A/N:Pokémon belongs to 4Kids, Nintendo, Satoshi Tajiri, Chuang yi translations and such. I do not own it.
TIP: Eek, Wallace and Steven aren't in this chapter. I'm so glad you appreciate my writing, I really am, and I hope you enjoy this chapter all the same.
I'm also grateful you noticed my creepy Lance rant. I love that rant so much!
Phantomness: Thanks for your review! Red and Lance make more of an appearance in this chapter...
Darkness: Yay blood. As for Lance...feel sorry for him indeed. There's more to come.
Oh yeh, what's that thing you put about me in your profile? That's sooo sweet! (glomps you) Miss ya!
DRD: Thanks for your reviews, yo. By the way, you don't have to like Originshipping, dear. All shippings are completely optional; heck, you don't have to support anything.
Guess the POV ;)
Is it right to deny the truth? That's right. It's happening. People pushed it away, covered it up in the hope that it would disappear. And that's what I despise.
They do it with everything. They tried to push us away, literally, to make it seem like we were never here.
And he thinks that...just by moving on and trying to get Wallace to help him covers up what happened in the past. And he also lacked belief in his own partners' judgment. What is he? What is anyone?
Dust. They're all remains of the selfishness of this Earth. They're gone, disintegrated into dust and...nothing...
I wanted to do so much, but I haven't. My life's flashed by with nothing to fill it...have I...wasted my time here? Have I failed?
I failed to succeed in my own dreams. They fell away leaving me humiliated and without hope. So I ran away. I turned away from the weakness of my past.
I've learned that weakness doesn't fade with time...it's always there to surface at any point. I've always tried to will myself to be strong, in as many ways as possible. It hasn't always worked.
Running away didn't work. I still saw that weakness in myself...forever afterwards...
Because I knew that by doing that...and that alone...I was avoiding the truth of what I was...
And that is now what I ultimately hate...
I stand here overlooking the disaster of this world and fate of one race only. Red lingers as an earnest figure by my side. He blinks calmly - yet he wears his slight façade, for I know what it truly is that he feels. His only weakness is fear, whilst weakness is my only fear...
Red is so special to me. He hasn't taught me as much as Wallace may have taught Steven...and he may not realize it...but it still means everything to me. Red's shown me that...his love isn't pain...
He came to me and caught me when I fell from being struck. The way Steven turned away from me to face Wallace was similar to the way I let Red guide me, somehow...despite the fact that he shattered me...and made me feel so weak...Steven and I both learned something similar...
But it was Red who took me by the hand...and showed me how it's meant to be...he's a person who wants to care...and wants me to care...
So we both stand here together and watch what was a pending disaster unravel over Viridian city. We left Sootopolis and with that, Wallace and Steven, observing the shocking disaster take its origin there, engulfing life with death.
And though I regret to say...it is only the truth...that death often succeeds in its wrath...
I watch without worry, but with acceptance. That is one way to be strong. Although through all this...I forget to remember...that I've always pushed away one of the most important truths I hold...
That I'm nothing but a foolish, weak, insignificant human.
"Lance?"
The Dragon Master finally tore his eyes away from the terrifying scene beneath their cliff at the sound of a voice. That one voice that had followed him for so long, whose owner may be using the last dregs of it until...
Lance decided that it wouldn't bear thinking about and turned to the source. Red currently wore his façade of collected calmness, yet his eyes were closed, shaded from the calamity.
"Lance...in a way, it's kind. Imagine being here and watching our fellow race tear itself to shreds. That would be painful."
He didn't reply, but let the words from Red's gentle voice soak in.
"There's something that worries me though. Why do we stand here and watch? I know you don't agree but...we are one of them...it's selfish for us to exclude ourselves. It's as if we think of ourselves as superior. But we're not; we're just humans like everybody else."
Lance felt a leap in his senses. How is it that he always says...what I want him to say?
Foolish...weak...insignificant...we're far from superior...
"I don't know, Red." Lance replied shakily. Compared to his partners' tones, the Dragon Master's voice was harsh and soulless, at least how he heard it. How can a kind person such as Red love...a thing? A thing that seems to be barely human, yet is?
"Perhaps..." Red interrupted Lance's train of thoughts with his sudden motion to sit down on the rocks, "Perhaps we're meant to be doing this though. Someone has to bear the pain. Perhaps Fate believes that we are saturated by darkness and are immune to it. Perhaps something out there wants us to survive for their purpose. Perhaps we were just meant to see the very end."
Lance turned to him. The façade still clung on courageously, allowing Red to gaze out at every inch of destruction before him.
"Lance, I'm scared."
His eyes widened slightly. He knew it was alright for people to be afraid. But he didn't know how to react to such a comment. Or did he just think he didn't? Was it all in his imagination that he was inhumane? Was it really true? Was empathy such a difficult value to unearth? It was impossible; he didn't even know what he was anymore.
However, the Dragon Master did know something, that there was an emotion he was reaching for in correspondence to what he saw from the cliff top. Lance let his hair obstruct his face and expression, almost like a façade in itself, whilst answering.
"I'm scared too, Red."
His vision blurred slightly with forced back tears. Yet out of the corner of one eye he caught sight of a swaying life form, moving gradually towards the already devastated city below, bearing the pure intention of doing harm.
A jet of purple light erupted over Johto to signal another arrival. The current Azalea gym leader viewed the incident through concerned eyes, adjusting them away from the jumping flames that engulfed his beloved forest. Surely...no more evil could be forced upon the scene? Surely...
"No more..." he hissed, "Celebi, why do you allow this to take its toll?"
Bugsy whipped around in fury, throwing his strength against the heavy wooden doors of the Azalea gym. The mysterious shaft of pale, flickering natural light glared upon a single ultra ball lying inside. After snatching it up and turning again, Bugsy was introduced to two looming shadows.
"I knew of your power, even through being a low ranking league member Bugsy," Kamon sneered, "but not of your cruelty..." he added, referring to the device now clutched in the protective gym leader's shuddering hand.
Will nodded.
"What the hell is going on?" the two Elites' opponent spluttered, "What's happening elsewhere? Celebi...Celebi has abandoned her post..." he waved wildly at the weeping forest, "She has failed to protect her home! Her people!"
"What do you think?" Kamon spoke again, impatiently, "Elsewhere has fallen. There isn't only your precious forest in danger. The disaster is centered in Sootopolis, only there is it most intense and only there is the safest place: The Cave of Origin."
Bugsy's eyes widened in his new found fear and he proceeded to stride past the people blocking his path.
"Come on...what?" he retorted when they grabbed hold of him, "The Cave of Origin is the safest place! We have to find our way there!"
"No."
"You're insane!"
Will took hold of one of his arms firmly. "We said no. That safety belongs to the pokémon and the pokémon alone. Mankind just has to accept that he has been separated from his brother and it is time for him to leave."
Will tossed away the arm that had slowly turned from tense to limp in his grasp whilst he spoke. Busgy's expression had morphed into something strangely solemn and understanding.
"Then at least let me stand by my forest until the..." he winced, unable to complete the sentence, "Let me stick by what I lived by."
Kamon fixed his embedding glare deeper into the gym leader's face, before reluctantly stepping aside to allow him out. Bugsy swept past into the smouldering air and headed straight for the forest, letting sparks of flame lash him as he strode forth in his dedicated fashion. Kamon and Will watched him move closer and closer to the blistering heat; closer and closer to something that he once loved as a part of life but was now so hostile.
"To watch them go..." Will began, alerting Kamon's attention, "...one by one..."
Busgy's silhouette shuddered in the scorching air, and there was a flash as the Ultra Ball he held broke open. The gossamer, translucent shape of a Butterfree joined him. Will snorted just as he sensed the pokémon's unusual life waves ebbing weakly away from the fire.
"Cloned. It's a cloned beast."
Bugsy turned back to the sin he had let out into the collapsing world and held out his hand to it.
"I can only just tell; this heat is getting to me..." Will continued, "But it doesn't matter any more; soon, it will decide to leave this life of its own accord..."
The Elites observed Bugsy's blurred gasp as he stretched out further to the escaping Butterfree. Ghostly chirps echoed away with its sinful body into incinerated particles on the wind.
"Imagine being a cloned life. Imagine being brought into the world unnaturally. Imagine being in insult to existence itself. That would be the pain of being a reflection, a copy of what is real. That is the cruelty that mankind brought upon this earth."
Bugsy's reaction of horror was frozen by the disastrous flames that leaped and consumed him. Kamon and Will turned away from just another victim, allowing the shock to be reflected by their desensitized bodies.
Flames stretched into unforgiving shapes towards the darkened sky.
A Dragonair crashed through the distraught city, unaware of the lives that it and its fellow species were taking in millions. A few more of the beasts threw their heads back in rage and unleashed their deadly Hyper Beams amongst the calamity. Viridian City was dead, before it even hit the ground.
The two very last people clinging onto the cursed lives they were forced into owning sprinted along the cliff top, following the roaring mass of death. Red chased the billowing, mud-splattered cloak that seemed to flow along on its own. Another screaming Hyper Beam drowned Lance's pleading shout towards the one thing that remained, yet was directly in the Dragonairs' upcoming path of destruction.
He groped at the swaying mob in the distance as if trying to pull it back. The dull, smoky image blurred out of vision, his focus concentrated on his blistered, scratched and grass stained hand.
"No...my forest..."
The hand clamped around nothing, forming a fist. From the end of the cliff top, they waited once more for the pokémon to demolish a piece of the world. Except this time, this life did not deserve to burn away.
"To think..." Lance panted, sinking to the sodden ground, "These pokémon...they had this anger all this time...just stored...and to think that at any time...they could have just done this...at any time..."
"It's not the same." Red mumbled after a long pause, but in far from silence, "They have been possessed by this anger for so long. That anger was never uncontrolled. Now they may destroy a part of what created them, by harming the forest. That action...I am afraid to say...is the same one as the humans made."
Lance stood up and yanked Red's arm, pulling into a teleport. In a single flash of green light the sense of approaching peril ate away at their insides. The tall figures that edged closer and closer to them, the glare of their white eyes caused the pitiful human Elites to shrink backwards.
The Dragon Master looked up into the crowd of what he irrationally feared, the crowd of pokémon that he once fought beside. They halted with an unearthly screech when he stumbled forward, stretching his hand out again.
"They don't understand what they're doing any more...they're like mercenaries, aliens, showing that they think they don't belong to this earth...that they're too good for it..." he hissed to himself.
Another Hyper Beam shot out of nowhere and hurtled towards the ground; there was a ricocheting boom as it was reflected by an enormous shield of some kind of green plasma. The furious power creating the shield flashed like lightning before dieing away again.
"Viridian...her power..."
A breath of wind tousled their hair. Everything had fallen silent for the godlike empathy of the forest, a representative of life, yet a part of the earth itself. She had shown herself for her own protection, therefore showing that her now only child had crossed the boundaries.
Or was it because...
Lance let himself be steered into the trees, his wrist being clutched by the person jogging in front of him.
...we were just meant to see the very end?
They scrambled up onto a grass bank, watching once more that the Dragonairs were moving away. So they were here, not knowing what would happen next, not knowing the next step towards sealing their fates. The last thing they expected to hear was a sound of civilization, the whirring blades of an aircraft moving closer and closer, aiming for them.
It was something that they had denied as a truth, something they had pushed away and pretended hadn't existed. The fact that they were indeed considered to be part of Humanity's treasure, and it was intended for them to be stored away as if they were never a part of the world.
A/N: Fwee. Angstay. Too much? Too little? Do you like? Hate? Are you murderous? Angry? Armed with an M-16 assault rifle? Pissed off? Go ahead, click the button, yo. The review one.
Please tell me if I'm working Angst too hard.
Oh yeh, and as for that first bit, Neochampionshipping is EVIL. That's why Championshipping and Originshipping PWN, and Neochampionshipping sucks. ;P