Chapter Twenty-Eight:
Out in the Open
Disclaimer: I do not own the series Pokémon. Like, at all. It and all its respectable characters are © to Game Freak and Satoshi Tajiri. However, all writing contents and semi-plots here are © to me; unless it is stated otherwise. All shows/ books/ video games/ songs that are mentioned in this chapter are all © to their respective owners, I do not own them.
Notes: I meant to post this sooner, but I got distracted by the entire month of Halloween. And horror movies. And Halloween. Did I mention Halloween?
Current Team: Keno the Marshtomp, Sela the Poochyena, Ambrose the Kirlia, Faye the Taillow, Breela the Breloom, Luna the Skitty
Badges Won: Stone Badge, Knuckle Badge
Searching high, searching low
We don't know yet where to go, but our faces are pointing to the target
No matter what we left behind
We'll keep moving 'til we find another place without a name and not a sound
Let's get lost in the open
Just to find our lost peace of mind
Let's go out and find a haven in the wild to claim our peace of mind
Out in the open
— "Out in the Open" by Puggy
Shay collapsed onto the ground, right atop a plush patch of sweet-smelling grass and clovers and wildflowers. If only she could smell the flowers, too.
Her lungs were on fire, while her heart kept thudding within her ribcage like cannon fire. Her legs were nothing more than lead weights that throbbed and twinged with stabbing needles as she lay there, trying to catch her breath. The only thing that didn't hurt quite as much as it used to, thankfully, was her arm. It was, to a certain extent, numb.
"Oh, god I hate you all. Why would you make me do this? Kill me now."
Hot and heavy breath poured over her, while a glob of wet smacked against her cheek. Shay shuddered and immediately swiped it away with a noise of disgust. Her eyes flew open, settling to glare on Sela's image hovering over her.
"UGH! Seriously?!"
"Get up, you lazy bag of bones," she snapped back, muzzle crinkling into an annoyed snarl.
Shay whined back, flinging her partially healed arm over her face to cover her eyes.
"I am so not in shape for a three-mile run."
"Funny. You kept bragging about how fit you felt not too long ago."
"For hikes. Hikes and runs are entirely separate entities, and you know it."
"It's using your legs all the same. Let's go, we still have to make it back home."
'Home' was a funny way of describing the room back at the Center—but it was the closest descriptor they had for it so far. It's been that way for nearly a month.
Shay and her team remained rooted in Mauville for such a time compared to their previous stints due to her injury. Likewise, Shay wasn't the only one to have remained in place. Brendan had been staying at the Center as well while his leg healed up. Roughly around the same time he gave up the crutch, Shay had given up the sling.
The stitches had since begun dissolving in Shay's arm, leaving deep divots in her arm and shoulder as flesh, tendon, and muscle began to knit themselves back together. It still ached, but it was growing more functional by the day.
Which was where it left Shay currently, lying in a patch of wild grass, dressed in athletic wear, sweat covering her from head to toe while Sela glowered down at her apparent laziness.
"Whose idea was it to make me start running again?"
"Everyone's, including your own. We need you in shape as much as you need us in top form. Your words," Sela remarked, her voice tinged with smugness. Shay groaned in return, reluctantly pushing herself upright. She gathered herself until she was back on her feet. The camelbak—a hydration pack not unlike her sling pack—sloshed at her backside as she stood. Slowly, Shay began jogging in place, psyching herself up for the run back to Mauville. She took a long sip from the rubber straw along her left shoulder before taking off at a steady pace once more.
The roads leading to and from Mauville were gorgeous in their own respective rights. The hiking roads to the north offered harder terrain, littered with a mountainous topography that rose on a steady incline the farther north she traveled. To the west, there were gentler slopes that were more forgiving, with forested hillocks, grassy clearings and knolls littered with wildflowers, scrub brush, and various blooming berry bushes. The east was broad in its terrain of sandy alcoves and beach fronts that butted up against thick forests and a river delta that flowed into the sea. The convergence of fresh and saltwater was adjoined by the cornucopia of reedy marshes and coastal grasslands.
Shay's route today had led her westward, inching ever closer toward Verdanturf Town.
The painful twinges in Shay's thighs had lessened during her return jog back toward Mauville City. Sela watched from the corner of her eye as she kept pace with her trainer.
It was a funny thing. Shay used to enjoy running. On her high school campus, she had achieved a strange sort of status as the "Running Girl". She even had several random students ask to take a picture with her over the course of time there, with all the enthusiastic thrall one would possess when begging a celebrity for an autograph. Even stranger, Shay had never joined any athletic club or team of any sort during her formative school years. She had simply just liked running in earnest.
And then the military had come along.
It had torn up what little joy she came from the simplistic act—and that wasn't even mentioning the torn-up cartilage she had destroyed from forced hikes and miles-long running stints. Keeping in shape had grown difficult after her several surgeries in an attempt to correct such physical indignities. It has, and still remained, a disappointing embarrassment that she was no longer in the shape she wanted or had once believed herself to be in. It was doubly embarrassing when she had junior Marines complain that it was "unmotivating" to have an NCO that was seemingly out of shape and incapable of even keeping up in a simple company run.
Ugh, enough with the pathetic pity-party, Shay thought to herself kept her pace slow and deliberate. Her left hip and lower back throbbed in protest, but Shay did her damnedest to ignore it all. Just as Sela was eying Shay, she was doing the same back at Sela.
She was no longer the short-limbed Poochyena that Shay had caught in the forested pathway between Littleroot and Oldale. Her legs have lengthened out to match the increased body mass and weight she'd gained since joining the team. She still had some awkward lankiness, true, but she was growing into her evolution-readying body. The horned nubs atop her head were also more prominent and yet not quite fully-form—just like the rest of Sela's body. She was very nearly level with Shay's hips with just how much she's grown.
Sela kept close, practically bouncing against Shay as they drew closer in sight of Mauville. Occasionally, Shay would reach out, hand clamping atop Sela's head and dug her fingers into the Poochyena's fur, massaging away. She focused more on the way Sela's fur was both soft and rough all at once, how it dragged beneath the texture of her skin.
"She's so close to becoming a Mightyena! I bet you're pretty proud of how far you and your team has come!"
Brendan's voice echoed in her head. He wasn't wrong, not in the slightest. It was one thing to get a dosage of happy chemicals from her brain when a game went her way. But when life was working the way that she wanted it to? That was a high she certainly had no protests in riding on for quite some time.
The entire layout of Mauville City reminded Shay of the Northridge Mall back in the San Fernando Valley. It was an entire indoor mall, and yet it was also a city with apartments; a major hospital; small specialty health clinics for both people and pokémon alike; a community center; a pokémon adoption center; a small auto mechanic shop for the citizens who owned vehicles; daycare centers for children and pokémon; grocery stores; at least two movie theaters; one major bookstore; beauty and nail salons; maintenance and repair shops for various electronics and appliances…
The list was practically endless. Food courts, clothing and toy stores, candy and vitamin stores, jewelry stores; even a community garden was available…
Yep. It reminded of Shay quite a bit of the stores she used to pass by with her mother as a child. And Mauville City was so much more and had plenty more to offer. It was impressive for a mostly indoor cityscape.
After her morning run, Shay felt strangely energized to keep moving. After rallying her team, they left the Center and dove into the innards of Mauville.
Bright indoor lighting, snappy window-dressing, alluring posters offering deals and tempting sales—it was quite a lot to take in.
I haven't really been in a mall in…fuck. Ten years.
She recalled the mall in Jacksonville over in North Carolina. It had been right around the time she had been in school for her military job; ironically right around the time James Cameron's Avatar had come out. It was the last mall she had ever caught sight of until now.
The sight of the shops was always more overwhelming than she liked to admit. So many people crammed into one space, all those voices climbing to a crescendo. It was doubly so with the voices of pokémon joining the symphony.
One of the first safeguards she had bought was a pair of wireless earbuds and a music device not dissimilar to an iPod. Norman had forwarded Shay's external hard drive to her, and after loading up all her music, she felt less overwhelmed focusing on just the one song at a time.
A broad hand gently clasped onto her arm. It was no longer a startling effect to her. Keno was always gentle in his approach. She paused her music and looked to him.
"Something catch your eye?"
He offered her a slight smile, tiger-orange eyes glittering expectantly as he motioned to a storefront.
Booster Effects.
She squinted at the posters plastered on the glass walls.
'Booster items to give your team that special edge in battle!'
Shay took notice of the expectant looks on the rest of the team sans Ambrose, who also appeared enamored by the store. It wasn't just the words that caught the eye. It was the pictures as well.
She motioned to Keno and the others with flourish. "Lead the way. It ain't just me out here, looking at things!"
It didn't take long for each team member to rush toward whatever drew their attention. As soon as they stepped through the threshold, they gravitated whatever they felt drawn to.
By the end of it, Shay had a handful of items for everyone:
A Miracle Seed for Breela; Black Glasses for Sela; Mystic Water for Keno; Silk Scarf for Luna; Sharp Beak for Faye; a Twisted Spoon for Ambrose.
After purchasing, Shay took the time to help everyone with their chosen items. She adjusted the Silk Scarf and Mystic Water for Luna and Keno around their necks comfortably. She held the Miracle Seed in place at the front of Breela's mushroom brim until Breela had directed growth over the object to keep it in place. Shay carefully molded the Sharp Beak over Faye's until it remained fitted. She fitted a pair of straps to Sela's Black Glasses so that they'd remain in place. Even Ambrose had his Twisted Spoon fitted with a leather cord so he could wear it around his neck.
Shay smiled softly as she finished her work, looking over her team and their new accessories. It made the pride in her chest grow at seeing how happy everyone on the team appeared.
It threw her when they all seemed to turn to her almost at once, a message glittering in their eyes as they assessed her in return.
'Your turn,' Ambrose's voice whispered with a familiar itch-shiver-scratch skittering over her brain. There was an inspirit to his tone, one that Shay found difficult to repel.
Keno stepped forth, broad hand grasping onto her smaller on, his grin encouraging.
"Let's all spoil ourselves today, huh?"
She swiped her hands over her shirt, trying to smooth out invisible wrinkles and clean herself of invisible dust. Shay twisted and her reflection mimicked her. Her entire outfit was meant to be orthopedic in nature. The faux, almost steampunk-esque, corset top supported her lower back, while her hiking pants gave cushioned support for her sciatic and hips all at once.
The woman who was attending Shay gushed over her as she exited the changing room stall.
"Oh, definitely you! So chic! Oh—oh! Try this on, both of these now. It'll bring the whole outfit together."
A bandolier was shoved into her arms, alongside a burgundy lump of cloth. Before she knew it, she was being shoved back into the stall. She heard a mix of snickers and noises of concern from her team. In less than a minute, Shay was garbed in the bandolier and what she now came to realize was a short cloak with a hood.
The previous sounds from her team turned to approval as she stepped out, flicking back the hood of the cloak. Divots in the bandolier were obviously meant for pokéballs and the broach that held the cloak together was flat and devoid of any sigil. Shay ran her fingers over the glossy surface.
"There's a shop just around the corner that can press any symbol you want into that, if you'd like," chirped the helpful store clerk, smiling at her. "They have a number of designs ready to go, or you can have a custom made one."
It didn't take much longer for Shay to settle on the outfit and to purchase it. Her old clothing was thrown into bag while she strolled out in her new duds. Shortly after, they found the store that could impress a sigil into the plain broach. It took her a little longer to decide on the design she wanted.
Ambrose was the first to catch on to her train of thoughts, which didn't surprise her in the least. Shay lingered on her namesake—the one she had chosen for herself for this world.
I know I'm not an actual Assassin…but I owe them for the name. And of anyone, I would rather be on their team than the Templars.
Ambrose helped revitalizing the design for her and she drew up it up on a piece of paper for the artist at the shop.
When she stepped out of the shop later on, she had the Assassin's Creed sigil imbedded in the metal on her chest.
Further along, right before she called it quits for the day, she slipped into a tattoo and piercing parlour. She scheduled a tattoo appointment, and got her ears pierced in several places. A Cacnea's swiftness managed the job quite well, while their trainer parted ways with Shay, a bottle of disinfectant passed into Shay's hands after she paid her dues.
Keno laid a hand gently on Shay's arm as they all left the parlour, gazing at her expectantly. "Do you feel better?"
Shay found herself beaming back at not only him, but the rest of her team.
"A lot, thank you. And how do you guys feel?"
There were murmurs of positivity from each of them. Little compliments of their new accessories, the enjoyment in stretching their legs, of the lovely little meals they got from the food court…
Pride and satisfaction bloomed bright and hot inside Shay's chest as they made their way back to the Center. They met up with Brendan in the cafeteria. He whistled long and low at all of their new accessories and outfits. Brendan poked at Shay's broach with an interested sheen in his eyes.
"Something from…your world, I presume?"
Shay's lips twitched in response as she ducked her gaze.
"Something like that."
"What's it from?"
She hummed back at Brendan's inquiry.
"It's…from a video game."
His eyes went a bit wide at that, but the interest didn't abate in the least.
"Didn't see you for a video gamer! I'm surprised."
Shay replied with a soft laugh as she bided her time with a few bites of food, a sip of coffee.
"This sigil is from a video game, where I'm from. It's the sigil of an Assassin. They fight Templars. The whole premise of the game banks on historical figures and timelines from my world. It's…a lot more complicated as each game comes along, but…the gist is the Assassins are generally the good guys, and the Templars not so much."
Shay ran her hands over the sigil with her fingertips, tracing over the familiar contours.
"Tell me more," Brendan insisted, a grin tugging at his lips. "Please."
Shay hesitated, taken aback. He hadn't even batted an eye at the idea of Assassins. He didn't question Templars. There was no prying into the history of her world, even. He merely inquired to know more of the game.
Was it even allowed, though? Was her revealing more of her world and any further aspects beyond the vague descriptor acceptable?
Shay was slow in revealing each layer of the entire game's premise. She got midway through the second game before either of them realized how late it had grown.
"So, these games…they parallel your world's history?" Brendan inquired. Shay nodded.
"The characters are fabricated, but the events were real enough. The individuals beyond the video game main characters were quite real. They ushered in artistry and inventions, advancement in human history that expands previous understandings of human knowledge. I…can't even begin to explain them all in detail."
The hours whittled away as she delved into the game series, excitement flurrying within her the longer she went on. Brendan remained enamoured as she continued weaving the tale between Assassin and Templar.
It reignited a spark within her she wasn't ready to let go to waste.
Not again.
If the Assassins could keep their fight going on for centuries—if the Marines could keep alive their desire to fight, well…
Shay wasn't one to break from tradition. Not here, not now.
And she knew her team wouldn't resist the call to arms, either. Not when they were so damned close like they were now. They were all out in the open by this point in time.
The League knew by now that Shay was gunning for them, and the Gym Leaders were the first to know this already. She wasn't one to pretend otherwise.
She was aiming for Wattson now, and she was slowly hyping up for that.
Camelbak—A hydration backpack that can hold a certain amount of liquid (primarily water, but to each their own). It can come with zippered compartments for minimalist items you wish to bring while biking, hiking, running, etc. In this instance, it's available for both commercial and military use.
