In which Ash continues to lead the gang into the middle of nowhere, Lily realizes she has a destiny far beyond pokémon mastery, and Ash doesn't catch a pokémon.
Our young hero Ash leads his friends deep into the forest. Since he doesn't have a compass, Ash must rely purely on his instincts, and that means trouble.
"Don't worry, I'm positive this way will take us back to the path."
Ash had said this at least three times since the last hint of a road had disappeared from beneath their feet. And when Lily said the last hint of a road, she meant any hint of a road. Not only was there no sign of a dirt path in sight they were also wading through waist-high grass in the depths of a temperate forest deep in the rolling mountains.
And each time Ash said that particularly damning phrase what small hints there were of human civilization became less and less apparent.
Wizard Lenin had gone from a state of rage to profound disbelief. Where the first time they had realized that they'd misplaced the path thanks to Ash's stellar leadership (which led to a whole questioning rant of why let Ash, the dumbest of them all, was in charge) Wizard Lenin had lit the surrounding field on fire and threatened to dismember him, this time all he seemed capable of was staring blankly at his map.
"There's only one road in Kanto," Wizard Lenin said forlornly, his eyes glued to the printed path that would lead from Cerulean City to Vermillion City beside the sea, "How is this even possible?"
Lily was pretty sure that Wizard Lenin did not want her answering that question.
If only because Lily, at this point, had decided the pokémon universe played by its own rules. Like Mirkwood, you stepped off the path once, you were staying off that goddamn path until you died. Or at least until you abused the one ring of power, loitered around the dungeons for a few days, and then snuck out your dwarf companions on the river via empty barrels.
"Pika," Pikachu, however, hardly seemed concerned at all. Lounging on top of Ash's backpack like a king he looked as if he was finally back in his natural element. Lily just wished his natural element had less trees.
"Positive, huh?" Brock asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. Although, Lily couldn't help but note that he wasn't volunteering to guide them out of this. Given that Brock had spent presumably his entire life stuck in Pewter City with his ten siblings, he likely had less camping experience than any of them. Well, except that he had managed to fit an astronomically large amount of fragiles inside his backpack. The only thing he seemed to have forgotten to pack was a car.
"That's what you said an hour ago," Misty moaned, "I'm tired."
Misty also, for whatever reason, hadn't taken up navigational leadership. Likely, Lily thought, because she presumably had only just left her far more beautiful and talented sisters in Cerulean City and was equally as travelled or even less so than Ash.
With Wizard Lenin and Lily lost in an entirely different dimension from their own, and Lily having next to no idea how to teleport directly to Vermillion City even if Wizard Lenin would allow such a flagrant show of power, it was becoming rapidly clear that Ash somehow was their best option.
Which meant that they were all too likely to die of starvation and be forced to eat each other's remains. Lily predicted that Ash would taste like chicken.
"Clefairy!" Clefairy said, bounding up to Lily, all too likely reading Lily's grim cannabalistic thoughts and suggesting the tried but true solution of Lily simply becoming some sort of pokémon god to deal with their problems.
Clefairy made sure to make this pointedly clear by her little pointing dance towards Wizard Lenin's backpack which contained the moonstone, otherwise known as the key to Lily's destiny and possibly the end of all mankind.
"It's not so much that I can't get us out of here," Lily noted blandly to the disappointed Clefairy, "But that I choose not to."
"Fairy," Clefairy said, not looking surprised so much as bitterly disappointed and resigned.
"You should get used to that feeling," Lily remarked back, because as she had for the past few weeks, Lily was not going to touch that giant problem with a ten-foot pole.
No, Lily would get them out of here if it started looking really bad. Probably.
"I told you to stick to the main road!" Misty cried out, coming to a stop in the middle of the field, "But you had to take a shortcut."
"I took a shortcut?!" Ash balked, stopping in his tracks as well and turning around to face the glowering Misty, "It was you who said to go this way!"
"Oh," Lily muttered to herself, ignored by all her companions, "It's that time of day already, isn't it?"
There were a few things in the land of pokémon that seemed to happen on a regular basis. The first, which Lily had figured out after the third or fourth occurrence, was that every few days they would run into someone truly bizarre. Not just bizarre, but Squirrel levels of strange, to the point where Lily would not have been shocked or horrified to find Squirrel stammering his way through Kanto like the rest of them on the hunt for pokémon vampires.
They wouldn't just show up either. No, that wasn't good enough. Generally, there seemed to be some greater point to them being around. Lily couldn't quite put her finger on it, but it was as if each time, Lily was supposed to learn something. Something like the meaning of hard work, the true power of friendship, or whether it's alright to join a cult of cave dwelling alien pink marshmallow people.
Lily wasn't sure she'd learned any of these lessons personally, but she would swear that they were always lurking about unseen behind every encounter.
That hadn't happened for a few days now, not since they'd run into Hogwarts: The Pokémon edition. Even then, Lily and Wizard Lenin had bailed on meeting Giselle, the prettiest and most vicious fourteen-year-old pokémon training student in the land, to instead blow up the west wing in a moment of protest against the very nature of the pokémon world.
The other, more understandable, thing that happened with an even more regular frequency was Ash and Misty bickering. Either, often, it was the status of Misty's departed bicycle and how Ash had still failed to deliver her a new one. Otherwise it was Ash's battle strategies, Ash's dubious victory record, or in this case Ash's lack of any innate sense of direction.
"Ha!" Misty rebutted sharply, leaning forward so she could yell closer to Ash's face, "If I was leading, we wouldn't have gotten lost like this!"
Ash, not to be outdone, leaned forward as well, "Who says we're lost?!"
Unfortunately, as always, Ash's comebacks were only worthy of cringing and pity. According to Wizard Lenin's map, they'd been lost for days.
"Listen, genius," Misty said, raising her fists together with a look of murderous rage on her face, "If you don't know where you are, or where you're going, that means you're lost!"
Misty, needless to say, was still in the anger stage of dealing with Ash Ketchem that Wizard Lenin had been in during those first few weeks. She had yet to reach Wizard Lenin's current stage of utter denial and ignoring Ash until he somehow went away. Glancing over at him Lily saw him morosely leaning against a tree, likely wishing he was dead in a ditch somewhere or else that the solutions to his problems weren't somehow pokémon training and mastery. He still hadn't quite gotten over that realization or the fact that they might truly never get home.
Vermillion City wasn't just the next point on their map that had a library it might be the next point where Wizard Lenin had to bite down whatever pride or moral protests he had and challenge the gym leader out of something other than spite.
"Chill," Brock said holding up his hands in defense, the peacekeeper as always between Misty and Ash, "Chill!"
"Alright," Misty said, crossing her arms with a huff and clearly only barely mollified, "But remind me to yell at you more if we ever do get to Vermillion City."
If they ever got to Vermillion City, so, even Misty wasn't holding out hope anymore.
Lily groaned, God, maybe she should just teleport them at least back to Cerulean City—
"Don't even think about it," Wizard Lenin said, apparently reading her thoughts. He was walking beside her now at her pace, map shoved back into his pack, glaring all the while.
"What?" Lily asked, "Come on, Lenin, if it was just us, you'd be begging me to get us out of here."
"There's nothing back where we came from," Wizard Lenin spat, "We've already been there, the only thing we can do now is move forward."
"Well, there's a badge there," Lily pointed out, whipping out her two badges from thin air, black and blue stones sparkling in the sunlight, "You skipped that gym, remember? And now that we're sort of doing this whole pokémon master thing—"
"You were given that badge by doing absolutely nothing!" Wizard Lenin spat, "It was passed to you like free candy!"
"But it tastes so good," Lily said, willing to relish in her victory even if it had come at absolutely no cost and no work. She wasn't like Ash, she wasn't going to pretend that they weren't going to go ahead and give her that badge anyway.
"And besides," Wizard Lenin hissed under his breath as he nodded towards their companions, "You're already flagrant enough, I don't want that kind of ability advertised, at least not until I get more of an idea of what the norms are in this place."
"Please," Lily dismissed with a wave of her hand, "I'd just blame Stack of Bricks."
"Fairy," Clefairy noted, although whether Clefairy was approving of Lily's age-old excuse or annoyed by it was hard to tell.
"I told you, Lily, that excuse has worn more than thin," Wizard Lenin said, "And don't think you can blame the Clefairy either."
"Clefairy loves being blamed," Lily said, nodding down towards her small pudgy elfin cultist, "Don't you, Clefairy?"
This was a delighted and affirmative, "Fairy!"
At seeing Wizard Lenin's look of utter rage Lily quickly backtracked, "But, that said, I have no idea where this Vermillion City is, or what it even looks like, so teleporting there might have such interesting results as turning us into a pile of severed limbs. So, you know, woods are good for now."
He let out a small, discontent, hum along with a look that said he knew everything going through her head and didn't trust her in the slightest. Which was great and all, but there wasn't much Wizard Lenin could do about it.
Lily might be immortal enough to survive being lost in the wood for the rest of her life, but she didn't know how Wizard Lenin's twelve-year-old Lenin Rabbitson body would fare in those conditions, and it didn't sound exactly comfortable.
And the path, of course, continued to be absolutely nowhere in sight.
She glanced over at Pikachu, unusually chipper on top of Ash's backpack, and wondered how he could possibly be enjoying himself so much. Well, that was a lie, so long as they were stuck out here in the woods and not in a city Pikachu wasn't battling for his life against giant rock snakes or what have you.
Lily could perfectly understand why Pikachu was relishing in this well-earned break.
Maybe Lily could try and do the same.
"Time for a break," Ash said in exhaustion, signaling the moment the group could perch themselves on a cropping of rocks.
"Are we finally admitting we're hopelessly lost?" Wizard Lenin asked sardonically as Ash sighed and slumped in on himself.
"No!" Ash spat back, "We're just, you know, taking a break."
"I'll go ahead and admit we're lost," Lily chimed in.
"Hey, no one asked you!" Ash rebuked Lily in turn.
Ash's attention then drifted to the side, to a small gurgling brook falling into a clear pool. There, drinking out of the stream was a walking giant bulb. Lily blinked, but no, with a blue spherical body, beady red eyes, and an outcropping of weeds on the top of its head it really did resemble an oddly adorable walking giant bulb.
Lily wasn't even going to pretend the pokémon were even trying to be animals anymore.
No wonder they hadn't blinked at Brick.
"Oh wow," Ash said in starry-eyed interest, "A pokémon!"
He held out his red calculator, Dexter, to tell them useful information, and possibly terrible puns, about their new plant friend.
"Oddish, this pokémon is typically found roaming the forest," Dexter chimed in with its robotic voice, "Scattering pollen as it walks around."
Putting the calculator away, with a grin, Ash declared, "I'll catch it!"
"Ha!" Wizard Lenin scoffed loudly, barely looking over at the Oddish, which was now looking over at them in curiosity as well as some alarm, "You couldn't catch a paper bag."
Wizard Lenin was all too likely referencing the fact that the two full-time Pokémon that Ash currently had in his collection, the giant sparrow and the giant pigeon, had both been caught by rather dubious means. The first, thanks to Lily's god-like powers in driving off their tormentors after Ash had thrown rocks at them, and the other thanks to Pikachu's spite towards Stack of Bricks and his own phenomenal power.
But Ash conveniently didn't remember that part.
"Oh yeah?" Ash asked, "Well why don't you sit down and watch, Lenin."
Lenin pursed his lips, likely decided if it was worth showing up Ash once again for the sake of his own pride, or else using this as an opportunity to further build up his pokémon team. However, looking at the quaking bulb now making small, adorable, noises of terror, something in him seemed to crack.
"I believe I shall sit this one out."
Strange, that Wizard Lenin had had the lack of heart to terrorize and murder his own countrymen yet could not bring himself to enslave these alien creatures for his own glory.
"Hold it!" Misty said with a grin, walking past Ash with determination.
"What for?"
"Because I'm gonna catch that pokémon!" Misty said, pointing smugly to herself, the last thing Ash would tolerate seeing.
"Ah, no way, Misty! I saw it first!" Ash said, now descending to the point where they were apparently going to call dibs on who got to be the poor creature's future master.
"But we found it around the water," Misty stated with her hands on her hips, "And water's my specialty."
Fortunately, the Oddish seemed to get the idea by this point and had decided to make a hasty retreat. "Oddish, Oddish, Oddish," it said as it waddled its way quickly back into the underbrush.
Not quite quickly enough though as Misty launched a pokéball to release her purple floating starfish of doom, "Go Starmie!"
It landed right in front of the fleeing bulb, forcing it to stop in its tracks and turn the other way, sweat now dripping visibly down its blue surface as it realized the inevitable end of this venture. There it was sprayed with water and then tackled to the ground by the starfish twice its size.
And Lily…
Lily didn't know how she felt, only that, somehow the other pokémon battles she'd seen hadn't been like this. Ash had caught his pokémon so quickly, in the aftermath of someone else's actions, it hadn't looked like this.
Or, perhaps, it was that Lily now was remembering that dream she'd once had a few weeks ago. Starring her anthropomorphized animal friends, who had implied that if Lily had been less lucky or less aware, she would be in that same situation.
This was what it meant to be a pokémon.
With less than a thought, a compulsion, Lily summoned the Oddish and placed it behind her and a notice-me-not ward. Looking over her shoulder, Lily warned it, "Don't move and don't make a sound."
The Oddish quaked in horror and confusion, but nodded and remained in her shadow, softly affirming with an, "Oddish Oddish."
"Hey," Misty asked blinking, empty pokéball in hand, "Where'd it go?"
"You must have blinked," Lily noted, crossing her arms over her chest, "It just made a spectacularly speedy exit into the underbrush."
Misty looked rightfully confused by that, as she hadn't taken her eyes off of it, "But I swore—"
"Oh well," Lily said with a grin, shrugging as if it couldn't be helped, "These things do happen, and there's always next time."
"I guess," Misty said, disappointed as she looked towards her equally confused faceless starfish, "I was really hoping to catch this one though…"
"Good work, Starmie," Misty said, summoning the starfish back into her pokéball with that familiar red light. Starmie didn't seem to mind, Starmie even seemed proud of its work here today, but Lily wondered if Starmie remembered when it had once been in a rather similar situation.
Behind Lily, she could hear the Oddish give a sigh of relief.
"Whoa, what's that?" Ash cried out, and Lily felt her stomach drop in anticipation and despair. Already? Were they at some sort of pokémon watering hole?
Across from them, growling in rage, was what looked like a strange spotted dinosaur with a plant growing on the top of its back.
"Wow, I can't believe it!" Ash declared, eyes somehow growing to the size of half his face, "A Bulbasaur!"
"Bulbasaur," Dexter commented, "It bears the seed of a plant on its back from birth, the seed slowly develops. Researchers are unsure whether to classify Bulbasaur as a plant or animal. Bulbasaur are extremely tough and difficult to capture in the wild."
"Oddish!" Oddish loudly declared behind Lily, jumping up and down in anticipation at the sight of the creature. Not loud enough to break the wards, or Ash's usual concentration when it came to exciting pokémon, but certainly enough to grab Lily's attention.
"You know this guy?" Lily asked, Oddish nodding wildly that yes, they apparently knew each other very well indeed.
Oh, if Lily was going to take a stab in the dark, then judging by the look on the plant dinosaur's face it had come to rescue Oddish in a truly romantic gesture. Or, a very chivalrous one at the very least. Only, without Oddish in sight…
"Oh, hell," Lily said, because if she was the plant dinosaur, she'd know what she concluded.
"Alright, Bulbasaur is mine!" Ash declared, drawing out a pokéball and throwing it, "Pigeotto, I choose you!"
And by the look on the plant dinosaur's face, it was going to eat Ash alive.
"Hold it!" Lily said, darting between them with Oddish held protectively in her arms, "Hold it! There seems to be a misunderstanding here."
"Misunderstanding?" Ash balked, glowering over at her even as Lily stood in the way of his now very wary giant pigeon (who apparently could sense the power coming off of Lily in waves), "Lily, get out of the way, I'm trying to catch a pokémon!"
Bulbasaur, too, stopped, and looked at Lily with penetrating and assessing red eyes. Vines had extended from the plant on its back, they restlessly moved, waiting for Lily to make some move.
"You're looking for someone, aren't you?" Lily asked the pokémon, but he said nothing in response, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Lily, what in the hell are you doing?" Wizard Lenin asked with a sigh, coming up to join the rest of them, but Lily kept her eyes on the Bulbasaur.
"If you look at me, very closely, I think you'll find what you're looking for," Lily said slowly, Bulbasaur's eyes moved, unseeing at first, and then widening as the illusion lifted enough for him to notice what no one else had yet.
"Oddish!" Oddish said in alarm, wriggling in Lily's arms.
Before the plant dinosaur could whip Lily to death, Lily carefully placed the Oddish down, allowing it to scamper to the dinosaur and relay all its wild adventures at the local pokémon watering hole.
"There," Lily said slowly, "Now, we're all good here."
She grinned, as if this might somehow make her words easier to swallow. Apparently, they did enough, because wrapping one vine protectively around the Oddish, Bulbasaur gave a slow, meaningful, nod towards Lily and then raced his way back into the undergrowth.
For a moment there was perfect silence, no one saying anything to the bizarre scene that had just unfolded, and then Ash asked, "Lily, what was that for?! I could have had him!"
Lily's smile dropped, she stood and brushed the dirt off her knees, "But could you have kept him?"
"Huh?" Ash asked in turn.
"Sometimes, Ash," Lily said, looking out at their surroundings, "It's best to let these things go."
"Oh," Ash cried out, "You're the worst trainer in the world! You're just jealous that I was going to catch it!"
"If that makes you feel better," Lily remarked dully, but judging by the look on Ash's face, it really didn't.
"Oh, it's not fair!" Ash said, "I would have had him!"
Lily sincerely doubted it, but at least now, he could always pretend that he would have.
As they started walking again, Ash moaning his fate and Misty still mystified over the missing Oddish, Wizard Lenin put a hand on her shoulder and whispered in her ear, "You can't save all of them, Lily."
She knew that, or at least, she had thought she had known that.
Lily didn't have to worry; Ash's mood and ego were skyrocketing once again as soon as they found a hint of a direction to walk in. As they stepped on a rickety wooden bridge, Ash marching with reckless abandon out in front, he declared, "I bet there are Bulbasaur all over this place!"
"But where is this place?" Misty asked, staring down at her feet and the raging rapids below.
"I can't find this bridge on my map," Brock noted, now in the place Wizard Lenin was this morning, where he still believed maps could help him. That poor fool.
Unfortunately, it was at this point that the bridge collapsed.
They all screamed, Clefairy clutching hold of Lily with tiny claws while Pikachu clung to the fabric of Ash's backpack, and Misty dangled precariously from Ash's leg.
"Holy shit!" Lily cried out, "Who built this thing?!"
They had barely set foot on it and the thing had buckled without warning under their weight. And, looking down at the rushing rapids, that was the kind of fall that would lead all too easily to an unpleasant death via drowning.
Brock, having only managed to grab onto the wood itself, slipped slowly and then faster until he was lost to the rapids below.
"Brock's falling!" Ash cried out.
"No shit!" Wizard Lenin retorted in mortal terror as he clung for dear life onto the rope.
Unfortunately, it was at this point that Lily realized she was slipping as well. Before she could do or say anything she and Clefairy were falling down towards the rapids, Lily only barely having enough time to hover them before hitting the waves.
There she moved her feet swiftly, trying and failing to match the pattern of the rapids and not get sucked in.
"Fairy!" Clefairy cried out in alarm, distracting Lily enough to cause her to lose balance and fall under the waves.
There direction was quickly lost, Lily turned upside down and around in darkness, buffeted this way and that and unable to catch her breath. Vaguely she felt Clefairy clinging to her, bobbing up against her shoulder for air, but then her lungs were screaming, and everything grew fuzzy at the edges. All too soon, it grew cold and dark.
"Lily," a voice called, soft, feminine, and alarmed beyond measure.
"Lily!"
Lily opened her eyes. The world was a dark and cold place, gravity a softer thing that had Lily's hair floating above her head and bubbles of air exiting her mouth, light shifted in white bands around them.
They were underwater, Lily realized.
Across from her, floating and clasping Lily's hands in her own, lacing their fingers together, was the pastel human form of Clefairy. Long, curling silver, hair floating above her like a halo while her clear blue eyes looked at Lily in desperate fear.
"Clefairy," Lily said, slowly in recognition, and the woman smiled.
"Lily," she said, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes and floating upwards, "Why didn't you take the stone?"
"We wouldn't be here, you wouldn't be like this, if you had taken the stone," Clefairy insisted.
Lily could only smile gently, "You don't know that."
"I know that someday you'll take it," Clefairy said, "I know that we've been waiting millennia for you to come and take it. Lily, why are you doing this?"
And at once the true answer was clear to Lily, the answer that she had perhaps never realized herself, or never been able to put into such simple terms, "Change."
"What?"
"Accepting the stone, turning into whatever you think I should be, it's change," Lily said, "And I don't want to change."
"Many pokémon are capable of evolution—" Clefairy started, hands squeezing Lily's in desperation but Lily just shook her head.
"But it's a death of a kind, isn't it?" Lily noted, speaking over the anthropomorphic pokémon, "Can you tell me I'd still think the same thoughts, want the same things, that I'd belong in any kind of human world if I took it?"
"You never belonged in the human world," Clefairy said back, a dark shadow falling over her large blue eyes, "And you know it."
"Perhaps," Lily agreed, "But I wouldn't be Lily anymore, I'd be something else, and I don't know if I would like what I would become."
Clefairy said nothing for a moment, just kept holding Lily's hand, and then noted softly, "Lily, you cannot save us as you are now."
"What?" Lily asked, feeling the breath escape from her lungs as if she'd just been kicked in the stomach, or if this strange dream world had caught up with her and reminded her that she was underwater.
The light disappeared and the water grew bitterly cold.
Clefairy though, kept speaking, even as shadows fell across her pale elfin face, "If you wish to free my people, all peoples in this world, then you cannot do it as you are now. As a human, as the girl Lily, you will fail."
In the water, beneath them, instead of a black pit visions of the terrified and panicked Oddish, Bulbasaur's wary red eyes, Pikachu's dismissive contempt, AJ's Sandshrew torturing himself for honor and glory, and Caterpie captured by a reluctant and ashamed Wizard Lenin.
Wizard Lenin was growing used to this, resigned to this, Lily realized in horror. Soon all his moral qualms would be squashed, and when that happened, he would do what he always did. He would strive to be a great and terrible pokémon master. Ultimately, no matter what he thought of himself, Wizard Lenin was human and in situations like these it showed.
Even he, eventually, would become corrupted and complacent.
With the loss of England, Lily realized, it was already starting. Wizard Lenin would accept, play by, and assimilate the rules of this world as if he had been born in this place.
But Lily hadn't come here to do that.
"That's not—"
"You once said that you would never choose our fate, but you can pretend to be human," Clefairy said, eyes burning like bright blue stars in the endless void, "You have the choice and means to do so. We do not have the luxury of choosing our destinies."
"We accept our fate because, there is nothing we can do but accept it," Clefairy said, "Even the proudest, the cleverest, and the strongest among us will come to this path one way or another."
Beneath them images of the proud, captured, Pikachu presented to them by Professor Oak.
"All we can hope for, in this world, is that the humans choose to treat us kindly."
Lily swallowed, felt the cold strike through to her heart, and then softly asked, "Is that what your people want from me?"
Clefairy said nothing, offered Lily no expression or hint of an answer, leaving it to Lily's imagination whether they viewed her as a simple messiah or something larger and more terrible than that.
"Why are you so certain," Lily said slowly, "That I would fail if I tried now?"
"Because you're pretending to be human," Clefairy summarized succinctly, "And have forgotten what it means to be one of us."
Then, abruptly, Clefairy let go of Lily's hands, plunging them both down into the dark abyss where no bottom awaited them. Here, Lily thought as she screamed, there were no stars.
Lily startled awake, gulping in air, and slowly taking note of her surroundings.
She was outside, still in the forest though now safely on the riverbank. She was drenched in cold water, the sun only barely warming her skin through soaked layers of cotton, and she appeared to be alive and undamaged.
There, to her left, perched on a rock like a monk, was Clefairy. Her eyes were closed, her legs were not crossed, but she was sitting there in intense meditation. With Lily's attention, her eyes opened, but it wasn't with that joyous cheer that Lily had come to associate with the creature but instead that hard reprimand from the dream.
So, this one had been real too then.
Lily said nothing, could think of nothing to say. So instead they stared at one another, waiting for the other to speak first, and sum up all the bitterness and expectation into a few empty words.
But there was nothing to say.
Lily stood, hoisted herself up and walked towards Clefairy, looking down at her. Lily looked deep into those blue eyes, darker and deeper than Lily had given them credit for in this small body, and said, "Let me try as a human."
Then, softly and more desperately, "Let me be Lily, for a little while longer, please."
Somewhere in the back of her head, Lily had the strangest idea, that she had been waiting for far too long for the chance to be Lily. Only twelve years of it, of the joy and the pain, it wasn't nearly enough.
Lily held out her hand in offering, watching as slowly Clefairy took it, curling her tiny claws around Lily's index finger.
Lily smiled, and with that contact, teleported them to wherever Wizard Lenin and the others waited.
"So, what'd I miss?" Lily asked as she and Clefairy appeared out of nothingness next to Wizard Lenin.
Wizard Lenin, as usual, looked thoroughly annoyed by the entire universe, "A series of delightful almost Home Alone inspired traps set up by a well-meaning young woman, Team Rocket blasting off again, and of course this place."
"This place?" Lily asked looking around.
"A kind of pokémon sanctuary," Wizard Lenin noted while pointing to an attractive, dark-haired, girl, "Run by that one, the most moral person we've met thus far. By this world's standards, she's a saint."
"Huh," Lily said, taking in the scene. There was Oddish from earlier, perking up in delight at the sight of Lily with Bulbasaur beside it, and a few others besides the giant plant all happily eating food and seeming to enjoy their sanctuary.
"Bulbasaur!"
Lily looked over in alarm, noticing the Bulbasaur pointing at her with a vine, a vine that said some message Lily couldn't decipher except Lily was the answer to its uninterpretable question.
"Her?" the woman asked, looking fondly down at Bulbasaur, "Not Ash? Are you sure?"
"What do you mean, not Ash?" Ash cried out, looking offended, back and forth between Lily and Bulbasaur as if for some clue as to how Lily managed to get involved in this. Lily wanted to know the same thing.
"Hey, Lily, when did you get here!" Ash cried, as a clear afterthought.
"Thanks for the concern," Lily noted drily, "Do let me know if you were ever going to send out a search party."
"Well, we were going to, but Ash, Lenin, and I got stuck in a tree," Misty explained frantically, "And then we thought that Melanie would find you and bring you here. When you didn't show up we were going to head out but Team Rocket showed up and—"
"Well, I guess it's moot point since we're here now," Lily said with Clefairy sagely agreeing with a "Clefairy fairy."
"Lily," the woman, Melanie apparently, said meaningfully, "We haven't met, and I am sorry about my traps, but I have a favor to ask."
"A favor?" Lily asked in growing alarm, the last thing that had asked her a favor, Clefairy, had asked her to abandon all humanity and become a messiah and god for her and pokémon everywhere.
"I think Bulbasaur should go with you," Melanie stated as she picked Bulbasaur up, the beast looking at her with inexpressible fondness, "It thinks highly of you, whatever you did, you made a strong impression. This village is too small for it, the bulb on its back can't grow here."
"What?!" Ash cried in alarm and despair, "But Lily didn't even let me try and fight Bulbasaur—"
Ash was elbowed in the ribs by Misty, taking the hint that maybe this wasn't the best time to talk.
"It needs to go out into the world now," Melanie continued before looking over at Lily with hope and compassion written all over her face, "And I know you'll take good care of it. Please do me this favor, take Bulbasaur with you on your journey. It'll be a good companion."
And Bulbasaur looked at her, with such kind faith, as if he had seen more in Lily than she had ever once seen in herself…
"But what will happen to the village without Bulbasaur?" Misty asked, the other pokémon gathered around and looking up at Bulbasaur with desperate eyes. Without Bulbasaur, Lily suddenly realized in horror, without Lily, their fates were sealed.
All pokémon reached this road eventually and Lily couldn't save them all.
"Yeah," Brock concurred, "Who's going to protect you?"
Oddish looked up at Lily with beady, red, terrified eyes.
"It's true that Bulbasaur has done a great job," Melanie stated, "Maybe too great a job. You see, these pokémon shouldn't remain in this village forever and ever. After they recover, the pokémon are supposed to leave, but it's too safe here, so none of them wants to go away. They don't want to return to the outside world."
Why would they? Lily wondered to herself, when they knew perfectly well what waited them in the outside world.
"But I think it's important that all of them return to the wild. That's where pokémon belong, and hopefully, someday, they'll find good trainers like you."
Lily felt tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. When was the last time she'd cried? She couldn't remember, but somehow this, this moment in time, was enough to twist a knife she hadn't known was stabbed through her heart.
Lily reached out a hand, took Bulbasaur's extended vine in hers, and gripped it tightly, "Of course, of course you can come."
Looking towards the others, regardless that the humans could see and were watching, Lily declared, "And I will come back for you, for all of you, every last one of you, great or small. I promise, I will be there."
"That's great, Lily," Brock said with a knowing smile, "But you can only carry six pokémon with you."
And then he, and everyone else, burst into laughter as if Lily's ignorant and enthusiastic declarations were a thing to be laughed at. But Lily, she suddenly realized, was not here for the likes of them.
No, as Clefairy had stated, she never had been.
With Bulbasaur now at her side, it looks like Lily is building her own dream team even while the future stretches uncertainly before her. Now, it's onto Vermillion City. Let's just hope our heroes don't take any more short-cuts, or we may never get there.
Author's Note: Hello, enjoy this very sporadic update as I take a break before writing the next chapter of "When Harry Met Tom". Oh, Lily, enjoy that destiny, it's a tricky one.
Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Pokémon