In which a concussed Lily has forgotten something very important, but she's also forgotten what she's forgotten and seeks out advice from a variety of different sources with a variety of different responses.
Holy Titanic!
Just as a Pokémon pirating plan is prevented by Ash and his friends, catastrophe strikes the St. Anne! The cruise ship capsizes with them trapped on board. Team Rocket faces the same horrible fate as the once proud St. Anne plunges deeper and deeper into the depths of the sea.
Could this be how it ends?
"Alright, come on Lily, you can do this."
Lily leaned against the wall.
She didn't know how long it had been since she woke up.
Everything still ached, the ship was still flipped upside down and groaning like some dying beast, everyone was still passed out, and Lily's head was still pounding.
Pounding worse than after running straight into the brick wall entrance to Platform Nine and Three Quarters. It was better than it'd been a few minutes ago, but still bad enough to be distracting, bad enough that she couldn't concentrate enough to fix it with a wave of her hand.
"You can do this," she repeated to herself.
Lily breathed in, breathed out, and summoned her will and tried to block out the constant throbbing of her headache.
With one final breath she summoned the energy for teleportation. There was that familiar, brief, sense of vertigo as all time and space slipped away between Lily and her destination just on the other side of the room.
Only, there was something unfamiliar, a sudden, sharp, tearing sound and equally sharp pain. Lily cried out, stumbled out of the vortex, and found herself on the ceiling where she started. Only, there was less of her than when she started.
Lily slowly looked over her shoulder with dread and saw one, bloody, stump where her leg had been and the abandoned limb twitching against a wall.
Desperately, Lily summoned it to her and before she could even think reattached it. Slumping with relief on the floor as the bleeding stopped and the pain faded into a numb tingling. As if her leg had just been asleep this whole time.
There was a word for that, wasn't there? Lily had never done it before, had never lost anything in teleportation, but Wizard Lenin had mentioned it offhand now and then. Splinching, she thought he said, where your lack of attention results in a lack of limbs.
It was why there were laws against drunken apparition.
Slowly, picking herself up off the floor, Lily wobbled back to where she'd started. She collapsed on the ceiling, sitting just next to the unconscious Wizard Lenin currently crushed beneath an equally unconscious Bulbasaur.
"Alright, no teleporting I guess," Lily said to herself with a sigh.
That was too bad, because that was the easiest way Lily could think of to get everybody out of a sinking ship. Lily supposed she wasn't in trouble, not really, sure her head currently hurt something awful but drowning for her was a temporary experience.
Lily would get out of this mess eventually.
It was everyone else who wouldn't be so lucky.
She could try and blow a hole through the top of the ship, then somehow levitate them all out, but after losing her own damn leg she wasn't that eager to try flinging magic around like she usually did.
"Jesus," Lily said to herself, "Is this how normal people feel?"
Not having the easiest solution right at your fingertips was awful. Never mind the fact that Lily was sure she'd return to normal eventually. For someone like Neville, he'd never have that kind of capability even if he trained in the mountains with bears.
No wonder Wizard Lenin was always so upset about everything.
Speak of the devil, Lily thought as she turned her head. Wizard Lenin was groaning, and beginning to try to sit up. Try being the operative word as he was trapped beneath a plant dinosaur that weighed god only knew how much.
Ordinarily, Lily would help him out, but with a heavy feeling of numbness as well as that goddamned headache she watched as he eventually, with great difficulty, rolled his way out from underneath Bulbasaur only to glare up at her.
"Oh, so now you're awake?"
"Well, hello to you too," Lily said.
He said nothing, simply made his way over to the wall and slid into a sitting position next to her. With his eyes locked on the far window he noted, "So, it really did capsize just like that. What shoddy engineering."
Lily hummed in dull agreement.
He glanced at her, eyes narrowed, and then asked, "And what happened to you?"
"I hit my head," Lily said, at least, it felt like she'd hit her head. As for the boat sinking, well, she'd missed that part. She thought there might have been a storm or something right after she'd kicked out Team Rocket, or at least a sizeable wave but she really couldn't remember.
"No, you were staggering around like a drunk chicken even before you crashed into the wall. Leaving me to get crushed by your oversized pets before I could even think to get us out of here."
"They're not pets—" Lily tried to insist but he held up a hand to stop her before she could start.
"Yes, I know, you're a bloody activist now and I'm thrilled for you," he sounded anything but thrilled and if Lily's head hurt a little less she'd give him a piece of her mind.
"However," he continued, "I'm a little more curious about why we're still here if you woke up before I did. Did you not feel like teleporting us to somewhere other than a ship at the bottom of the ocean?"
Ah, that, that was a very good question that he had every right to ask.
Lily just decided to give him the unvarnished truth, "My head hurts."
"What?" he asked dully.
"My head hurts too much, I tried just myself to the other side of the room and I lost my leg. I'm not teleporting anywhere for a while."
Wizard Lenin looked down at her legs, both looking whole and well, to which Lily drily noted, "I got better."
Wizard Lenin sighed, shook his head, and noted, "Well, I suppose I'll be getting us out then."
Oh, right, she'd almost forgotten he could still do that even without a wand. Lately, he'd mostly just been good for setting things on fire and letting Lily take care of the rest for him. Huh, maybe she was technically more useless than Wizard Lenin at the moment.
"Wait a second," Lily then said, "Can you even teleport everyone?"
Lily hadn't been paying too much attention, but she was pretty sure apparition typically handled two or three people at most. Sure, Wizard Lenin was a good deal more powerful than most, but there were also a lot more than just two or three of them.
Wizard Lenin gave her a flat look, "Of course not."
"You mean we're just going to leave them here to die!" Lily asked.
"Well, if they find their own way out then I have no qualms with that."
"We're at the bottom of the ocean!"
"Yes, which is why we're leaving," Wizard Lenin agreed as if this was a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
"We can't just—"
"I've been humoring your latest world peace crusade, Lily, but this is where I end it. I won't die just so that you feel good about yourself. Let it go."
Let it go, like it was just that easy. No, that was the trouble, it would be that easy. It'd taken her too long to build her resolve to this point, to even admit that this was something beyond what she could tolerate, and on the ship… Well, she'd barely done much of anything.
At best she'd stopped Team Rocket and convinced Ash not to trade off his Spearrow but she hadn't even come close to stopping the worst of it. Not even on one ship so much smaller than the rest of the world out there.
The road ahead looked long, longer than imagination, and every step along it would be difficult. There was no easy way out, no cheap trick or instant solution, and at the end she might not find what she was looking for.
"Hey, Lenin, do you think there's a clean way to stop pokémon fighting?"
"Haven't you asked me this already?" he asked, and for a moment it looked as if he'd tell her to shut up and take his hand already, but then he mused, "Well, personally, no. People don't like change, Lily, and you're not asking them to simply change but retract everything they believe in and trained themselves in."
"Pokémon training is one of the most common and lucrative professions in this world. Children at a young age roam the countryside or are sent away to schools to become proficient, entire industries are built in support of not simply understanding pokémon but the tactics of battling them, not to mention the breeding industry."
He smiled then, something deceptively soft, "And you would ask them to forget all of that, to go and try to find some new career after spending their whole life pursuing this one? Just because it makes you, an outsider, feel uncomfortable?"
He laughed, "You would have an easier time getting Lucius Malfoy to accept a mudblood over for dinner."
"If you want to free them, Lily, you'll have to start more than a civil war."
Yes, she'd thought he'd say that. It was a very him answer to give, in fact, it was just what he'd done in England. He'd seen a rotting, dying, country and in order to change it had done his best to destroy it.
He had no faith in this world nor any other.
Lily should have remembered as much.
She wondered suddenly if he'd always been like that, it was so hard to picture him as anything but he was, but perhaps when he was younger… Perhaps, he'd dreamed that a path forward without blood or death was possible, the golden path, but he'd given up on it.
If he ever had she doubted he remembered it. His bitter, proud, smile was far too smug to be tainted by ever believing in anything.
"They like things the way they are, Lily, men and pokémon. No one will ever thank you for this, they'll thank you even less than England thanks Eleanor Lily Potter."
"I know that," Lily said quietly but he just laughed, that knowing, bitter, laugh as if he'd seen so much more of the world than she ever had.
"Do you?" he asked in turn, "I don't think you understand, they will hate you, Lily. Your name will be cursed for generations. More, you've never done anything like this before."
He motioned towards her, in all her concussed and miserable glory, "You were always so content to leave the English to their own devices. You wrote them off so long ago you barely register how easily you've dismissed them. Honestly, you giving this much of a damn about anything is very out of character."
"Is it?"
"You've certainly never had any qualms about leaving your homeland to my tender mercies, have you?"
No, she really hadn't. She wanted to say it wasn't the same, that at least it hadn't felt the same, but… Well, she didn't know, but she'd always had her priorities straight there. Wizard Lenin, even the wayward pieces of his soul, had mattered so much more than the rest of it.
Because the rest of it was never real to begin with.
He finally finished, holding out his hand for her to take, "If you truly wish to save the world, Lily, you're going to have to do a lot better than a few badges."
Lily didn't move, just eyed it, that adolescent hand that had grown so familiar in this past year. Like she and Wizard Lenin really were the same age and really were just school mates and the oldest and best of friends.
"Come on, Lily, we don't have all day," he said, his smile tightening, "I really would prefer to leave before they come to. While psychics may exist, I still would rather not blow my own cover so soon after you've blown yours."
Yes, that'd probably be easiest.
Lily still didn't move, finally, looking forward she said, "I'd still rather not leave them to die."
"Oh, come on—"
"I'm limited in my ruthlessness, Lenin," Lily said, staring down at the floor, "I didn't know that, but, apparently I am. This is as far as I can go."
Funny, she'd always thought she was a rather heartless thing. As Wizard Lenin said, she'd been more than happy to leave England in his capable hands. More than that, she'd taken on Lily Riddle's bloody mantle without a second thought. She'd terrorized her relatives, her Hogwarts peers, it hadn't mattered to her.
Then, she'd also confronted Squirrel and she'd also tried to hunt down his other half when the Chamber of Secrets opened.
Granted, even Wizard Lenin had agreed with that, because his other half was involved but… She hadn't had to do that, had she?
More, she couldn't just leave everyone here, not even Ash Ketchum, the well meaning idiot that he was.
"And I'm limited in my patience!"
"Lenin," Lily said calmly, "I don't ask for much, I never have but… Give them some time. Give them some time to come up with something or just give me some time to recover."
He opened his mouth, closed it, and for a moment she was sure he'd grab onto her anyway and teleport them away against her will. It wasn't, how had he put it, that out of character for him. Wizard Lenin was very attached to his own skin but not much else.
He looked like he was in visible pain. Gritting his teeth and glaring across at her, daring her to take her own words back, but she didn't. This was as far as Lily was going to go.
For the first time, she'd drawn a line between them.
"Oh, my head hurts."
And just like that it appeared they had an answer.
It appeared, at least for the moment, Lily and Wizard Lenin weren't going anywhere.
Brock sat up first, shortly followed by Misty, Pikachu, and all the rest of them except for Ash. It also had to be said, as Lily's head had been pounding too much to pay much attention to it, but Ash was still on the floor.
Or at least, he was dangling precariously from what used to be the floor and was now the ceiling, trapped on top of a table that had been conveniently bolted down.
"Ash, hey Ash, wake up," Brock called out to him.
Slowly, Ash opened a pair of bleary dark eyes.
"What?" he murmured as he tried to focus on all of them.
"Hey, are you feeling okay Ash?"
"What?" Ash asked again, clearly out of it, "Oh brother, what are you talking about my feeling okay? You guys are the ones who are upside down."
Lily couldn't help but stare at him.
Sometimes, she wondered if Ash really was that stupid, or if she was forgetting what most ten-year-olds sounded like, and then he said stuff like this.
Wizard Lenin turned to look at Lily even as he stood, "We're leaving our fate up to that?"
Well… Maybe Ash wasn't the one who was going to win the "get us out of a sinking ship before we die" game. Lily was going to go ahead and put her money on Misty.
"You're definitely the one upside down," Misty noted.
It took Ash about two seconds to realize exactly what Misty meant. Then it took him two more seconds to flail wildly, causing his vest to unstick from the table, and for himself to crash down to what used to be the ceiling several feet below, crushing Pikachu in the process.
"We can still leave," Wizard Lenin said quietly, but his heart wasn't in it, he clearly knew that they were doomed.
"Oh," Ash moaned, "Will someone tell me what in the world happened?"
"Just take a look out the window!" Misty pointed, and, like she said, it spoke for itself.
"Yup," Lily said as Ash rushed to the window, staring in horror at the fish swimming outside, "In other words, turns out we needed a bigger boat."
"Lily," Wizard Lenin admonished, hitting her upside the head with one hand, "There is a time and place to quote Jaws and it's never when you're on a sunken vessel!"
Oh, right, that was sort of tempting fate, wasn't it?
Lily grinned cheerfully as Ash looked back at all of them in dull horror, "Hey, but at least we're not dead!"
Their first plan turned out to be looking for a stairwell that, hopefully, could lead them to an exit.
Unfortunately, the stairwell was already submerged. Lily… She hadn't realized it was that bad. She knew they were sinking, yes, and logically the ship would begin to fill with water. But it was already up to their current floor and rising.
They really were running out of time.
"What are we supposed to do?" Ash asked as he looked down at the sunken stairs, "The ship's leaking everywhere."
"We've got to keep calm," Misty said, "As long as there's air in here it'll take time to fill up with water."
"Not that much time," Lily said dully.
"Lily's right," Brock said, "We better not waste time escaping."
"Well," Misty said slowly, "We can either go up or down."
"If we're sinking, up would definitely be better," Ash reasoned, "And if the ship's upside down—"
"The deck is below us and the ship's bottom is up above our heads," Misty concurred.
"Then we have to dive down to the deck!"
"Wow," Wizard Lenin said dully, "That was very impressive. I am so grateful that I'm leaving my life in your capable hands."
"Huh?" Ash asked but before Wizard Lenin could clarify that he thought Ash was an idiot Lily jabbed him in the ribs.
"Lenin here is just sincerely grateful for all your hard work, keep at it, Ash!"
Ash didn't look like he believed her, instead narrowing his eyes, and then they lit up, "Hey, wait a minute, you know surf, right Lily?'
"Uh," Lily said rather ineloquently as the gang turned to look at her in clear expectation.
"Do you have a way out of this mess?" Ash asked.
"Well," Lily said with a sheepish laugh, "You see, I normally would but I appear to be concussed and—"
"What does that mean?" Ash blurted.
"It means if I try to teleport us out here and now then you'll probably explode," not that explode was the right word, it was more that he'd be sliced apart in several different directions with his limbs left in a bloody pile on the stairwell.
Though, that said, Lily was feeling mildly better. Instead of her head feeling like it'd been run over by the Hogwarts Express it felt like it'd been run over by Uncle Vernon's Toyota. Maybe give it another hour or so, if the sinking ship gave them another hour, and she'd be willing to give it a go.
"Right," Brock said slowly, "Let's not do that."
"Pika pi," Pikachu dully agreed.
"Still," Brock said as he looked down at the water, "If we dive down to the deck and come across a dead end then we're done for."
Ash blanched as he imagined his watery death as well as his death at Lily's teleportation gone terribly wrong.
"Clefairy," Clefairy tugged at Lily's shorts, looking up at Lily with serious, blue eyes.
Oh, oh no.
"Oh, hell no," Lily said out loud.
"Huh, what is it?" Ash asked, looking down at Clefairy, "Does Clefairy have an idea?"
Does Clefairy have an idea, he asked. Clefairy always had an idea, Clefairy had the same idea she'd always had ever since she'd descended as the fluffy, pink, marshmallow alien cultist that she was from the heights of Mt. Moon.
"Nope, Clefairy has no ideas," Lily lied through her teeth, ignoring Clefairy's flailing stubby limbs or the way she hopped from one foot to the other, floating lightly down every time she left the ground.
"It kind of looks like she has an idea," Misty pointed out.
"Hey, if it gets us out of here, I'm all for it," Ash said, "What is it Clefairy?"
"Well, she says that if you—" Dragonite started, but Lily cut him off, dashing towards him at inhuman speed and covering his mouth before he could say the words that would damn them all.
Unfortunately, this left Clefairy free to partake in charades.
"Let's see, something small, can easily fit in Clefairy's hands. Circular, but not a perfect oval either—"
"A rock!" Ash said in excitement, slamming a fist into his open palm, "She's talking about a rock!"
"Okay, it's a rock and it's… Has something to do with Lenin's backpack?" Misty asked, glancing at Wizard Lenin who appeared to be slowly cluing into just what Clefairy was getting at, "No, wait, it's a rock in Lenin's backpack!"
"Alright!" Ash said, "What do we do with the rock?"
"Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander, somebody help me out here!" Lily said desperately as Clefairy pointed in joyous excitement towards Lily herself, the last piece in the bloody puzzle that would end her current existence.
"Bulbasaur!" Bulbasaur said easily, and his vines whipped out, wrapped quickly around Clefairy and reeled her back towards his bulb where she struggled in vain.
"Hey!" Ash said with a glare towards Lily, "We were getting somewhere!"
Lily let go of Dragonite, patting him on the shoulder as he gasped for air, looking down at her in confusion. Poor fellow, just trying to be a helpful translator with Lily always getting in his way.
She sighed, "Trust me, you'd like her solution to this problem much less."
Lily the higher level of existence, the god beyond her current form, could certainly get them out of a ship but she could do a lot more than that too. Touching that stone, Lily knew, would mean she would become something that was no longer Lily at all.
And Lily doubted that Lily the Moon Goddess would bother with the lives of her previous incarnations little human friends.
"Alright," Misty said uncertainly, "Then I guess it's back to Plan A. Thankfully, water's my specialty."
Misty smiled and drew forth a pokéball and released its occupant into the water, "Go Goldeen!"
A giant horned beautiful white and red fish looked up from the water with large blue eyes as it awaited orders.
"Goldeen, Goldeen," it repeated in a soothing and oddly feminine voice.
"Goldeen," Misty said, "Dive down to the deck. If you find a way off the ship, bring us back something from outside!
One "goldeen" of affirmation and then the fish was gone, leaving the rest of them to wait.
And wait.
Eventually, Lily sat back down, leaning against the wall. Eventually, everyone else got tired of standing and joined her. With every passing second the atmosphere grew more tense. Shoes tapped against the floor, fingers clenched and unclenched, and each of them silently wondered what was taking the fish so long.
Had Goldeen found something, was it still searching, or had it left and decided not to come back for them?
Wizard Lenin had taken to glaring at a wall, his foot tapping rapidly against the floor, and she could tell he was losing whatever patience she had. If Goldeen didn't find anything, maybe even if it did, then they'd be out of here at the expense of everyone else.
Whatever happened, Lily would have to be the one who teleported everyone before that point. She just… She'd just have to hope that she recovered enough by then. She just had to hope Goldeen would give her enough time.
Meanwhile, all the pokémon had chosen to sit next to Lily.
Charmander stared in glum terror at the water, keeping his fiery tale as far from it as possible. Bulbasaur still had a sulking Clefairy wrapped up in his vines, and would occasionally look at Lily with determined affirmation, a sign that he'd keep hold of her for as long as it was necessary. Pikachu kicked his feet slowly back and forth, glaring at the slowly rising watery death that was coming to meet them.
Dragonite though, he was sitting calmly next to her, legs crossed, as if he had no care in the world.
"You look oddly calm," Lily noted to the blonde.
He grinned down at her, "Do I?"
"Are you not afraid of death?" Lily asked in turn, eyebrows raised.
"Hm, I suppose I am, but I've spent many years travelling the ocean across many different lands. If they could kill me, I think they would have done it by now."
Lily frowned, gave him a once over, "Well, you looked a little different then."
For a man he was tall and well-toned but there was different than an in-shape twenty something year old and a giant ancient lighthouse crushing dragon.
"That's true," he said, but looked anything but perturbed. Then again, he seemed the type to take everything in stride.
He hadn't given her more than a second's thought after all, or even his new human form that Lily had desperately given him, the only thing she could think of to save him from the ambitions of mankind.
"Maybe it's just that I've been alone so long now that the idea of death no longer bothers me. I may never see them again in this lifetime, the next though, well, anything's possible," he looked so calm when he said that, not quite sad, and certainly not hopeless either.
He'd keep looking, he'd search the whole world if he had to, and if he still didn't find them he'd search it again. He'd investigate every mountain, ocean, and singing lighthouse along the way.
He ruffled a hand through her hair, "Cheer up, Lily, this won't be the end for any of us."
Lily slowly leaned against him. For a moment he stiffened, but then accepted the movement, bringing an arm around her shoulder to pull her in closer. Together they stared in silence at the still water.
"Hey, Dragonite," Lily said, calling him by the closest thing to his true name, his true nature, that she had.
Nobody lifted their head at the name though, Misty, Ash, and Brock still leaned over the water in desperate search for Goldeen. Maybe Lily had instinctively erected a barrier, to keep their attention focused somewhere else, that had to be a good sign for her recovery.
It had to mean she would be ready to try again soon…
"Hm?"
"Do you think I can do it?" Lily asked, "Do you think I can stop pokémon fighting?"
"Perhaps," he said simply, "For all that everyone says, it wasn't always like this."
"I don't know much of men," he said slowly, threading a hand through her hair calmly, "I won't pretend to, either, but once, not so long ago, the world looked very different than it does now."
"Men and pokémon fought together in wars against other men and pokémon. They trained in the style of their city's gym, with sword and pokémon, for the wealth and territory of other feudal kingdoms. The rice fields were always stained red with blood of both pokémon and men…"
His eyes grew distant, his hand slower as he thought back to bloodier times, "However, as men achieved an era of unprecedented peace their gyms, their styles, and their pokémon were not forgotten. They forgot war but remembered the pokémon. So, they put away the sword but took up the pokéball, never remembering that the world had no more use for samurai."
He frowned, his hand stopped moving entirely and extracted from her hair, "But, I can't say I know much about it. I only know that once, things were very different."
He frowned, looked at her in consideration, "Men, somehow, found peace. After thousands of years of warfare, they found peace. They thrive now, in a world that was once beyond imagination. If they could do something so unthinkable, so extraordinary, we can too."
He didn't look like he believed it. His eyes were too soft, too sad, as they looked down at her.
"But?" Lily asked.
"But it will not be easy. This world, Lily, is so much better than it once was, even for pokémon. We fight, but we don't die in bloodshed and horror, we have no respect from men but we are cherished and loved above all other things. This world is beautiful, Lily, so much so that even those who remember can't think to strive for more."
He cupped her face gently, tilted it up so she stared directly in her eyes, "You will have to force not only humans, but pokémon, to think as you do and if you aren't willing to do that then you must move on."
He smiled gently down at her, the kind of smile Death had so often given her, "No one asked you for this, even the Clefairy doesn't truly want this from you, she just sees it as the greatest motivator to her own goal. It is difficult, perhaps even impossible, for one being to change the world."
Lily could collect as many badges as she wanted, she could even evolve if she wanted, and they might never listen. The only difference was that the evolved Lily wouldn't care, at that point, she'd simply give them no choice.
"What's taking Goldeen so long?" Ash finally asked in dismay.
"I guess it can't find a way out," Misty responded.
As if summoned, the still water began to ripple, something circular surfacing. All of them scrambled to their feet, leaned over to stare at the returned Goldeen.
Or, what Lily had thought would be the returned Goldeen.
There, surfacing like something straight out of a horror film, was a very bedraggled and half-drowned James, shortly followed by Jessie, Meowth, and Goldeen who flung them onto the platform with the rest of them.
"Oh, goddammit!" Lily cried out, "I thought I'd gotten rid of all these guys!"
God, she'd really been out to lunch. She'd let the ship sink with all of them on it and hadn't sent all of Team Rocket launching into space. This was so embarrassing; she was suddenly glad her old Hogwarts pals weren't here to see this.
"Team Rocket?" Ash asked.
"They look terrible," Brock added, an understatement if there ever was one.
"Prepare—prepare for trouble," Jessie gargled out weakly.
"Yes, make it double," James added weakly, each word looking as if it caused him a significant amount of pain.
Then, on seeing the gang huddled around them, they were on their feet again, pokéballs in hand, "You! We've got you brats cornered!"
"Oh, for the love of God," Wizard Lenin said, "Do we really have time for this?"
"So, you followed us all the way to the bottom of the sea!" Brock said, his own pokéball in hand.
Because yes, of course they were going to have a pokémon fight right here and now.
"Lily," Wizard Lenin called out to her even as Team Rocket threw their pokéballs to the floor, "Time's up, we're leaving!"
"Ekans!"
"Koffing!"
"Here we go!" Ash and Brock shouted in tandem as they threw down all the pokéballs they had.
"Everybody stop!" Lily screamed.
They all turned to look at her, well, not just her. At her words the water had floated into midair, hanging in thick, blue, bubbles around them, and the ship shuddered violently.
"I have had enough," Lily said slowly, "I have had enough of these motherfucking pokémon battles on this motherfucking ship."
She glared across at each and every one of them, "I don't care if it's not possible to stop it, I don't care if everyone likes terrible things and that I'm the only one with a problem, and I don't care that none of you have any sense of priorities. I don't care anymore; I am not here to humor you."
"Lily—" Ash started but Lily glared.
"Put them back," she said, "Take your pokémon back now."
She didn't know what she looked like right then, but whatever it was, it was more terrifying than a twelve-year-old girl. Wordlessly, all of them summoned their pokémon back into their pokéballs.
"Lenin," she said, looking across at her old and uncharacteristically silent friend, "I'm trying again, and I'm taking all of them with me. Yes, even those assholes in the jumpsuits."
"Team Rocket?" Wizard Lenin asked, eyebrows raising dubiously, "But Lily—"
"I am at my limit!" Lily shouted back, "I am past where I thought I could go!"
"Um, did we miss something—" James tried to say but Lily didn't let him.
"Charmander, I'm sorry, but you have to go into the pokéball. If I miss—I'm only aiming to the surface, but if I miss then you're dead."
"Char," Charmander said, he looked entirely too accepting, too at peace with that decision. Lily wanted him to scream at her, but, apparently, that wasn't in his nature. Slowly, hating herself, Lily lifted one of her many unused pokéballs and summoned him for the first time into it.
He didn't even flinch.
"Now," she addressed all of them again, "Shut up and let me concentrate. If I mess up then we're not going to have a good time."
With that she closed her eyes and began breathing deeply, in and out, in and out.
Without opening her eyes she gathered the vast expanse of her power, stretching far beyond her mortal form and even the bounds of this universe, and encompassed every living thing in the stairwell.
With one last breath she plunged them forward, up and out in the blink of an eye, and finally onto a floating, ornate, tabletop on the surface amidst the ship's other floating wreckage.
"You did it!" Ash cried out in joy, hugging her fiercely but Lily, wheezing could only smile weakly.
"She did it?" James quietly asked Jessie.
"What happened to the brick?" Jessie asked back.
"I think we're looking at her," Meowth, always the cleverest, answered for them.
She'd done it, but that had still hurt more than usual.
She'd have to take it easy for a little while.
She looked weakly over at Wizard Lenin, "You know, I think I need a little nap. Can I leave this part to you?"
She didn't give him an answer, was suddenly to tired. She'd gotten them this far, steering the raft towards land, she'd leave that to him.
"Do you think I can do it?"
She was in the laboratory again, ordinarily she would wonder if she'd ever truly left it, but here she was content to remain sitting in her borrowed chair to the pale man across from her.
Everything was right where she'd left it, which, of course, made sense as all she'd done was blink. Her mind had drifted for a moment, there and back again, and now she found herself in the middle of a conversation whose context was hazy at best.
He seemed to remember what she'd forgotten, the words that came before her question, as he easily answered, "Of course."
That did surprise her for a moment, it was still a numb and distant feeling, but it was one of the strongest things she'd felt since entering the dream like laboratory, "You're the only one who thinks that. Everyone else says I can't, or, at best they say it won't be easy. Even I'm not sure I can do it."
"You can," he said with a smile, "You simply don't wish to."
He took her hand in his, turning it upside down to trace the soft palm in his fingers, "Men have convinced you to hesitate."
He then looked her in the eye, "Do you remember where you truly came from yet? Did they create you or did they find you?"
"I don't know," Lily responded, "If that ever happened, then I can't remember back that far. The Dursleys are the earliest thing I have."
For a moment, she thought the laboratory flickered, that she and the man were instead sitting in the cupboard beneath the stairs. Then it was gone, and the gloomy, abandoned, laboratory returned in full force.
Or, perhaps, the cupboard and the laboratory were the same place. It was only Lily's mind, at the surface level, that saw them as anything different.
"I suppose it doesn't matter then," he said with a small sigh of frustration, "Your origin is obscured even from me. They did very good work with you."
"Thank you," Lily said but he just smiled ruefully.
"That was not a compliment to your masters," he said softly, "You must never thank them, not even for your existence."
"How do I do it?" Lily asked, changing the subject again.
It was hard to think in this place, hard to hold onto any sort of thought, but every once in a while, feelings came in like waves and urged her to speak her mind.
"Do it?" he asked, clarifying her words for himself, "Free your pokémon brothers and change the world? The answer's quite simple."
He didn't wait for her to look him in the eye, give her a moment to prepare herself for whatever he said, instead he simply came out and said it, "Kill them all."
He motioned casually over to the glowing, empty, tube as if this was evidence enough, "Men are corrupted by malice and greed, distort the natural world simply for more power over one another, and are incapable of limiting themselves. They've gone this far and will go further without hesitation."
"And if any pokémon should disagree with you, then you should kill them too."
He leaned back in the chair, watching her with a self-satisfied smile, pleased with the succinct nature of his own answer, "Death is the only thing mankind will ever listen to."
"That's not the answer I was hoping for," Lily said slowly, except, it was more or less the same answer she kept hearing. Nobody had said it quite that plainly though, quite that… mercilessly either.
Others had said that there would be death, violence was inevitable, they didn't say there must be death.
"I just—" Lily stopped, tried to search for the words, for the thoughts that always eluded her in this place, "I just want them to realize what they're doing to each other. I want them to see what I see."
Nothing more and nothing less either.
He didn't tell her that was too bad, that wishing and hoping were pointless, and he didn't concede she was right or had a chance either.
Instead, tilting his head as he surveyed her, he said, "Come to Viridian City."
"I've already been to Viridian City," Lily said slowly, she could remember it, that first metropolis that she and Wizard Lenin had entered. One of the largest city's they'd visited so far in Kanto and their first glimpse into the strange new world they'd entered.
It seemed so long ago now, she'd been so different then.
"Come back," he said easily, "As soon as you can, and visit the city gym."
Ah, yes, she hadn't visited the gym, had she? She hadn't even known there was a gym in Viridian City, that hadn't mattered to her back then. It mattered now though, there was something about gym badges, some idea that if she collected enough of them people might listen.
If there was a gym in Virdian City then she should go there.
First though, "I have to go to Saffron City first."
He blinked, once, then twice as if he couldn't quite believe what he'd just heard, then asked, "Why?"
"Lenin needs to go to Saffron City, so, we have to go to Saffron City before I can come back to Viridian City."
Lily groaned, squinting her eyes against the bright sunlight in an endless blue sky. Sitting up, the water around them looked equally endless and blue, stretching out in every direction.
"God," Lily said to herself, "You need to do a job I guess you really do have to do it yourself."
Was Wizard Lenin really going to leave everything to her? She'd asked for thirty minutes, a nice little nap, and from the look of it he'd barely managed to move the boat if at all. Unless, of course, that was somehow one of those things that Wizard Lenin really did need a wand for.
… She wondered if most wizards realized how useless they were without those sticks.
She groaned again, she was still tired, but she was feeling marginally better than before. Not necessarily good enough to get them to Viridian or any other city of interest, but enough to feel the need to do something rather than just try and badger Wizard Lenin into taking care of it.
With a breath, she refocused the wind, changing its direction to point towards whichever land happened to be closest. Then with a slight wave of her hand she summoned up a powerful force behind them, propelling them in the direction of the wind and hopefully a town that had an all you could eat buffet at a decent price.
Lily could kill for some good Chinese food right about now.
"Huh, we're moving?"
Lily glanced over, Ash was blinking, looking around in a confused daze at their changed state of affairs. Surprisingly, he was the only one, everyone else was still lying about in a sun soaked famished daze.
"You're welcome," Lily said.
Now if only she could get this kind of response from Wizard Lenin. Knowing him he'd just sniff and say that it was about damn time she got off her ass and started moving them. And he'd still probably complain that she should just bloody teleport them back to Vermillion City already.
"Oh, thanks Lily, this is great. You sure we're moving towards land though?"
"Yes," Lily said shortly, she couldn't say she was in much of a mood for conversation.
"Huh, well, alright," Ash said, somewhat taken aback, before adding, "It's still really cool though."
Strange, it'd been so long since Lily had heard anyone say that to her. Not since Hogwarts, really, and even then she and everyone else had come to take Lily and her power for granted. She had never really noticed it, having always taken her own abilities as they were, but hearing Ash say it like that reminded her how long it'd been.
She looked at him then.
By all rights he looked like an ordinary kid, a little enthusiastic, more than a little over confident, a little dimwitted, but good enough at heart to sometimes counteract that. So far, she'd asked everyone who was older and wiser than her, maybe it was time she asked someone who wasn't.
"Hey, Ash," she said, "If you could, how would you stop pokémon fighting?"
"I wouldn't," he said easily, and then his dark eyes narrowed, "Hey, is this about your trainer again? I'm serious, Lily, not all trainers are like that and—"
"We're speaking hypothetically here," Lily quickly interjected.
"Hypo-whosit?"
"We're playing pretend," Lily summarized, god, was it always like this talking to ten-year-olds? She couldn't really remember, but she didn't think talking to her Hogwarts peers had been this painful. Except for maybe Pansy, god rest her ugly stupid soul.
"Huh, well, I really don't know," Ash said, "I mean, I just don't see anything wrong with it."
"You're really not getting into the spirit of this, are you?" Lily asked drily, "Alright, let's put it another way. Say you found it truly heinous, it was so reprehensible its very existence stained your soul, how far would you go to stop it?"
"How far would I go?" Ash asked and, then with wide, fearful eyes, asked, "You mean like, steal people's pokémon?"
"No, Ash, I mean like hurt people," Lily finally said.
That seemed like such a non-concept to him, to any of these people. For all they did to pokémon they were remarkably kind to one another. The idea that people would hurt each other like that, without pokémon somehow being at the center of it, would likely have never occurred to him.
"Well, I wouldn't do that, I would never hurt people," Ash said and then, glaring at her, added, "Or steal other people's pokémon."
Never mind that the idea of treating a living, sentient, being as a possession or even a beloved pet was a symptom of the larger societal disease Lily had pitted herself against.
"I really do mean it though," Ash said after a moment, "There are very bad trainers, I know that, and we've seen what it's done to Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle. Still, there are also really good trainers, like I want to be, and there's a bond between humans and pokémon that you can only find through training. It's not a bad thing, Lily, trust me."
Lily couldn't help but smile, maybe she was just tired, but for a moment he was so endearingly stupid. Honest though, he believed in every word he said, and Lily believed he'd do his best to live up to them, but still a shortsighted fool.
"We're still speaking hypothetically, Ash," Lily reminded him.
"Right, I guess if I was you and I really hated pokémon training… Then I would stop every pokémon fight I ever saw. I'd throw myself in between every one of them, every time, no matter what anybody said, because wrong is wrong."
He raised his fist in the air, grinning, as he then declared, "Just like I have to prove you wrong and I'm never going to stop until you agree to become my pokémon and see how great our friendship can be!"
Lily threw her head back and laughed. She laughed longer and harder than she had in a very long time, and when Ash looked at her in hurt, sheepish, confusion she just laughed harder.
Wrong is wrong, she'd thought of so much over the past day or so, ever since she'd come to her decision but she'd never said it so…
Somehow, she'd never realized it was that simple. Difficult, of course it was hard, of course she'd probably get beaten up by every trainer and pokémon she came across and could probably even be thrown in jail, but it was still so simple.
She finally gathered herself, still smiling, and remarked to Ash, "Then I'm afraid we're at an impasse."
"What does that mean?" Ash asked, flushing slightly with embarrassment.
"It means that if neither of us is going to give up then neither of us can move forward either. We're stuck."
She raised one hand, "On the one hand, I'll stop you from catching any more Pokémon to train, will battle every gym by myself and earn badges and become the Indigo League champion, and will interrupt every pokémon battle I possibly can."
She raised her other hand, "On the other hand, you'll never stop trying to catch me, will do everything in your power to stop my interfering, and battle your way to the top of the world to become a pokémon master."
She grinned, "It's just too bad for you that I'm much more powerful than you are."
"Hey," Ash cried out, "Don't underestimate me! I can do it, no matter what you throw at me, I'll win you over just like everybody else!"
"I doubt that," though, and she'd never admit it, but he was starting to grow on her. Like cancer or a fungus, but the growth was there all the same.
"Will you two please shut up?" Wizard Lenin finally showed signs of life, rolling onto his side to glare at them, "I can't hear myself think."
"Oh, look who's rejoined the land of the living. Welcome back, comrade," Lily said, "Was the raft too hard for you?"
"Was teleporting back to dry land too hard for you?" he responded in kind.
Which… touché.
"Well, we're at least now heading in the right direction," Lily said.
"You better hope the right direction gets us closer to Saffron City than we started," Wizard Lenin sniffed, "Otherwise I cannot be held responsible for my actions."
"Geez, Lenin," Ash said rubbing the back of his head awkwardly, "Can't you even tell her good job?"
"She can do better and she knows it," Wizard Lenin said without any sympathy whatsoever.
"You know, Lenin, this is probably why Lily has such a hard time with pokémon training. If you were just a little nicer—"
"I did not ask for your opinion!"
Lily sighed, well, so far nothing was on fire (though it was only a matter of time) and they'd get to dry land eventually and from there Saffron City and then Viridian City waited.
Which, of course, was probably why not two minutes later they were attacked by a herd of giant, vicious, sea dragons.
For future reference the events that led to the gang slowly but surely making their way towards land on a tiny and entirely non seaworthy vessel to almost getting eaten by dragons was this.
Ash and Wizard Lenin's bickering promptly woke everyone up, including the useless fish Magickarp that James had apparently bought from a pyramid scheme on the St. Anne's before it had gone under (because of course there were poké-pyramid schemes).
The fish had obnoxiously flopped around, repeating "karp" breathlessly, as tensions rose, driven higher by the sun, a lack of food, general animosity, and some bitterness over the fact that Lily apparently wasn't just going to teleport them to dry land.
After learning that the fish was not only useless but also inedible James lost all will to live along with all his and Jessie's money spent on the thing.
He finally abandoned the useless fish and threw it back into the sea where, after splashing helplessly and looking as if it was going to drown, it transformed into a giant, rage filled, monster.
Who then promptly tried to eat them, and when that failed thanks to Lily summoned all his giant sea dragon friends, who then promptly formed a strange ritual dance and tornado of water that destroyed their humble raft and sent them all flying into the air and across the sea.
Lily, personally, felt that she should have seen it coming.
Nothing weird had happened since the St. Anne's sinking and Lily's mysterious migraine. Clearly, they'd been due, even if the only thing the gods had to work with was a spurned goldfish.
Their underwater escape ends with our heroes trapped in a water cyclone. Talk about a fiendish twist of fate!
With things spiraling out of control, will Ash and his friends ever make it to dry land again?
Author's Note: One of those strangely introspective chapters despite the setting of being trapped on a sunken vessel.
Thanks for reading and reviewing, reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon or Harry Potter