Thanks to everyone who reviewed. I didn't have time to reply to all of you, which I apologize for, but I appreciate your reviews!
I don't own Pokemon.
Equilibrium
Chapter Seven
Cresselia hated recovering. The idea of being crammed in a tiny little room, all alone, for immeasurable periods of time was not one that she liked to dwell upon, or considered appealing. There was absolutely no form of entertainment in this room – it was a Pokemon center, built for Pokemon who had little to nothing going on in their brains. And it was not adequate to support her needs. The bed was too small, it was lumpy, and she had a kink in her neck at this point. But perhaps the worst part of the whole ordeal was the fact that she was not the one who was truly recovering – it was Darkrai.
She hadn't seen him in hours. It was officially five o'clock in the afternoon, and she'd had very little word about what was going on. Tonio had come in a few times, and explained that Alice was very busy. He tried to explain further that with Darkrai in the condition he was in – although Tonio failed to elaborate on exactly what that condition was – and the tower in a complete state of disarray, that they were very busy, and she'd just have to stay put. He'd checked in a little while later, looking very tired and much warier than he had earlier in the day. He told her that it was no longer just the tower that was deteriorating, but the entire town was beginning to fall apart. Upon hearing this news, her nerves only addled her even more – and the fact that he still, even when she asked him directly, would not tell her anything of Darkrai, made her even more concerned.
So, naturally, she'd tried to escape. First, she tried the door, as there was no window in the room. She'd tried to wrap her beak around it, and when that didn't work, she used psychic to try and open it. But she found quickly that the doorknob wouldn't budge; it was locked. Cresselia's knowledge of human locks was varied, but from what she had gathered over her lifetime, she knew that it had to do with tumblers. Each tumbler had to be pressed upward to a certain position for the lock to release. So, for the majority of forty-five minutes, she tried to pick the lock. When it turned out to be unsuccessful, Cresselia had had enough. Her wings flickered violently at her sides and began to glow, and simultaneously, so did the doorknob. It took only a matter of seconds, but that was long enough to cultivate so much psychic energy within the door. With a small bang, the knob erupted into thousands of tiny shards that caught themselves mid-thrust. Cresselia lowered them to the ground and silently pushed the door open. There were nurses – not the pink haired one, but interns, she suspected – in the hall. They were tending to a Charmander who had, from the looks of it, a broken leg. She ghosted past them without much trouble, and found herself sneaking into the lobby.
Here, there was more turmoil. There were at least thirty people crammed into the tiny waiting room, each having at least one Pokemon – varying from the tiniest Pichu to the largest, which happened to be an obese-looking Garchomp. Each trainer looked thoroughly shaken, and each Pokemon had some sort of injury. Nurses clambered between people, assessing the most seriously injured and taking them into the rooms in the back. Good thing I freed up a room, She thought smugly as she glided – virtually unnoticed in all the commotion – through the automatic doors.
She had not been prepared for the chaos outside. The buildings that she had seen just a few days before in perfectly fit condition were reduced to ruins. Their skeletons were visible, and the bricks they were made of had disintegrated – in many cases – to dust. She gasped at the sight of the once-fair city, bustling with life and activity, on its knees. The second thing she noticed, after a long moment of observation, was that nobody was on the streets. She busied herself with hovering down a few alleys and peering into holes that had shown up in the sides of the buildings. Nobody sat inside them; no lights were on, none of the outlets were working. The power had gone out. Above her, an angry looking swarm of thunderheads bristled, warning of an impending storm. Somewhere, far in the distance, a crack of thunder sounded, and a stream of liquid electricity found a spot to land on one of Alamos Town's bordering mountain range.
She flinched at the sound, but continued searching the abandoned city. She passed the Contest Hall, a large, amassing building that seemed to be one of the only ones with a back up generator, besides the Pokemon center. Even from outside of the large building, she could hear the hoards of people that were gathered inside of it – seeking refuge from the disaster outside. The building's splendor had all but decayed, and it was amazing it was even standing, when buildings around it had been reduced to rubble. As if they had aged hundreds of years in just a few hours. She only knew of two things that could do so much damage unnoticed, and she didn't like the idea of facing either of them. She stared at the Contest Hall for a very long moment, watching as parts of the building literally crumbled beneath their own weight. Thankfully, it was nothing structural – merely décor on the outside of the building. It took her more than a few minutes to finally gather her wits about her, and when she finally had, she set off for the only logical place she could imagine anyone that she was searching for would be at: the towers.
She had seen a picture of them in the newspaper, and the memory of their grandeur was still fresh in her memory. If she had only those two images to go by, she would have never noticed the building at all. The tower was nearly half of its size, and all of the wrought iron spindles that worked off of each tower were completely gone. A green substance – something she was hoping was moss but looked more like mold – covered the side, and nothing moved within it. The spires at the top had cracked off into sharp edges, and looked more like knives than a piece of architectural mastery. The small Pokemon that seemed fond of the tower had completely abandoned it – the Pidgey, Spearows, Starly, Wingull, all gone. In fact, she hadn't seen any of them throughout the town itself, either. This was exceptionally unsettling, and she began to doubt whether or not anyone was even in the tower. She wandered through the open double doors, one of which was hanging and the other had fallen off of its hinges completely. Inside, the statues were worn down so their features were no longer distinguishable, and each musical plate that sat in them was completely gone. The tower, according to the story Darkrai had told her of the last time he was in Alamos, was the key to stopping Dialga and Palkia. With the music gone… If they, or anything else – that idea was more than ominous – appeared, the town would be entirely defenseless. The only thing that had survived the onslaught of time was the staircase that lead up to the offices she had seen just the other day, when Alberto summoned them to see the broken computers. She followed the flight for a ways, until voices resounded through the halls. Encouragement flooded over her, and she increased her speed until she could make out the words.
"…But I don't understand," It was a female voice, and it sounded a lot like Alice. She was frantic. "Tonio, I don't understand what's going on!"
"…I know…" He spoke so softly she didn't catch much of what he was saying. "…I'm not sure either…"
There was a long pause in the speech, and Cresselia could only imagine that what he was saying was still too soft for her to hear. She crept closer to a heavy oak door, which was, miraculously, still standing. Its surface, however, was worn, and there were cracks in the metal work.
"But it was never this bad, not even when Palkia and Dialga came! It was never this bad."
There was a low, hollow groan, and her heart skipped two beats. There was only one being she had met in her entire life that could make a sound like that, and it was Darkrai.
"Do you know?" Alice was pleading now, in a pathetically insecure tone, "Do you know what's going on, Darkrai?"
The silence was so unbearable that she pressed the side of her head to the door in order to hear, but nobody was speaking. The silence wore on so long, she had to restrain herself from barging into the room, only because the information spoken would be valuable, and if they knew she was there…
"Well, Darkrai?" A short pause, "Please, if you know what's happening, tell us!"
There was another uncomfortable silence, where he grunted, but did not say anything.
"Something bad is going to happen, isn't it?" It was not so much of a question anymore, it was an answer. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what was going on in the room. She could almost picture Alice's expression. But Tonio and Darkrai just left large gaps in her vision, infallible voids.
"It is." The reply was so absent that Cresselia thought she'd imagined it. The silence that extended after the bleak admittance only deepened her theory. Until she heard the sob, and knew Alice was crying.
This time, Tonio spoke; "They aren't coming back, are they?" His voice was so full of fear, she could hardly picture him ever saying such a thing.
But she couldn't wait anymore. Whether she subconsciously did it, or it was just meant to be, one of the hinges gave way. She backed up just enough to barge angrily through the door, her metallic, ring-like wings making a terrible whirring sound in the air around her, like an over-worked clock.
They were standing in a circle, Alice was in the furthest corner, backed up against two oak desks that had seen better days. She hadn't noticed Cresselia, and if she had, she acknowledge it. Her head was buried in her hands, and she was shaking. Tonio stood to her left, his right arm pulled across his chest and his left elbow balancing on it. He was holding his glasses, and massaging the bridge of his nose with his left hand. At the farthest end of the room was Darkrai, floating in an unstable sort of way. His right arm had thick white bandages on it, and there was a soft splatter of red where the arm was still bleeding.
"Cresselia –"
"So that's what you came back here for, huh?" She growled. Her wings kicked up a flurry, so quickly that the papers strewn across the office were kicked up. "I can't believe it! When were you going to tell me you were coming back here? When were you going to tell me?" She beyond angry – she had thought she'd been mad earlier, but she was oblivious. This was what true anger was, and under her skin, she felt her blood boiling. Tonio and Alice were staring at her, partly because she was speaking in tones – soft ones by nature that had been warped into shrill, angry bell tones. They couldn't understand what she was saying, but it was obvious they knew she was angry.
"You weren't, were you?"
"No." His answer was short, but it cut like a knife. Her insides churned uncomfortably, and she could have sworn she'd just been physically stabbed. "If I told you," He added, "You would not have let me come."
"Of course I wouldn't let you come!" Her throat wasn't working anymore, so she had to resort, finally, to speaking without it. "I would not have let you come because the last time you came here, you came back in shreds! I thought you were going to die!"
Tonio and Alice had not expected something like that out of her, and she knew that they must not have thought about where Darkrai remained when he was not with them. They obviously did not know, and she was angry at them for not giving it much thought. No, she was furious at them, for not considering what Darkrai's actions did to her. And she was fuming because of everyone else, Darkrai didn't think about how his choices affected her. Her wings beat so quickly they became blurs at her sides.
"I can't help that, Cresselia," He said, finality and firmness in his tone, "I have to do what I'm told to do."
Her mind went numb, and she couldn't form articulate words. She stuttered for a long moment, and drew out nothing but gibberish. Finally, her brain seemed to kick into gear, and cleared the fog. "Well you can't expect me to wait around and watch you die, Darkrai. Do whatever the hell you want, request an audience, because I won't be there." The phantom seemed to actually recoil, a reaction she had not expected from him. But she was too angry to pay attention to this. "I'm leaving, Darkrai, and I'm not waiting for you. If you don't come back, that's not my fault." And, having said all she could manage to say, she turned on a dime and rushed down the flight of stairs. The building seemed to quake with her momentum, but she ignored it. The sooner she was out those two broken doors, the sooner she was out of this horrible town, she would feel better. And that was the only thing she thought about as she sped through the ruins of Alamos.
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Well, that was interesting. It's not a total repeat of the movie, guys, so don't abandon me just yet. A lot of crazy stuff is going to happen, so I suggest you keep all of your limbs in the vehicle and hold onto your hats. PS: FF hates putting in those line breaks.
