It doesn't end. It refuses to end.
I can tell when I'm no longer under the affect by the Dimensional Scream simply from the fact that I don't see or hear Darkrai as I did from following his memories. No, I can tell right away that this is different: That this is mine. The last key to unlock the remaining doors that have shut away the last fragments of my life for so long.
There isn't much to say about how I grew up before I met Grovyle in the Dark Future, but there's so much I missed from the life I was supposed to live out if time had never collapsed. Ri was the last Pokemon I would've met as a trainer, and he would've helping me master aura sometime before whenever it was that I woke up in my own time. Before that, I bounced back and forth trying different things, favoring contests with Dusknoir and gym battles with Grovyle. Celebi followed us everywhere, forever a part of the team without ever going into a Pokeball. Dusknoir always teased me, but there were times when he would scare away even other trainers just to look out for us. Grovyle and I were together weeks before I was even allowed to be a trainer because I ran away from the orphanage I was from and he left the side of an abusive trainer as a Treecko: We were two people the world threw away, and so we stayed together.
I loved shaved ice and the beach. I did name that doll Nunna. I loved it when my father would let me ride on his Tropius' back and my favorite thing in the world was my mother's cookies, the ones she cut out to look like different Pokemon. I loved our home in the trees. My mother would take me to the market to help her get berries on the weekends. My father would play a game with me in the woods where we'd look for 'buried treasure'—beads, pieces of candy, or small toys every once in a while. And on really special occasions, all three of us would go for a drive far into the countryside, and we'd have a picnic, and see Miltank and Mareep, and climb on rocks…
There had been a festival. My father was tired, but he was determined to take us because he promised he would. We were coming home later than usual, and night fell. That's when it happened.
"Shiro, are you sure you're ok to drive?"
The little girl sitting in the back of the car—fastened into a booster seat—was already beginning to nod off herself as she watched the whirl of trees as they drove by on a quiet, lonely road, but she heard that much. Her parents were starting to quietly argue with one another: They never fought, so any brief spat caught her attention.
"We can pull over. You can let me drive: You haven't been sleeping well."
"And you have?" Her father sounded a bit irritated, but all the same he was well-meaning. Keeping his eyes on the road—the expanse of pavement ahead of them only lit by the vehicle's headlights—he took for hand off the steering wheel for just a second to give her a small, dismissive wave. "No, no, I can handle it. I'm good. I'll be good once we get home and we'll be there any minute now."
"You're exhausted," her mother pressed.
"We're all exhausted: It's been a long day," he countered in turn.
"Maybe we should stop somewhere."
"We're out in the boondocks: There's nowhere to stop. Illiana, I can handle this," he rocked forward in his seat as if to emphasize his words, "I'm well aware that I'm not a superhuman like you or her, but I think I can manage to drive for the fifteen minutes that it'll take to get us home."
Falling silent, the woman turned her head away—facing the side window. There were times she didn't at all mind the mention of the strange abilities that she shared with her daughter, but this was not one of them. She always fell silent when she didn't want to talk about something, always looking away to some distant place.
Whether or not her husband knew the full story, he still sighed, "Sorry, sorry, I'm just… Let's just get home."
The child looked down at the small, rubber toy she had won from a scooping game earlier that evening. It was shaped like some kind of bird-like Pokemon, but she didn't know which. She just thought it was cute and liked how it squeaked. She lightly squeezed it, provoking the faint sound over the subtle whistle of the wind as the vehicle sped on.
She knew that her parents weren't really mad at each other: They were just sleepy. That's what they told her and they looked sleepy anyway. They had been ever since the shadow man with the pretty eyes had visited her that night some time ago, and since then they had let her sleep with them in their room. She knew that grown-ups had a later bedtime, but she was sure that it wasn't as late as they stayed up lately.
She had tried to give them plushies to sleep with, but they said they didn't need them. Would it help if they read a story? Stories helped her sleep.
"Shiro!"
"Arceus!"
Suddenly, all the little girl could register was the feeling of her seatbelt biting through her clothes and into her flesh as the tires screeched with the harsh cry of claws raked across a chalkboard and the toy flew from her limp grasp somewhere to the darkened floor below. She had never heard such a horrible sound or knew that the car could buck as it did—vaulting off of the road like an uncontrollable beast. Her stomach lurched as they swerved into the grass, diving toward the nearby forest. Her aura reacted by instinct, encasing her within a protective bubble. Things went flying, and her father cursed again as something struck him at the edge of his brow. Her mother was screaming, but the child was silent, too numb from the chaos that was taking place to even begin to fathom what was happening.
And then, in seconds, everything stopped. The car stopped as it slammed into a tree, the airbags exploding outward in an instant upon contact. The belt stopped biting into her flesh as she was first flung forward into its painful grip before being slammed back against the seat. The lose objects stopped flying as they hit against the doors of the vehicle to fall to the floor. The noises stopped following the gut-wrenching crunch of metal. Her father stopped cursing and her mother stopped screaming.
And then all was quiet.
No matter how much her mind desperately ran to catch up with her, she couldn't begin to process what had just happened. She was hurt: Why was she hurting? Why did the car do that? Why weren't her parents doing anything? Why were flecks of crimson splattered upon the glass in front? She couldn't look away…
Her lower lip began to quiver and her eyes started to water. A faint hiccup caught in her throat and soon enough she began to bawl as the initial numbness faded away only to leave behind the terror in her heart and the gouging pain that ran along her small chest.
I want to look away now—I want out of this nightmare. I don't want to see this anymore! I don't want to relive this! I know they're gone! I know—!
"Lira…baby… are you ok?"
Those words… those five, simple words… They make my breath hitch. This is not part of the memory. No. No, I don't want to hear it! I want to wake up—I have to wake up! They're dead and I am never going to see them again, so why…? Why is it doing this…? Just stop…
I can beg my mind to stop playing the scene before me as much as I like, but it won't. It won't dim the lights of the vehicle to black. It won't shut up the crying child in the backseat, screaming for her parents.
It won't pause the sight of the disheveled figure that starts to push against the front passenger's airbag in order to wriggle herself free just enough to crane her neck around to look back at the little girl. I half expect her to be falling apart like an unearthly creature from a horror story, but only a handful of reddened marks destined to bruise have appeared along her body. Her eyes flickered with the terror of the moment, but rather than glazed over with the emptiness of death they shimmer with concern and are very much filled with life. Really, her hair got the worst of things—fallen from the loose bun she had put it in to form a tangle of wisps.
Why does she have to look at me? Why do I have to face her? All the same though, there's something about it that feels right and it tears at me from the inside all the more because of it. I don't understand why this is happening…
The sight of her mother only somewhat calmed the child down, muting her cries to soft whimpers. The danger gone, the barrier of aura around her dispersed. However, following it was the stifled groan of the driver, and as he propped himself back up to reveal that long cut that squirted crimson life down the side of his face and neck, her panic renewed.
"Did you see that…?"he gasped with a shaky, heavy breath, wiping at his face only to swear the blood further. "Did you see that?!" he repeated, but his wife didn't answer. Instead, she fumbled with her seatbelt and slammed her weight against the car door to try to get out of the vehicle, fighting the airbag all the while. "Iliana, you should stay in the car! We need to call someone!"
She still didn't listen. Eventually, the door flew partially open with a gruesome clunk and she was able to wriggle herself out. Cursing under his breath, the man scrambled to unbuckle himself, squirming to turn his body around to check on their daughter who only cried harder as the blood continued to rain from his forehead. It wasn't until her father's attention shifted away from her—his eyes rising to stare with a paranoid fixation at something behind the vehicle that the girl quietened once more. Sniffling, looking out the side window, she found her mother facing the same way as her father with the same expression on her face.
Yeah, all of this has to be wishful thinking. I know what happened—Dialga told me what happened. He said it was an accident…
Jarring herself out of the stunned silence she had fallen into, her mother jogged back the few steps over to the car to open the back door to start unbuckling the girl, uttering words of solace all the while. Despite how much she seemed to be trying to calm her daughter, however, the child noticed a fear she never knew she could find in those normally reassuring eyes. The action that normally would've taken a short minute seemed to drag on forever as she struggled against the seatbelt.
No, something isn't right, I think… I remember…
There was no warning: There were only shadows. And mere seconds after, there was a vibrant, icy light of an eye peering at them in the darkness. Now it was the girl's turn to take on a fixated stare, even though she wasn't afraid—she didn't know she should've been afraid. Not until her mother caught her distant glance and realized the true danger hanging over them.
She spun on her heel in an instant, summoning a wall of aura before her as an orb with swirling, dim shades of mauve and fuchsia dove at them from the shadows—striking the barrier and exploding upon it like ink splattered upon tile before it writhed into nonexistence. Horrified, the man screamed his wife's name before turning to wrestle with his own door in order to get out and help her however he could.
"I'd rather witness a glance of the child's strength than yours, Aura Guardian," a familiar voice chuckled with both amusement and resentment—though I'm certain that not a single human in the memory understands what's been said. "Though I have to admit, I'm beginning to find that you're a grave inconvenience to me in your own right."
Even upon revealing himself to the trio, Pitch Black was nearly invisible within the darkness from the cluster of trees that he manifested himself from, all except for the ghostly white veil of his mane and the blisteringly cold radiance of his uncovered eye. It didn't take long for the child to recognize the figure that had appeared in her room on a night that seemed so distant from the one that blanketed over them now, but what she hadn't noticed the first time they met was the cruel disposition he bore.
Drawing the energy from the barrier into the palm of her hand, her mother reshaped it into an orb of her own and fired it at him; however, he quickly used Double Team to evade the attack. Lunging forward in a burst of speed, the woman had no choice but to face him head on to keep him from reaching her daughter—charging him and raising her arms in a defensive block. Nevertheless, she underestimated Pitch Black's strength and was easily knocked to the earth with a brutish sling of his claws. He didn't so much as give her a sparing glance as he continued to make a straight line for the girl.
There was a sudden flash of red. "Tropius, Leaf Storm! Now!" Her father's Pokemon materialized in a beam of light in front of her—the Pokeball having been thrown over the roof of the car once he had managed to escape it. The child kept her head down as the Grass-type summoned a maelstrom of leaves against Pitch Black. The latter is sent recoiling with a harsh grunt of pain under the severe firepower.
Hunkered in the floor of the vehicle, her eyes wandered around the scattered items until they finally landed on the second Pokeball their family had. She had always been told not to play with them—they weren't toys—but she reached for it nonetheless, fiddling with the device to get it to activate as she had seen her parents done. Precious seconds passed until it suddenly expanded in her grip with a quiet, electronic sound and she tossed it as best she could while still on her hands and knees, "Snover, help!"
It didn't go very far, but it did open—as though the Pokemon inside of it had been electrified by the girl's desperate cry. The Ice-type didn't need a moment to assess the situation to know it was a bad one, and didn't hesitate to leap to the family's defense by using Razor Leaf to add to Tropius' attack.
The child watched her mother in the background as she pushed herself back onto her feet. There were several things she noticed at once, one of those being her stance. She had always thought her mother was beautiful, confident and gentle, someone like a princess from a fairytale. Her voice was always pleasant and her smile was always kind. But now her mother didn't carry herself like a princess from the stories she read: She carried herself like a knight experienced from the conflicts of war.
Another thing was that, although there was no wind, her hair still danced around her shoulders. For a moment, all the girl could think of was how it added to her mother's noble bearing—as if she really were some character from a legend of heroes and magic. Then she crawled forward to get a better view of the scene playing out before her eyes, slipping out of the safety of the vehicle to hide behind the open door.
It wasn't long before she found the source of the 'magic' that tugged at her mother's hair, the same thing—she realized—that her parents had been so captivated by only moments ago. She might not have known what it was, but I recognize it immeadiately: A Dimensional Hole, only much more fearsome and unstable than the ones Primal Dialga had crafted to send and retrieve Dusknoir to and from the past. Just standing close to one, nevermind touching it, invites the chance of being dragged inside and launched somewhere else across time and space. This one… It seems like a black hole that could devour anything in its wake.
Her mother fired another Aura Sphere, but the combined efforts of hers and the Pokemon could only go so far. Targeted from both the front and back, Darkrai merged with the shadows to slink along the earth and reform directly behind Tropius and Snover—twins of the same dark orb he had fired upon them earlier manifesting into his hands that are both swiftly flung at the two Grass-types.
There's no chance to dodge them: They're both struck down immeadiately, overtaken by the shadows that broke free from the orbs and clamored over their bodies. It's not that they seemed to take damage, but they fell to the earth writhing in pain and clearly unconscious. I can only assume that what they were going through had to do with Darkrai's ability to cast nightmares.
Right when there's no one to stand between him and the girl, her father veered around the car with a large, broken branch in his grasp—now half-blinded from the scarlet downpour. With a fierce, guttural cry, he lashed out at the Dark-type, giving his daughter just long enough to crawl under the door to get away. Her mother closed in, throwing herself at Pitch Black with a round kick. The little girl stood back, frightened and confused. She looked down at her hands, willing them to draw out the same powers her mother used, but nothing happened. She didn't know how! She snuck back over to the Pokemon, desperately trying to jar them awake, but they wouldn't get up!
Then it happened. As if he was swatting at a pair of insects, Darkrai batted her parents away and then once more unleashed his nightmarish attack. Her father fell first. Her mother tucked and rolled along the earth before she was struck from behind.
The child froze, watching on in terror as the same fate the Pokemon suffered overtook them. "…Mommy?" she whispered, urging the strong woman to rise, but she didn't. Neither of them did. "Mommy! Daddy!" Screaming, she ran forward only for the Dark-type to catch her with a blow to the stomach and knock her to the ground.
Neither of them were prepared for what happened next. The vortex's power worsened and her parents' bodies were dragged toward the void. Darkrai moved forward, as if debating whether or not to catch them, but stopped, shaking his head as though thinking that they weren't the effort.
Paralyzed with pain and fear, all the girl could do was continue to scream for them, "Wake up! Wake up!"
But they didn't. The closer they inched toward the Dimensional Hole, the stronger it's pull on them got until, finally, they were swallowed by it.
They were gone.
And the child was left alone to face the monster that took them from her. He stared a while longer at the vortex, watching as it reacted to the two humans it had devoured. Then his eyes drifted casually back to her, and she flinched under his piercing gaze. Those eyes that she once thought were so pretty now terrified her. Kicking at the grass and cradling her aching chest, silent tears covering her face, she moved away from him—still aimlessly mouthing for her parents to come back. She lifted her free hand. Just one Aura Sphere. Just one like Mommy's.
She couldn't do it.
Rather than strike, Pitch Black unexpectedly remained where he was, waiting. But there was nothing for him to brace himself for: She couldn't fight back.
And realizing this, he grinned.
"The Guardians of Light: Five beings blessed by the legendaries with immense power to maintain the world's order," he said, "The Child of the Dimensional Scream: The Chosen Sword." He motioned at her with a faint, mocking wave, "You: A sniveling human. Perhaps I wasted my time tracking you down… Oh, you don't even know what I'm saying to you?" He took a step closer, but as she screamed, he laughed and maintained his distance, "The way things look now, your parents are going to put up a worse fight than you ever could—even if you were to discover what you are. Yes, don't cry now. Once the world resets, you won't even remember this: This will all have been a bad dream.
"Then the real nightmare begins."
