Alright... now after that last crazy chapter, might as well make another crazy chapter.

It may seem like I do not have a plan, but I promise I do xD well, some of the time. The plan is to start a plan and then leave it open and wait for the actual writing process to come in and somehow make things even crazier.

Anyways, if you're still reading this story, haha hello! The updates keep being... quite sporadic. But hello I'm back for right now! The other story I was working on made me mad and depressed because I was suffering trying to write it, so back to fun time fanfiction.

Chapter 17: Our Worlds Crumbling

N

There is a tower of the highest length within Plasmic Palace. This tower is my residence, my private chambers. From here I can see the rolling fields and lush canopy of treetops that surround the palace and, as Father told me, hide it from the cruel public view. He has warned me time and time again that passerby must never learn of us and our visionary dreams, not until the moment of retribution. I wonder what would be so strange if someone such as the girl Marlun discovered our hidden abode.

My attention is soon diverted by the fracturing of an entire palace wall. Powdery smoke releases from a gash, spiraling upwards like wayward snow. The only sectioned-away room of Plasmic Palace, the metal holding chamber whose purposes Father has yet to spell out for me, kept a safe distance away from the rest of the buildings.

A chunk of wall has broken off, as if—smoldered. I squint at the wreckage, but I cannot make out any other discerning qualities.

Until the tree to its back bends at an unnatural angle and sidles through the hole.

There is only one person I know who could have done such a thing.

I leap off of my bed and launch through the door, tumbling downstairs until I nigh trip and catch myself, my breaths tight. On my way down the hallway, rushing toward the exit doors, my shoulder clips on another person's arm, and I stumble.

Oval glasses with metallic rims flash above me. I meet eyes with Colress, our scientist of the highest order. For once his gilded eyes have unsettled, as if stirred. Colress, a man of science, a man of logical structure, shaken?

His brow furrows into my direction, and before I can leave he sharply asks, "What are you doing now, child?"

I freeze. I haven't been called a child in some time.

My eyes give me away, unable to leave the tree alone. "She's in there? Why is she in there?"

"Well she's too big for her cage, now isn't she." Colress's chuckle is rusted, sardonic. "Why did you think your father had that testing facility made?"

"I don't know," I murmur, all-too aware of my ignorance. Isn't that what she said to me? I was ignorant?

...is that why I am her problem?

But doesn't she know why we're here?

Colress scoffs, already on his way to some other experiment of his. "You are a fool. It is a good thing I thought ahead." He mutters something like "useless" under his breath, but he's already too far away, his labcoat flapping in the breeze of his breakneck gait.

That's all he's going to tell me, apparently, as he rounds a corner and has disappeared as if a haunted ghost, leaving me to stand dumbly on my lonesome.

I shake myself and move on. There is no time to play mind games with the smartest man of Plasmic Palace. I have a duty I must fulfill.

The palace rounds about in such a way as to lead from rather than to the testing facility, of intents I cannot imagine. I determine the palace desires to lead me on a route much longer than what I would like to take, and so I prop open one of the few windows in the hallway and sidle through it. Unceremoniously I crash into the ground and pick myself back up, racing ahead to the building with the tree poking out of it.

There. A figure clambering up the tree, into the facility—

Wait, that's not her at all. That's a pokemon. A two-legged kitsune with long, red hair and ashen fur, and the glittering quartz eyes that I could not mistake for the world.

Asha, I almost call out, but then I find myself hesitating. The words stick to my throat.

I slide to the ground, my back against the testing facility. Black scorch marks have torn its exterior, breaking into holes like the one that tree had twisted inside of—the tree that my now-zoroark friend had climbed atop and now snuck within. My first question is of course how she even found us here, though she does know the location of the palace. It hides within the very center of Unova—my father would call it "Unova's heart," to be revealed to the people once the public knows of us and rejoices in our actions for their greater good.

No, my question is how she trekked this entire way here. We must have not been as far away as I had thought. That or... it does appear something occurred to her, something memorable enough to cause her evolution.

She has been my only friend for some time now. Any other pokemon I knew, I had lost connection with or they had chosen to step outside the periphery of my life. Just myself and Asha, preparing for the coming day of our retribution.

And Father, of course, though he is no pokemon friend. The thought of him causes me to glance back at the window I had unprofessionally squeezed through, thinking myself some sort of thief, fiend. None of the sort, obviously—Father has eyes all over Plasmic Palace. He knows all. I am not sure how, but I have come to trust in his ceaseless flow of knowledge.

He is the one who told me we must find her. That I need her, if I am to be the ruling force of the Dukedom. He told me, and so it must be true.

I have been staring so hard at the tree that I almost mistake the moving shadows as another facet of its rough exterior. But no, they shudder and move, Asha the zoroark and a pale form tucked against her.

There she is.

I still don't know what to call her. She said she has no true name, and so now I am sort of at a loss for words.

Perhaps I shall ask her, once she and Asha land.

Their movements arc across the sky, and before I can say anything, they land in a copse farther away than I was anticipating. I have to pick myself up and run into their direction. By the time I reach them, I am out of breath. Father did not instruct me in the ways of training my body.

For a long time I had not questioned his motives, but I hear her voice in a sharp pang of alacrity: Why would he keep you soft, N? Why would he want you to stay weak?

It occurs to me again that she is making sides, forcing a war out of a family, and that if I do not side with her I will become her enemy.

That there might be a reason why I would become an enemy. A reason that links with the reason Father kept me soft, did not let me out at night after he saw me play-fighting with the pokemon friends I had discovered.

The reason why Mother was no longer allowed to see me.

My stomach clenches. He told me Mother had gone home, had left the palace, but Asha did not believe him, and I am beginning to wonder why. Instinctively I clutch my only gift from Mother, the glowing bracelet about my wrist, and I try to remind myself what she would do in such a situation as this one.

Then I stride into the trees and call out. "Asha?"

Some sort of commotion ensues from the greenish shadows. Zoroark paws clap around my wrists, and a zoroark rump slams me into the ground, holding me in place.

Her voice, a raspy yip, brushes over my skin. What do you want?

No, I do not think Mother would have aroused such suspicion. It appears I have failed her yet again.

I still see her in my periphery; it's easy to imagine her beguiling amber eyes and gentle warmth while I'm held hostage in a dark forest... not much else to think about. Perhaps Mother is not the right word for her—she was a lucario after all—but that is what I called her when she was not around. She had no name that I know of, but she responded when I called for her, as if somehow she knew what I needed before even I did.

She taught me how to speak with pokemon such as herself, and where I failed, she helped me with her gift of aura.

I wonder how I may have changed, if she had not gone missing from my life.

If only she was here now.

Hello, Asha, I manage. It is me.

Yeah, yeah, sure. Her voice has become a growl. And here's me playing the world's tiniest violin. I asked, what do you want? Do you wanna sabotage Filloma... again? Like didn't you do that enough times for a freaking lifetime? Let the girl live, you idiot!

She is here then, somewhere in the shadows. Listening.

I've never tried to... to sabotage her.

That's because your listening skills are very bad! And you have been sabotaging her this whole stupid time! Rrrgghhh—Asha notably moves her paws as to not crush me with her claws. They must have been unintentionally unsheathed as she seethed in her anger. Now we're stuck here with very few good ideas, while you're over here probably about to add another idiotic mission to your list of idiotic missions!

Asha's never spoken so roughly to me before. I struggle to determine why she is now.

Idiotic, I finally manage, and she freezes her paw before it lashes against my face.

When my body stills, I sense her hot breath pillowing my face, her muscles tensing, her gaze closing in on me, sizing up my limp form, waiting—waiting to carefully construe my next action. She is stronger than I could ever hope to be, stronger and more capable than Father let me ever try to be. And it's so blindingly obvious now that she's evolved, now that it's become abundantly true that I will not undergo such a transformation.

If Filloma is forcing my family to choose sides... it appears Asha has chosen her. My only friend, my oldest companion. She has decided against me.

My stomach, it feels... sick.

My own best friend. What have I done so horribly wrong..?

Her paws returns to my shoulders, pinning me down the moment I struggle around her weight. She's watching my eyes splinter about the treetops, seeking between leaves for a pale face that lives on in my memories and chases me through my dreams. But I do not see her.

She doesn't trust you. Asha senses my sharp exhale. Do you blame her?

I would like to, is my eventual response, but it appears I am unable to. There's a foreign, feral aching in my throat, mangling my thoughts with the distant throbbing of my skull. Where is she?

I sense my strain release the moment I lay eyes upon her. And she knows it too; her shoulders bunch closer to the rest of her lithe, milky figure, and a mess of matted minty hair falls about her face, as if in the attempt of obscuring herself from me.

She's in a tree. I was right. There she is, her legs up against her chest, but now that she recognizes me, the legs fall and swing, and the bough jiggles with the motion of her weight. Though she tries to hide it, the tiniest spark ignites in her gaze, as her feet sway and her dress of veins stretches to cover her modestly. Always modest, uptight, careful, but even now her guarded expression falters when she cannot look away as quickly as she must have wanted to.

Asha lets out a breath. Did you let him see you?

He would have seen me eventually, murmurs Filloma, her fingers drawn tented over her lips. She skids down the edge of the tree's branch, and it lowers with her, bouncing back into place the moment her feet touch ground. No more shoes. Where did her shoes go?

Before I can ask, she responds. Your kind took them. They ruined my clothes, ruined my skin, threatened to wrench me open and ogle all the organs inside of me.

I exhale slowly. Asha weakens her grip, her head faltering between the both of us. My people would never. We adore you.

"And what if they did?" Her voice launches across the forest to me, a laced dagger.

It strikes me and I fumble with her outcry. "We would... we would have a wonderful reason. A reason that would make perfect sense, if only you gave Father the chance to—"

"Cover his ass."

My mouth folds shut. It appears I will not be allowed to finish my sentences today.

Asha lets out an involuntary snicker and slaps a paw over her muzzle.

"If I gave him the chance to cover his fat, lying ass, I would be gifted a wonderful little reason that would tie together the nasty box he has thrown me into once again." She folds her slim arms across her chest. There is pride in her face, awash despite the blunt look in her eye, the gaunt cut at her cheek, the blemishes dragging shadows like bruises through her skin. "He would tell me, Dear Shay, I am helping you—helping us—change the world for the better.

"Stop telling me that. I ceased in believing it long ago."

At some point she had moved closer to me, and now her hair falls over her head, blanketing our faces like a curtain. She speaks over me, her breaths launching into my face, her face inches away, radiating with a heated vengeance.

"N, how? How can you believe in them still?"

"Filloma," I whisper, and she shudders, the hesitation in her form weakening her fury. "You do not see what I see when I look upon my father, my dukedom."

She swallows hard, her cheeks aflame. "What am I—What am I missing that you're so sure exists?" She angrily draws her hair behind her ear. "What am I supposed to see? All I uncover is misuse and torture and horrible, horrible, horrible.." Her lips gloss over the word, atrocities, but she cannot light a voice to it, and so it falls dead to sound.

Yet I still hear it.

Finally I ask, "What did they do to you that they did not show me?"

Her brows slowly raise. This is the first time I have separated the dukedom from myself, and with the distinction in place my lips have gone cold.

"I told you." Her voice sends a low aching in my soul, somewhere intangible yet all-powerful. It dives deep into me like a secret, its little fingers ripping into me and revealing my very core. "I told you what they did to me. They malformed my very appearance, N. I was a pokemon, and now I... and now I..."

"And now..."

Her nose grazes mine. I don't think she meant to—it's the way her head bobbles, as if losing its connection to her neck—but she can't seem to pull herself away. "And now I'm never going to find a home ever again. I can't even convince the boy I supposedly grew up with to help me. He's too—He'd rather... He..."

I realize it's not raining the moment I catch glimpse of her mottled, graying eyes.

"Filloma," I manage, and she sobs. "Filloma, there is something I must tell you."

Asha climbs off of me as I turn and face Filloma. She's shaking, head hidden by her trembling hands. Gently I rest my hands at her shoulders, and she lets me, bends into my warmth. "Filloma." She freezes. "Please open your eyes."

"I don't want to," she mumbles, but for some indiscernible reason she does it anyways, even as the tears fall and she may not even be able to make me out. I remove a hand—my left hand—from her, and I tug the aura bracelet from its nook in my sleeve. Her eyes dazzle with its light, and the storm momentarily calms, a hazy blue.

"My mother gave this to me long ago. I—I called her mother, but she was not a human." Filloma gasps. "She was a lucario. She created this for me when she taught me how to speak to other pokemon. She told me if they see it, they will feel more at ease.

"It may appear decorative, but it is a special bracelet. The color it glows gives away my inner feelings; it is only blue when I tell the truth." I swallow, forcing the sudden tightness down as it rushes to stop my speaking.

Mother's face swims before me, still gentle, placid, her comforting murmur cushioning my ears. I do not know where she is now, whether Father has hidden her away somewhere or if she has left him, but the tugging at my gut ventures me to ask now the questions I had never considered asking him—asking them.

"Filloma... I do not love you."

The bracelet burns. She flinches back at the burst of scarlet, shading her eyes with a hand.

She tries to look back at me, but she knows what my intents have laid out to her.

"I... N, that's... I did not realize you..." The smoldering has cleared; only a pink afterburn remains at her cheeks. "Um, I'm sorry, I don't know what to..."

"No, I didn't expect you to say anything at all." I quash the cheeky grin striving up my lip. "I know you do not see me in a romantic light. I'm not trying to say that I desire you in a... romantic light."

Then while I have her attention, I ask, "You like Keebae, don't you?" and the way it opens up her face—I can't help myself. I look away. I laugh.

She can't even form a response.

"I—I—Uhhh... Wh-Who's Keebae?"

"Goodness gracious, Filloma. I am not a fool. I know as well as you do how you felt about her even when we were little."

"Then... Keebae's..." There it is, the speck of sun in her gaze. She releases a long, shuddery breath. "Keebae's the girl who saved me."

"So it was she who..." A knot tightens in my throat. "No wonder Father banished her. I had been wondering why for all this time when the answer lay plain in front of me."

"B-Banished..!"

Oh, she's trembling again. It's a good thing I am not physically attracted to her or my life would be infinitely more difficult, not even minding the fact that she would never be attracted to me. There goes Asha's barking laugh again—somehow a piece of me eases at the sound of her hearing my thoughts and enjoying my self-destruction.

I take Filloma's hands into my own. She squeezes tight to me. "Yes, banished. I believe he sent her to a region far away from this one. Father told me that she would serve his pen pal."

"Pen pal..?" Filloma's lips purse. "N, I am sorry. But I'm afraid you've gone and lost me. Gh-Ghetsis... has a pen pal?"

"Do you not remember Cyrus? He was some few years older than us." She's shaking her head. "No? Oh—It's because you were..." My gut pinches. "You were still a pokemon when Father took me to meet him. Colress had been tasked with searching you out while Father spoke with Cyrus and introduced me to him. He stayed with us for some time, but perhaps this was during your, ah, transformation.

"He learned a great deal from Father and went on to his own home. He said he had some unfinished business. I am not sure what he meant by that."

Filloma's brow furrows. "What did he learn from... Father?"

I struggle to look back upon it. "I was there for a number of their sessions. They spoke a great deal about mythical pokemon such as the family you are from, as well as a few rumored others who supposedly control the very axis of our world. Father has always been interested in harnessing that power and breaking humanity's chains to these overlords. He has wondered for so long if people and pokemon would be happier without them."

She's losing me again. Her eyes have smoldered. "So... So you're saying that Ghetsis had another 'child' something like us, and that that 'child' has fully grown and is off in another region doing who even knows what?

She stumbles. "And Keebae was with him last..." The storm is brewing, and lightning flashes through her gaze.

I tighten my grip on her.

She refocuses to me.

My heart—it's pounding. Has she ever paid attention to me without my inquiry?

"But can you not see, Filloma? The reason Father wishes to find you is to bolster the hearts of people, to convince them that humans and pokemon do not need to chain themselves to one another. He wishes to break the bond of pokemon as slaves to human—but that is not at all where his dreams end. He gazes above us and sees the creatures that bond humans as slaves to them... and he desires to end their control. The challenges he places upon you, the showing you to people—he wishes to make you strong enough to be able to take on our overlords. The Plasma Dukedom plans to come out of the shadows and save all of humanity as well as each and every pokemon's soul.

"How," I utter, my voice a feathery whisper, "how could that be seen as atrocious?"

Her face—it freezes.

Her eyes dart once to my bracelet. They squeeze shut at the sight of cerulean.

"This is too much," she manages, sagging into me. "Please tell me this is all a terrible dream."

"No," I murmur, folding her into my arms. Her fingers tighten at my chest, struggling for purchase. "It is not a dream. He is beginning with the extinction of the dragon rulers Reshiram and Zekrom. Once he deems you powerful enough—now that you have returned and there is no need for the sages to step in—they will be next."

"I... N, I... I-I-I don't know if I completely understand..."

"That's okay." The frigid touch to her skin is melting. "I... I am beginning to understand how you could have seen Father's uses as lethal, harmful, and I cannot bring myself to wish you to go back to him. If... you are interested... we could seek out the dragons for ourselves."

There—Her breaths hitch. "How did you know that's what I was thinking?"

"I'm getting better at reading you."

She giggles. "Is that triumph in your tone?"

"P-Perhaps."

Goodness, I've had a lot of trouble with this. Even before we were reunited, I couldn't begin to comprehend why she would leave Father and his dream of true unity.

It's so simple, so easy, so—right in front of me. Of course she was afraid. Father didn't tell her anything.

Or perhaps there's another reason she hesitates, something that neither of us can even begin to understand.

Bro this got so meta. I did not see this coming and YET here we are.

Bro...