Part 7: The Grove
Chapter 52: Crossfire (2)
Sandy is Sandra is Al is Alli is lijwehfawoieufhsodkjf
I don't own Pokémon.
Sandy
With the Maximilius residence behind us, we returned to our careful traipse over the ruin of a wrecked town in search for Travis, better known as Flicker in that seemingly innocent body. When asked about how innocent Travis was, Cadi said that she hadn't sensed any malicious will or ill intent in him when she spoke to him directly. I wasn't aware they had ever talked, but, from what Cadi told me, she was partially responsible for the way Flicker looked, in that transforming Travis' body was part of a process that would have soothed his mind, in order to prevent potential Flux. Either way, as that round blue mouse Pokémon, he was destined to be Fluxed, and Cadi saved him. I didn't have a problem with any of that – Champions and Symbis alike both had a lot of Gamma in 'em, and they could transform us humies if they put the effort in. What I had a problem with was the idea that Young, some former caretaker of Travis, brought up the notion that he wasn't as good as Cadi said he was. I wanted to trust Cadi, 'cause she was, like, a goddess? Right? And Young was just some scientist?
Then there was that decisive moment where Travis shot me in the back and ran off with that shithead Bryan, and I could see the place Young was coming from. Symbi Susano'o, was it? I would've really liked to know why it chose Travis. On that, I would've liked to know the real reason any person ended up with any Symbi, and I think Fausti knew it just as much as she did everything else.
Out on the streets, walking right through all the carnage, bent steel, trees, and the like, I held Paige's bat over my shoulder, looking at the Maximilius family photo with some moral obligation to bring them back together stirring in my head like toxic heroism. None 'o that, thanks. I wanted to dismiss it, but the smiles on their faces made that all the more rigorous. Emi's bow and Pat's broken trinket didn't have faces. They were easier to wear and ignore than they were to look at and get feelsy, and, while I had a bit of churning around in my stomach, it wasn't the same when I held a piece of family history in my hands and saw bodies in it. Sure, I could've taken Nick's phone out and searched Facebook for pics, provided service was still a thing and didn't suddenly poof like we all thought it should've done the moment the Wave broke out.
Rumbling underfoot. I stopped. A strange, grassy shuffling close by.
Ears perked, I turned to the street's center divider, grass and weeds standing tall behind what looked like a yellow petal zipping into the ground and disappearing into a round hole. Seconds after, I felt the subtlest vibrations beneath my feet, so discrete that, if I didn't have, well, cat-like senses, I wouldn't have felt anything.
The only thing Cadi noticed was my unease. She turned back, staff in hand, a curious gaze glazing over her starry blue eyes. I'd looked at her expecting her tail to be as raised as mine and her posture to be a little more empathetic, but she was standing, relaxed and cool on the outside.
"Something the matter?" she quipped.
"Y'didn't feel that?" I said, guiding her to the ground with a quick glance downward.
She shook her head quietly, then tilted it. I double-took, twice at her, twice at the spot I saw the yellow flick. I murmured a quick disfluency, hoping she would wait while I checked the area. Walking with a touch of caution up to the divider, I didn't noticing anything strange right away. Actually, seeing the rest of this place, any irregularity would've looked completely normal. With that thought, all the tension and curiosity that brought me over here went up in a puff of air. Having hunched myself slightly, I stood straight, thinking it kinda hopeless and stupid to look for tracks.
Even though that's what we're doing for Travis.
Shrugging off the unknowable, we carried on through the abandoned neighborhood until the houses started to look a lot more like apartments, condos, and construction projects. We were already nearing the next most logical place Travis would have been: Brink Boulevard, the last place I saw, well, Flicker. I had some hopes that, if Flicker was really as smart as Young proclaimed, she wouldn't have hung out around that place for any longer than however long it'd been since I had her with me that one time. Those hopes had some weight at the other end of the scale. Brink was all about Fluxes – it was a breeding ground for them, messy and full of happy hiding spots were they could writhe in their junk and spoiled food.
…
Orion and Brink Intersection
…
It was never easy.
Here, the streets and skies were clear – no cars smashed into each other in the intersection, no canopy blocking the view of the clouds (and Aera Firma) above, save the occasional steel girder work that had no future, and, up to a near perfectly visible threshold, no implications of flooding. The big 'square' that made up the intersection to two major streets in Autumnridge was as clear as it had never been before. There were sidewalks covered over with mud, tire tracks, and debris. There were gas stations on two of the corners, one old and forgotten, locked away behind rusty chain-linked fence, the other in poor condition with its snack shop missing about every window. There was a broken stone sign for an apartment complex on one corner, and the old, crusty basketball court of an elementary school on our corner. All of them looked awful under the red sun, but the intersection itself looked clean, swept up, sparkly and nice. Not to mention, cars had been piled up and wrecked on all four sides of the traffic lights. None of that – nothing at all – bled into the central asphalt itself. Cadi and I weren't the only ones who found that odd.
Standing across the way where Orion began to take a climb up to the hills were two Fluxes, stunned quiet, eying us from all the way over there like we were the ones responsible. Or, if I had any reliable experience with Fluxes, they just wanted us to fit in with them and become whatever they were. Though, they looked afraid, or at least at an impasse. One of them was much larger than the other, a wide tendril raised overhead wielding wet silver spikes that glistened in the red sun. He had splotches on his ashen white fur that gave the impression he might've been badly burned at some point. Canid in posture and presence, his ears and tail were made of a leaf-like substance, both a reddish orange, tipped off with black. The Flux standing by him was a lot less imposing – like a little white squirrel thing with two big tails and red markings over her. She seemed to have eye-shaped patches on her cheeks. Normally, I couldn't have afforded to care about how a Flux looked, but these two carried themselves with a less savage poise than the other 'things' out there. One of them was even wearing a dapper little bell. Wasn't that Edge's? Hard to tell from all the way over here.
On the Brink side, to the left of Cadi and I, Charley and Kat were there, Kat's mutated contrast making me fully believe that the other two Fluxes weren't mindless. Even if Kat was a horrible looking slug with parasites coming out of her cheeks, she was still with us – she still had all her mentality right where it needed to be, and I guess Charley was there to make sure of that. She had her Symbi out, that weird curved rod with the glowing strings spinning around it that looked fun as hell to swing. They looked as perturbed as the Fluxes across from us.
On the other Brink side was our objective. Flicker, standing with her Symbi at the ready. This time, I really got to see it. It was a weird thing, that Susano'o, like some kind of futuristic rifle, neon green dashed through it. Its barrel had two golden rings hovering around it, a lot like Cadi's staff. A very jagged, compact weapon, its grip and trigger were located in the same spot, effectively making it a one-handed rifle. Despite its size, I knew the punch it packed. It shot you through so hard that your body went all fucky for a while. Or maybe that was just me. The problem with Flicker's Symbi right now was that it was pointed at Charley. Poised like that, Flicker looked a lot different now. That, or it was the change in clothes. She wasn't wearing a cutesy red dress anymore. She had on a tight, white corset, black hose, and white boots strapped over with reddish bands. Couldn't help but notice that the boots had some lengthy heels on them, so she was still in it for the style, but given how one of her big ears covered a side of her face that had rough implications of Flux markings, style wasn't about to last very long. What really didn't help her case, if she had any redemption left, was that Bryan was with her, having built up his nasty-ass, bloody Buizel body like I'd never beaten him out of it, back into his shit-pulp. How, I thought. How could that THING be loyal to her?! He stood by her like she was actually something to him.
"Travis!" Charley shouted over the silent, tense air.
After that exclamation, bright emerald energy congregated somewhere around Flicker's position. I searched for her in my peripheral, and noticed her Symbi about to fire. That sound. That light. That smell. It came together, put me back in a spot where I'd been in the line of her fire – a skywisp, too. I didn't have the time to call her out for it.
Luckily, a blur of white fluff came before me, staff pointed forth. Cadi stood high and mighty, presenting herself without struggle, as a surge of green left the barrel of Flicker's weapon with a noisy burst of electricity and magic or whatever-the-hell. The streak of green's destination became Cadi's staff, the oncoming bolt and reaction between both Symbis so bright that the siren in front of me became an outline, lights and energies coming together at the tip of her staff. It all dimmed out and went quiet again, Cadi keeping the staff put, placing a hand confidently on her scarf. Her head turned to Flicker.
"And yet you fight," Cadi said, cryptic. "After all Fausti told us, us Symbis are still used against one another by people who cannot understand them."
"Alright, Travis," One of Kat's parasites roared over Cadi's quiet inquiry. "You and your dumbass decisions owe me an explanation!"
Flicker didn't say anything, and when I looked over to her, I could only see a stone cold muzzle, no indication of a smile or any expression beyond or beneath that – all of this behind the ear covering her face. She kept her weapon held out, arm extended fully. As if she knew I was examining her, she raised her arm, blocking my view of her mouth and muzzle. Damn boots made her pretty tall for a little pipsqueak alien rabbit.
"Travis' decisions? I think there are more things at play here, hey!" Charley suggested.
"I don't give a shit what's at play," argued one of the mutant's parasites. "This is personal. It's been personal from the start, and your Symbi or your Flux can WAIT until you YOURSELF tell me who you are."
Still-framed silence. Nobody moved, except for the little squirrel Flux opposite us on the intersection. I could see her tails twitching from here as she lifted her head to her partner like a frightened and confused child. All he did was shake his head at her.
"I'm HX," Flicker suddenly spoke, loud enough to be heard as well as Kat. "I'm all that's left of the people that Delta Meadow has changed. Don't blame me. Blame that skywisp next to you. She knows who I am."
"Kkkhhhehehehehe," Bryan cackled, raising his blood-oozing paws to his chin, shaking like a maniac. "Blame DADDY-WISP!"
"Bryan. Travis... Both of you poor kids." Charley lamented.
"What the fuck is HX?!" Kat, frustrated, shouted.
"Heart-Crossover. Delta Meadow's first attempt at changing one person into another person altogether." Charley answered, no holds barred.
"Heart-Crossover, really? That's a name that people with doctor's degrees came up with?" Kat asked.
"That's not its original name, but it is a name I thought we could all move away from now that Gamma's doing all of the changing for Delta Meadow. But, hey, a lousy doctor can only hope for so much," Charley sighed, then perked up at the sight of us. "Arcadia! You're a godsend right now, hey! You saved Travis before. We need you now. Can you... do that for us?"
"With pleasure, my friend," Cadi began, setting her staff on its hilt against the pavement. "Travis! What ails you, little one? Is it Susano'o? Is it the Flux? Tell Mother Arcadia, if you will."
With a sweep of her giant tail and ears, she looked at the two of us, finally revealed the horrible scarring beneath that concealing ear. Half of her face had been either masked over or torn off, the fur missing, skin left to nothing but muscle fibers. In place of her eye was something covered with a lens of black, a bright amber glow acting as a pupil. It looked so much like one of Bryan's mad eyes. I grimaced at the sight.
"Do I know you...?" Flicker remarked, devoid of emotion. Her big white whiskers sagged on both sides – both sides of whiskers were free of the scarring and peeling, that rested above, where her blue fur used to be.
"Surely we've met. Do you not recall? It was I who pulled you from that cesspool of hatred. My staff absorbed your purge. Remember? You love this town. You would want nothing ill to come of it. Don't you want to protect your home?" Cadi said, reaching out to Flicker on more than a level than involved her holding her hand out, rather one that should have stirred some kind of emotion within that soulless face, head tilted over with her neck bent to such a position that it looked painful and, well, creepy. Doll-like.
And she stayed that way for an uncomfortably long moment.
"Ohhhh..." she creaked, head still bent. "Yeah, I remember now. Huh."
"That's lovely! Well, Travis, won't you let me help you once more?" Cadi offered.
"If you want..." she muttered, although still loud enough to be heard over the distance of the wide streets. Not like there were any cars going by. "I still love Autumnridge, but I'm too late to save anything. Still, I was told there's someone who can still save it."
"Didn't look like you were helping Autumnridge when you tried to shoot Mari." Kat growled. Funny coming from her, when she locked herself away in a sewer somewhere before this.
"Sorry. It's Mars I'm after." Flicker droned.
"Mars...?" Charley must have said, staring at her crystalline rod, the blue strings gently flowing around its edges as if drifting through wind or water.
Bryan cackled again, moving behind Flicker and draping his goopy arms around her waist like a drunkard craving affection, leaning against her backside and poking his head out around her with a crazed grin. Flicker didn't even react to it. She just accepted the thing, dripping all over her white corset and her fur.
"Khehe! Travis-so happy. We found our-way together! Get-rid-of Daddy-wisp, Delta-Meadow, Pokémon, all-them! Make-friends with... Crossblade! Khehehe!" he spouted and dribbled so fast that I wouldn't have been able to repeat it if asked.
"Come on, Bry, don't tell them everything..." Flicker frowned and sighed, leaning her head back against Bryan's, showing some and any kind of emotion; of course, it was meant for the only thing here that felt nothing anymore.
"Sorryyyyhehehehe!" the dripping Flux giggled. Sick and twisted romance – the Crossblade? Really?
"Yo," I called out, pulling the bat up behind my head and resting my arms over it. I didn't really know what I wanted to say, so I looked at the two Fluxies on the other end. "You two enjoying the show?!"
The little squirrel with the 'eye patch' cheeks put a little paw on her bell. The big leafy Pokémon stepped in front of her, blocking my view of her. Was he that protective of the little thing? I saw the squirrel poke her head out from behind him.
"Nirva? Where have you been?!" a parasite of Kat's asked.
Nirva? The Champion?!
"Sorry to interrupt, hey. Bryan?! Travis?! You're coming back with me, even if it means I gotta take you in kicking and screaming." Charley declared, swinging her Symbi out. Resolute, she began floating forward, ready to kick ass and take names. Was I really about to watch a throwdown between two Symbi wielders? Rad! Even Kat wanted in on this. She had the Crossblade, so things were really heating up now.
"Bry, you'll help me, right? I need you..." Flicker said, the Flux buizel letting her go.
"Oh, Travis, my happy friend," he moaned, swerving and jerking from Flicker, standing hunched and locked in a wide-eyed manic grin. Arms hanging forward, he took short, twitchy strides toward the oncoming skywisp. "I'd be MORE-THAN-HAPPY to help you, khhheheheheahahahaha!"
Like Kat before her, Flicker, at first cautious, followed quickly behind Bryan. With excitement boiling over, I took a step forward. I expected Cadi, through all her protective instincts, to swing an arm out and stop me from going any further. While she didn't, something else took me so far by surprise that I was incredibly glad I didn't join in on their fun to be had.
As soon as they hit that clean-cut asphalt of the intersection, where nothing had been touched and marred, they stopped – they stopped as if frozen in time. Everything, even Bryan's dripping, was paused.
"Wha-...!?" I grunted. I wanted to call out to 'em. Before I could, they started shimmering, the light around their bodies warping and coiling. At first, it looked a lot like heat distortion, and then it just went so wild that their bodies contorted in such a way – such violence, actually, that they all but fizzled and dispersed into the red lighting around them, nothing but a loud, thunderous growl left in the wake of four very, er, unusual... faces?
They didn't just die, did they? They straight-up turned to light.
"What the hell was that?!" the leafy guy – Nirva – shouted over the awesome silence.
"They're gone! Blessings above, what trickery have we here?!" Cadi expressed. I would'a fawned over how cute her outdated mannerisms were, but right now, uhm... no...?
I couldn't put my mind to it. What – was that why the intersection looked barren? No water, no wreckage, no – oh...
Oh God!
"They Tripped," I said quietly. Confident with the answer, I yelled it. "They Tripped! This is a Trip spot! Yo, I was wondering when one of those'd come around!"
"My word, you're right," Cadi, aghast, nodded. "I've never been an onlooker of such an event."
"You're saying that's what people look like when they Trip?!" Nirva asked from afar, voice drifting uninterrupted through the windless air.
"It must be! Sandy, Travis is our objective, and I cannot let Solacea and Susano'o go unchecked. We need to give pursuit!" Cadi suggested, looking back to me with a sparkle in her eyes that screamed duty and devotion. I had so many questions for you, girl. But I got it. Me 'n my tits had things to do right now.
"I'm with ya. Let's go!" I bounced in place, lightly tapping the bat against an open hand, rhythmic to my bouncing. Cadi walked forward, leaving the sidewalk, pointed to the middle of the intersection. I'd have imagined the boundaries for the Trip spot were more arbitrary than a perfect square, but that was a level of Gamma that I needed to leave to bigger brains.
I saw Cadi freeze, arm raised, legs locked in a motion that implicated light jogging. Despite vaguely knowing the outcome of the situation, it was unnerving seeing someone like her taken in by the effects of anything else, being made vulnerable in some way. If I pushed her now, would she have fallen over after her transportation finished? Was she already somewhere else? How long did it take to, like, warp?
I couldn't really find out for myself. Somebody was screaming up all kinds of worry behind me. Before I went in for my Trip, I swung around, looking over my shoulder. I saw a flick of pinkish red, then a cloud of dust, as my ears were greeted with an unrelenting series of thuds and cracks, pieces falling apart, over, hitting the ground and contributing more to that puff of smoke. Whatever hit that old building must have come in from above, 'cause it came in fast. That was a person, too. Wait, was it?! The scream came from that person! It whipped with her – the noise followed her into the building. She must have exploded from that impact.
Oh, fuck me upside down, what do I do?!
I looked back and forth. Behind me. In front of me. The rest of the street and its strip mall where that dust was clearing over all the car wrecks and such, or the empty intersection where a bassy boom signified Cadi's disappearance. I couldn't stop. Who did I go to first?!
In my hesitation, I saw something bright leap atop a car behind me, some twenty yards back. The figure was a Pokémon, no doubt, on all fours, blue ears standing tall, tail all the same, totally okay and not explodey.
"Holy shit," I gasped. "It's Rayse."
She looked beaten up bad, her hood lowered back. That bright white fur gave away injuries so loudly and clearly that I could see her bleeding strange blue liquid all the way back here, the stuff glowing against her cheek, dripping into that red circlular patch of blush or something-or-other she always had. Her four feelers were high, pointed at the threat that'd so wildly launched her into what I imagined to be nothing but rubble now. Jesus, she had to be pretty anime to survive that crash-down. I mean, she was a natural Pokémon with crazier powers, so she was literally anime.
Still wasn't looking too good, and now I had to make a weighty decision. Cadi wasn't even the one fighting, but I didn't want to leave her alone in there with Bryan and Flicker. No no no, I had to. I had to trust her, and Kat and Charley WITH her. She was all good. She was always good. I had to help Rayse. I swore I would. SHE was fighting something.
Still...!
"Hey," I turned back to the two right-minded Fluxes. "Can you get over—oh shit the bed..."
They were occupied. Somebody was giving them a very, very hard time, Symbi out and on the ready, already having engaged with Nirva in some heat. With the way he jumped around her, they'd started something of their own. The little squirrel was running to find cover, and, sure enough, their problem was Fausti. Well, she was in the neighborhood. I swore I saw her look over here for a fraction of a fraction of a second and smile with her tongue out, before raising her crazy platinum-ball scepter and make a delicate situation somehow all the more delicate. A bright flare of purple came from that end. Hurt my eyes – I had to shield them with my free arm. Not like they could get over here quickly anyway, through the obvious Trip zone.
Got it. My fight was with Rayse. When I looked back to see her deal, two more figures joined her in the space of a few seconds. One of them was on fire and the other of them had a star on its head and a CROSSBLADE, so that was fun. More magical explosions behind me was taking up Nirva's time. I tightened my grip around the bat and ran from the intersection, taking to the street and hopping over the hood of a car. I jumped onto its roof, then into the tailgate of a truck nearby. I kept a close eye on all three figures, their movements so sporadic and sudden – dammit, the two little figures could fly around like skywisps. That made it hard to track them, but Rayse wasn't having too much trouble dodging their swipes, namely the little white star-headed creature with the Crossblade.
I dropped off of the truck, ran through some clearing, found an opening through the abandoned traffic, and took that right back to the sidewalk, sprinting on the side of the street where Rayse'd crashed into the mall strip. I got to its tiny parking lot, checked to see what was still there, and, nah, only one of the stores caved in from Rayse's impact. Surprised that much dust kicked up with how wet everything still was.
Okay, this time for real, I thought. No backing out of this one.
I wanted to call for Rayse, who was leaping from car to car, back to some rooftops on the other side of the street, but if I distracted her from the volley of fireballs that the little flame creature was hurling at her with its, er, hand-shaped tail, I thought it might've ended poorly. Not to mention, that starry creature was really going after Rayse, dodging the fireballs herself and giving such a relentless chase that it almost appeared out of sheer desperation. Rayse was quicker on her feet than her pursuer was in the air. She got low, letting her foe fly above her and try to come to a stop, after which Rayse sprung back up, jumped at the thing and grabbed it between two feelers. She flipped about in midair and threw the creature back down into the rooftop. Fireballs oncoming all the while, Rayse kept herself afloat with a bright pulse of magic coming from her feelers pointed at her grounded foe, like a single burst of light shooting into the surface below, a visible shock wave thrown out above me. The light from the fireballs bled into the light from Rayse's attack. Still afloat, she turned slightly, rolling to the side in midair. I caught a brief glimpse of her face, biting down, snarling with an vicious intent to be rid of this attacker. A ball of a fire connected with one of her feelers as she batted it away the second it did so, throwing it into the foe all the same as her own blast. A light explosion, another shockwave, air picking up around me, papers and debris caught in the blast. Arm over my eyes, I lost track of everybody.
"Truly a marvel, these Pokémon powers, and how far we have come with them." came a heavily accented voice, something African, thick and becoming of her word choice. I knew it. I recognized it, and the fur on my arms, back, and neck stood on end. I was in danger. My tail flicked. She was behind me.
I spun. That white-gown, green-haired lady with the red spike in her chest. Garde-something. Didn't care, but a troubled gasp gave the impression that I was so much more afraid for my life than I would've liked to admit. Her arms, behind her back, one of her eyes glistened more brightly than the other.
My muscles seized up. I gasped again, then grunted, and choked. I was holding onto the bat so tightly that it hurt. I couldn't let go. Everything was locked in place. My legs were stuck holding me up. My back was stuck raised as high as it could be. My tail, my ears, my feet, fingers, neck, throat – stuck choking. I fought to move, and when I did, it hurt like hell, like every muscle fiber was being forced apart, ligaments tearing. I wanted to tear up. I didn't even have a chance.
"We do well without spectators, I am afraid," said the woman. Maya. Was wondering where the hell she went off to. That Delta Meadow pit, I'd have bet. "But they do provide us with opportunity we cannot shy our oh-so curious heads from. It was a bad time to be here."
Her consonants were so sappy and stuck to her tongue that it made some of of the stuff she said so hard to understand over the excitement and the fear, as well as the noise of a battle on two fronts, loud shouts and bursts of light.
Maya started walking around me, her head locked, looking onward to the quarrel between Rayse and those two unknown Pokémon. I couldn't see them. Whenever Maya passed by me, her eyes avoided mine for all but a second, as if to reassure me that I was just important enough for her to consider, but not enough over something I couldn't see.
"You are familiar. Maybe we met?" she asked. I couldn't even move my tongue or my eyes, let alone answer a question like that. "Well, it does not matter. You come with me."
Oh God, what the shit, dude?! I-I can't...!
I was struggling against the invisible grasp on me with such whimsy ferocity that I felt more afraid my muscles were about to snap in half before I got free, the visual of blood leaking through torn tissue inside of me that I could do nothing about, and nothing more until I was let go. It was like being squeezed and made stiff – no, like every bit of me was no longer mine, but... I could still think!? I could barely breathe.
I couldn't-
"Hi Alli, bye Alli!" Rayse yelped, darting by so quickly that she appeared as nothing more than a pinkish blue blur behind Maya, who must've dropped her focus or something. The traitor lady turned around with a questioning mumble, and in that instant, everything came back to me. My chest, my legs, my tail and my throat – my heart! Everything was mine again, including my hands, in both of which I took the bat after counting my blessings.
Up and over my head, I swung down at the shorter lady, the fleeting sense of justice so divine that I felt my lips curl into a cathartic, fang-bearing grin.
The strain of the impact sent pain shooting through my wrists and fingers, like striking metal. It wasn't Maya, unfortunately, but something she'd possessed. She held up one of her strange green arms, bent and blocking her face – she'd managed to turn around more quickly than I'd thought. She put up a transparent, pinkish barrier centimeters from her arm, absorbing the blow and continued push of my weapon. A large purple pulse rippled outward from the point of the bat's impact, ephemeral sparks flying as I kept the push on. I didn't let off the gas for a second. I didn't care if she had me parried. My grin turned around, now a face of twisted do-or-die matter. I bit down both rows of teeth. I bent my front knee, solidifying my position.
I couldn't break through. Her barrier wasn't something that a physical 'thing' alone could break. I needed more! I need something better!
"Oho, my my...!" she mocked me, showing no signs of effort in holding me back.
"WHAT?! YEAH, WHAT?!" I yelled at her, like I'd wanted to do while she was pacing around me. Throat freed, I let spit fly from my mouth, my chest broiling with rage so hot that I felt it leave every strand of fur on my body, namely the tips of my fingers, trailing along the bat like a piece of my body was flowing free of it shell.
I saw sparks of yellow fly, electricity arcing from the head of the bat around Maya's barrier, the radiance of her defense and my offense clashing together to form a firestorm of color. Each bolt that left my body tickled, from my feet to the tip of my nose, and it only made me want to put more into the push. My arms were afire with pain. My hands were trembling, not out of fear, but out of something bent on destruction, and it was all mine!
I pushed the bat, aglow with electricity jumping off of it like a swarm of insects, with such tenacity that I saw a physical distortion in the barrier, a dent forming nicely in the shape of the bat.
I had the advantage. She didn't have any room to pull back, and if she dropped the shield now, it was game over. All this electricity arcing over to her, she felt the hurt. I knew she did. Every tickle on me was a thorn in her, sparks puddling in the wet asphalt around me.
"HOW'S THIS?! THIS what you WANTED?!" I blared, furious and triumphant, her barrier giving way, flashing, as she began to move her arm closer to her face, turning aside.
A buzzing sound around me. My electricity.
I felt the strength in my arms become sapped before I even knew why. I wasn't the one who did it. Hell if it was me. I wanted to go all the way through this bitch's force field, and then...
...Ripping, popping noise – something fleshy. It shook me.
The power flowing through my body – all this electricity, it... just stopped... My bat wasn't glowing. I lost momentum so fast that I panicked, my breaths short. Confused, I tried to push. I tried to push again. All the effort put in just went away. I couldn't push. I couldn't even pull the bat back up because it'd been wedged into her barrier.
Then, I felt the sting, like a needle – no, a spike so hot, so sinister and horrible that the pain was actually fetid. It was gross. It was wet, infernal, and it filled a spot where my stomach used to be.
"Nnh...!" I hiccuped, grunting and panting like I was hysterical.
Maya let down her barrier and jumped away, gown flowing in compliance to the gentle, floaty hop. My arms flew forward, challenged by nothing but air. I threw the bat to the ground and arched over, but I didn't fall over, my legs still bent, keeping me upright. As the bat clanged loudly against the pavement and I doubled over, I saw a blade thrust through me, painted red with liquid that I once owned. A crystalline blade with crystalline teeth, like a saw that must've shred my insides to pieces.
I didn't want to accept it. I tried to reach for it, but my muscles were afraid for me, stiff like they were not a minute ago under Maya's spell. It was in me. The ripping, the puncturing – everything it caused was real, and I didn't want to believe it. I wanted to touch the blade so badly to make sure that it was real, as my vision pulsed, my heart tried to race, and my blood dripped from its point and its countless toothy edges, splashing into the wet ground.
Somebody was breathing behind me, so young, trying to catch the breath she expressed so loudly. This kid had been fighting for her life. It wasn't Rayse.
I couldn't see right. This pain was... unforgivable. It didn't go away, but I didn't want the blade to go either, or else I...
I just...
"I-I-I can't..." I whimpered, fingers curled.
I tried to pull my arms back, reflexively attempting to grab for the straps of my backpack. It was still there. The blade went through that, too.
"I can't..." I repeated, hot tears welling up in my eyelids. It was unlike anything. It was unlike anything...
"HEY! N-NAUGHTY! Stop it! She didn't do anything to you!" Rayse hollered. Her breaking voice was coming closer.
"Jirachi!" another girl called out.
"Huh?" A feminine breath came from right behind me, puffing out from those hurried breaths before. She was the one who did this. I could tell her head turned with how she was panting now.
Footsteps racing closer. A sudden shriek.
Pain. More pain. The blade was moving, the girl behind me thrashing. Movements were agony. My heart stopped once or twice. I couldn't even count it. I couldn't even feel it – I didn't know if it was true. I didn't know where I was for a moment. Everything blended together like oil or watercolor. I sniffled.
That sound. That bumpy, wet cardboard sound, tearing and playing to the rhythm of every motion the blade made inside of me, each serrated edge pulling something out with it on its journey out the way it came. I felt strings of something pulled apart inside of me, loud snaps, fluid spilling where it didn't belong, making me sick, making me want to piss out the toxins that'd been mixed. The tearing became muffled as it journeyed through my backpack, yanked me down as if it'd been pulled in another direction. I her a jingle and a clang. Something hit the ground. My backpack felt lighter. My legs felt lighter. They gave out.
I didn't even feel myself hit the ground, but I was there, laying on it, croaking and crying. I tried to fight. I tried to lift myself, but pulses of pain and numbness together dropped me right back down again. I managed to turn, wheezing, viewing the whole world from the side, cheek against wet ground. Salty tears touched my lips and my nose.
Rayse was there, standing before a red truck, the white star-headed girl wrapped up in three of her feelers, with a chilling, purple Crossblade in the last one, pointed at the kid's face – actually touching the space between her little eyes. The kid's own Crossblade was gone, Rayse having constricted her so well through burnt ribbons that it would've done her no good to hold it.
Rayse's Crossblade was... disgusting. It was so vile that I could taste it, if that wasn't my own salt-flavored innards pouring out. It was bubbly, like frozen liquid, shining with a grotesque green highlight over its purple crystal material. The hilt was wrapped up in Rayse's feeler, but I could tell that, somehow, it was moist. In spite of its cross shape, all three blades were asymmetrical, one of them curved down, the other up, and the center a wicked mess of thorns, still bubbles, and pulsating tendrils, all ending in one impossibly sharp and straight crystal thorn up top, that of which just so happened to be the smallest distance possible from skewering the kid's brain.
A critical lull.
Rayse was shaking, her eyes wide, the light of the sun behind the truck casting a horrid shadow that fell over her face – the half of it I could see anyway. The uncertain sadism in her face, the absolute terror of in the kid's, tears flowing down her pure white cheeks. She and Rayse were both afraid.
"Jirachi, y-you... little..." Rayse whispered, voice scratched with an undertone of cruelty.
The sylveon shook her head slowly, unblinking, biting her teeth together through tension.
It was so quiet. All I could hear was my broken heartbeat, fluid dripping inside of me, and the sniffles and tears of the poor Jirachi kid.
No one wanted to move. Where was the other one? The fiery thing?
My eyes drifted around, though I was answered with a brief gust of warm air by my face.
"O-oh my God, please don't do that... Please! We just... Oh my God..." the other girl whimpered and stammered.
Where was she? Was she that little wisp of fire without any arms? She was actually a person? Who... was that? She was trying to get in close, but the crazed motions of Rayse's head and eyes, darting back and forth between her and Jirachi, unnerved the little fire, who happened to look back at me with those tiny beady eyes. They met mine, but for what mine were worth, they were blurring my vision. She looked at the ground before me. Dunno why, but I followed her gaze down. Both of our gazes met at a shiny black object, its chain coiled on the ground. Pat's pendant, having been yanked from the torn scrap that was my backpack.
I didn't know or care what the fiery girl was thinking, but with the drizzle of strength left inside of me, I reached a shaky hand up to my hair, felt around for that silky red ribbon, pulled it from my head, the pain of hairs coming with it negligible against my open wound. Holding it tight and scrunched up, feeling myself squeezing the metal bit within, I brought my arm out to its full length, slowly lowering the ribbon onto the pendant. It took everything I had just to get there. Just to get here. Here, and there.
I let go, seating the accessory down with its other half.
I pulled my arm back.
"Ah-..." the little fire gasped.
The warmth of her just being close by – it was strangely euphoric.
"Sky, so birdless, so... starless." she chanted to herself, like a memory playing itself for me to enjoy, having plugged itself into her consciousness. Pat's poem? Really? Was she that famous? I would've laughed if my lungs weren't about to explode from all of this desperate breathing.
"Willow...!" Jirachi cried for her friend, or so I imagined.
A sudden surge of energy. A flurry of footsteps and presence, the scent of ashes and flowers over a saline, metallic accent.
More people.
"Hey, hey, hey now! Y'all hold up! Jirachi? Rayse?! 'The hell are you doin' to each other?!" somebody blurted, his voice reminiscent of the guy from before – what, that Nirva person...
He and his friend stopped right by me. I saw red feet fill the space behind the ribbon and the pendant. I didn't even look up to their faces. I just watched their legs dance around, then go stiff, one of Nirva's raised like he was about to reach out. His friend's paws were so little compared to his.
Between their legs, I watched Rayse's expression shift from dastardly fear to excitable shame, as if caught in the spotlight doing a deed unspeakably bad – unforgivable.
Nobody spoke.
"I had to... g-get Sera... Then I could go," Jirachi stuttered, wrapped up so tightly that her arms were wholly hidden. "Chevron said..."
"Sera?! Who's Sera?!" Nirva asked.
"Her... r-right here, she's... Sera." the bound girl answered, motionless, only looking at the sylveon as a gesture.
"That's not Sera. That's Rayse! Sis, what happened to you?! Did you forget who we are?!" he questioned again.
"Enough of this horseplay. Let the girl go. There has clearly been some misunderstanding." Maya interrupted. She began walking, until she came into view. Finally, she stepped on the trinkets. She stepped on Pat and Emi.
The tiny fiery girl release a feral scream out of nowhere. I saw lights flicker, shadows jump about, as Maya was thrown away from the two items, the girl screaming at her. Nirva's feet bolted away.
"Hey, knock it off! Calm yerself down!" he ordered. I couldn't see what was happening. He must've been fighting with her fighting with Maya. Lots of shuffling. Sounds of wooshing fire, wooshing limbs, hums of energy, shouts of resistance.
His friend, the little squirrel, came up to me, hesitant, at first wanting nothing to do with me in my helpless condition. She turned back to Rayse, then found the two hallowed objects, crumpled together by Maya's step. It grabbed her attention for some reason. She got to her puny knees and looked me in the eye, giving me the strength to return the stare: no strength at all. Those eye-like patches, those black markings beneath her eyes... so Fluxed... so Red, like her little red paws on the ground in front of me.
"Hi? Hey, hi? Wh—oh!" she panicked. She just sounded like a little kid rather than a little girl. I couldn't honestly tell, but she must've noticed my wound with the way her stare went south. Or wherever the wound was. She averted her attention from it.
"I'm... kinda..." I started.
"I can see that! We'll get'cha some help, um, I think? Like..." she stopped, looking up, fully revealing her bell to me. It jingled, as she watched somebody – probably Nirva – fight with the others.
"Edge's bell..." I groaned, lost in its swirly design, three whirls of black interrupting the shine of gold. She looked at me.
"Huh?" she quipped.
"Whats... the bell?" I moaned, drained of life.
"My bell?" she queried, raising a paw to it, defending it. It was hers. She owned it and nobody else could touch it. Her bell.
"Cheeks!" Nirva called. Instantly, the squirrel Pokémon lifted away, standing, little red-stocking legs fluttering to the aid of her friend. The commotion settled down.
"Right here, Vay," she said. "They okay?"
"Well, K.O. on the gardevoir. No big deal." he said. Good...
Willow was sobbing. Or, whatever the fire girl's name was. Didn't even know how she could sob. Didn't question it. Had pain. Couldn't deal...
"Rayse! Let go of Jirachi. Right now." Nirva, or Vay, barked. He was gritting his teeth.
"Vay, I... I-it's not..." Rayse babbled, a petrified little kid. I was watching her. The width of her eyes didn't change. The stance she had over Jirachi didn't change. She really didn't want to put the Pokémon down, and it was 'cause of me. I wasn't even important and Rayse was driven up the wall because of me.
"Put her down." he said again.
"But, h-hold on. Brudder! She's all... messy in the-"
"PUT HER DOWN!" he finally shouted.
Rayse's mouth was hanging open, but she had nothing more to say.
Her Crossblade sank away into its ethereal sheath, purple dust consuming the hellish object. Her feelers began to unfold and pull away from the starry girl, flowing carefully. Shaken, Jirachi fell to the ground, even after having displayed clear mastery of flight. She just dropped and hit the asphalt, reaching behind herself and crawling away, while watching Rayse's ribbons retract and accord themselves to their freedom.
I could feel the heat of all eyes on Rayse, like she was stuck with the task of an explanation of which she was so ill-suited to present. Her ears fell like stones. Then, she turned to the truck behind her, lifted her head, and leaped onto it. This time, I found the motivation to lift my head, her image darkened against the red sun.
She gave me one sad, inconsolable look, and then she ran off without a word, her paws hitting hard against the roofs of cars, before disappearing altogether, nothing left but a plead – a call of her name by Vay, who ran in front of Jirachi. He took the spot she'd been standing in all this time, Jirachi her unlikely hostage.
"Rayse!" he called for her again. He lowered his back, hind legs bent, then he jumped onto the truck after her, claws scratching its hood.
"Vay, hold on! What about them?!" his friend asked.
"I don't know!" Vay answered, growling something about the Crossblade.
The Crossblade was something I always believed Rayse about, but always thought she was exaggerating when she told me about the kind of pain it wreaked. I was supposed to be a siren. I was supposed to be strong, or... whatever, but one little stab with the Crossblade broke me. I didn't want to move. I hardly wanted to speak. The first time I summoned the Cross for myself, I felt a faint stamp of pain somewhere in my body, but it wasn't a lasting process like Rayse said. It just came and went whenever I summoned the thing. I never wanted to think that the Crossblade was all that evil and stuff, even after I what I saw Nephi do with mine, and, um, her own...
I got the idea now. Get blown up by fireballs? Get blasted by Joel's Symbi? Get tossed around by Pokémon attacks? You had enough Gamma in you to wake up from it.
Get cut down by the Crossblade, and you didn't want to wake up – go into that proverbial White light and forget all the pain. But it didn't let you.
It got Dad the same way as me, tight through the gut. I should'a known better.
I...
Felt a heartbeat within me
stop.
It belonged to me no more.
Instead, it tore me apart into three pieces.
And those pieces shared something broken
like them.
I don't even know why...
...the Crossblade's color is White.
But it's been mine ever since the fight with Katalyn.
I'll take it back now. It's my pain.
"I'll go get her," I found myself saying loudly, through segmented, nauseated breaths. "This is between us."
I raised a shaking arm, watching my blue-furred hand as it blocked out my view of Vay in the red sun. Still, I squinted, opening my hand, fanning my fingers and rotating my wrist.
They were all quiet, but I know I had their attention.
"Oh, get real! Who do you think you are, saying something like that?! She's my sister, and you're bleeding all over the place! You need help!" Vay argued, like I figured someone as loud as him would.
"Your sister?" I tested him, recalling the horrid, sickly face Rayse made. Not once did she smile. My fingers clenched towards a half-shut fist, the stress in my had building, the force behind that stress wet and wretched, slimy and painful. "Aren't you the one she was worried to bits about? You finally meet up, and... she runs from you?"
"I ain't got time to fuss with you, human-thing. Ain't need no sick 'ol mix of a human and a Pokémon tellin' me what for." he dismissed.
"What'd your sorry-ass just say to me?" I growled, egging him on.
"I ain't sorry that you got run through. 'S what happens when you humans try and play on our level. Get better is what I'm sayin'."
OKAY, I CAN'T. I CAN'T!
FUCK THAT!
I squeezed my fist around something that was there before it was visible, and a millisecond later, an inferno of golden sparks flew from around the space occupied between by hand and the transparent bar that was beginning to solidify from sparks and agony, the wound in my stomach wailing a shriek of pain so loud that I wanted to shout with it. So I did. I shouted, and it felt violent, volcanic, and incredible.
I was grasping a golden bar enveloped in electric light. I felt my grip around it become tighter, like the bar itself was growing in width. A coating of black crawled across my hand, as I thrust the object into the asphalt, just shy of Emi's ribbon. Clinking loudly, metal clashing with pavement, I knew what had been made for me. My body contorting to the shape of its beginning, I remembered where I came from, the faces I've met, the reasons I was here now, feeling the crash of the waves overhead.
My legs were lighter, my perspective on the world warped to such an extent where things looked so much larger, my nose now consuming more of my face than before, with the world around me so cold – I felt naked and tiny, but powerful, as the evidence of that crackled around me like a maelstrom.
I pushed from the ground using the newly formed Crossblade, lifting my body not to my legs, but into the air. No legs needed – no legs owned! I was flying, holding my light Cross at its hilt again. I flicked my forked tongue out, tasting at the ozone and the Gamma, and I whipped my snaky tail back before lunging up at the orange-eyed excuse of a Champion. The only thing I let go was the idea of really hurting him – like, REALLY hurting him. Slicing a piece of him open was too much, and it involved me using the Crossblade on his Fluxy-ass body. I had it on display, and he wasn't going to get it. He didn't deserve my pain. Instead, I swung with my free arm, blade off to the side held in the other, and landed a hit so goddamn hard on his cheek that I saw it all happen in slow motion, his skin folding to my little digitless hand, the spit flying out of his mouth, all of that glorified over the sound of electric cracking and buzzing. I owned it all the way through, arm out at its fullest, gritting my teeth while I bathed in the breakneck moment.
Then it was over, Vay tumbling, nearly losing his footing on the truck, as he swung his head back up to try and find me, spiky red vine curling high. Looking to avoid it, I'd already bolted, meters higher than he could ever get to, the thousandfold sting of sheer cold and haywire bolts freeze-burning me from the tip of my tail to the tips of my round quills, a skywisp again, unbound and rampant!
I spun around in the air, letting my body taste the freedom, before I turned back down to the speechless Champion and saluted him with the hand I'd gone and decked his face with. In that, I pointed my Crossblade at him, nearly forgetting what the thing looked like, what with its yellow lightning bolt-shaped blades held by a crossbar of pulsing wires. All pairs of eyes were on me.
"Get better?! Go eat a dick! Just EAT it up~!" I bellowed down at him backed against victory and guile. Somethin' like that. I felt good! Amazing, even! I flew a loop with both arms out wide, balance undeterred by the Crossblade, before shooting off in the direction of Rayse, eyes searching to find her in the mess of cars along the street. I was upside down at the moment, but in rolling around mid-flight, I found who I was after, and she was gaining ground, heading for the hills. I lost sight of her, but I knew where she was headed.
I only hoped that my stuff would be okay 'till I got back. Rayse was more important than all that. She was the real deal, not just some item to remind myself of how hurt or sad I needed to be. I could'a stuffed all that in the Crossblade and it still wouldn't have matched the surge of hurt that came with this weapon, but right now, it felt cleansing more than anything. The Crossblade was my heart and it held all of my makings, in spite of what corruption it entailed. It was a purgative kind of pain, rather than a dirty one; like, a suffering that I needed, reminding me above all else that I was Alli.
I needed to have Rayse know it was okay, too.
…
…
…
"Duuude, she... turned into a skywisp, and NAILED you right in the face..."
"I noticed."
"Don't forget the part where she got a Crossblade. I-I didn't mean to stab her. She was hurting our, um, supervisor."
"Came in at the wrong time, I guess... I'm gonna break that girl in half the next time I see her."
"Well, like, don't. Vay, check it out."
"What, Cheeks?"
"It's uh... a photo, from her backpack."
"What about it?"
"It's actually my family. Why'd she have this? Why'd she have Pat and Emi's stuff, too?"
"That pendant..."
"Yeah, Willow? What's the matter?"
"Jirachi, I know what we have to do. We were so close. Cruce, can you keep those things safe?"
"Aye, no prob. Her bag's all ripped, but I'll see what I... Wait, isn't this Al's? S-sorry, yeah, I'll see what I can do."
"You girls goin' after Rayse, too? Ain't feel like I'm welcome anymore..."
"It's okay, Big Boy, you still got me."
"Ugh..."
"Y'love me, boo~."
"Shut up, Cheeks."
"So it's Rayse... NOT Sera? Oh... oops."
"Yeah, Jira, good job at not recognizing your sister Champion."
"I'll make up for it. She scares me, but with Willow here, I'm ready for round two! We're so close, right?!"
"SO close, Jirachi. We're doing this for US now. Forget Maya. Forget Delta Meadow! It's you and me!"
…
"I'm home, but the people I spent my life with might be even closer than I think."
"Y'say somethin', Cheeks?"
"Eh. Ominous monologuing."
"Dude, can you monologue your face into mine a little? That girl clobbered me..."
"Ye-hea, she did, bro! 'S okay, c'mere..."
