Heya! Yes, I FINALLY got chapter six out. I started writing it half a week after I published my other story's most recent chapter, scrapped almost the entire chapter a week or two ago, and now it's done. Marching band took up a lot of time and energy I could have used to write this… having said that, yes, I'm in marching band, which is like, the ultimate level of band geekiness… Except for drum major and stuff, maybe. And being in marching band means that for almost every Saturday for a while, I get to steal Lucas's hat. Yup.
Moving on:
The Morning Star Café had clearly been built with penniless trainers in mind. Everything was highly affordable, yet well-made at the same time – at least, judging by the plates of other customers and the menu above the front counter. Andrea went up front to order.
"You guys find a table," she told Rachel and Lucas.
Most of the spots across the floor and along a counter were occupied, but a single row of small square tables was empty. Customers seemed to be avoiding them, although Rachel couldn't understand why. The tables were clean and looked fine. The only difference was that those tables were square and all the others were round. She and Lucas chose one with two chairs and dragged a third over for Andrea. After that…
Does the phrase, "awkward silence" ring a bell?
Rachel attempted to block out the silence by playing a song in her head. Eventually, though, she admitted to herself that as fast-paced and intense as Critical Mass was, it still wasn't working. "So," she said, trying to start a conversation. "Um… How've you been?"
Stupid, she thought a moment later, you've been with him this whole time.
"Fine," he said shortly.
"Striaton City's pretty cool so far."
He didn't respond. He kept looking at the ground.
"I wonder how far away the next town is?"
The carpet must have been really interesting; it had Lucas's full attention.
Rachel sighed. "What's bugging you?"
"Nothing," he said a little too quickly.
"No, really. Something's bugging you. Even I can tell."
"Nothing."
He's homesick, Eist piped up.
Rachel blinked. "Uh, Eist, how do you know that?" she said out loud.
Ether told me. Wait… Ether must have been telling Eist more – for one thing, Eist seemed to be listening to something, and for another thing, Lucas's expression was starting to broadcast mild anger.
So Ether says Lucas misses home and his friends, like, even Jonathan stealing his food every day, Eist began. He wants to go back to band, but kind of doesn't want to go to school. Guess he doesn't like it. He just wants to see his friends again, and–
Suddenly Lucas jolted upright. "Ether, say that and die," he warned in a low voice.
…and he especially wants to see someone named Ally again, Eist said slowly. Who's Ally?
Lucas closed his eyes. "Ether, I really hate you," he muttered.
"Flute player," Rachel let Eist know, not caring that Lucas could hear. "Don't worry about it. Jonathan and I have known for a while."
So that was the buildup. Homesickness and lovesickness.
Lucas groaned. "My ralts friend hates me," he said, putting emphasis on "friend".
"Sounds like it's a mutual feeling, though," Rachel reminded him. He shrugged. "You really miss her, huh?" she wondered, changing the subject.
Lucas opened his eyes and stared at the carpet again. "Yeah," he mumbled.
Rachel hesitated to say what had just popped into her mind. It was a question. A question that, she guessed, could be the least bit awkward to ask someone. She did anyways. "What's it like… Liking someone?"
The spot between Lucas's eyebrows creased. He shrugged.
"No, really," Rachel said, "I want to know so that when it happens to me, I'll recognize it."
He didn't look away from the ground as he said, "I dunno… it just kinda happens. You really look forward to seeing that person whenever they're not around, and then when they're there you laugh at everything stupid they say and like being near them. But it's really hard to talk to them if you like them."
Rachel digested this information. "Okay. I'll keep that in mind," she said cheerily.
A man approached their table. He was dressed in a formal waiter's outfit, complete with a blue bowtie and a towel draped over his arm. The man was tall and lean, and had bright blue eyes. Tendrils of long blue hair framed his face, which was directed their way. "Are either of you ready for your battle?" he inquired.
"…What?" Rachel wondered.
"Your battle. My brothers are busy at the moment, but I'd be glad to compete against one of you now," he explained.
"What… Oh, is this one of those restaurants that battle for the food?" Rachel asked. There was one like that in Sinnoh, somewhere near Pastoria City.
The man looked surprised. "This is the Striaton City Gym. Challengers battle for the Trio Badge. You are sitting at a square challenger's table, right?"
Gym. The word reverberated in Rachel's mind. A gym in a café?
She was about to say, "Sorry, we weren't planning to battle. We just wanted lunch and didn't know about the tables." But someone beat her to the response.
"Sure."
Rachel glanced at Lucas, alarmed. "I'll go first," he said. He was looking at the man.
The man smiled. "Great. My name is Cress, and I'm one of Striaton City's gym leaders. Come with me – and you're welcome to watch, if you'd like," he let Rachel know.
Lucas immediately got up and followed Cress toward a pair of kitchen doors. Rachel hurried to catch up. "What's going on? You said you didn't want to waste time on the badge run. Plus, are you crazy? You're gonna get hurt to some degree," she reminded him.
He turned toward her as they passed through the doors, and a shiver ran down Rachel's back – his normally light brown eyes had turned scarlet, and held an alert gleam that definitely wasn't his. "When did I ever say that?" he said, and Rachel realized the voice wasn't his either. "That wasn't me. Lucas, maybe. But not me."
"Ether," Rachel understood.
A grin spread across his face. "Yeah. Hey, I've wanted to battle someone for ages."
"I'm going to tell Cress that you're not here for a battle," Rachel said slowly.
"Do that and I'll magical leaf you til you can't stand," he warned in a light tone. Ether or Lucas or whoever he was turned around and walked faster.
An increasing sense of apprehension growing in her stomach, Rachel followed, deciding that it was a good thing she'd chosen to accompany them.
They followed Cress through a narrow hallway. Its walls were decorated with awards – "Café of the year," "Most popular café of 2010", and "Top voted soup of 2011" were among them. At the other end of the corridor, a simple wooden door lay in wait.
Cress turned the handle. "Usually, the challenger reaches a gym battlefield on their own," he let them know, "but this gym is different. There's no puzzle here." He pushed the door open, leading to a brightly lit room. A standard league battlefield had been painted on a plain concrete floor, which was just larger than a basketball court. On the sides were elevated bleachers for people to sit and watch at.
"Stairs are over there," Cress let Rachel know, gesturing to their left. "I suppose I haven't asked you your names yet."
"I'm Lucas," Ether informed him.
Liar, Rachel thought.
"And you?"
"Rachel," she replied.
"How nice to meet you. I hope this will be an exciting battle."
Cress turned and strode to the other side of the room. Rachel took this as her cue to head up the stairway, but not before she noticed the look of excitement on Ether's face.
This is seriously scaring me, she told Eist.
Don't worry; I wouldn't do that to you, Eist promised.
I trust you. I just don't trust Ether.
"This will be a one-on-one battle between the myself and the challenger. There are no substitutions. If the challenger is the victor, they will receive P1680 prize money and a badge. However, if I am the victor, the challenger gives me half the money he or she has on hand," Cress announced. Rachel found a seat in the front row. The chairs were pretty nice; sort of movie-theater style, with seats that flipped down when you needed to use them. "Protocol says I send my pokemon out first, but you get the first move," Cress informed his opponent, holding up a pokeball. "Are you ready?"
"Yeah," Ether's voice responded.
"Panpour, come join us," Cress called, throwing out his pokemon. Rachel recognized the creature from her brief flipping through the Xtranceiver's Pokedex. She went back and checked the description.
A water type… And Ether only knows magical leaf. Of course it's now, when Lucas is possessed by a bloodthirsty idiot ralts, that we get a Deus ex Machina.
Ether unzipped Lucas's jacket zipper and pulled his arms out of the sleeves. He dropped the jacket on the sidelines behind him and let his hat follow. The straps of Lucas's backpack were still looped around his jacket.
Cress watched curiously as Ether stepped out onto the battlefield. "Would you be a fighting-type enthusiast? Some choose to fight in the place of pokemon."
Ether let a smirk fall across Lucas's face. "Not exactly. I get the first move, right?"
As Cress opened his mouth to respond, a swarm of multicolored leaves flipped out of thin air and rushed at the unprepared panpour. The water monkey squealed and clutched his face, which started to drip little spots of red fluid.
"What on earth… Panpour, use watergun!" Cress yelled, surprised.
An onslaught of magical leaves hit the incoming water attack, saturating the leaves enough to make them fall to the ground, but also cutting the stream of water into beads. Ether didn't even have to duck.
"Go with fury swipes!" Cress called out.
Letting out a yowl, Panpour rushed straight through the next bombardment of leaves and flashed his claws. Claws? Rachel thought, He didn't have claws a minute ago. At any rate, yes, the panpour now had claws, which were long and sharp and very lethal-looking. Panpour slashed at Ether with both hands, leaving long scratches down the latter's arms. The scrapes looked red, but if they were bleeding, there wasn't enough blood to tell. Rachel swore she saw something flicker a second later, although she didn't know exactly what.
"Panpour! Use what we've been working on!" Cress exclaimed.
Panpour's claws shrank back into his hands and he immediately chomped down on Ether's lower arm. Water squirted between his teeth, with traces of something darker mixed in.
Ether yelled, "Ow!" and Rachel saw the flicker again.
That's not even his own blood, she thought in disgust.
It's half his, Eist corrected her. Remember? That's not just Lucas anymore.
An idea popped into Rachel's mind. So, if Ether is in control right now, what happened to Lucas?
What happens to Ether when Lucas is in control?
Rachel frowned. What do you mean?
Where is Ether?
When Lucas is in control? Ether's inside him somewhere.
There you go, Eist chirped happily. Lucas is still in there.
Cress, meanwhile, seemed confused. "That did way more damage than it should have done to a grass type," he admitted. "Waterfang is part water, naturally. But then, it's also part dark type," he added, a grin slowly spreading across his face, "and magical leaf requires some psychic energy to use."
Panpour let go of Ether's arm. Clutching the fang wound, Ether shot Cress a spiteful look. "I thought Gym Leaders weren't supposed to let their guard down," he drawled in a bored tone, although the tear in his arm clearly hurt like heck. As he spoke, a fourth round of magical leaf barreled into Panpour, who was only a few feet away.
"Waterfang," Cress instructed. Ether darted away from the water-type's jaws, launching a small hurricane of leaves while still holding his arm. "Watergun!" The foliage collided with the jet of water, cancelling the attack. "Scald, then!" Cress changed tactics.
The psychopathic ralts shot another magical leaf at Panpour, and another stream of water countered it. This time, though, the leaves fell away, soaked and steaming like boiled spinach, and the water continued towards Ether.
"YEOW!" Ether yelled in a funny voice, yanking his body away from the water. It had caught him full in the chest, and judging from the fact that his drenched shirt was now steaming, the water had been burning hot.
Well, scalding hot, Rachel figured. The flickers she'd seen before returned, and this time there were several of them.
Cress made one of those overrated dramatic poses. "Panpour! Use waterfang and don't let go! See if you can finish this!"
Even with Ether's efforts to stop Panpour's charge with magical leaf, the water monkey still reached him. Ether jerked his wounded lower arm, which Panpour had been aiming for, away from the pokemon's reach. However, Panpour grabbed the bottom of Ether's shirt with his hands. Another flicker somewhere around Ether's face, and the ralts flung his hand down at the monkey. This was sort of a good thing, because in doing so, he got his lower arm away from the spot the panpour then aimed for.
Having said that, he still failed to hit the panpour who had jumped up to bite.
Panpour latched his fangs to Ether's bicep, piercing his black t-shit as well as the skin underneath. When Ether shouted in pain, Rachel saw a flicker that was slower and longer than ones before, and it dawned on her that it was a flicker of color. She didn't know anything else about it. Most of her brain cells were busy trying to prevent herself from shaking too much.
Eist, she said, if this Ether doesn't win or give up soon, he's going to maim Lucas.
For once, Eist was silent.
Ether was breathing in short gasps. The magical leaf that sprung out of the air wasn't nearly as confident as previous ones had been. It barely hurt Panpour, who was still hanging on to Ether's arm.
Cress frowned. "Persistent. Panpour, use fury swipes."
Feeling a bit fearful, Rachel gripped the arms of her seat. The panpour extended his claws again and started to swipe at Ether's side while still locked onto his arm. With every strike, every rip of black t-shirt fabric, every slash that made panpour's claws come out a little more red, the odd flicker of color repeated. Ether was struggling against the water-type, but his efforts were starting to grow slower. The magical leaf he tried to conjure barely looked like grass flying from a lawnmower.
Rachel had had enough. She shoved herself to her feet, letting the theater-style chair flip back up. "Ether!" she hollered, "Just forfeit or win! Otherwise you're just some selfish idiot who doesn't care that you're hurting Lucas when you hurt yourself. Forfeit or win! It doesn't matter! Just stop!"
Ether looked up, and a flicker happened. Suddenly she realized what the flickers were, all along: his eyes changing color. The flickers were shifts between the bloodred of Ether's irises and Lucas's dark amber.
Shifts between the two beings inside that one body.
The light brown, dark amber eyes didn't flicker back to red. Taking in a breath, the person who was now Lucas used his familiar unconventional fighting style: he punched the panpour in the stomach. Panpour released Lucas's arm while coughing, and couldn't get up in time to escape a full-power magical leaf. The direct hit knocked him back, and the water-type monkey's head hit the ground.
Cress sighed. "Panpour, we were close. Return." A red light drew the unconscious pokemon back into the gym leader's pokeball.
To Rachel, it felt like some invisible barrier between the field and herself had been lifted, and she jumped down the stairs as fast as her feet would take her. She started to run out onto the field, but halted. Rachel backtracked just far enough to pick up Lucas's hat, bag, and jacket from the side of the battlefield. She swung the backpack's straps over her own shoulder, then continued toward her friend.
Cress had gone over to him after the battle. He appeared to be examining the damage to Lucas's arms. One arm stayed loosely at his side, with nothing more than a set of long scratches. Contrariwise, Lucas's right arm was bleeding freely from deep bites on both the upper and lower parts. Underneath his right arm, his shirt was torn up and soaked with dark liquid. It was his right arm that Cress was studying.
"Hm. Usually a fighting enthusiast will prefer to train longer before challenging a gym," Cress let him know, "By then they'll have learned tricks for preventing open wounds. The magical leaf was odd though, how did you manage that?"
Rachel looked to Lucas, who wasn't saying a word. His face was tinged a slight bluish gray, and his breaths came quick and shallow. His eyes were distant and tired, like he was about to fall asleep standing up.
"Cress," she intervened, "He needs medical help."
Cress appeared surprised. "A trained fighter often is built to withstand–"
"He's not a trained fighter. I'll explain in a bit, but we really need to get him somewhere fast," Rachel said seriously.
He collapsed just before getting to the medical unit of the Striaton Gym. Nothing dramatic; he just dropped. Cress caught him and shot Rachel an anxious look.
"I thought he wanted to fight," Cress said in alarm.
Rachel considered saying, "It wasn't him; it was his inner demented ralts that challenged you," but she figured now wasn't the time.
Cress carried Lucas through a wooden doorway. "Stay out here," he said to Rachel, letting the door close behind him.
She stood there, awkwardly, until she decided that standing there awkwardly wouldn't actually help the situation. Running her thumb over the soft inside of Lucas's jacket, she tried to think of what else to do.
I'm hungry… guess we never actually ate lunch, huh?...
Oh yeah, Andrea's still there…
Rachel bolted down the corridor Cress had led her and Lucas down, and headed back out the way they'd come. Bursting through the outer kitchen doors, she made her way straight to the table Andrea was at. It was a round one, unlike the table Rachel and Lucas had unfortunately chosen.
"Andrea," Rachel panted, going straight over to the table.
Andrea turned her head and spotted her. Standing up, she said, "Where did you go? I thought you guys would still be here, at the bathroom or something…" There was worry etched into her words.
Rachel looked for a good place to start at. "This café is a gym," she began, "and Lucas and I got a table meant for gym challengers. A gym leader – his name's Cress – came and asked us if we were ready to battle, and then Ether possessed Lucas or something and said yes, he wanted to battle…"
Andrea obtained an alarmed frown. "How did it go?" She seemed to realize that someone was missing. "Where's Lucas?"
"Medical area…"
Andrea snatched up a plastic bag from the table. "I got this to go," she explained briefly, walking briskly towards the kitchen doors. She then stopped and looked back toward Rachel. "Maybe you should go first."
The duo strode quickly back through the kitchen, hall of awards, battlefield, and another hallway to reach the door Cress had gone into.
And there they waited. They sat against the wall on the ground and pulled out their paper-wrapped sandwiches and ate them, but the time didn't pass any faster. Rachel described the battle in detail to Andrea.
"Wow. I really missed out," Andrea commented, laughing a little.
Rachel smiled, but shuddered at the thought of the blood. You didn't miss out at all…
Rachel was starting to nod off against the plaster wall when the door opened. Suddenly alert, she quickly got to her feet. Andrea did the same.
Cress was there. Rachel introduced Andrea, and he nodded. "You can come in now," he let them know, sounding a little tired.
They followed him in. The small, bedroom-sized chamber was neither dark nor light; the lights on the ceiling weren't on, but sunlight from outside came through the closed blinds on the far end of the room. Medical supplies decked one wall, in varying appearances of age. There was a crisp, clean bed near them, and another bed farther away with someone sleeping in it.
"If I'd known, I'd have stopped the battle sooner," Cress said sadly, looking over the peaceful form in the corner. Lucas's entire right arm and part of his left arm were completely wrapped in bandages, and he was wearing a different, gray shirt – Rachel remembered that the one he'd been wearing had been partially shredded by fury swipes. "I honestly thought he was a fighting specialist…" He broke off abruptly and pulled out a pair of rolling chairs. Gesturing for Andrea and Rachel to sit there, he plopped himself onto the edge of the smooth white bedcovers of the unoccupied mattress. "All right. Something's up with this whole deal. What is it?"
They told him. They told him about Sinnoh, Nuvema, and the laboratory. The experiment and the aftermath. Their decision to travel up to the Pokemon League and get approval to head back home…. And their choice to not battle for gym badges.
Cress took the near insult to Professor Juniper in a surprising way. "She always did seem a bit off to me," he mentioned. "Like she'd do anything for science." Thinking further, he slowly said, "You can't actually get into the Pokemon League without havng all eight badges. The badge check gates make sure of that." Rachel and Andrea must have appeared upset, because Cress was quick to support the statement. "Even if the badge possession wasn't necessary, I'd actually recommend the journey to you. I mean, how often do you get the chance to travel around a region? Going for the badges gives you a goal to reach, and how you manage to reach the goal is how you grow in the end."
"Isn't it really out of the way though? The fastest route around Unova… See," Andrea said, pulling out her map, "Head west from here until this big city on the coast, then north to the city here. Then east all the way around the region, past a lot of coastal areas, and up to the league. Half of the gym route is on the other side of the region from this route. Gym cities are marked."
"You don't want to go that way," Cress said, smiling slightly. "The eastern end is where people go when they get bored of winning by a long shot. All the super powerful battlers are there, and they almost literally pounce on any trainer who comes by. The gym cities actually go in order from easiest to hardest as you go around this way," he said, tracing the western half of the map.
"They're all on our way…" Andrea mused.
"And you can't get into the Pokemon League without them," Cress added.
Andrea looked to Rachel. "Doesn't sound too bad, anyways," she said.
"That means yes?" Rachel confirmed.
"We don't have a choice." Rachel whirled around, surprised. "No one can reach the champion without badges. So we have to get the badges," Lucas said quietly. He seemed barely awake.
"Glad to see you up," Cress said brightly. "I wanted to hand this to you face to face." Standing up, the gym leader reached into his apron pocket and drew out an envelope and a small, shiny object. "This is your prize money. Use it well. And this is the Trio Badge, from the Striaton City Gym. You earned it." The badge was the color of polished brass, with three diamonds lined up with each other in the middle – one red, one green, and one blue. It was oblong, unlike the roundish ones of Sinnoh. "And, ah, I'm really sorry about that," Cress said sheepishly, handing the two items to Lucas.
"It was Ether's fault," Lucas stated bluntly.
"All right then. It was a really good battle, though," Cress admitted.
"Hey Cress! Where are you, there's two challengers and Cilan's already occupied…" A waiter with flaming red hair waltzed into the room. Besides his crimson colored hair and eyes and his impatient demeanor, the man looked exactly like Cress.
"Medical problems, Chili. All taken care of," Cress replied.
"You guys battled yet?" Chili asked the teens briskly.
"He did. Not us," Andrea said.
"I saw you upstairs. You were here before the other kids challenging us, so you get priority," Chili said at lightning speed.
Rachel and Andrea stood there, stunned, for a few moments. Lucas spoke first, oddly enough. "If I already have a badge, you guys probably don't need to," he said.
Rachel grinned and turned back toward him. "Your logic is off. Because you have the badge, now we have to get it too, to match your level."
"See you in a bit?" Andrea said, heading out. Chili zipped in the direction of the battlefields.
"I should heal Panpour for the next battle," Cress remarked, walking out. "Get some rest until I come back," he said to Lucas.
Then it was just Lucas and Rachel. "I should go…" she said, sort-of-smiling from the terrible awkwardness that was her voice. Lucas nodded, and she turned and went out the door. Just as she had the door almost closed, he said something.
"Good luck."
Rachel opened the door a crack wider. His expression was sincere. "Thanks," she said, smiling.
She shut the door.
Just a heads-up: I changed Rachel's last name for undisclosed reasons. It's Myers now. Rachel Myers.
So I wanted to get this out in time for it to be dedicated for someone's birthday… Yeah, that didn't work. But happy (belated) birthday to Lucas, anyways.
Speaking of Lucas, I am having issues with him like you would not believe… Long story short, when I was writing the part where Ether starts to possess Lucas, I realized that Ether could represent the side of Lucas I really hate. The character Lucas Zhang is based on how Lucas used to be, and I hope still is.
Critical Mass by Todd Stalter. Yes. Awesome song. I'm pretty sure it's on YouTube, so check it out.
Til next time.
~A. Eon.