Part 7: The Grove

Chapter 52: Crossfire (1)

When I say six more chapters, I think I'll include the multi-part chapters as being one. I mean, that's what they are, technically; I'm just still a bit worried about that email spam. Sorry again!

(also yes Sandy is still Al and Al is Alli and they're all the same, just different names BLAME CADI I DUNNO)

I don't own Pokémon.


Sandra

Orion Avenue

The scorched asphalt was cold beneath my furred feet, made more so by the impact of a short fall. Having taken a hop back, I checked for Cadi, head high. She was mounted on an overturned vehicle some yards away. I looked on ahead at my adversary. Dented baseball bat in my right hand, I forced the strap of my backpack through my free arm, tossed the bat over to that hand, and loosed the other strap, throwing my right arm aside. In doing so, the backpack went flying, thumping against the wet ground, rolling over its straps.

The bat was too heavy to swing around one-handed. It was a marvel its tiny owner could even carry it, but all she had to do was tote it around and fly out of trouble if it ever found her. I'll have gathered she didn't mess with the baddies out in the car-wrecked, hellhole streets Autumnridge had become, that timeless sun casting its looming mood lighting on the scene, painting a Flux somehow redder. What a Flux it was, too, twitching and snarling, exposed ribcage leaking viscera into a mixture of stinking fluids. At some point, the Pokémon was feline, an even crueler reminder of myself. Granted, this one had grown in size, standing a couple feet over us sirens on its four muscly legs.

It roared, a seam showing in its face. With a putrid ripping of tissue and flesh, the face split apart, flaps of flesh folding back to show another fleshy abomination within; some kind of flailing red tendril with an imprint of the feline Pokémon's original face, eyes closed, a bearing a mouth with vicious fangs. This mouth, paired with the roar before it, screeched, the tendril raised high, as the scythe-like tail behind the wildly muscled creature lifted into the air. After giving its warning shriek, the 'tendril head' shrunk back into the face, which closed up, the seam hiding. The expression in the thing's eyes told no story. It was hollow, tears of black running down its pointed face.

My heart was going. My hands were shaking. I'd fought nothing like this before. And now I had to think about it, because of goddamn Joel. Did this thing even have the will to fight? Did it care we were here? No shit it did, because it just screamed. If we went the other way, would it have gone off and left us alone? What if we walked right by it? Who's kid or parent did this used to be? I didn't need to think about this before. I just hit things with a shiny electric stick.

Well, I never did deal with Fluxes this size.

"Sandra," Cadi called me, her pink-strapped staff in both hands, clad with its hovering rings and baubles. "Do you really mean to fight that?!"

"What?!" I shouted reflexively. I tried to glance over at Cadi, but each little shuffle that the giant beast leopard thing made challenged me to keep eyes on it at all times. "I got it! They aren't that bad!"

"Yes! When they're not gargantuan! Why, you're more likely to hurt yourself slipping and falling in their gunk!" she said.

"Couldn't say I ever did that. Wisps don't have legs. They're SUCH a liability!" I mused, spirits afire, fighting to keep from swaying.

"And you've made my point for me! Were you a wisp, this would be different, but you've hardly a glimmer of experience as a Siren. Grab your things and move to my position! Quickly now!" she commanded.

I wanted to decline. My gut stapled me to this idea, this thought of erasing all of these things. I didn't want them here. Nobody did. One time, I didn't even think anything was left of these guys. Now that I've been one and had another by my side, was there something more to it? I mean sure, no shit, but was every Flux just a dormant volcano of pus and potential?

The monster wasn't going for me. It was lifting its legs and setting them down again, stepping around and eying me, but again, I saw nothing in those eyes – I couldn't communicate with them. There was a language in there and I didn't speak it. Not anymore. Some time ago, I caught a glimpse of what that language meant. Somewhere in the spectrum, eyes had a volume. They spoke louder than words and quieter than actions, but they were a bridge for both. Intention, emotion, primal instinct, and the unconscious. Right now, it was invisible to me, and all I wanted was for my heart to stop beating out of my chest.

I couldn't. Cadi was right – I couldn't. I wanted to get a hit or two in just to gauge where I was at, but that meant nothing in the face of a neck-length claw. Two quick hops to the side got me over to the backpack. I bent down, swooped a hand under whatever strap or loop I could catch, then dipped. I heard Cadi say something, and I followed her voice over some wreckage. The creature watched me all the way through, but it didn't move. It growled with the inflection of a question. Desperate, sloppy scrambling brought me over to a pile of rubble leading up to the van on its side. Cadi was here. She nodded to me, beckoning me forward with a wave of her finger, before she dropped off the other end of the vehicle. I followed suit.

We crossed over the wreck and the scattered debris, making distance between us and the Flux. It didn't give chase from what my ears and nose told me, but every stop that Cadi made, I felt a shudder in my shoulders, tickling up to the back of my neck. Or that might have been my new hairstyle. Could've been both.

Consumed with distraction, I'd completely dismissed the possibility of encountering anything else like that thing. It fucked with my footfalls, led me to bump into objects, and provoked a curious stare or two out of Cadi. I was always able to handle a Flux. I never backed down from one before now.

I knew she wasn't judging me, but I avoided Cadi's eyes, peeling myself from the shame all the same. When I did that, I caught a familiar sight. That row of houses across the street's divide, separated from others only by an old deep brown wooden fence – that was the Maximilius residence. He and Bryan were the only ones who lived on Orion, which made it a hassle to get to 'em. I never liked going through the woodland, since you had to go out of your way and walk along a sidewalk somewhere to get somewhere that led to another somewhere out of the way – it was a hike and a half, but the gang always said there was a quicker detour.

None quicker than playing the game of parkour over a cold, dead street where the trees used to hang overhead and cross branches, kids rollin' around on the front lawns and laughing, cars zipping by. That was how a lot of the streets were, but every time I visited Cruce and Topher, things were hoppin'.

I pointed out the house to Cadi and gave her a quick call. She responded, shifting direction toward the house, struck over the roof with a fallen tree, part of it collapsed. It still looked a lot better than some of the other homes on Orion. They either got smashed to pieces, burned down, driven into by cars, or, what I couldn't have seen or known, taken over by Fluxes or otherwise.

The door had been left unlocked. Satisfying though the full twist of the doorknob was, the weightlessness of the door echoed to me as I pushed with one hand, other clenched around the knob, the thing creaking open, pathetic and defenseless to protect from any of the shit I'd seen the past few 'days'. My eyes met the living room, ransacked and abandoned, the memory of a life reeking in the rays of red sun beaming through the dusty windows. Couch cushions had been tossed onto the floor and coffee table, lamps knocked over. Everything else, from the flatscreen TV to the furniture itself, was in okay condition. The house smelled of a coalescence of Gammas from some time passed. Ashes, metals, oils – all of that came together faintly to create a dim variation of what the Grove smelled like.

I walked inwards. While warmer, the house didn't show much for solace anymore. A haunting silence played over the reminder of Fluxes' screams and roars of disdain, obsession, and otherwise. Working with that, I heard Cadi enter with a sound of her staff's hilt end touching the scratched wooden flooring. She had the courtesy of closing the door behind herself, given the prompt of a click and thud. Turning back to reassure myself that she was the one closing it, my eyes met hers around the same time. Their blue hue pierced through the red perpetuation of the atmosphere, calm, intelligent, and manipulative, as opposed to my spastic, loud and bright yellow eyes. She came forward, quiet cadence of her footsteps cuing her for inquiry, but she didn't ask me anything. She stopped beside me and poked her head past mine, facing the narrow hallway onward to the back bedrooms. I did the same. There was nothing but an end table hidden in darkness beneath an arbitrary mirror. Underneath that was a silhouette of a framed picture standing at a slant.

"Uhh, C-" I began, before a finger set itself gently over my lips and nose. My ears and tail went high.

Cadi was still, eyes locked on the hallway. She said nothing and stopped me from saying anything, which, honestly, made me want to say more things. 'Guess I needed to trust her. Was she trying to remember this place from Nick's own memory? Was someone in here and she was trying to listen for that person? Both thoughts had me concerned. Looking at it in this light, there appeared to be more to remember, now that the house had been used and dismissed.

Cadi took her finger from my lips and left it an inch or two from my face. She retracted it, putting it on her fleecy scarf. I watched her, waiting for any murmur or gesture of instruction. What I got was basic but effective. She walked into the dimness of the hallway, her puffy tail raised, alert; although, she held her staff with with a laxness that suggested, if there was any trouble, it was only mild. It didn't stop my heart from fluttering up again like an overexcited child's. She could'a been faking this whole thing and I still would've fallen for it. The silence, the anticipation, and the way she walked with such soft, unbroken rhythm – The intensity of her focus was contagious. It tightened my shoulders and put my back low, as I crept behind her, bat in both hands like a scrub protecting his or her house from a midnight break-in.

Cadi came to a halt before a room on her left, the door ajar. Her head turned toward the soft red light cast from its open window, bleeding into the hallway, growing louder as she pushed the door open, delicate touch contrasted by the sharp, ceaseless squeak that the hinges sang. Had anyone not known we were here, they did now, provided they, too, were actually here and weren't just some ruse to make my heart explode out of my chest. It wasn't good for me – seriously. I half-expected a Flux to leap out of the room and jump on Cadi's face. Instead, she walked into the curious room. Their room. Cruce and Topher.

I had my eyes forward the whole time, watching the picture that looked vaguely like a family photo, the shapes of five bodies huddled together happily. I tore my gaze from the photo and peeked into the bedroom. It was messy, but a lot less so than the living room before it. It was a strange living space, two 'archetypes' of bedroom trying to blend together to form a mismatched harmony, a female and male side, Cruce's on one side of the bed and Topher's on the other. Weightlifting here, fluffy stuffed animals there. Both of them had desks, but they only had one dresser and one closet, and I've have imagined Topher took up about ninety percent of that.

It was a room with so much personality that I felt sad to see it this way. The rest of the house was sad, too, but this was where two weirdos lived and hid their secrets away behind colors. All those secrets lost and likely forgotten like the rest of the place for preference over survival, my stomach churned with empathy for the two, despite how I felt about Cruce before, or how I felt about Topher for either playing us on or losing himself to Gamma. I wasn't sure if I could forgive them. I wasn't sure if forgiveness even had to play a part in this story. In spite of that, they were stupid and innocent, at least before the Wave era, so I could set my own grudge aside for the two I used to know and smile at the memory I had of them – this memory, their room.

No noise, other than my own heartbeat. No footsteps anywhere, beside Cadi's and my own against soft carpet. The smell of Black Gamma – my own and Cadi's, I gathered. With all of this, my insides were uproarious, like turmoil was just a close corner away. With Cadi quietly examining the contents of one of the desks, I looked for something to distract myself – something small, just to stare at. I did find a piece of paper on the floor, sketch markings evident. I reached down, picked it up, and turned it about.

"Uh...!" I grunted, or gasped. Some kind of startled noise came out of me, and it was somewhere between both of those.

The paper was a drawing of the gray-skinned woman from the... the place? That... Crossblade place. Somewhere in the hospital, where the world turned to hell and...

The flowers.

This was her, and the drawing, slightly disproportionate though it was, appeared frighteningly accurate, like somebody had tried to recreate her based on observation; yet, they had enough time to color her in – all but her eyes, which small holes in the paper took the place of.

I swallowed spit. My hand was shaking, wrinkling the paper in my fingers. If I had any proper claws, they would've ripped this thing apart by now.

"That," Cadi whispered to me, her breath against my shoulder. I would have jumped if I wasn't consumed by the trying memory of a murderer in her den of flowers and crosses. "Is most troublesome."

She was looking at the drawing from behind me. She knew my discomfort with the image. To try and settled me down, she put her hand against my back, her soft touch quelling the furious beat of my heart. I even felt her tail whirl up over my own, trapping it against my back.

"This is the world of her creator," Cadi spoke up in both volume and explanation. "Somebody you and I used to know well, but hid it away."

"Topher?" I guessed, looking closer to the direction of Cadi.

"Isn't it strange?" a new voice mocked us from behind. I dropped the paper reflexively and spun so quickly that I was afraid I may have whacked Cadi across the head with my bat. She was alright – I didn't feel any contact.

"Oh heck." Cadi mumbled, her voice implying she hadn't yet turned to see who this interloper was.

A skywisp, purple with high-standing, sharp diamond-shaped quills. The spikiest skywisp I'd ever seen, she had all kinds of purple thorns and spines on her back side, including a rows of the things fanned out far enough to look like small, sharp wings. The same physical feature repeated itself on the back of her head, each of these quills with a white band across them. Her hair was black, streaked with gray, and nearly the length of her entire body. Same hair as mine in that form, if not a bit longer and less unkempt. Like all wisps I'd seen, her underbelly was white, but with solitary white scales meandering away, curling like flames around her slender body. Her snout was more downward slanted than mine or Charley's, and her fangs were fiercely long.

She invited herself in.

I lurched for her tail, squeezed, and then pulled her down to my level. She yelped like a punished dog, then looked at me with the intent to hiss like a pissed cat.

"Nope," I said, shaking my head, eyes still wide, grimacing at the smaller creature in my grasp. She stank of Gamma. I may have made a mistake. "Y'can't do that."

"What can't I do?!" she objected.

"No sneakin'. Sneaking's not allowed." I told her, raising an eyebrow. Confrontation aside, she wasn't too pissy with the whole 'grabbing her out of the air' thing. I would've hated that shit and fought to escape. She was chill. 'Nough for me, but the smell of her Gamma was particularly strong.

"Speak for yourself, Siren," she said, pouty, but kind of accepting that I caught her in place. "Really, this could be my home."

"But it's not." I said.

"Oh no? And if I told you this room belonged to my grandchildren?" she asked...

"That would be a half-lie." Cadi spoke.

I let the skywisp go. She flew from me, but my eyes followed her around the room. Ostentatious, she set herself down on the bed, draping her tail over the side of it. Between the two of us, she looked at me with a sly, challenging smile, like she wanted me to combat that fact that Cadi kind of defended her. So who was she?

"You're... not a grandparent. How old are you? Twenties?" I suspected.

"Pbbth," she spat, flicking her wrist at me. "Are you trying to flatter me, or do you not understand the aging process of a skywisp? Ugh, Earthlings..."

"Yo, if you're their 'grandparent'," I started. "Then you're an 'UGH, EARTHLING' like me."

"And this is why it is what it is. A half-lie," Cadi mused, setting her staff forward, placing it against the ground between herself and the skywisp, as if to make it the topic of conversation. "Let's make this clearer for dear Sandy."

"Dammit, I like being condescending, but you're not gonna let me do that, eh Arcadia?" the wisp shrugged. "Hmph. None the worse for wear."

"Out with it now," Cadi prompted with a mischievous smile on her face. "Unless you'd rather not adhere to an older Symbi."

"Oh, 'blah' to you. Just 'blah', you know? I like the idea of having an older Earth body than you kids. I suppose that's why it's so hard to let go of dear old Sam in here, huh?" she said. "And, more than that," she paused, putting one arm back lifting the other, leaning her chin against her reddish hand. "It makes me somebody over You-know-who. Yes?"

"I find it odd that you're comfortable enough to speak in pleasantries around me. What warrants that?" Cadi expressed, as if holding authority over the wisp. "After all, putting your human self on a pedestal speaks a loud volume. So, darling, those are some very loud pleasantries."

"Well excuse me for having a personality, unlike YOUR human self. Wright?" the lady teased.

Oh, here we go...

I heard Cadi sigh.

"Nickolas had enough of a personality to accept me." she argued.

"But you had to let him go. He just didn't have any use anymore, not after all that trauma my 'grandchild' put him through. I know! I was there." said the skywisp. I really oughta've kept her in my hand. This one was feisty.

"There's no sense in dwelling on the past and tormenting oneself with it. I wanted to save him from that." Cadi kept on.

"No sense in dwelling on the past, you say..." the wisp mused, then clicked her long tongue. "You're saying he couldn't have done it on his own? He couldn't have grown from it?"

"One does not grow in a world where time is stunted," Cadi claimed. "And, would you have not done the same exact thing, Symbi Faustus?"

"Uh, 'Fausti', thank you," the skywisp corrected, hand against her chest coyly. "But you're right! I would have! Congratulations!"

Fausti took her hand from her chest, thrust it into the air blithely, and, somehow, with a loud pop and puff of smoke, sparkles flew from her hand, raining down on the bed around her like confetti.

"Wh-what did you-"

"Wave's a different game, Arcadia. I don't know if you've realized it by now, but," Fausti interrupted me, retracting her hand, balled it into a fist, and made a sharp, quick sigh. "The more competent your host is, the harder it becomes to play. Instead of picking people who are worthy of wielding you, like we always used to do, you pick people with problems, then you make those problems go away, like magic.

Then, you get up," she started again, flying herself from the bed, hands on her waistline. "You make yourself the boss of your new body, and you try, try and make amends with the idea that Nephi is the only one who can save this world."

It went without saying that Cadi and I had nothing to say for ourselves after that. This Fausti Symbi – who, at first glance and even beyond, didn't show that she was a Symbi in any other way outside of her scent of Gamma – had the audacity to make that claim, on top of darting at my feet and picking up the paper that I'd let go. She held it up to us with one hand and pointed at it with the other like we didn't know who she was talking about.

"Sorry, what – hang on," I waved my free hand around, then put it up to the side of my head and leaned into it. "You and Cadi know each other because you're Symbis. I understand that, but like... Nephi? Save the world? Are you okay, or...?"

"Hokay, Earth girl, let me blabber out the script for you," Fausti giggled, swerving up to my shoulder and holding the drawing in front of me while she talked. Up close, the pungent smell of her Gamma was dissimilar in flavor to Rayse's, but similar in that it occupied so much of my nose that I wanted to sneeze.

...

"Long ago, there was a big fellow by the name of... we'll just call him the Father, yes? He created Nephi, and Nephi went around giving ancient weapons to people who proved themselves as virtuous, dependable individuals in this world of Hypera that the Father also happened to create. As ages passed on, the wielders of these things died, and with each death, they were trusted by Nephi to seek out their own new hosts. If they couldn't do that, they were vanquished. Some of them got some real winners, and others... ehhh, went a wayward route.

On the sidelines, Nephi and the Father had their own quarrel. You see, before the Symbis, the Father forged a weapon for his creation so that Nephi could have a viable defense in the rugged, scary world of Hypera. Just in case the Symbis got too obnoxious, Nephi could show dominance by using this weapon – the Crossblade, to bring them to submission. This thing was so powerful that the Father lacked enough solid matter in the whole world to forge it. So, being the genius he was, he converted matter and gravity into pain and suffering, and put Nephi in charge of all of that. You could cut through anything, but you better expect it to feel like hell! Something the Father DIDN'T so much expect was that, when you bend the physics of your own universe, the universe tries to fix itself. Our brilliant universe decided that, to do that, anyone who met the bad side of the Crossblade became a vessel for the weapon – No! For the Father's new law.

And, what do you know, the almighty Crossblade fell in the wrong hands and started breaking the whole world apart. So, the Father got testy with his child and ended up having to use his backup plan to destroy everything and try again. Oops, right? Oops.

Nope. The Father couldn't even do that, because the Crossblade just got too powerful. Happy-go-lucky fellow by the name of Scion the Storm became the new prince of the world with the Crossblade making Hypera a very, very painful place to live in. Hundreds and hundreds of us Symbis faded into nonexistence because of how terrible the world was and how they didn't want to curse their wielders into fighting a losing battle forever. Even with the Father's fail-safe, two sibling weapons to the Crossblade that held the same properties, it was too late. The Crossblade had spread, and those two siblings never could and never would. Instead, the first Crossblade and it siblings formed together at Scion's command to create exactly the thing the Father couldn't ever hope to stop: something called Trivium. Still with me? Good!

You might think that the Father was mad about all this. Oh, he was. Y'see, Nephi gave the Crossblade away to Scion. Despite being cursed to wield it for the Father, Nephi was ALSO granted the power to pass down any Symbi. Well? The Crossblade is technically a Symbi, albeit with its own special qualifications that Scion just so happened to satisfy. Nephi got out of jail, only to be put back into jail for a very, very, very long time. And even after that, the Father abandoned Nephi after a vindictive, brutal punishment that left the poor thing with no choice but to be the Scion's plaything forever, so that Scion, or Trivium, would be distracted from completely erasing Hypera.

Are you starting to understand? Nephi wanted a world of pain and suffering in place of a primordial wasteland of nothing. Hold onto that, okay?

Though us Symbis scowled at the Crossblade and everything it represented – and yes, the strongest of us chose our heroes to fight against Nephi and that Scion bloat – in spite of EVERYTHING we once meant to Hypera, the last of us, having grown over generations of mortals, sometimes viewing the world through their eyes, couldn't deny that we wanted this world to stay around a little longer. After all, it was created for us. We had to control it. We were Hypera.

If Hypera was nothing but a world of misery, and misery came in the shape of the Crossblade, then... surely, Hypera was the Crossblade, and we, as Symbis, were to protect that world. Like Nephi before us, who married into a life of pain, we had to do the same. We were going to become Crossblades.

It never did happen. I really do wonder why Hypera disappeared like that. I suppose Gamma is the prime suspect.

But now that we're here on Earth and Gamma can't be stopped, I'm pretty sure nothing much has changed. Nephi knew we would be here with her, and she must've thought highly of Earth, until...

...Pokémon came in. With Pokémon came Flux. I know you've seen it. Flux is nothingness. It's a red haze and nothing more. Gamma is spreading and it cannot be stopped. So, if that Pokémon Gamma keeps on going and Flux comes with it, everyone to be Fluxed eventually, what good is the world it creates? I would much rather live in a world of pain and suffering than in a stew of mindless bile."

"O... kay..." I mouthed, as Fausti insinuated that I held onto the drawing. I obliged and I didn't know why. It added insult to injury. I had to hold this picture of Nephi now, look at her eyeless, purple lipstick smiling face. Did I believe it? Not really, but if she had that all memorized off of a 'script', then I would have been more impressed, but she told it to me like she was talking about freakin' daily life.

"I have my side picked," Fausti declared. "Pokémon are ravenous creatures carrying a disgusting disease that may as well make the world vanish. This sickness is starting to spread to skywisps. Before long, no one will be safe, not even wielders of the Crossblade."

"Hold on. Really? How do you just know all that off the top of your head?" I suspected.

"Been around!" she chirped, floating backwards, cheerfully swinging her arms and hips from one side to the other, to and fro in a soft, admittedly cute hustle dance.

"What? No! No other Symbis said anything about that! Cadi?!" I looked at her.

Again, that silence. The same from when I had mentioned Astraea. She still had her staff out, but she wasn't 'participating' in the conversation. She looked aloof and distraught – distant, I thought. I just stared at her with my jaw hanging down like I'd lost a heated argument and had to think about why I was wrong. The worst part of that was, with the way Cadi didn't answer my call or object to a single word Fausti had spoken on behalf of the Symbis, it seemed like that was about to become a reality.

"Cadi? Y'gotta tell me you're thinking of, like, a smart thing to say. 'Cause if you're not, then, wow, awkward." I said.

"I'm... not." she shook her head hesitantly.

"A-... awkward." I stuttered.

"You know I'm right. I don't understand the surprise. You knew all this, and you two seem like friends. That's great! But, ehmm, did you not tell your friend, Arcadia?" Fausti spoke. I squinted at her as her smile sculpted deceit in her cheeks and her lips. "Or, wait! Don't tell me... You actually think that the Pokémon are the good guys?"

"They're hardly wicked," Cadi defended. "And you're suggesting we eliminate them?"

"Why else are we here? We are SYMBIS, Arcadia! Come on! We're living weapons. Emphasis on, uh, WE'RE LIVING WEAPONS, which means that we 'live' and we... we 'weapon'. How is a weapon 'living' if it's not fulfilling its existence? Its duty? We're made for war! We're made to protect our world! Think about it! Gamma's going to turn this world into a Pokémon one, or a Hypereal one. Which one do you want? Theirs? Or ours? Ours! Of course ours!"

"That prospect alone deters me," Cadi spoke under her breath, audibly fighting off an unbecoming growl. "Because the Pokémon that I know, native to their world, are deserving of a home. It's not 'us against them'. That is an ugly world to live in, and I yearn for beauty, Faustus."

"Please. You know how much pain comes with beauty. If you were really loyal to the idea of beauty, you would agree that the Crossblade is a couple thousand notches up from Flux." Fausti claimed.

"Your idea of beauty befits me poorly. Neither of those things exemplify beauty, and I refuse to fight on behalf of a crazed legend. Come now, what is beauty to you?" Cadi asked.

"Beauty. I'll give you an honest answer," Fausti mused, albeit lowering her face, casting a shade of seriousness upon her. "When I think 'beauty', I think anguish, sadness, and misery. Hear me out. With 'anguish, sadness, and misery' come a story to be told, and if you have a story, well that's just beautiful, isn't it? When you can understand that, you can be happy that you came from that story. I can't let go of Sam for this reason. If you want a better explanation than that, then go out of this room and swing left, then take a nice, long look at that portrait under the mirror, and see what Sam had to give up."

Again, Cadi had no reply in tow. Since I didn't give two shits about Fausti's beauty monologue, I instead clumsily replayed the story of the Crossblade over in my head until somebody spoke up to break me from this mad loop. Was it all really this complicated? I guess, with what I saw Nephi do in that weird misty place, it made some sense. She took my Crossblade away, and if she was like the liaison bridging the gap between Symbi and wielder, then I could understand it, but Scion? Why was Scion a part of this? Where did he come from? What was Trivium all about? The Crossblade had siblings? Who...?

"Cruce?" I thought aloud.

"Right, that boy," Fausti lamented. "I wonder where he ran off to. I ought to see to it that he hasn't become too friendly with that other Gamma. Well, tally-ho, the hunt is on!"

"Hunt? Odd choice of wording for somebody that you care about." Cadi sneered.

"Oh, I'm not hunting Cruce. I'm hunting the Red temptation that surrounds him. Hehehe, you know the one! I can't let my grandson get involved with Flux!" she clarified, raising a hand into the air.

All of a sudden, particles of purple light shined around her hand, distant at first, but as they slowly closed in on her, they pulled together. At a point, they picked up in speed, flashing into her hand and therein building a small pillar casting a tall shadow behind her. The noise was bizarre, like a humming current of electricity. The lights broke apart again, like a cocoon shed off in an instant, shattering as glass and showing the evolution within, a purplish crystalline scepter with a single platinum sphere cradled by four curved clear spines. The spine-like designs appeared to have a translucent gray liquid flowing through them, evident in the tiny bubbles that moved through the glass-esque material.

"Hey, Arcadia," Fausti said. "You'd be a lot more useful as a Crossblade than a Flux, but if you want to be with the Pokémon, you should at least give Nick his life back for as long as he can hold onto it. Think about that."

Parting words pronounced as clearly as the skywisp's purpose, her scepter's spherical bauble gathered four strings of red light from the tips of its surrounding spines, the silky light coating the sphere like webbing, before erupting upward, a thin column of red touching the ceiling. Upon impact, this strange magic cleanly parted a hole outlined with the same red light, creating a tube from the ceiling all the way through the attic, and directly outdoors. With a hearty wave, Fausti flew into this small 'portal', up and away, leaving nothing but esoterica and the oily scent of her magic.

Again, I looked at the drawing of the lady in the white and purple-sprayed gown, smiling ceaselessly, mindlessly, torn wings indicating some kind of truth to the story Fausti claimed her to be the star of – some kind of miserable existence wherein misery itself was better than nothing, and to some degree, I had to agree, but not when I didn't know that was the stake from the very beginning – that it was what Cadi must have known over me. I guess I'd always had that unwelcome feeling when I got mixed up with the Pokémon of the Grove. I always felt good beating Fluxes into nothing.

Yet, everything I saw Nephi do was of bad nature, clear as day. She was the 'villain', but I was supposed to believe that her endgame looked a lot better than the Pokémon side, who were supposed to be the 'good guys'. That was a really big 'what even'.

"Yo, Cadi." I quipped quietly. I didn't have anything to say. My sunken shoulders alone should've said more than words – I wanted reassurance.

"I suppose you did want to find out more about the Crossblade." she told me.

Yeah, that was the plan, I thought. Hell if I knew that somebody was going to just explain the whole story to me while I patiently stood there and listened. Funny enough, I, uh, patiently stood there and listened, but it never occurred to me that I was listening to the 'Bible' of the Crossblade in the room where its rules were written.

'Guess 'Fausti' does have a reason to be here, after all. Several.

"Travis has a Symbi, too. Symbi Susano'o," Cadi began. I looked at her and blinked. "Who is not known for possessing his host in the same way that Fausti and I do, but may very well try to now."

"Yeah, I got shot with that," I said. "What about Astraea and Andromeda?"

I thought she would dodge the question again, but, thankfully, I was wrong there.

"Astraea..." Cadi stopped, leaving her mouth open. "Is more afraid of Flux than anything. She's been avoiding me, trying to find her friend Joel. I believe she wants Andromeda to take over his mind, so that he does not get Fluxed. Joel is still a Pokémon, after all, and as one Gamma grows stronger, the other becomes more susceptible to changing sides. Joel is fighting Andromeda, and Astraea does not want him to."

"She only wants to save him," I murmured. "And he's running away. He hates Flux, too, but he hates it as much as he hates Astraea. Now he's probably an experiment at Delta Meadow."

"But that might provoke Andromeda, as horrible as Delta Meadow is," Cadi suggested. It was a chilling thought, but with how Diancie possessed Atti, I could see it being possible. "On mention of them, Fausti brought up a 'portrait' in the other room?"

"Yeah, in the hallway." I recalled.

I folded the drawing of Nephi in half width-wise, zipped open the backpack, and threw it in. After that, Cadi and I left the room. I'd forgotten why we ever went in there. I was glad that we did. I needed to remember the two dorks I had a fondness for before the Wave came to town, and when we got to the family portrait that Fausti recommended we check, it opened the door to a depression to which I was amazed I'd been able to hold my back against for so long. Even after Mom and Dad and our dog were either killed or went missing, after what happened Emi and Pat, and after learning that we may as well have had a war on our hands, seeing a picture wherein only smiles and stupid poses were the biggest thing you had to worry about in front of a camera made me want to fucking cry.

I knew them a little bit – Cruce and Topher's parents. Topher's aunt and uncle, anyway. They were kind of quirky and goofy and, well, 'guess they weren't around anymore, like their kids. They were in the back, while Cruce was forcing a nervous, toothy smile, faced pushed against by Topher's, who actually looked a little less girly than he did when I last saw him as a human. His hair was shorter and he wasn't completely cross-dressing yet, with the whole T-shirt and jeans still being his go-to garb. Still had the random hots for his cousin, though, both arms draped around him and throwing him into an uncomfortable scene.

Thing is, Topher wasn't alone in that respect. There was a little girl in the photo standing on the other side of Cruce, wearing a fleecy pink beanie and lightly dotted with freckles. She had indications of the same jawline as her mother, but none of hair. Her eyes were sharp and wide, lighter blue than Topher's. She looked like a real spitfire, the tiny girl giving a big smile, holding Cruce's arm straight above her head like she was lifting a weight. She must've been teasing him, then. This was a nice picture for all of 'em, 'cept Cruce, but... who took it? They were all in the photo. Who took the picture for them?

"Yeah, that's them." I whispered.

"This was Sam's family?" Cadi asked. "That feminine boy – that's Topher, right? Nephi's creator?"

"Yep, yep, and more yep. I'm taking this," I claimed, reaching for the small frame with both hands. I brought it closer and looked at it, examining its integrity, its lighting, its age. I was reminded of the pendant and the hair ribbon I'd taken. "A little thefty, but it's just another memento of the gang."

And if somebody needed a reminder of who they were, I could throw this at Cruce's dumb face if I ever saw him again.

Much less, Nephi.

"Let's be on our way, Sandy. Travis is still out there." Cadi suggested. I tucked the picture away in my pack, and we left the house to which only ghosts of memory called a home.

To Be Continued...