Roses are red, violets are blue, this chapter is done, please read and review.
Cornova: Can't say I disagree with you on wanting to get the heck out of dodge with the weedle, but Crescent isn't really up for travel, and Scar has his own thing going on. As for figment girl... well, I get the feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of her, to confuse and befuddle us in the future. After re-reading last chapter...yeah, the number of grammatical errors is atrocious. I'll see about fixing that tomorrow, but I have a heck of a lot on my plate today.
Random Omnes: Yeah...the errors are atrocious, I'll edit them later. I'm not really sure why it is Cornova has that fascination with bug types, but I guess that given the sheer number of them with KO'd over the years...well, it's ironic in a sense. Unfortunately, I am a man of SCIENCE, and one of the reasons I've taken so long to release this chapter is because I've been trying to figure out how large bugs could even exist, how it is the entire world doesn't run on a MASSIVE energy deficit, how it is pre-undampening pokemon moves worked...the likes. It gets more confusing the more questions I answer.
"Excuse me sir, could you tell me where your foreman is?"
My voice was as earnest and innocent as I could manage. The man sitting on the ledge overlooking the sea in front of the construction site looked up from his sandwich, unimpressed by the young man that interrupted his lunch "What do you need him for?"
I smiled and stuttered for a moment, as I inwardly scrambled for a suitable lie "I'm here to deliver a message from the client. In addition to the damage from a few days ago, the building's wiring isn't up to regulation. Since the power is out, the city would like to have it fixed while the power is still down." I gestured at the building behind him, in all its archaic greatness.
This got the construction worker's attention "We're construction, not general contracting. They'd have to talk to our contractors about getting an electrician."
I bounced on my toes uncomfortably as the lie became more convoluted, the simple knot became tangled, and I found myself grasping at each end of the string in a desperate attempt to keep it from unraveling "That's why I need to talk to the foreman. As you might imagine, the city is busy trying to keep up with all the displaced people, and with the power out, there's been difficulty with contacting them. They'd like to consult with your foreman on how to proceed."
The construction worker sighed, stuffed the rest of his meal in his mouth and got up. The man swallowed once and cleared his throat "I'll get the foreman and tell him to start heading over the hall, alright?"
Inwardly, I breathed a 4sigh of relief "Thank you."
The man nodded and departed. I shook my leg and waited impatiently, once again trying to puzzle together exactly what to say, so engrossed in thought that I almost missed the giant foreman when he passed. Jolted from thought, I called out "Excuse me sir!"
The man that turned in my direction must have been at least six feet tall, towering over me by at least seven inches. His hair was graying from experience, peppered with black, indicating he was not yet too old to get his hands dirty if it meant getting the job done, and indeed, his hands were dirty. Dust and debris covered him from his helmet to his jeans, so thick in its consistency that his orange vest appeared to be a muddy gray. He looked down at me impatiently, the dust exaggerating his hard and weathered face "You were the kid that the city sent, huh? I don't recognize you."
I did not shrink under his inquisitive stare, but I did not have the courage or the reason to continue the deception "That's because it was a lie, sir. I'm only here on my own behalf."
The man's features hardened from impatient to irritated-bordering on angry "Well, I don't have time for your bullshit. I have a city to fix and deadlines to meet!"
I stood firm as the taller, larger, and irritated man stared me down "I'm looking for work, sir."
The man's expression relaxed, if only slightly, perhaps relieved that the distraction amounted to more than immature mischief, and I was something more serious than the careless punk I appeared to be "Well, what makes you think you'll find it here?"
I gestured down the line of buildings down the block, all with varying levels of damage.
The man sighed "I'm sorry kid, but none of my people have time to show you the ropes, and I don't feel like wrestling with child labor laws just for a pair of untrained hands."
"I'm sixteen."
"No, you're not, and you're not fooling anybody into thinking you are."
"Please sir, I know you're understaffed, and the city is asking the impossible from you. I'm stronger than I look, and even if it's just carrying tools around, that's work, and it's one less job that your employees have to spend time on."
The man sighed, and wiped the dust off his face with his right hand before addressing me "I'm sorry kid, but no means no. Try talking to the restaurant owners, they've been packed since they've dropped the prices to dirt-cheap, the fishermen can always use more hands, and the craftsmen have been working nonstop to get ready for when tourists come back."
"I already asked many of them. The fishers haven't sent out their boats since you got here, and nobody will help me while they still have a neighbor in need."
"None of the locals are that hospitable while their own are on the line, huh… I feel you there." The man sighed again "Fine, but if anyone asks your fifteen, and you're my nephew, Michael. Nobody is going to buy sixteen, but labor laws are looser with family members. You're payed by the job, the wage is piss poor, we stay penned up in the pokemon center at night, and it comes with two square meals a day. Complain twice, and you're out."
I nodded quickly "A job is a job; a wage is a wage."
He gave me a once over: I was very much not in work attire- a white t-shirt a size too small, a pair of khaki shorts a size too big, and socks and sandals. All were donations to the pokemon center, unfortunately I had last pick. The clothing I had arrived in was more or less ruined, and the nurse had discarded them as rags, "Alright, lets find you some better clothes for you, and a hard-hat. I think Andy has a spare pair that will fit you, I'll tell him your dad shipped you out here as punishment. Today's mostly demolition work: we need to knock out and replace the floor, so expect to be hauling around a lot of wooden boards. Got it? Hey, are you paying attention?"
I nodded quickly, catching my mind drifting off, confused by a sudden stab of pain in my side. It would be hard work, but I needed work. Nobody would give a handout to a foreign vagabond, and I was stranded here until this city got it's act together.
I awoke with a start and growled. I did not want these dreams, did not need them filling my head with worthless information.
"But you promised"
It was true. I was naïve and traumatized, and desperate to find something that had meaning in a world that didn't.
"But you promised"
It was silly, stupid. I was offering solace to a dead person who I had never met, promising something that I did not have when I had nothing, to someone that did not want or need anything.
"But you promised"
I did it more for me, to hang on to the idea of humanity, to grieve in the only way I could, for a life I had only a dead girl to remember by.
"But you promised"
I put my head in my hands, cursing myself, and pulling my hair. It was all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.
But I promised.
'But what is a promise worth? They were offered and broken without a second thought, even back when your average joe wasn't either dead or fighting every day to not be dead, so not much. Surely, they were worth even less when survival and honesty were mutually exclusive as often as not. And less still, if one party of the pact was dead.'
But I had nothing else.
"You are troubled"
And like that, I was dragged from my existential crisis. I looked to Scar, who had been staring at me through his black goggles and remembered that I was no longer alone to think and act as I wished without facing judgement "It's nothing."
Scar stared for several moments longer, then shifted his gaze back into the dark without a word.
Deciding I would prefer not to revisit the dreams that had been haunting me, I sat up straight and looked into the fire. It was still dark out, not a star shone in the sky, and the wind was strong- pushing and tugging the fire as it passed.
"Do you think it will rain again?" I asked my only companion in a bid to pass the time.
Scar didn't even look towards me, keeping both eyes on the night "It will not."
I gazed around the clearing uneasily, haunted by the sounds of rustling bushes and branches as they were brushed by the wind, just out of sight. I glanced about the clearing frantically, my unease promoted to anxiety as my eyes fell upon the burnt-out husk that remained of the pidgeotto at the edge of the clearing.
Scar shifted- perhaps noticing my unease- and began rummaging through his bag "I wish to show you something."
I turned my attention towards him, watching as he produced a small plastic mirror. It was a toy really, more like a thing that a small child might use when pretending to be a princess, with a simple yet fanciful handle molded from pink plastic. Scar gently placed the mirror back onto the ground, mumbled something incomprehensible, and brought his fist down onto his reflection, shattering it. Scar then lifted it by the handle and stared at it briefly, then offered it to me "What do you see?"
I stared at my reflection, eyes tracing the dark lines that ran across the mirror "Just my reflection."
"Throw it into the fire and watch."
I did so without question, watching perplexed as the flames rolled over the reflection of the sky.
I almost jumped back in surprise; the image that I saw now was not the reflection I had seen the instant before, and it was a good thing that it was not. The image was bizarre, chaotic, otherworldly. My heart beat against my ribs and my eyes darted about, trying to find sense in any single detail, but there was none to be found.
And suddenly, a stick brushed over the broken mirror, raking along the hot coals, and the mirror once again reflected the night sky. Several seconds later, the many shards of the reflective surface shriveled in on themselves, turning black and emitting a foul odor. I sat there, still staring, still processing all the meaningless chaos I had seen.
"A neat trick, is it not?"
I ripped my eyes off the fire "What was that?"
"A good question. I do not know for certain." Scar moved his stick again, guiding the smoldering mirror out of the fire "The sinnovians, in pre-history, believed that mirrors remember what they reflect, and release them when burned. The Orrean… primitives- my ancestors- believed that primitive humans came to this land through a portal from a world that had suffered great calamity, and that when a mirror is burned, one can see our home. Kantoans, before enlightenment, believed that mirrors comtained demons that fed upon vanity, and they cursed whoever breaks or burns them."
"Is there any reasonable explanation?"
Scar froze for a moment, pondering "An answer for an answer. What is it you saw?"
I organized my thoughts, still trying to make order from the chaos with little success "I think…I saw a castle, and a forest, but it was all wrong. It looked like something broke it into many pieces, hurled them in the air, and then just…stopped them."
Scar didn't seem at all surprised, or even impressed by my explanation. Or perhaps he was better at hiding it- it was difficult to read the expression of someone that wrapped the entirety of his face in bandages, but his body language betrayed nothing. His lips moved, but I was too busy attempting to read his body language to actually catch the words "What was that?"
"And what?"
I sat there for a moment, finding the words to describe the image easier to grasp "I also saw trees, and a house, but it looked as though they were rooted on a mirror, like... symmetrical."
"And what did you feel?"
"I don't know. It was overwhelming, I was afraid, I think, but I don't know why...There was something else." The words were automatic, so quickly I hadn't realized how true it was until after I heard it from my own mouth. It was alien, wrong, confusing, yes, but I should feel uneasy, not the deeply buried anxiety that I felt, the small screaming voice in my gut.
I felt a jolt in my chest, struck by a sudden moment of self-awareness. 'Does that make me a terrible person? That I sit here, days after witnessing two massacres and dismissing them, but feel fear and anxiety over the reflection of a burning mirror? Have three weeks in this world turned me into some sort of unfeeling sociopath? Have I always placed so little value in the lives of others? Had he been equally apathetic before losing his memories?'
I wasn't sure which prospect frightened me more; that I was born a selfish and evil creature, or that in three weeks I had changed from a kind and supportive young man into the person that stepped over corpses with mild disappointment in that camp.
Either way, it didn't feel as though I was frightened enough.
It was a loud pop and the sight of Scar's hands clasped together in front of my face that roused me from my introspection. I hastily filed away the train of thought for, I would have words with myself later.
"Ignorance is bliss, Crescent." Scar's voice lilted a little, the slightest underlying tone of caution and weariness setting the token wisdom apart from the other words he conveyed in his flat, matter-of-fact way "To think is dangerous, be careful not to hurt yourself in your own head."
I ignored the second warning, unsure of whether it was intended to be genuine or insulting.
'As if I needed a reminder that knowledge always comes at a cost.'
"Well, I answered your question, well, questions. Explain what I saw."
Scar nodded in acknowledgement "I cannot speak for what is a 'reasonable explanation', but most believe it to be nothing but a neat trick. It doesn't happen to all mirrors, some theorize that the heat warps the reflective material, and bends the image once while striking the mirror and again while being reflected. The rest is simply how the mind chooses to make sense of the chaos. It might show what you desire, or what you fear, below consciousness."
"So why did you show it to me? You must have gotten that mirror for a better reason than that."
Scar paused for a moment, then shrugged- a motion that looked forced and unnatural on his frame, more like slumping "It is a neat trick, and sometimes the only thing to fear is the minds interpretation of reality. The mirror was of poor quality, I will find another." Silence reigned for several minutes as I pondered what I had been told and Scar stood still as statuary.
"You should sleep." Scar said, again interrupting me from my thoughts "It will be several hours more until sunrise, I would rather you sleep while I am awake for both of us."
It was a polite suggestion, but a compelling one. I was asleep within the minute, my fear of the woods forgotten.
Step, step, step.
It's easy to lose myself in the rhythm of footsteps, at least, when there is nothing else to pay attention to.
Step, step, step.
Crunch.
I look down, finding the heel of my foot wedged into some sort of ceramic sphere. Curious, I withdraw it and gently nudge it with the side of my foot, turning it over.
It is neither ceramic nor spherical, rather, it is a skull, a human one, not small enough to be a child's, but not large enough to be an adult's either.
I shrug, step over the sharp fragments of bone I had split with my clumsy step and continue walking.
Squish.
I look down again, finding an arm underneath my foot. My eyes travel along the length of the arm, finding that it is connected to the body of an old man? From where? Was it the old man at the cabin in the woods? Or was it the old man that was in the farm on the hill, that battle field? By Ho-oh, I had forgotten about them. I examined the body, but rot had already set in, leaving the faces sagging and impossible to identify, even if I could remember what the two had looked like. My face crinkles a little bit in disgust, I scrape my foot on the ground to remove any remains of old dead dude that may have clung to the bottom of my shoe. I continue walking.
Thud.
I frown a bit, annoyed by yet another interruption, this one having solidly bruised my toe. It was that blind girl, Rui, though her eyes were no foggy, but a clear blue, and her face was morphed into an expression of great horror the likes I had never seen.
'Well, that sucks'
I continue walking.
I begin watching where I step, and I step over the next two bodies- I'm not entirely sure I recognize them, perhaps the doctor and a soldier- without a second thought. I continue, onwards.
I stop. Three bodies lie in front of me. One, I am familiar with, but do not know. The other two I know, but I have never seen before.
I choose to leave my confusion behind me, and step over the first body, then the second, and leap over the third, as if I were a child playing some game of hopscotch.
I stumble and fall to the ground in surprise. I push myself up to my hands and knees, but I can rise no further as I see my body.
My left arm is gone, stripped down to its bones. My neck falls, and I look at my abdomen. I hear a deafening clink and watch as a small piece of metal -not much larger than the tip of an eraser- falls out of my stomach and to the ground, followed by a torrent of blood. On the side opposite of my skeletal arm, the flesh suddenly parts, turning purple and my ribs begin to erupt at awkward angles. I open my mouth in horror, and to my surprise, I vomit a clear, cool substance. I wait for it to pass, but ten seconds pass without change, and I cannot breathe.
Terrified now, I use my one arm to push myself up to my feet and stagger forward, stumbling as my back-foot catches on something. I look down in panic, and three sets of hands are grasping my angle, I trace them back to their owners in anger, and deliver a weak but savage kick to the first's face, Lawrence. I deliver two kicks to Jenny, and then three to the dead girl, boo, and spit in her eyes for good measure.
The hands do not release my leg, and I desperately struggle forward regardless, dragging the three bodies behind me. My left eye is suddenly filled with red, and I shake my head in frustration, noticing blood fly free of my forehead, and notice the warm liquid sticking to the back of my head.
I hear a noise, like the buzzing of a thousand insects, and look up, finding a swarm of golbat circling above me. My gait becomes even more desperate, forcing myself forward in sloppy hovels to put distance between the swarm and myself.
I don't look back, but I can hear the buzzing grow louder, and I can begin to pick out the individual wings beating against the air.
Closer.
Closer.
I can feel warm breath race across the back of my neck, and then-
I bolted awake, upright and on my feet before I even realized I was no longer asleep, my head connecting with something thin and heavy with water. I ducked away from the obstacle, scrambling away, only then realizing what I had done.
Scar stared at me, wet and probably less than impressed my tearing down the tarp he had set up to shield us from the light rain that was now beginning to soak the bandages around his face and slowly smother the fire.
I looked sheepishly at the tarp and began to pick it up, only for Scar to grunt and motion for me to remain seated. Grumbling, Scar gathered up the plastic tarp and carefully placed it over four sticks that he had solidly anchored into the Earth. I noticed that the sticks were placed in such a way that one of the coverage was narrower than the other, and the tarp sagged into a funnel, at the end of which a plastic bag collected the run off.
Scar grunted and returned and added a moist log to the diminished fire, and in a moment that terrified me, stuck his unbandaged hand in the coals, stirring them, trying get the fire to take. Scar grumbled curses under his breath, shifting the coals with swift jabs until -almost spontaneously- the log erupted into flames. Satisfied, he moved to the edge of the tarp, resting his hand in the damp Earth.
"Eat."
I snapped back to attention, finding a small pot to my left filled with a murky fluid, small greens and some sort of yellow vegetable floated about the center, and just beneath the surface small chunks of some sort of pale meat. I reached into the pot with both hands and scooped the food out and shoveled it into my mouth, quickly emptying the sizeable pot of its contents. Once the pot was as empty as my stomach was full, I allowed myself to drop the pot.
Then and only then did I allow myself to gag.
The broth tasted like plastic, the vegetables tasted like grass, while the meat tasted… fishy, but not like fish.
"The broth is from the water collected from the… stills. It has dandelion and a caterpie I found while grabbing your belongings."
I would have laughed if my side hadn't hurt so badly, at the irony, as well as the discomfort of having eaten something that I had seen alive, as well as having eaten a bug. "It tasted awful."
Scar only shrugged "You were not complaining when you glutted yourself on it."
"I was starving."
"And you are no longer starving, so it has fulfilled its intended purpose. Dandelions are rich in nutrients, the caterpie has the vital amino acids, and with broth you should be able to digest it, regardless of how empty your stomach was."
I said nothing, simply pushing the pot out from under the tarp so that it could collect water. Neither of us said anything else, allowing the pitter patter of the rain striking the tarp to fill the silence.
By my estimate, about an hour had passed before I found the silence to be unbearable. A full hour of nothing but the sound of the rain, periodically interrupted by Scar pulling the same stunt to keep the fire alive. Apart from his tending to the fire, Scar was completely idle, completely still, eyes probably glazed over behind his dark goggles.
I shuddered as another gust of wind brushed past me, carrying small drops of water in it's wake. I pulled the now-full pot of water back under the tarp, bringing it to my lips and taking a long draught of it before placing it back into the rain. A sudden tingling -like static- in my bladder reminded me of how displeased it was, and that I would have to, at some point soon, dispose of the copious quantities of water I had drunk, but while I was in no rush to go from damp, cold, and miserable under the tarp to soaking wet, cold, and miserable, I was less willing to part with available water after the ordeal I had just emerged from.
I needed a distraction, and I had now an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
"So, you said you would tell me what happened back at the camp." Scar's neck turned slowly until he was facing me. He was silent, if I had to guess I would say he was deciding whether to be annoyed or frustrated by my question. In the end, he must have decided it did not matter.
"I said that it was not a suitable topic for the hearth."
I shrugged, a response already in mind "This suitable weather for the hearth."
Scar gave a brief huff through his nose, and for a moment I found myself comparing him to a tauros, or an ursaring; between his silent mannerisms, large size, and animal-like expressions "Very well, there is not much to tell. Wes, Rui and I were on the same boat from Orre to…what was it named? Ah, Olivine town. The boat's engine broke down, and we were delayed another six hours until nightfall. By chance, we had just gotten off before the shattering, and-"
"The what?"
"The Shattering. It is like…" Scar gestured wildly with his hands for a moment, trying to communicate something I couldn't make sense of "It may be an incomplete…translation? Common doesn't have a proper word for it, it is like… chaos, but not the chaos itself, but the state surrounding the chaos, as opposed to the state preceding it."
My head hurt a bit trying to make sense of it "Isn't that just chaos?"
"What did I just… no, there is a distinction. Your language doesn't have a word for the concept…nor does your culture. I do not think I can explain it to you without it. Suffice to say, it is the best word for… the beginning of the end of the world as we know it. Shattering then."
"So…when all this started."
"In a crude, misunderstood way, yes." Scar's voice sounded almost pained by my explanation "Regardless. We were just on the dock, the boat was still emptying, when all the pokemon began going violent. All but one of mine did so, and I had to disable them, or they would have knocked someone off the dock. There was another, one of Wes's, I believe, a tyranitar that attacked the boat, and… broke a hole in it, that is how it is said, correct?"
"It's 'put a hole in it', like to 'put' a shirt on."
"But to put something is…to add. Can you add what you take away from… never mind." Scar shook his head violently, as if sheer force would derail that train of thought "Well, yes, I disabled it as well, but it was too late, there were already many in the water…I digress, that is unimportant. Rui was…affected, changed by the shattering, and in pain. I sought out an…acquaintance to whom I owe a debt, and we borrowed his home to rest so that she might recover. I left them there that night, as I had something I had to attend to, and departed the city."
Scar seemed to drift off for a moment, then once again tended to the fire before continuing "I found the base on accident, I had stumbled upon it while looking for shelter, and entered out of curiosity. Rui and Wes were also there, I do not know why. Once I had arrived, I was not allowed to leave- this was about a week after, and they had problems with thieves. I had seen other places though, around the mountain, with the golbat, but nobody believed or understood me. Rui could understand though, she is the grand-daughter of an important chieftain, and she convinced Wes, and we began plotting ways to escape the camp, at first by building bombs to blow apart the fence and distract the soldiers, then with…less orthodox methods."
"The ringing." I concluded.
Scar nodded "It is…a special frequency. Sound waves can interact with one another in ways that either amplify or… interfere with one another. Golbat use frequencies of…fifty-thousand hertz for echolocation, while zubat use around sixty-five thousand hertz. We used old… analog sonic equipment to produce sound waves of similar frequency that would interfere with these…like sonic sound proofing. It would blind and drive away the zubat, while golbat would be able to see but incredibly confused, and easy to dispatch. Explosives were running low, and Rui offered her and Wes's help with a… mission if I could somehow help defend the people after we escaped."
"What about the commander?"
"What about him?"
I looked at Scar incredulously "The whole freaky mind screaming thing."
"Ah. I knew he was a psychic, but I could not imagine how strong of one he was. He was ill suited to lead, and his powers were changed by the shattering. He used morphine to keep them under control, but evidently the stress was simply too much, and he had an empath reflux."
"Ah."
"You are disappointed?"
"I guess so. It just felt so significant is all, and I don't understand it. I was hoping you knew a bit more about it, but…I don't really get it myself."
Scar chose not to respond to this, instead piling most of the remaining wood into the fire and briefly tending to it, then standing up, prepared to leave "The weather should abate soon, the fire should last you. I have business I must attend to." And he was gone, off into the rain without another word.
A bit slower, this one, but what can you do? I'm going to level with you, it'll be a while til I update this again. The events of next chapter were supposed to be incorporated into this chapter, and I think I need to add something else in now so I don't mess with the pacing. Additionally, I think I'm going to focus on updating my FE: Beyond Changing Skies fic next, I haven't touched upon it in a while, and I think I have a good idea of what to do with this next chapter. Oh, and it's the end of the semester, so I need to put in the work.
A quick shout out
