Warnings: Keta, cryptic crap, small worldbuilding, Joys are their own warning, just how human are we really?
Chapter Twenty-Seven - A Stone Thrown
Aelita honestly didn't even know where to start with this morning. The nurse at the pokemon center, smiling like a liepard (and Aelita could not even tell if that was normal or not, though the Eldest had dryly informed her that most Joy were like that), had said that girl had gone back into Amethyst Cave on Sensei's orders. Going up to ask Sensei what he had asked her to do had gotten her ignored and the door summarily locked in her face.
UGH.
It was always like this and someday it was just going to be too much. But there wasn't much else she could do but try to find Aya in Amethyst Cave to get some answers about anything. So she went with a few days' supplies (just in case, you never know with that twisty cave) and hawlucha in front. After a quick word to Eldest, in she went.
She doubted the girl got very far. It took Keta a few days to cross it and he could move fast for someone who hardly fought or exercised. Or ate much of anything. Or left his bed. Okay maybe she had crossed it quickly.
She entered the cave and was promptly stared at by seven different natu. With a shudder, she hurried on past them. She could have Hawlucha just fly her there but that wouldn't be good exercise. So she jogged as far away from the natu as possible. As she walked past the waterfall that ran through the cave she passed by a basket that was nearly overflowing with herbs and berries. Aelita paused and looked at them. She sniffed. They were strong from here, which meant these belonged to that lady's Wanda's boyfriend, who made herbal tea for pokemon from the few plants that could easily grow from the terrible purple earth and dirt. She picked up the basket and grimaced. Gross.
Hawlucha tried to snag a bite and she snatched it away. "Don't be rude." He puffed out his chest at her and Aelita rolled her eyes. "Come off it, you big softie. You hate these. They taste like barf."
Not that she'd... eaten one on a dare or anything. Of course not.
Someone screamed. Trainer and pokemon looked at each other\ and bolted towards it.
"What are you doing?" the voice shouted. "It's trying to kill me!"
"Hush," said a voice as she grew closer, and it sounded like that girl's, all airy and soft. "They're just angry, aren't you? You must have been napping real pretty huh?"
There was a god awful whining sound, like rocks on rocks being compacted together.
"I'm sure he's very sorry, aren't you sir?"
"O-Of course I am! I should have been much more careful picking herbs. I promise I will be."
The sound came again, louder this time.
The girl sighed. "You ought to take your apologies. That's all humans can give you, but-" There was a familiar ding and click of a pokeball. "If you're going to beat up the poor man more than you already have, you need a time out."
Aelita turned the corner to see Aya standing in front of Scott, whose dad had been here before going to retire at the Tesla Resort, sprawled on the ground. She turned to look at Aelita. Aelita grimaced. She'd thought that she'd been quiet when she walked. She'd have to practice again. Aya merely quirked an eyebrow, spun the ball and slipped it into her bag. Well that was odd.
"Good timing," she said softly. "This one's been dosed with repeated hits of psywave. His brain needs a treatment of aromatherapy and persim berry before his body can be healed. I probably shouldn't risk carrying him out with my tiny arms, could you and your pokemon take him to the nurse?"
Aelita blinked, baffled at how much information just got hurled at her. "Sure?"
"'M fine," mumbled Scott, who was drooping where he sat.
Aelita, seeing that, let out her combusken and had her scoop up Scott. "Clearly you're not."
Aya watched her and then her lips turned up. "Thanks. They tend not to listen without a person to tell them. Joy are like that."
Aelita frowned. "Aren't… you a Joy?"
She got a real grin for that. "What gave it away? The pink hair or the pretty face?"
The what.
Aya rolled her shoulders and barreled right along. "But yeah I am. I know how we work. So go, be a voucher. I'll probably still be here for what you need me for."
"Uh… okay."
A few minutes later Aelita stopped, blinked, turned around. "How did you know that?"
"Why else would you come into this ass of a cave?" echoed the other girl's voice.
Point.
Red stone… red stone…
"One would think," Aya said to Pich, scanning the ground. "That in an almost entirely purple cave, it would be easy to find one red rock." She made a face. "Maybe Ho-oh made me colorblind…"
Were bird pokemon colorblind? She'd never been sure. She'd have to ask her grandpa later, he'd have science behind it or something.
Pich squeaked and hopped off of her shoulder. He skittered over to a rock formation and then sat on… a red stone.
Aya's face flushed with embarrassment. "Thanks buddy." She went over and picked him up. Then she touched the stone.
The cave rock rumbled and flashed with light that made Aya's eyes sting (they'd grow back if they were fried out but she'd still rather not deal with that, it was apparently really freaky to look at) until the rock crumbled and revealed a simple opening about as tall as one and a half of her. Good. She didn't have to worry about tall people getting in here.
Stupid tall people and their height. No she did not have an empoleon complex, excuse you internal narration.
She moved inside, diving into one of the many naturally occurring tunnels. But then, this one seemed a little too smooth and neat. Then again, diglett, if left to their own devices, loved that sort of thing. Sandshrew used their tunnels for racing and it took away the tendency they had to burrow if diglett helped them out. She rather thought that was what her books said anyway. Still, too clean.
Pich made a noise of discontent and Aya reluctantly returned him. Eevee had been left at the center to watch her things, if only because she wanted to carry her budew with her. Shadow pokemon were strong but they didn't grow, let alone evolve. They were stunted from even lengthening bones, and in exchange their natural limiters were removed, allowing them to fight until they lost all ideas of sanity and kindness, which made them shadows anyway. Then when they were purified, it all came flooding back to them in awful ways and usually caused the painful, famous, spontaneous evolution that was said to be common on tv that was mostly just a final metamorphosis. Unless you were Cheshire, Trinity and even Isaiah, but the pokemon had at least grown partially beforehand.
… She really needed to talk to her therapist. That freakout from Hortense had scrambled up her brain. She'd call him after dinner.
The bud was a bit bigger now, at least to nine inches, with the top petals of her body starting to open in preparation to bloom. Once the blue and red petals unfurled into full flowers, the head would grow out and the body would shrink into leaves. Or something. She didn't think, unlike Pich and Cheshire, that it would happen anytime soon.
Light and the smell of fresh grass met her nose as she began to reach the end of the tunnel. Did this lead outside? Was there an environment biome under the ground? What lived here?
She pulled herself out of the tunnel, Ai squeaking all of the way. "Hush, you're not the one walking," she told the budew and only got another happy squeak. Cripes, pokemon were cute.
Wiggling her feet and standing up, Aya stepped onto grass, redwood trees looming overhead, the sounds of meowth mating and happiny cooing in a far off distance.
"Ignore the cat sex," Aya reminded herself with an eye roll as she moved up the steps? Steps? Was this an altar? Or something like it? Had she found an ancient temple for crazy people?
It felt sacred in any case, it felt like a place of blossoming light and soothing darkness, where powers and energies mixed in a swirl. Enchanted. But she was looking for a stone and there sure were a lot of rocks here. Where did she start?
Then, she blinked because that Keta-sensei person was in front of her. Only, not entirely. He was a bit see through, like a reflection on a window. He was smiling softly, face less skeletal, a bit more alive. A bit more… steady in his stance.
His lips twisted a bit. "That coot finally sent someone down here, mmh?" Even his voice sounded better, a lot less dusty. "A child though… no." He narrowed his eyes. "A Joy child. A ghost?"
"Couldn't see myself if I was a ghost, sir," Aya said before her mouth and brain connected themselves. "How do you know?"
"The hair, mostly," admitted the man, dressed in his neat little turtleneck and jeans like it wasn't the ugliest thing in the world. "And the redness of the eyes. You can't fake a Joy's hair and eyes, but mostly it's your smell. We Rota know smells fairly well, for our pleb being."
"I meant more how'd you know I'm not a ghost?" She was obviously a Joy she was her mother's daughter.
The man laughed and seeing Keta's face laugh already felt surreal. "Oh that's an easy one, you're too busy shining to die."
Aya was just going to pretend that she knew what that meant. "Aye… all right then. Who are you?'
"I'm what happens when a man who needs therapy thinks he's too far gone to receive it." She earned a massive shrug for her efforts. "But you can just call me Kenneth for now."
"Kenneth's shorter."
"Tis so. Follow me if you please."
She watched him float away, backwards, without even looking. Though she didn't think his feet were moving either. "What are you to the grumpy man upstairs?" She did not think of the sulking horse in her bag as she spoke those words, not at all. She brushed her bag with her fingers as she walked.
"I'm the cast off of his emotions." He settled in front of one of five altars, sitting down and crossing his legs. "Or well, his healthy coping mechanisms, the part of him that could function through grief. He lost his brother about a year or more ago, and his wife a rough decade or so." He paused. "I suppose I should say that I did but it doesn't feel so much like a loss these days. Time doesn't work for shit here."
"That's a pretty dangerous thing to cast off and leave in a cave, isn't it?" She stopped and set Ai down so she could wander into the flowers.
Kenneth smiled at the sight of it. "You can say I'm stupid. I won't disagree with you. But grief makes you do stupid things."
Aya winced. Didn't she know it?
"Still, he sent you here for a reason and that means I have to be the useful one and give it to you. And I will." The man sighed. "If you'll help Keta of course."
"Help him what?"
"As you of the earth do." The man's voice was deceptively gentle now. "Help him die knowing the way, rather than stumbling into it."
Aya stared for a few moments. "You want me to kill him."
The man shook his head sadly. "I want you to remind him of what life looks like before he dies."
What's the difference, she wanted to ask. What's the difference between living well and dying lonely? Of being happy and being sad?
She didn't ask this because she didn't want to hear the answer everyone would tell her over and over again.
Instead, she said, "I'll try."
Because honestly, she didn't know what to do. She was basically being asked to kill a man, which okay she did know how to do that, but she was being asked to let him die happily and with hope. Did these people just not understand death? Death had no emotions at all. It was dying that had the feeling.
Still, how could she refuse?
He smiled at her, as if he knew what she was thinking and that was gross and old and tired. "Then take this."
He held out his hand and Aya opened hers to accept a stone. Instead, a staff formed in her hand, a heavy bronze metal with a purple stone (of course it was purple this whole cave was purple.) embedded in the top, surrounded by metal like a cage.
"Take that to the place where your missing person died. It should work."
"What happens if it doesn't?" Aya asked him, testing the weight of the staff in both hands.
The man shrugged. "Some people die without regrets."
Aya sincerely doubted that Melia was one of them.
A few days after her first attempt to talk to Aya, Aelita had nearly been strangled by a ditto, almost caved in by a mass of annoyed diglett with arena trap, cuddled on by sandshrew and pecked on by a natu and she'd still not found where Aya had disappeared to. How could one girl with pink hair disappear so easily in a purple cave? It was ridiculous.
Also she'd reached the other end of the cave and the sun was shining and she wanted a damn shower. But that'd mean going into Gearan. Every time she thought about Gearan she'd get a weird twist in her stomach and usually give up. There was a trailer park with some showers but she'd never used them. She had no shower sandals either. Uggghhh.
Nothing for it, she'd just have to use them, rest up here, and take the risk with it. She didn't have a change of clothes either aside from sleeping clothes, so it'd be a long paranoid night.
Aelita squinted at the fading sunlight and made her way down. A swarm of blue winged vivillion took off overhead, singing a song Aelita never really liked. The only birds she'd ever been attached to were torchic and hawlucha. Birds gave her the heebie jeebies. Though in the back of her mind, she felt something else do the same. Something colder and older, something with eyes like blood.
Before she knew it, she was standing under the promise tree. It was a beautiful cherry blossom, planted when the old Sheridan, the pre-calamity Sheridan, still existed. It was beautiful and vast and sprawled over an entire clearing surrounded by sparkling blue water. And it always calmed her heart for some reason. She couldn't tell why but it did. So she went turned around to slump against it, just to rest her eyes for a few minutes on a route where everything and everyone was disciplined by a gang of dedenne and their fairies so the humans didn't do something stupid. They always left the tree alone for some reason.
Aelita closed her eyes and breathed in the sweet smelling air. By the time she opened them, it was dark, but it really had felt like she'd only shut her eyes a few minutes before. She opened them to the sound of someone running across the nearby bridge, followed by another set of footsteps.
"Rua you are not bathing in the water, pokemon live there."
"Well, I'm not using those gross showers and I need my hair wet."
"Just use the dry shampoo you packed."
"No!"
Aelita groaned and stretched, trying to ignore what sounded like a man scolding his kid.
"Keep your shirt on or so help me-"
"It's nothing you haven't seen before, I'm just gonna dunk my head, Uncle!"
"You are not! We have pokemon, stop being fucking ridiculous."
"I'm telling auntie you cursed!"
"She curses, she can get the fuck over it!"
"Swear!"
"Put your shirt back on!"
Aelita really didn't want to open her eyes, but she did, just as a tall person with blue hair was chased past by a shorter boy (was that just a boy, he seemed so much older) who was shaking a black tank top and jacket furiously at the fleeing, bare chested teenager. The two of them moved back around to pass her for a second time.
"You're scaring old ladies!"
"I could put it back on if you just let me get my head wet -oh." The first stopped at the sight of her and Aelita got to see well, a body. She didn't think about that kind of stuff much. She guessed this was a boy, the long hair and way of standing make it very hard to tell. There are weird crescent marks running down his sides, and they're a strange shade of blue themselves.
The other silently held out the first's clothes and the first took them, face flaming with embarrassment. "Sorry," they said.
Aelita felt her face burn. "No, thanks honestly! I was thinking of doing the same thing, those showers are so gross!"
Blue boy's face brightened. "Right?! I don't need pokemon center showers but those are awful! Does nobody scour them or anything?"
"Someone comes by once a week I think." Aelita pulled herself up to her feet. "Or they're supposed to. Sensei's responsible for it but he's…" She struggled to think of a good way to put it. "He's not been doing his job properly for a while now. He's mostly been coaxed out to do gym battles but that's it. It's a problem."
That was putting it mildly.
The other guy's eyes had narrowed the longer she spoke and the first sighed. "Uncle, no."
"He's not doing his job," the man pointed out and actually listening to it holy shit that voice was deep. "I have to do mine and correct it."
"That's just your excuse to be nosy in people's problems," said the first, pulling their jacket back over their tank top. "You may just make things worse."
"Your parents taught you not to stand by in the face of injustice."
"And you told me not to rush into danger because I have a best friend for that."
Aelita blinked at the two of them as the second, shorter but apparently older elbowed the taller one in the side. "Sorry, he finally hit his rebellious phase."
"It's only rebellion because you think I'm wrong," said the first in a prim voice. He smiled at her. "I'm-"
"Rua!" shouted a voice, and that was their only warning before a blur of pink and black tackled the blue boy to the dirt. He didn't seem to mind, hugging the blur back and laughing happily. "You didn't tell me you'd be here!"
"Baby dragon down," crowed the second with a smirk. The blur turned to him, revealing Aya with wilder hair than the last time she'd seen her, and then smacked into the shorter boy with as much strength. "Whoa kid we're not lilypads."
"Shut up Uncle Ion," laughed Rua. "Let her hug you, it's been months."
There was a lot Aelita wanted to say to that but what came out of her mouth instead was, "I've been looking for you for three days!"
Aya blinked at her, the honest bafflement only making her more irate. "Well, you found me, I guess. What took you so long?"
