Please, if you don't want to read the chapter then just go to the bottom and consider what I say, if not only for a minute. And if do you read it, I am sorry if the quality has gone down… it's that I have no one to beta read me anymore… but at this point I could care less. Just go to the bottom.

Mood music

Thoughts

The usual

Chapter 9: In Loving Memory of IcyNirvana

Chris walked down the stairs with a flashlight in hand while talking to himself, "This day is just great! Lewis goes missing, the city has a massive blackout, and now there's no hot water left… thanks Sara." He walked up to the front door and sighed as he opened it, "Lewis, it's midnight!... HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" Chris stumbled back and tripped on a shoe, "S-SARA HELP!" He screamed while crawling backwards as a monster walked into his house.

Immediately, Sara jumped down the stairs with a shadow ball in hand, ready to strike. "I'll save you! -" She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw what she was fighting followed by a large spike lodging itself in the wall behind her, inches from her face. Sara let out high pitch squeal, "nope!" then ran back upstairs on all fours as fast as possible.

Chris looked up at the creature standing over him, fear in his eyes. "D-don't kill me!" He closes his eyes and turned away.

Kai walked up to Chris and tapped him on the shoulder, "We're not here to hurt you, mister." She meekly spoke.

"Then why are you here?" Chris looked at the beat up Riolu then over at creature that he just now noticed was holding Lewis. "Oh no Lewis... what have you done?"

Kai tugged at Chris' shirt to get his attention and explained very Tiredly: "Lewis needs to be put in a tub of cold water; he's not doing so good... we just want to help him." As she spoke, Kai could feel the exhaustion creep up on her. Sleep becoming the only thing on her mind.

Chris was hesitant and a bit confused, but nonetheless he was glad they were on his side. "Uh, okay... here, come to the guest bathroom." He stood up and showed them the way with the flashlight, watching his back as he walked down to the basement. Walking through what he called his 'man cave' he opened the door to a small bathroom. "Place him there, I'll turn on the cold water." Chris turned the water to cold and stepped aside for the guardian to place Lewis in it; the water turned to vapor on contact with Lewis' skin.

"Wow, that's really hot!" The bathroom momentarily filled with steam, "what happened to him?" Chris looked back at the guardian only to find it missing, just the poor Riolu passed out on the floor. He sighed, "I guess we have a new quest..." gently picking Kai up as to not wake her up, he brought her to the guest bedroom and laid her on the bed.

"Is that thing gone..." Sara asked, poking her head around the doorframe.

Chris covered Kai with a quilt and carefully placed her head on a pillow, "Yeah, also Lewis is back home; he's in the tub cooling off." He lit an old lantern that sat on the bedside table. The soft orange flames made the room feel smaller than the moonlight that came from the ground level window, safer even.

"I saw, he looked really cut up." Sara walked up to the bed and looked at what Chris was doing, "Lewis brought her here? If so, then he better take good care of such a cutie! Not everyday you come by a Riolu like this."

Chris walked out of the room with Sara following behind, "Are you already shipping them, really? Just because he brings a girl home doesn't mean he actually 'got a girl'. Have some shame." He placed the flashlight on the sink and drained the hot water from the tub, replacing it with more cold water. "For all we know she might be a little girl."

Teasing Chris Sara said with a smirk, "Or a sexy beast ready to evolve and ride Lewis' rod like a Ponyta!" She giggled with a childish grin.

"That imagery will be burned into my mind thanks to you..." Chris shut off the water, "but in all seriousness, what do you think happened? When Lewis goes off and does his thing he's not brought back home in a coma by a monster that then leaves us with Riolu that might- or might not his girlfriend!"

"So you're entertaining the thought~" Sara added in while Chris talks.

"Shut up about that right now, we have bigger issues! What I'm trying to say is that something big happened and a shit storm will follow after tonight!" Chris grabbed some first aid supplies from under the sink just in case Kai or Lewis needed medical help.

Sara sat in the hallway by the door, staring into the dark then sighed, "Then what do we do?"

Chris came out with a basket of medical supplies and a flashlight in hand then went into the bedroom, placing them all on a table next to the lantern. "Well... we wait for one of these two to wake up, that's all we can do." Grabbing an extra blankets and pillow, he laid it on the floor as a makeshift bed, "I'll sleep down here and watch over these two. If you want, you can sleep in our room." He turned off the flashlight, turned down the lantern, laid down and covered himself with another blanket, expecting this to be a long, lonely night.

Sara snuck under the covers and laid next to Chris, "I've slept alone in caves and under bridges, why would I go back to sleeping alone..." She curled up against Chris, giving him a kiss on the neck and laid her head on his chest. "Love you."

"Love you, too." Chris smiled and held her close as they fell asleep, loving the feeling of her soft fur that smelled of lavender.

Transistor – Gold Leaf

Lewis opened his eyes to see the cracked concrete ceiling of an old building. His body sore and his head pounding with every heartbeat, his eyes hurting so much that he wanted to rip them out. Slowly, Lewis stood back on his feet using a wall for support. Walking was hard with his unstable limp as he tried to find a clear window that wasn't frosted over. Lewis managed to find a stairway going up and with his shaking hands he grabbed the railing, then carefully made his way up.

He walked up to a metal door with frost coming from the bottom. Lewis threw his entire body at it; not having the willpower to use his arms for such a task. With one sturdy slam the door broke open into an unknown landscape. The harsh, frigid wind blew against his face, fresh ankle-high snow covered the ground. So cold. Where am I... can't even feel my feet anymore... Lewis thought to himself as ice formed on his beard and eyebrows from the melting snow.

"You look cold; you might need to get out of that icy water!" A voice cut through the howling winds. Lewis turned around to see a towering white shadow, black and blue dots peering through the blizzard. "Forgive the weather," suddenly the raging blizzard slowed down and turned to light snowfall, "better."

"What…" Lewis violently coughed and leaned against the doorframe, looking at where he was. Astonishment was his first reaction, a city that looked very similar to his world's Detroit, just more run down and decrepit. snow covered the streets and rooftops, smoke came out of the chimneys and heater units from the top of the buildings. Small and large boulders of ice had crushed light posts, mailboxes, and parts of some buildings. "Hail...?" Lewis looked up the 'sky'.

Miles upon miles of jagged glacier floating on top of their head, massive chunks of ice falling off the sky, crashing to the ground. In other parts of the city there were entire sections flattened by massive ice caps. Roars like thunder boomed through the city as the glaciers crashed and grinded against each other. In other parts of the city had entire sections flattened by massive ice caps "Sorry for the skyquakes and icebergs; it reminds me of this cool universe I visited once." Stephen wore his usual long white cloak as he happily swayed back and forth.

"Where?" Lewis kept his questions short while sliding down the door frame, feeling ill and nauseous.

Stephen smiled and walk up to Lewis, "Welcome to my world! It's about the size of your planet- but you don't care, right now you feel like dying. I know." He handed Lewis a small water cake with a strange fruit in the middle, "I hope this helps for now, at least until you wake up."

In most cases, Lewis would be skeptical about taking anything from Stephen. But in that moment he felt like dying, so he would take anything to help his pain. "Better not poison me..." Stephen carefully place the delicate cake in Lewis' hand. Lewis placed the whole thing in his mouth and felt the strange gel melt away into water with a nice hint of blueberry. "Wow. That actually helped!" It had a bitter after taste, but he wasn't rolling on the ground in pain anymore.

"Get up, time to talk!" Stephen gave a hand to Lewis and pulled him up; his tone always so upbeat, "I'll give you a chance to ask questions, but only if you ask the right questions." They both walked inside where it was much warmer and less dangerous.

They walked back down into the room where Lewis woke up in as Stephen turned on a heater by the window. "Now, I'm gonna ask the obvious one... what the hell was that thing!" Lewis asked while taking a seat on the concrete ground.

Stephen leaned against a cracked wall and sighed, "Not the right question. First one should've been what happened."

"That was my second question, but okay. What happened back there?" By then Lewis had come to accept how annoying Stephen was.

"Great question!" Stephen sarcastically chuckled, then forcefully shoved the entire fight from his perspective into Lewis' head.

Lewis clenched his jaw from the sharp pain in his head and all over his head. "Shit! Dammit! Why'd you do that?!" He saw everything that happened and felt all the pain of the entire fight in a second.

"Wrong questions my dude." Stephen took a seat adjacent to Lewis on the ground, "Look man, I'll give you a second chance."

Lewis let out a loud groan, "What is Norr?"

"Norr was an old friend of yours and an advisor to the sol admins; one of which was you." Stephen was excited to be finally giving a much needed history lesson to Lewis.

Lewis felt a bit dumbfounded by all of the new information Stephen just told him. "Then what is this lope I've heard about? Is it like my heart?"

"I mean, kinda yeah… If a sol loses its base lope they'll die, but it also gives them their powers. Look, I've lived a VERY long time and I still don't understand how those strange anomalies work, so that's the only question I can't fully answer." Stephen smirked as he watched Lewis go into deep thought and his gaze wondered off.

"wait a second..." Lewis had the look of a true philosopher as he connected the dots, "So are sols like alien gods?" only to give a stupid sounding, but valid question. "I feel like a dumbass for asking that... but is it true?"

"Wow! You got straight to the-" They both looked at the ice chunk that crashed through the wall with the heater, "to the point!" then the ice fell off the building. "Yes, you are right and wrong. We are not from this planet; thus the powers, but it would be retarded to say that we are gods. That's a flawed concept because we can die and there will always be something more powerful out there. So, I'm an 'alien' and you have our powers." Another large piece of ice destroyed the entire outward facing wall that had a window.

Lewis felt concerned about the crumbling building he was in but trusted he was just a projection in Stephen's world. "You say our powers, and from what I saw there are at least five of us in just my city... So, how many of 'us' are there out in the world?" He flinched as the stairway behind him collapsed and the metal door came crashing down.

"well... at the moment, on this planet there are around 23 active sols. There possibly could be a couple thousand in existence if you count the inactive ones, but it doesn't compare to what we use to be..." Stephen leaned back and laid down, remembering the good day. "We were an empire of nine hundred thousand, we were simple and isolated, but we controlled everything around us. The three of us were the admins, the speakers for the Mother. Sadly, we had one limitation: we couldn't reproduce. Then another very advanced species got into a resource war with us for our rare mezorite crystals... I wanted to help; I didn't want to see my friends die again, but I couldn't interfere." The building shook as dust crumbled from the ceiling, "It really sucks that I have to keep reliving my civilization's downfall... It collapsed like this building will." Stephen sighed as the floor cracked under them.

"Wait! Now I have more questions! Tell me who is 'the three'?!" Lewis started to panic as the building shook under him, "For fuck sakes! I hate you for this!"

Stephen sat back up and smirked, "The three; the admins and speakers, by that I mean you, me, and yo-" The floor imploded and the building instantly collapsed mid-sentence.


Chris was sleeping down in the basement as Sara and Kai slept upstairs in his room. Then, when the moon was at its highest, the noise of splashing water, falling shower curtains, and the slamming of a toilet bowl. Chris shot up and stumbled out of bed, he turned on the flashlight that he'd dropped on the ground then ran to the guest bathroom. He slammed the door open and turned on the lights, "Lewis!" Chris saw Lewis with his head in the toilet violently throwing up, "Shit, let me get you some water!" He quickly ran back to his room and grabbed a water bottle, then ran back to Lewis. When he walked back in Lewis was laying on the ground while groaning, Chris handed Lewis the bottle and watched Lewis viciously chug the water. "uh… take this too." He handed Lewis a green towel since Lewis was naked.

Lewis simply threw the towel over his body as he lazily laid on the cold, wet, tile ground of the bathroom. "Thanks…It's… ugh. Heh, it's good being alive…" Lewis looked down to his shaking, scared hands, "The Riolu… is she safe?" Lewis asked, scared to death that he failed to keep one simple Pokémon alive, even with all his powers.

"Yes, Kai is safe. She's upstairs sleeping with Sara." Lewis let out a sigh of relief as a weight was lifted from his heart. "How you feel?"

Lewis coughed and shivered at the taste of vomit, "I feel like shit, everything hurts, I feel weak, my skin is burning, and I want to kill- I mean die…" Lewis didn't want to say that last part; it just came out, but he thought of it to be a grammatical slip. "I just want some aspirin and a bed… tomorrow I'll explain what happened." He stood up, wrapped the towel around his waist then walked over to the medicine cabinet to get some aspirin, "Goodnight…" Lewis grabbed two pills and walked into the guest bed room, shutting the door behind him.

Chris sighed, "I'll be sleeping on the couch today then~" then turned off the lights and walked upstairs to the living room.

"Hey! Lewis!" Stephen slapped Lewis in the face to wake him up.

"Stop! You bitch!" Lewis quickly woke up and punched Stephen in the face, then shouted: "Why and I back here!" Lewis stood up and looked around at the rubble of the collapsed building he was in.

Stephen grabbed Lewis and pulled him back, saving Lewis from a falling icicle. "Lewis, just listen! Your perception of time is faster here so I can't spare time!" Stephen stepped to the side and dodged another falling spike that exploded on contact with the ground, "When you stole Norr's powers you've also assimilated some corrupted lopes, so you'll have violent thoughts and the occasional bloodlust, but there's a reason Mother chose you. Also, you're now an active sol, so you'll find that you might have trouble controlling your powers for the next few weeks." Stephen explained as fast he could, "Crap!" Stephen grabbed Lewis and lunged out of the way of a large ice bolder.

They both got up and Lewis asked: "What hell does that even mean?!" He had become tired of Stephens bullshit, as if Lewis had a meter of how much Stephen he could handle for a week, and that single day passed the exposure limit of an entire month.

Stephen looked up and groaned, "ah shit~ times up!"

Lewis looked up and saw truck-sized boulder crash onto his head. Soon after he jumped out of his bed in a cold sweat, his heart racing and body trembling. "I hope other sols hate Stephen as much as I do..." He looked around the dark room and saw that the clock's display five AM in green print.

Something in Lewis' bed moved around and groaned, then the head of a small Riolu poked out from under the covers with a large smile. "L-Lewis!" Kai jumped at Lewis and tightly hugged him, "You're awake!"

Lewis hugged Kai back and laughed, but at the same time blushed. "Kai why are you down here so early? And... I need some pants… could you let go?" Lewis placed kai down on the bed.

Kai tilted her head and asked: "Wait, so you're naked? Oh… I've never seen a naked human~" She sat on the edge of the bed and attentively watched Lewis scramble for pants in the drawer. Kai tried to capture the moment she saw Lewis naked as a mental picture, how his skin felt against her fur. my first time seeing a naked human… not a bad way to start my day… The Riolu laid down and calmly watched Lewis put on sweat pants and a dark blue shirt. "I mean hey, you don't need to worry about clothes around me; I'm just a baby Pokémon." She tried to flirt with Lewis, giggling at the pleasant feeling of the butterflies she felt when thinking about his body.

"I don't care; it makes me feel uncomfortable being naked around a child. Pokémon or human." Lewis felt very awkward and uncomfortable when he realized that he'd slept with Kai naked too, for him that entire situation felt wrong considering Kai was still a child. "Just go back upstairs and forget this happened… I'm still tired as hell, Kai."

Kai gave Lewis a childish pout and complained, "I don't want to go away, I want to lay down with you and relax… If you're tired just lay down; I won't bite." She held his hand and pulled him into bed, trying to convince him to sleep with her.

"Fine… only for you." Laying down his head on a pillow, Lewis sighed and pulled the cover over him. Kai joyously crawled under the covers and cuddled between his arms, letting out a cute yawn and falling asleep in Lewis' arms. Lewis looked down at her and chuckled, tomorrow we'll have a lot to talk about.

~At the same time in a valley far away~

"I can finally relax…" said the elegant voice of a tall, slender woman as she drank her fine wine. The glow from the fire shined off her moderately short, silky, black hair in the dark room.

"YOU… you set me up!" The voice of a walking rag crackled like the fire, heavy feet stomped down on the wooden floor besides the woman. "You said the sand could protect me from him! All I had to do was to delay him, right?" Its voice growled with anger as black sand ate away at the floor beneath its feet.

The woman placed down her glass and glanced over to the figure, "Lewis did do a number on you, didn't he?" The figures clothes were ripped and a quarter of its head missing, the metal skeleton beneath the synthetic skin showing.

"If he'd hit my black box I would've died…" Its left arm fell off and became a clump of metal dust, "You can only fix me so many times… find a solution for my shit body that YOU put me in!" The voice box failed with a loud crack and metallic screech as the other arm fell off. The man made of sand leaned against a wall and slid down it, then it hung its head down and allowed its body to decay into dust, metal, and rags.

"Aufs neue~ Wir need better batteries." A small giggle came from the dark corner next to the fire place.

The woman smiled, her lips in red lipstick, "Hello, Fifi… How was the hunt, my little jaeger?" She opened her hand and got a flash drive handed to her. "Good, now we can start installation o4."

"I brought a friend too, Meister!" The happy voice of a girl came from the two red beads in the dark.

"Hm?" The woman placed the flash drive next to her wine on the table besides her chair. "Who is this friend?"

Two, reflective blue eyes opened from the dark next to Fifi, "Good to see my favorite bitch in red!" Stephen referred to the woman's red dress while stepping forward into the light of the fire. As always in a white cloak, and as always hated by almost everyone.

"You…" The spite in her voice became toxic towards Stephen, "This past week has been the last twenty years of my life!" The room creaked as thin wires formed a tight web all around Stephen. "There were so many variables! Ako's sand was weak, the Riolu died in the fight, Lewis died in the fight, Norr ignored Lewis, Lewis decided not to help Kai, Lewis brought Kai to his house when he saved her, that damn Riolu got lost in the forest! Over, and over, and over again! I'm thirty but I've lived through one hundred years of failures and retries! I want to die... But I! Can't!" The wall warped and the fire went out as the snaps of high tension wires echoed throughout the room.

"Nein! Don't crush zee haus, I live here too!" Fifi skipped away from the fire place and stood closer to the balcony door, the moonlight shining down onto her jet-black skin. She wore an unzipped, oversized cream colored jacket with cat ears on her hood. bandages wrapped around her breasts and her legs as makeshift pants; it was clear she'd wrapped over the ripped parts by the hanging leftovers.

"I'm more afraid of Fifi than you. I have more control over you than her, her powers are more terrifying than yours, I'm more afraid of Fifi's slashes than your most powerful attacks. I've seen what she was at her prime, you haven't. So attack me if you want, do it." Stephen instigated the woman with a smile.

"Sheisse~" Fifi jumped out of the room to the balcony as all the wire collapse onto Stephen with a whistle.

"Just calm down and drink your wine. You really can't hurt me." Stephen now stood behind her, resting his arms on the back of the couch. The woman sighed and retracted her wires, then took a sip of her wine. "Look at the bigger picture, we are all tools of this universe. You are just the towel that polishes the shoes, as I am the grease." Stephen laughed and softly rubbed her shoulders.

Fifi walked back into the house and giggled at the sight of Stephen giving her master a massage, "I thought you hate Stephen, Meister."

The woman tried to resist how good it felt, but she was too stressed to keep her arrogant composure. "I do, but I can stop for a small rub..." She relaxed and gave out a sigh of relief.

"Oh yeah, I got Fifi a new gun since she's a deathlord! I'm like the awesome step-dad that give awesome gifts to the pothead son that's still hates me." He walked over to Fifi and gave her a five-foot-long, high powered musket with intricate golden designs of flowers and dragons running up the side of the gun.

"YAY!" Fifi grabbed the gun and hugged it, spinning around with it. "Ya! I love it!" She noticed a silver plate that said 'Fifi The Deathlord' on the hand guard, the squealed while jumping around. "Yas, yas, yas! Ich werde etwas zu gehen töten!" She got extremely excited and got carried away as she started to speak German out loud.

Before Fifi ran out, Stephen threw a bag of ammo at her while he still had her attention. "You need that ammo before you go out killing, hun." Fifi laughed and jumped off the balcony, then ran into the forest with her shiny new gun.

Stephen looked back at the woman on the couch, his expression changing from a smile to worried frown, "When are you gonna get her a Pokémon? She needs someone that isn't a psychotic sand man looking for revenge or an arrogant asshole that is mad at the world for her own problems. Y'know, cuz she ain't the most stable sol, even more for the powers she possesses." He pointed out the obvious family issues that Fifi's 'family' had.

The woman scoffed at the idea of Fifi being unstable, "What do you mean? She's pretty stable."

Stephen sarcastically laughed, "HA! no. She's a child! Stable children wouldn't rip a guy's legs off then shove a sniper through the back of his head and into his then proceed to kill an entire house full of people! Now do they!" He didn't speak in his usual passive-aggressive attitude, no. When it came to the few sols he cared about he would become protective and aggressive. "So, when are you getting a Pokémon for her!?"

"I'm not!" The woman slammed her fist on the armrest so hard her wine was knocked over. "I can't stand looking at them... I don't want to think about them... it hurts too much." She tried to sound somewhat arrogant as she pushed out her words, but only came through as downhearted excuses. "People say that the more you kill the less you care, but... I can't look at a Pokémon without feeling guilty." She held her head in her hands and sobbed, "Comparing me to Team Rocket is being generous. You've seen the deplorable things I've approved in the name of science and fucking progress." The sun started rising as the sky turned purple and pink.

"I know your job is hard, but you need to help Fifi." Stephen walked to the door and took one last glance at the woman, "Find a way. And while you're at that you can think of what you'll do next." He walked out and closed the stainless steel door.

The woman looked over to the remains of Ako; the name of the person stuck in the metal tomb, and rubbed her eyes. "I'll have to hurt more things to fix you, my experiment... then we wait for Sachi and Lewis. That's all we can do..." The thought of having no control over her life made her sick, that she depended on the person she tried to kill years ago to keep her life moving forward. "This is what all my life decisions lead me to... rich, powerful, miserable, lonely, and with no end to my future..." She used her strings to turn on a vinyl record player then started eating a bottle of painkillers in another suicide attempt.

Skeeter Davis – End of The World (this song is dedicated to a great friend that I've lost, so please listen to this one song if anything)

This month has been a sad month for everyone that knew IcyNirvana. The thought that he will never write again is the most painful, depleting feeling possible. For anyone who has read this far into the story please, stop and go to his account, read his amazing stories, give some support to his friend Wulfy because she needs and deserves as much love as possible from you guys. If I'm ever gonna beg for something, it would be for you guys to give his account some attention… help me spread the word by leaving his account a favorite or recommendation, anything will help. I wanted to make this longer, but I have no more tears to shed, I want to stop remembering how much this hurts and focus on the good things about life.

But for those who have read this story, know that I love all of you. From the new comers to the loyal followers that have read up to this point, all of you guys are absolutely amazing! So do me one favor and spread the word about this amazing person. And to anyone who read the last paragraph of the story, know that I wrote that before I knew Icy died... Ironic in the most fucked up sense is the only way I can describe it… isn't life a funny thing…

5:43 AM 7/19/2016