The Guardian

by Stjernefald

Ash Ketchum learned from an early age that the world was a place devoid of hope. Armed with an unquenchable thirst for vengeance and with an unholy power at his fingertips, Ash must fight a mad force of nature intent upon destruction, whilst trying to cling onto any shred of sanity within himself. But Dark forces lurk unseen in the shadows of the world, and the Crimson King rises.

13. The Apathy of God

Disclaimer: I don't own this shit, which has been established a long time ago, I think.

Still. One can dream, right?

---

The Apathy of God

I left his office on a high cloud of guilt and rapture.

Oh yeah!

Fucking addiction, man! Come on!

Hellfire coursed through my veins like a drug belonging to the aspirations of my olden days.

Ya feelin' it, motherfucker?

I should be better by now, dammit! This was what I'd succumbed to, eh? This was what had become of the grand potential of Ash Ketchum. Fuck me sideways! I was a disappointment. Such a damn disappointment… Couldn't even play-grasps for power without getting a fucking hard-on.

And yes, good sir, I said that aloud.

The President was in the palm of my hand. Sure as all Hell. But only so much when it came rightly down to it. Really, really down to it. Down to the broken fabric of such deals, written on unseen, imaginary papers, held together by the good intentions of our hearts - it was always gonna be a shady, shitty deal. He could break the deal just as quickly as I could break him. Quicker even, perhaps, as he didn't have the same moral authority as I - a penchant for doing the right fucking thing in a world where that wasn't really appreciated. Not anymore, at least.

Well, that's me. Just a stand up kind of guy doing the right thing where others hesitate.

I am doing the right thing. The necessary thing.

I didn't trust that slimy bugger one fucking bit, though. He was too much like a politician and with the goddamn silver tongue of a fucking politician. Something like trust - so hard to give and so honest to hold - well, it could never be shared amongst us.

Yeah, sounds about right.

Never trust a politician, Drew. Their words are but a double-edged sword. Filling you with hopes and dreams on the one end and stabbing you in the heart with the other end, when you're not looking. When you are not expecting it. When ya really feelin' it, motherfucker…

I hadn't expected much, though, if I was being completely honest with myself, which I seldom am. I had gotten what I came for, more than I'd hoped for – and less than I truly needed in order to survive. No matter. Yeah – no-fucking-matter. I'd have to make due. The real danger, however, I realized as I stepped onto the rooftop again, was that I couldn't trust myself in situations like these. Not anymore.

The fucking addict showed its face in the midst of chaos every time. At times where I needed to keep my cool, I was close to burst instead. When I was supposed to be the suave, experienced bastard, I came in my pants prematurely like the overeager virgin. More so now and onwards, it seemed. I almost lost control of myself back there, you see, in his office. Almost lost that carefully worn mask of indifference that I put on every day. I was one step away from losing it all the time. I was one step away from losing my temper, losing my sanity, losing my fuckin' religion. And with a propensity for excessive violence and a goddamn God complex rippling just beneath the surface of my skin, I didn't have the luxury of losing anything these days.

Fucking Hell…

Propensity… Goddamn vocabulary. Who the hell uses that word these days, beyond the snobs of Unova, that is? Me, myself and I.

Allegedly.

Oh, God, do you hear my fuckin' sighs and do you bear witness to my goddamn aches?

But it was truly an addiction, Drew. I was a junkie. A junkie of ecstasy, of vertigo-induced foolishness. I needed the blood-pounding thrill of the chase. I craved the feeling of power, of being the one in charge. I needed to feel the use of the vast potential at my disposal in order to feel even a pale semblance of ordinary. Wretched creature that I am, I need to be…

I don't know…

Just pride fucking with my stride… that's all it is. That invisible bone that keeps the neck stiff and the heart unreceptive to defeat.

You are the Demon on the side of the Angels, Ketchum, soft voices intoned with scornful whispers, plunging me to damnation. The voices were inside my head - only inside my head - but they were not of my own creation. Or perhaps they were. Yes, they bloody were – of a sort. The power the mind holds over us, indeed. Revel in the power of the Suit whilst it is still under your command, for one day it will be reclaimed!

"Get out of my fucking head, Aaron!" I snarled, voice paper-thin, yet it carried a hard, almost human edge to it. "Let me wallow away in self-pity. Even if only for a moment longer. To be alone in my misery."

Talking to yourself, Ash. Talk, talk, talking to yourself. First sign of madness.

"Shut up, Aaron!" I said without any real heat. Like a man would talk to his overly eager dog. "I am not in the right state of mind for this bullshit."

No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness. There was an almost wonderingly note within the voice, like it was voicing its own wonderment as it came to it.

Think back, though, and take note of the emphasis on the words 'almost human', Drew. I spoke them only a moment ago, remember? Take note and realize that it's not a good thing in my case. Not even remotely. You see, humans – as you must have realized by now, and if you haven't you will – are the most hideous, most savage beings created, nurtured and led astray by the will of the Creator. Or whatever make-believe that conforms oh-so neatly to your sense of the world. We are set apart from the animals we fought with for supremacy in the wars of yesteryear – and in the wars before the times of yesteryear – we are set apart from the Pokémon only in our ability to remember and revel in the wickedness of our sins.

Pokémon hunt in order to survive, to thrive in a world of pain. Man, however, does so for sport, because it is that fucking funny to kill, Drew, to be in charge. To be the one with all the right answers and all the right moves. To be… Power.

If I was close to human, then it wasn't speaking wonders of my character. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows in the horizon. It wasn't all…

Oh, you get the fucking point, right? No? Ah hell… I know you're a psychiatrist. It is your job to dwell deep within the darkest remnants of my mind and uncover the truth about my madness, yes? The origins, I suppose, yes? Be careful, Drew; be very wary of what you wish to achieve in life, for you just might make it all the way - and then you'd realize the simple truth of life.

It is all a great lie. It is all something someone made up in order to get through the fucking day without decapitating himself. All these rules that you cage yourself to... lies! Rules meant to deprive you of a singular ordinary thought, to anchor you to some certainty that at the end of the day, we are each somebody. Somebody better than what the whispers of our darkest corners would have us believe. These rules are meant to keep us from doing terrible things, to act on our instincts… from giving in to our most secret desires.

Necessary things.

The truth is… the truth is I have no fucking clue. About anything. Or anyone. Not anymore. I grope in the dark. Fearful. Scared fuckin' shitless. With eyes wide-shut. And you are just the same. Just the same… Walking round and round in your miserable little lives with no clue, racing towards the same fucking red light, with no real desire to wake up, to realize... in your bones... that you are nothing, and you are afraid.

You are afraid… As am I.

Only difference between me and the rest of you is I'm not pretending otherwise. I bear witness. I see the Darkness, Drew...

And I welcome it.

I welcome it. I really do.

I cannot get out of your head, Aaron spoke at last, for I am your head. The soft, whispered voices had dispersed, coming - quite like echoes - from everywhere in my head. Uncannily so. Ash Ketchum - you stole what belonged to me. To me! ME! ME!

I am not making sense to you, am I? Or perhaps I am making too much sense? A dangerous kind of sense. Oh, Drew, do not mind the voices right now. They only illustrate the illusory state of my sanity. Understand what I am trying to say, understand what I am not saying. Let go of your notions and listen to my narrative. Let me absolve you from your dread and doubt. Let me give you a catharsis in which you can place your hope.

I'm here to fuckin' convert you. All of you, motherfuckers.

I am human.

I despise humans, Drew. Their dark, whimsical nature sickens me. Their propensity for hypocrisy, carelessness and greed mirrors the deeper instincts within my own being. And I hate that.

I hate 'em, because they reveal the monster beneath my consciousness. The monster that hides in the subconscious level in all of us. Including - or perhaps especially - in me.

What do you get out of all of that? Give it to me rough, please?

HAHA! That I am insane? Drew, if that's really all you found out these last couple of hours, then, brother, you better pack your bags and get the fuck outta here. Even the fucking readers of the transcript for this conversation will know that madness has laid claim to my mind a long time ago.

You are not paying attention, Drew. You really ought to start fuckin' doing that.

"You cannot take away my mind," I said, a soft, edgy smile etching into my face beneath my helmet. The smile would have annihilated any hope of truly, utterly reconciling with my friends had they laid eyes upon it, because it contained something of an appalling nature. Something mere words couldn't describe. The glint in my eye would have told them that nobody is irreplaceable and I would sacrifice 'em all if necessary. And to humans, there is no harsher truth. "I grow stronger every day," I continued. "Can't you feel it? You are fading, motherfucker. I am rising."

And then the voice stopped. And I was left wondering if I was merely talking to myself.

Stranger things had happened.

And you are still not paying attention, Drew. Get your mind out of the gutter. I am not talking about her right now.

You know what I mean.

I am human, Drew. I am. And I despise 'em.

Don't ask me to come out and just say it outright. Why? Because where would the fun be in that?

I am human, Drew; and I despise humans, for I am human… Listen to my narrative, motherfucker! Listen and learn!

Oh, fucking kill me already. I am trying to tell you something here. The truth about my vendetta. The reason for it all. Why I did it in the first place. Or – more accurately – why I am still doing it.

Why I am still racing towards the red light. With the rest of you.

---

Dreams. If I asked you what dreams are, you'd probably say something about the reality of our subconscious, say that it is a product of our fears, our imaginations, our hopes and aspirations, our intake of the days of our past. A narrative of our state of mind. You'd go about explaining it in a known and confirmed manner, without the illusory choice of creative thinking. You'd dwell into the cognitive aspect of narrative and the subconscious' power over the mind of men.

Yeah. I read books, too.

No mere schoolbook, boy, will ever explain my mind. Will ever make you able to understand me.

My dreams were all that and more. Far, far more. Explainable only to a certain point. They are explainable only in the amount of treacherous certainty you can project from your fallacy.

To me dreams have always been associated with a sense of déjà vu. Not a sense of entitlement - that it was meant to be, that I was meant to be there - or a sense of being something. No. No, no, no. It's like I am sucked out of my own body, adrift in the nothingness, and then dissolved into the same nightmare over and over again. Like I had done it all before, like I had seen it all before.

Lucid dreaming, except… I wasn't ever really in control of things. I couldn't awake.

And then, from the gutter of fear, the nightmares will take shape.

This dream - and I know for a fact it is a dream - is different, however. The smell of it, the feel of it, the sense of it is all new. All wrong.

My nightmares have a very specific purpose. They are there to haunt me. To break or strengthen my resolve, to forge my will in flames and suffering. And they are never associable to something in my past. Not specifically, at least. Just a sensory feeling of the past. A sense of which I just couldn't let go of. This dream - oh man, this dream is just... more than that.

The world was on fire.

Hellfire scorched the skyline of the city, the flames licking at the edges of the skyscrapers, reaching for the sky like a toddler would reach for his father.

And then try and wring his fuckin' neck. That kind of toddler, Drew.

In a mad world, only the mad are sane.

Chaos. Everything was on fire and everything was moving out of place. Ripples of vast heat hauled away the mountains of man without difficulty. There was no man or woman, however, upon the godforsaken streets of this city of sins. No life. Only death.

I wasn't afraid. I was wearing my suit. There was no reason to feel fear, for I was Red - redder than the crimson of blood and the haze of flames. And stronger than all of it.

The tarmac creaked beneath my feet as I walked down the street, strolled like the world wasn't coming undone around me. It gave way, though, fell apart at the seams, man, and my foot became submerged in molten, almost liquefied heat.

I sighed, bothered by the heat like a troublesome fly would bother an ordinary man. And then I lifted my foot up, shaking off the tarmac residual.

And then there he was. The monster at the end of the dream. A man stood amongst the wreckage, eyeing it all with the care of a free man at peace with the world around him. He was the only man in the City of Flames. Materialized out of thin air. Like he popped from a Poké Ball. Though I could only see his silhouette, his sudden appearance seemed highly improbable.

Oh well, I'm not creating this, my mind is. There is a fine difference between that, Drew. Isn't there? The power of the mind, you know…

The man smiled. The smile of a cat who's about to skin you alive with its massive, unseen teethes. He waved me onwards and I wavered in my steadfast dedication to justice and eternal defiance. Should I follow? Every bone in my body wanted to defy the man and run the other way. But that wouldn't really be me, would it? Before I got to decide, however, he had turned and immersed himself in shrouding shadows. He walked towards a bench, which had somehow survived the blazes of fire and sat down, waiting for me. I ignored him for now, however, and looked out over the city, trying to identify it. Trying to identify myself within the city.

Why would I be here of all places? Why would my mind, my dreams, take me to this place?

I couldn't identify myself within it, couldn't find the cause for my nightmare. It might have been a city of my imagination; it might have been a city of my memory. I wouldn't know, the fire had reshaped it and made it unrecognizable to me.

As if to prove my point, through a haze of unimaginable heat, I heard rather than saw a skyscraper of steel groan as it bent in the flames and sort of shuffled along on the last vestiges of its life, before carving in half and tumbling down. I braced myself for the inevitable collision of steel and earth, expecting the bones of the world to rattle and its heart to moan in agony as it shivered and split apart...

Nothing came. Blinding fast, the building of steel fell to the ground and then disappeared in the flames, leaving no trace of it. Like a black hole had swooped in and swallowed it whole. Unseen and unbound.

Unfound.

It wasn't strange. It was just a dream, after all. I had to remind myself of that. I wouldn't dare to admit it, but it was fucking eerie, this was.

You won't tell anybody, will you?

I turned to the man again, noting the calm of his nature, benign and comfortable on his bench. Here's another secret: I was fucking scared of that man, too. Silhouettes cloaked his form, masking his face in shadows, which flickered with a life of their own in the light of the fire. His body was thin, clothes dark and tight in all the right places. His peaceful nature was putting me on fuckin' edge.

I swallowed, a lump of fear caught in my throat. Fuck, I was Red; I was the indestructible motherfucker that frightened the world. I didn't do fear. Not anymore. Not after Riley had taught me to master my senses and use my power to lay waste to civilizations.

Why did this stranger unnerve me so goddamn much? I had faced down worse. And why did I fear the fire when I knew it couldn't touch me?

Why did I walk towards him, when I felt, within in my heart, that he was capable of ending me. Always racing towards the red light of my life.

Mayhap, on a certain level, I craved it. The end.

I sat down on the bench, looking straight ahead like the man beside me was but mere air.

A soft chuckle was exhaled from between tightly closed lips, mocking me with my fear. The man turned on his ass, towards me, throwing his arm over the back of the bench. His leg brushed up against mine, and I shivered with dread despite my best intentions.

Fucking homophobic!

Yeah, guilty as charge.

"Ash Ketchum - do not be afraid," he said, his voice soft and rich, almost drawling with sympathy. His hand brushed against the side of my helmet… only for me to realize that my suit of armor had somehow obliterated in the light of the fire. Somehow, this man had stripped me bare. "I am not here to hurt you."

I didn't move. I couldn't. His hand brushed against my cheek, and I wanted - craved - nothing more than to snap the fucking arm off the fucker. But I was immobilized, frozen stuck in a horror-induced stupor. And I realized, though I didn't know if my discovery made it worse or better, that the touch of the man was not that of a lover, but of a father. It was love, but a different kind. A love I had never experienced.

"You – you here to kill me?" I asked, looking anywhere but at him. I hated myself for the fear I felt within. I couldn't even mask it from my face anymore. It was so goddamn yesteryear of me.

"Kill you?" He laughed. There was a note of hysteria to it, like I was just so fucking funny to him. It almost made me look at him. 'Almost' being the key word in that sentence. "Why would I wanna kill you? Death is easy, my boy. A flickering light extinguished for a time, until it is reborn unto the same train of nightmare. A blink within an eternity. Why would I grant you such an easy way of release, of blissful ignorance, when the path of torture you subject your soul unto every single day is more painful than even the most horrific of deaths. Death is an inconvenience for men such as you. The Rough Men. Death is nothing more than that. A pathway to a recurrence. No. No, no, no… No. I'd rather watch you tear yourself apart than grant you what you desire most. An end."

An end? Yes, I did crave it… No…

Another building rippled in the haze of blazes and tumbled over, disappearing into another hallucinatory black hole. When would the Darkness swallow me? "I could..." I licked my suddenly dry lips and swallowed, steeling my wayward nerves, trying to ignore the rising ride of panic in my gut. "I could kill myself."

His laughter blossomed into something hideous, overpowering the roar of the city. "You couldn't kill yourself, Ash, even if it meant winning the game." The man that had brushed my cheek moments ago, brushed his hand down my arm now, setting it alit with a sensory overload of power, and then paused over my hand. Then he tapped my grey finger. "This, my friend, this won't let you. It has beset you with its claws of immortality… Suicide is no longer part of your programing."

"Get your damn hand off me!" I growled, a ripple of defiance manifesting from somewhere deep within my soul. This would not get me down! I wasn't immortal! "Get your fucking hands off me!"

"Immortality is a curse. Of that we can agree upon." He removed his hand, though I had no illusion it was from fear of what I'd do to him. It was very obvious that he held no fear of me. He turned his eyes, watching - quite like me - the city fall to fire. "This is necessary. This, Last Guardian of Aura, is your legacy."

I finally turned my eyes upon him, a snarl on my face.

It fell away, just as all other thoughts of defiance fell away upon seeing the man's face. It was Darkness.

He was Darkness.

He was me – or another me. He was the monster hiding in the subconscious level of my mind. The monster at the end of the nightmare.

Talk, talk, talking to yourself, Ash? Aaron's voice whispered, coming from afar. Coming from the fire of the city.

"I…" Breathing labored with fear, I searched for words that could inspire myself. Nothing came but the truth of my heart. "I don't wanna die," I said at last, almost begging.

He looked at me. You know, really fucking looked at me. Like he saw all the wretchedness, and could strip it from me if he so desired. "I know," he said simply, softly, with a voice of compassion. "But you ain't keen on living, either."

And then, like his voice had set alight the inner demonic nature of me, my hands rose, blinding quick, and grasped round the stranger's neck. I didn't know what came over me in that moment. Fear can drive a man to the edge of his wits. An extraordinarily amount of courage can take him far beyond any comprehension of an edge.

"The..." Strangled - or on the verge of it, at least - the stranger of my dreams tried to speak.

"Die!" I screamed and shocked and raved. "Die, die, die!"

His eyes became red and raw, air coming in shorter and shorter rasps from his choked windpipe. He was, in the literal sense of the word, disarmed. But disarming him wasn't enough. He had to be erased. Forever.

And then at last his struggle stopped, and all the sounds of the world died with the stranger. And upon the edges of his lips, grinning with lunacy, the last whisper of prophecy filled the dreamscape of my own personal reality, "The Crimson King rises."

It echoed into eternity.

"The Crimson King rises."

"The Crimson King rises."

"The Crimson King rises."

And I awoke into the nightmare of living.

---

The moment faded off. The voice left me alone. My thoughts, running wild, only afforded me with a nanosecond of stillness. Where I could breathe, where I could remind myself of why I did this in the first place. The reason for my existence. My excuse for being a real person.

What was that reason again? I couldn't recall it at that exact moment. Or maybe I was just too chickenshit to face the truth. The truth staring right in my face.

"Misty," I said out loud to myself, shaking myself out of stillness. Men like me couldn't afford stillness. Not for long, at least. "You take care of that bitch real good, motherfucker," I murmured to myself, looking down at the roof I was standing on. Looking beyond - towards where I knew the President would be at. He'd speak with her, he had said in his office. He'd talk with her, arrange all that needed arranging, smoothen out all that needed to be. Convince her of the sheer importance of our endeavors, convince her that it was worth putting a few hundred innocent, decent people's lives at risk, if it meant getting a shot at the anonymous fucker's head. Hopefully, she wouldn't put up too much of a fight with him. Stubborn, self-righteous bitch that she was, it would be just like her to do so.

And it would be well within her rights to do so. And within the moral confines of our world, as well.

The world didn't allow me to be… morally incorruptible. We needed her city, and more specifically, we needed the long stretches of barren fields surrounding her city. The times of morals and decency were long gone, and I was long past any shred of decency and morality, anyway.

A surge of raw sensory feeling disturbed the peace of the rooftop. Like something materialized out of thin air.

"You know," her soft voice interrupted my all-around motherfucking sane argument betwixt I and some crazy dude in my head. "I've always thought that madness was contagious. Like a disease." She paused, grinning, no doubt. "Like an idea." Her voice came from behind me, yet I couldn't really detect her presence. She mustn't be there, I thought, as I turned my head just a shadow of a tad.

And yet there she was, standing in the breeze like she had been waiting for me in an underpass of invisibility. "I know some of the signs, Ash Ketchum. Of madness, that is."

"Sabrina," I acknowledge, keeping my head turned just a tad to look at her over my shoulder with one eye. Like her presence was merely an inconvenience to me. "You'd know about madness, wouldn't you?"

"We are all born mad." She giggled, soft and feminine, and a significant number of years bled off her face for it. "Some of us just grow to forget it. Some of us grow to pretend, to not acknowledge it."

"Though not you," I stated. "You revel in your own lunacy, don't you?"

She frowned, the years coming back onto her face in a shadowy glimpse of wrathfully realness. You were always on edge when you were in the company of Sabrina; you never knew what she'd do next.

Part of her scorching charm, really.

"I am not mad," she said, whispering into the wind, doing her best to control her anger, her insanity. There was a steadfast conviction to her voice. Something undeniable and indestructible. Something enthralling. You couldn't keep yourself from looking at it. What can I compare it to? Well, you know, on a motorway… Often when you find yourself stuck in the motherfucker of all queues, you ask yourself what the fuck started this shit? What kind of accident would cause such a stillness? And then, after hours spent rolling along, you see that the crash sight wasn't anything vast in size or horrific in nature. You see that the accident wasn't really what started the queue in the first place. It was all the people that weren't a part of the crash who stopped or slowed their cars to look upon the wreckage that started it.

In there lies the point, you see?

We have all complained about such people, haven't we? When we were finally free of the queue. We have all said that we were better, that we would never stop to look at such a thing – that such a thing wouldn't interest us. That we were better than that. But the truth is there is something about wreckages - if it being a car crash or an obviously mad person - there is something about their wretchedness that attracts us to it, that makes us stop and look.

Sabrina was that kind of person. You knew she was danger, but you couldn't keep yourself from it.

Maybe I had become that sort of person, too.

"I am not mad," she repeated. Not sure if she was trying to convince her or me. Or maybe she just thought I hadn't heard her.

"Of course," I agreed amicably. It wasn't fear that drove me to be so... agreeable with her. I wasn't afraid of her, but I didn't want to awake her ire nonetheless. I had enough enemies on my plate as it was. "You look beautiful," I noted instead.

And truthfully, she did. She was utterly stunning as we stood there in the sun. Her skin was paler than white pearls, her hair a touch darker than mine, and it should have been a mismatch, but it worked on her, giving her an ethereal glow. Like a dark halo encased her sweet, heart-shaped face. A dark-purple, almost black, corset stretch over her bust, offering a small glimpse of her cleavage and a captivating narrowing waist. It stretched down to a dark floral dress reaching to just above her knees. Her feet were clad in some simple black sandals, her toenails colored as black as the darkest hole of my dreams.

"Thank you," she said with a small nod, all but discarding my compliments. Then a small smile, flirtatious and dangerous, crawled like a spider onto the edges of her lips. "I always knew what you were thinking…"

"I wasn't thinking anything."

"Liar, liar." She giggled again, though a lesser mad giggle. Almost - damn it all! - but almost a giggle worth falling in love with. "Naughty little boy," she purred, low and cat-like. "Come and play with me, Ash Ketchum."

Was that an arousal growing somewhere below? No, surely not…

"What are you doing here, Sabrina?" I asked. "What do you want from me?"

She winked. "That, I'd say, should be rather obvious."

"Fuck you. Don't play coy," I said, my gaze hardening beneath my mask as my temper went somewhat sideways. "Not with me. Not with what I've become."

"Oh..." She paused, a half-smile, half-frown creasing her face. Like she was in doubt of how to proceed. "And what, dare I ask, have you become in your absence?"

I still stood with my back half turned to her as she drew closer. Still stared at her over my shoulder with the one eye. I lifted my hand slowly, twirling my fingers in the air for the fuck of it, and then pointed my index finger at her, tip blazing with blue power of lethal intent. "More powerful than you, witch," I said, "more powerful than you'll ever be able to imagine."

"I can be submissive - I don't mind," she said promptly, not backing off from the light of my finger. "If that is what you desire."

I sighed, holding my finger steady but letting the light evaporate. "What do you want, Sabrina?" I repeated. "Just get it over with and tell me."

"Okay." She sighed, and another person entirely appeared before me. Someone bearing bad news of damnation, no doubt. "Have you ever considered that perhaps your presence won't make this better – make this all go away," she said, and the tone of her voice had changed so suddenly, so completely that it caught me unaware for a moment. "That perhaps," she continued, "it is your presence that creates these animals."

"Wait – what?" I was left confused, Drew, if you were in doubt. "What are you talking about?" I said, all but snarling in her face. I had some notion, and it scared me. "What the fuck are you on about?"

"Wherever you go, whatever you do, trouble seems to be right on your tail. Like the touch of Arceus has cursed you onto a path of ruination." She paused and something flickered behind the emotionless curtain in her eyes, a ripple of something honest and cruel. "You might be able to stop what is coming, you might be the only one who can stand up to him, but that which will replace him will only be worse."

"It will always get worse before it gets better," I said, non-pulsed. "Did you forget to read your tea leaves again this morning, Sabrina?"

"Don't. Mock. Me!" She ground out, the glint in her eyes becoming more discernible. "Not with this, Ash."

I identified the emotion behind her eyes in a spark of clarity. Fear. "I don't intend to stop now just because fear has claimed you!" I said with a force of nature in my voice.

She paused, took a step away from me - as if she had only just realized who she was dealing with. She had never appeared saner to my eye. "What comes now may not be so bad compared with what will come if you shan't stop your interference." She took the step back towards me, displaying honest concern, displaying a kind of bravery I had never seen from her, for she was afraid of me. Of that there could be no doubt. "You may be a match for the monster lurking in the Darkness now. But there is a storm on the horizon, Ash – one you can only hope to endure. Like a Butterfree in a hurricane. I have felt its presence. And even in its infancy, you will be no match for its wrath."

"You know," I said benignly, like I was about to comment on the weather. "You can dress up in your finest hooker-dress and allure me with your fucking tits all you want – Hell, I might even enjoy the view in some twisted way – but spare me the tales worthy of a fortune cookie." I laughed, a wicked laugh with a mechanic edge. More robot than man. "And what's fucking wrong with you anyway? One minute you're trying to get me to fuck you, the next you're warning me about my imminent demise. You're so fucking changeable – I've no idea who I'm speaking to half of the time, when I see you! Do you even know that yourself? Or are you just running along, doing whatever the fuck the wind tells you to do?"

Blinding quick, fueled by her sudden, murderous rage, she raised her hand and jabbed it at my helmet, her psychic powers fueling her muscles with a note of otherworldly strength. I could have stopped it, but I didn't even try. I wanted to prove a point. She struck true to the side of my face, and the slap resonated like lightning in the sky.

I stood unflinching, unwavering. I hadn't felt a damn thing.

And she fuckin' knew it.

She swallowed her mistakenly placed pride, replaced it with fear, face veiled with a bland mask, and stepped the fuck back from me. And I kept my gaze leveled at her, staring with the one eye over my shoulder. My head hadn't budged even a single inch.

"The times where you could bully me into obedience with theatricalities are of the past, Sabrina," I said, an air of prophecy in my voice. "I am beyond your capability of understanding. Whatever you have felt, whoever has you turned blind in your fear - I will rise to the fucking challenge. I will defeat them, and I will leave only the dust of them behind, if necessary. All of them shall tremble before me. I am Aura."

Her form rippled, like she'd become insubstantial enough to let the currents of air pass through her. "Hubris, Ash Ketchum. Hubris has always been your greatest weakness." Her gaze suddenly softened into something intimate, into something resembling the protectiveness of a lover. "Do not underestimate this monster you are now facing, Ash - I beg that of you. You might be stronger than he will ever be. But if you are not careful, then you will have nothing to do with all your strength. He knows of your nature, of your darkest secrets. Of your Darkness and weakness."

"What do you know of him?" I snapped. "Tell me, Sabrina. You owe me that."

"I owe you that and far, far more." A tear escaped her eyes. She was crying with the strength of a thousand men, crying with a grace I couldn't ever have any hope of matching. "I owe you my life, but I cannot give you more than I have already given. He masks his future and nature for my Eye, shrouding himself in your Darkness. I can only catch glimpses of him. Glimpses of his soul in the Void. They only reveal danger."

Sabrina has the ability to see into the soul of people and strip them of their secrets. Don't you, bitch? Yeah, I'm talkin' to you! Anyway. It gives her a distinctive advantage in any fight because she usually knows everything she needs to know of her opponents before the fight. Many years and hardships ago, I'd called it cheating straight to her face... and she'd given me the badge as a reward for my courage. I thought it a charity at the time - which I hate - but I needed it - which I hated even more - for the League. And the League had always been a big incentive for me to hide away my pride. So I'd taken it and left, with only the scars on my pride as a solemn reminder of how easily she'd beaten me, how easily she had torn my secrets and desirers from my mind.

Curiosity got the better of me. Different times, different strokes. Mayhap this would be different now. "What do you see? In me, I mean. Now." I turned fully now, not able to hide my desire for the answer, and gazed upon her beauty with both eyes. Even when she was fading, she was still stunning, as she flickered in the light of the sun. "What do you see in me when you gaze upon me with your Eye?"

Her lips curled, and the world stopped breathing. Or maybe it was just me who stopped. "Darkness, Ash. I only see Darkness. Glimpses of it. Just as him. Just as the storm on the horizon. You are three beings, three titans, cut from the same cloth. All three of you see yourself on the path of righteousness. I suppose only the winner gets to decide for all."

As it has always been decided, I thought. "Who's the third?" I asked. "And no bullshit answer this time!"

"It doesn't have a name yet, and if it had - I wouldn't dare mentioning it without its say-so. Names… are powerful agents, Ash. You of all should know that." She looked around, as if afraid The Creature would jump out from the same underpass of invisibility as her and smote her in terrible righteousness. Obviously, nobody came. "People have died for speaking the wrong name at the wrong time."

"You know," I said, finding it more and more difficult to conceal my temper. "I don't think you understand the meaning of a no bullshit answer."

"Goodbye, Guardian." Suddenly, like day and night just shifted in an instant, her seductive smirk was back in place - flimsy like the rest of her. She was going to pass over the other side in a moment. "If it'd mean anything to you - which I know it will, of course - my tits and I hope you win." She tilted her head, smiling from behind a curtain of dark hair. She was almost gone. The moment before teleportation, I guess. "Perhaps I will have another whore's dress ready for you."

"Hooker's dress," I said, rolling my eyes despite it all, as she slowly dematerialized before my eyes, "I said hooker's dress!"

Her laughter echoed in the wind long after she had disappeared, and I shivered, a lance of soft pleasure surging from below my belt.

Fuck it all. Why did girls have this way of spinning my head round and round?

Is it a guy thing or is it just me?

---

Timetable? You think I messed up something in my accounts of the actions? Oh well, guess I did. Joke's on you, though. Yeah, one minute I was reminiscing - or rather contemplating - my situation with the President, the next I was dreaming, and then I was back on the rooftop, talking with a girl - ghost - from the past. Yeah, I guess that seems a little messy for someone used to order.

Do you really only dream at night, Drew? Really? That's fucking sad, that's what it is.

The man in the dream is unknown to me. And that's the goddamn truth. He could be him - and do take note of the emphasis - or it could be this other guy. The third option in this mess, The Unknown or The Creature or whatever - the presence that has Sabrina's panties soaked in fear.

Sorry. Couldn't help myself. I promise I won't go there again. Maybe. Unlikely.

Yeah, forget it - I probably will go there again.

Yeah, you're right. That's not my guess, either. The man at the end of my dreams - the monster of my nightmares - encompasses everything I hate and fear. I don't fear either of the monsters Sabrina talked about.

The simple sight of him inspires such unparalleled terror within me I often find it difficult to explain it in words. But there must be some key to it all, right? A simple order of words that would make sense of the senseless, make me see the light in the dark.

Make me understand myself.

In there is the key. Understanding. Understanding one self. Oh, clarity...

There is a moment. A moment of clarity. A moment where you realize everything that's wrong with you, realize why it all must happen to you, realize that it all happened for a reason. You - no... I... Hmm. The reason it all happened to you were because you were fucking unprepared. And that's all on you, motherfucker. That's all on me.

Why should I live in history? Why should I be the one that could make it all go away? This is a world where nothing is solved. Why should I be any different? Surrender to Darkness and It shall embrace you.

Why should I be remembered? I am no better, and I could be even worse than all of you. A man once told me - I cannot recall who (which is obviously a lie, but just go with it) - that the sane world is just one bad day away from collapsing. That all your laws, all your moral authority, all your love, all your compassion - all of that is just one bad day away from becoming twisted, becoming awry… becoming mad.

One bad day, Drew… One bad day and you'd become like me. He had a bad day once. The man terrorizing our nation. I had a bad day once. Multiple days, in fact. And it turned us into these monsters of self-righteousness. But it's always just the one bad day that counts. You know, the one where the rising tide tilts just that tiny bit over the edge. Always the same day in my memory, and I try to forget it. I really do. Sometimes, on my best days, I succeed, and I end up saving lives. Other days, on the not quite bad-days but really fuckin' close, I end up getting stringed to a current of apathy and I cause the end of lives.

Without me on a good day, Drew - oh, and this is the truly sad part - there's no you, there's no Lance, no Sabrina, no nothing! There is only the better part of me left standing between now and end times.

But she's right. Of course she's right. At the end of a dream… there is a monster. The monster holds a different face, depending on the vessel of the dream. The philosophy behind the monster, however, remains the same. Same dream, same fuckin' concept.

A monster of fear. Our fears. My fears.

From that perspective, dream or reality - keeping Sabrina's words carefully in mind - what would my bloody defiance really accomplish? It is an illusion of a choice. The dreams of man cannot produce the monsters of reality. Cannot produce the answers necessary in order to best 'em. She was right. I highly doubt what she saw was anything but a product of her vivid imagination, but that's hardly the point of this discussion. The point is… that she was right. If I won today, another monster would rise in the shadow of my victory tomorrow. And so on and so on...

It's a circle. For I will, inevitably, rise to defy the next monster, and the next, and the next… Until someone or something breaks the circle. But who's to say the circle is breakable. Who's to say that in death, you'll not simple wake up in the exact same moment you died, a thousands years and a million realities and one single beat of the heart away, doing the exact same thing you were about to do upon the moment of your death.

It's a circle of death. However, inside a circle there is always something. A path unto enlightening. A ghoul of nightmare. A touch of the divine. The monster of your nightmares - different face, same fuckin' concept.

Behind the monster, however, there is Darkness.

And in Darkness, there are good days... and there are bad days. You can have a lotta good days...

It only takes one bad... to make everything undone.

So, my question to you, Drew: what is the fucking point to it all?

Uh, the sheer apathy, huh…? Huh!

---

"What do we do now?" Oak said, leaning back in his chair, sighing that weary old sigh of a broken, old man.

What do we do now, motherfucker? I thought

That's the word of the hour, Drew. Motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker…

Anyway. Moving onwards.

"The road to enlightenment is paved with treacherous steps of misshapen human nature," I said, my words coming from afar, like I was talking from beyond a door, which stood ajar on the other end of a long, narrow corridor. "Let the Devil work out the detail, take some days to rest, gather our wits… I dunno. Take the edge off…"

"You're slurring, Ash," Serena said, laying her hand on my shoulder, as she walked by with a glass of water for Oak and I. I wanted something stronger, but that would never happen. I shouldn't be trusted with booze. Not that I thought it could really harm me. Not anymore. But it was the principle of it, you know. I shouldn't have a vice like that. "Perhaps you should get some shut-eye."

I smiled, wondering how best to tell her that I couldn't sleep. That sleep had no use for me anymore. How could you say such a thing, without making everyone think you were mad?

I couldn't, which was why I didn't.

"No time," I evaded. "We need to prepare. I need to prepare."

Prepare for what? Don't ask me. I don't even know what I say half of the time.

But even though I said it in my head, I could still see the question forming in Serena's mind. I held up my hand, and Serena took a seat in the sofa in silence, swallowing the question as she sat down next to May, who was watching the exchange in a quiet, speculative manner.

"There will come a moment," I said, stalling with a subject I found oddly, almost eerily important for no apparent reason. "Far out there, where I will need you to do something for me. It might seem tedious to some, it might seem like the most rational thing in the world to others, but for you three-" I nodded to May and Serena, sitting cramped together on the small couch, and I nodded to Oak sitting beside me on his black leather chair, identical to the one I was occupying. "-it will be the hardest thing you'll ever have to do in your life. I need you to promise me that you will do as I ask when that time come. Without question. With unquestionable loyalty."

That sounded fuckin' awesome! Didn't it?

Oh, fuck you, Drew. I made it up as I went along. Cut me some slack.

The mood in living room hadn't been anything less than tense since I got back, and yet my presence only seemed to heighten the feeling of a slow suffocation. Like I was too big to share the room with others. My request - no, my fucking demand, for that's what it was - definitely didn't defuse the tension. And maybe that was a deliberate action on my part. On a subconscious level, at least. You know, hit 'em when they are already feeling the heat on their necks and that sort of shit.

I was never anything close to a considerate friend.

"What is it you'll need, Ash?" May said, twirling a stray of hair round her finger as she regarded me behind cold, blue eyes. A couple of days ago, there had been some warmth in them. And an edge of trust. Now there was neither. Understandable, yet it hurt me in ways a punch never could.

I almost smiled, though. Leave it to the journalist to ask the questions. "The nature of unquestionable loyalty, May, is that there must be no questions. But, alas, I can see I don't have you on my side of things in this matter. No matter. It's not important right now, anyway. But I need you all to think on my words… And then accept them."

Uncertainty clung to the heart of our little group.

"What about him?" Serena asked, throwing her head in the direction of the lone chair off to the side of the room. Snoring like Snorlax, Clement's head tilted to the side, a lance of spit forming on the edge of his mouth in his sleep. He had been asleep since before I got back. Pikachu lay on his lap, snoring contently with him. Nobody had thought it necessary to wake him up.

Serena had, however, thought it a good idea to take a photo of it. I kinda agreed.

We were still at that level in our relationship to each other, you see. Not near anything you'd call family – which, I can reveal, we'd never be. A family would have looked upon the sleeping person, then shrugged, maybe with a half-smile, and then thought nothing more of it. We took pictures of it, celebrated the happening like a sleeping, young kid was something of a rare occurrence. We were treading the delicate line between friendship and hostility, between trust and distrust, trying to pave a way towards that trust and friendship which would be true and strong, which we all seek… but few of us ever find.

Ah, hell... a bit too cheesy, right? I knew it. Oh well, no taking it back now, is there?

"What about him?" I frowned, honestly confused. Clement would understand when to keep his head low; he would understand my proposition perfectly.

Serena rose and crept towards him, silent yet with the clear intent to wake him up. Two stark contrast in nature, but that's the behavior of people most of the time. "Shouldn't he be in on this, as well?" she asked.

I lifted my hand again, stopping her. "That won't be necessary, Serena." I grinned. "Clement will be the sort of person who will see all the rationality of my thinking should the moment arise. I'll talk with him later. I am more concerned for you guys."

"You talk as if we have a choice," May noted, as Serena slipped back in the couch beside her. They didn't shy away from one another, which were an improvement, and I had the feeling the last couple of weeks had been good for their budding friendship. Or maybe I was just hoping too much, wishing too much. "But we don't really have a choice, do we, Ash?"

No. No, you don't, May. "Of course you do, May," I said, finding my most gentle smile of hidden deceit. "You'll always have a choice. But this is for the good of all, not just for me, not just for you, but for everybody. I wouldn't ask this of you, unless it was of the utmost importance. Please, will you indulge me this one time? Without knowing all the facts beforehand."

May would be the hardest to convince of the three of them. And even if I managed to convince her to give me her promise, I wasn't naïve enough to think she wouldn't back out of her promise the day the moment would arise. Yet it would give her an incentive to stop and think, and maybe - just maybe - it would be enough to save her life.

We lie to friends and commit torture unto our enemies and carry out the maiming of decency and bloody murder the innocence of our souls for the safety of those we love, don't we? I do.

So would you, I suspect, given enough… motivation.

There is a fragile line somewhere around here. Between right and wrong, and everything that's just too damn easy. Sometimes there is no right answer. Sometimes there is only a wrong answer and an easy answer. And even in that scenario, you'd find that the easy answer isn't lesser wrong than the wrong. Often it's just more wrong and more enticing. Sometimes, if you were unlucky, you'd have to sacrifice your friendship and love in order to keep them safe.

I had to be willing to do that.

I wasn't. Not even remotely.

Which was why May, Serena, Oak and Clement - Pikachu and all of the others - the very reason they were still with me was because I'd chosen all the easy solutions, instead of all the wrong and right solutions. Lying - or in this case withholding the truth (I know, same fuckin' thing) - to them had become second nature to me. It was easy, which made it wrong for all the wrong reasons.

I should be alone. You must realize that, Drew. If I'd done the honorable thing all those years ago, I'd served all ties to the old relations of my life. I'd never made my return known to my friends. I'd carry on, shouldering my burden in stoic solitude, been the silent hero of the night. I was too selfish for that, though, too craving of love and other drugs of man. The truth was that without May and Serena and the old man I wouldn't be able to move. It was wrong for all the wrong reasons. Mind you, me being alone wouldn't be right, either. It would be fucking wrong as Hell.

But it would be wrong for all the right reasons. And that, my friend, would make all the difference.

Ya feelin' it, motherfucker?

They shouldn't suffer because of me; they shouldn't bear the burdens I'd been cursed with. They should be as free as possible of the problems of this dark world I had plunged them into by my mere existence.

You'd probably call that pessimistic nature and a tendency for self-destruction. But you wouldn't know. It is one thing to get told of war, and another to experience it. To endure it. And even further, Drew, it is one thing to read all the books, know all the theories behind the illnesses of a man's fucked up mind. It is another thing entirely to know it. Intimately. To be so ill there is no cure – only drops of love carrying a healing nature on the soul to keep it a little at bay.

I was lying to them, when I should have done the wrong thing and told them the truth. If they stayed with me, they were likely to wind up dead. If I served up all the ties with them, they would be unhappy and I would be unhappy, but they'd be safe.

But it wouldn't really stop them now, anyway, would it? No, they were in too deep; they loved me too much and they knew far too much.

Fucking love…

Fucking knowing…

"Please, May, I need you to trust me. One last time."

She nodded at last – lie or truth, I did not know, but she nodded – and I had given her an encouragement for being deceived, an excuse to believe an honest lie. Maybe it would be enough, most likely it wouldn't. I think I sealed her fate the night in Saffron City - amongst all the fire.

---

Later, when Clement had awoken and found himself smote by embarrassment, and then quickly made a dash for his bedroom, muttering some strange words I couldn't fathom the meaning of, the girls retired for the night. They had spent the better part of the evening talking among themselves, giggling like the young women they were. Talking about what was hot at the moment, who was very hot at the moment, and all those things I knew nothing about.

They said their goodnights and walked out, still muttering softly between the two of them. May didn't kiss me, I suddenly thought; as I watched the derrieres of the only two girls that mattered in this world disappear up the stairs. That kinda sucked. If saving the world didn't come with its small slivers of pleasure, then what was the fucking point?

Oh yeah, I have my priorities straight.

I felt eyes on me, and I knew Oak studied me from behind a glass of water held to his lips, a thin cooling drop glided down the glass. So softly and yet, to me, so loud it might as well have been screaming.

"Why do you do it, Ash?" he asked.

"Do what?" I asked, distracted by the lingering memories of olden pleasures that May and Serena usually conjured. So distracted…

"Insist on taking the pain and suffering of others and endure it for them?" he said. "What drives you to go to such lengths? To be so selfless? You were a good boy when you were young – if not a reckless one – but this level of self-sacrifice is unprecedented. I cannot see the reason for it. For the change in you. You are… so very different."

Time weaves all of us to its tune, Professor. I thought. It is the inescapable destiny of every life.

I chuckled, a note of bitter irony in my laughter, caused by my pessimistic thoughts. By Oak's raised eyebrow of inquisitiveness, he must have picked up the tone.

"Selfless? Professor, you can accuse me of being a great deal of things." I paused, tasting the word 'selfless' on my lips and found it strange, unfitting. "But selflessness isn't one of them - self-awareness, on the other hand, I have in spades."

"You? Self-aware? Don't insult my intelligence - and even more important, don't insult your own by lying to yourself," he said. "You don't know the first thing about yourself."

"And you do?" I asked, skepticism heavy and clear in the note of my voice and the creasing of my brow. "You know me for what I truly am?"

"I don't think you've ever let anybody know what you truly are – or how you truly feel." Oak paused, gazing out the window panning out over where the forest used to lie. The barren, withered field of a forgotten beauty – claimed by a vicious, unforgiving world – was bathed in pale moonlight, and a gentle breeze blew away any lingering clouds. That wasn't what held my eyes, though. There was a tone in Oak's eyes, a wretched feeling of deep and incurable sorrow and regret. "You are too much like me for that."

"Like you?" I blinked, confused. "Professor?"

"You are a good person, Ash," Oak said, smiling sadly, and caught my eyes spellbound in his eternal regret. "You just won't allow yourself to see that, lest you should lose your edge."

"I lost my damn edge a long time ago, didn't I?" I asked, looking him straight in the eye without fear. I had nothing left to fear from this man. "Things are growing bleak." I paused, thinking pessimistic thoughts again. I couldn't control it anymore, couldn't hide it. "Growing bleak beyond even my considerable abilities to control. To defy… I cannot keep carrying on like this. It's – the path's too steep and treacherous. And yet…"

"And yet you must," Oak finished. "Monsters and Legends beset you on all sides, pushing you to the brink of insanity. And the world keeps gunning for you, while continuously asking you to be its salvation." He paused with a funny little smile, like he could hardly believe the words spilling out of his mouth. "But you keep fighting; keep mowing down enemies turned mad. You're the only one that can."

For a long time I sat looking at the table in front of me, not seeing anything at all. Oak's words rang in my ears like a deep echo of prophecy. Like a tone of Old that just wouldn't die in the wind. I nodded at last. "Is there a point with what I'm doing?" I asked, hating how small and childlike my voice became in my thirst for absolution. That it wasn't all a big lie I told myself over and over, until I believed it, until there was nothing else left to believe. That it wasn't all a big lie to justify… something like me. "Will there be a point out there where I will amount to something? Anything. Anything at all."

Oak stilled in his mindless stirring of his cup of water. It had long since grown lukewarm, yet it hardly mattered anymore. Staring with a strangled look of grieve at me, his demeanor was that of a man at odds end.

Oh, what to do, what to do? said the little spider of olden days, crawling up the rainy road of hope. Oh, what do you do?

Two old, broken souls… That was all we were. That's all the world had allowed us to retain. It was just enough to keep going, to keep torturing ourselves.

"When I was young…" He began and paused again, doubtful of himself. By the thin sheen of sweat on the edge of his brows and the flickering look in his eyes – like he was looking for all the monsters in the shadows – I could tell that it troubled him deeply the route of the conversation. "…I was a lot like you. Or like you used to be," he said at last. "Extraordinarily talented, gifted and admired by my peers. Marred with a tendency for arrogance – oh, I wasn't arrogant without reason, mind you. Like you, I had to understand from an early age that I was cut from a different cloth compared to the children I grew up with. How could children such as us, admired and envied and awed by everyone around us – how could we not let it go to our heads?"

I thought it a rhetorical question and kept my silence.

"The blame is obviously only partly our own," he said, leaning back and gazing at the loft, gazing into the past. "Our upbringing failed to prepare us for the burden of talent. Our parents failed to install a sense of humility, a sense of value in the ordinary. Your parents, though not for the lack of ability but for the simple lack of love for you, hurt you more than even the darkest of monsters will ever be able to hurt you. Mine… oh, mine loved me something fierce. Perhaps, sometimes, a little too much. They let me run havoc, Ash, let me do whatever I wanted, whatever I desired. It is the worst kind of neglect, because it is neglect that is almost impossible to see from the outside. But neglect, no matter the form, will always be neglect. And perhaps they didn't really love me – I was their champion. Their prized treasure. Their prodigy. But seldom was I their son.

"I was clever. I was really clever, but I had no guidance, no answers. I didn't know what to do with my brain, didn't hold any special passion for anything. One night, however, would change everything. Would change me." Suddenly, a smile bloomed on his doomed face. "I was wandering around in the forest, in a haze of… waste-" he said it with such disdain and aggression, such violence. He had walked out in a drunken stupor, to kill himself or simply for the thrill of the danger. I couldn't tell which, and something told me that Oak couldn't, either. Or perhaps he simply didn't want to face to truth of his own – supposedly – cowardice. A lot of us felt that way, after all. "- and then I stumbled upon it," he continued. "The most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. A force of nature. Something that cannot be explained away by mere science."

I knew what that was. I, too, had seen that.

"The evolution of a Pokémon," I said, excited. Something about that had always caught me mesmerized in its magnificence. I thought all people who possessed even an ounce of interest in Pokémon would think of it as a special moment to behold. Despite what most ignorant people thought, not many trainers' got to witness and evolution and live to tell about it. Pokémon becomes erratic after an evolution. Unpredictable. Like speeded up puberty with superpowers. Cases of trainers killed by an evolved Pokémon were not an uncommon occurrence. Most trainers feared an evolution just as much as they welcomed it. "Which evolution did you see?"

Oak was laughing outright now. "Same as your first. A Caterpie evolved into a Metapod, though it wasn't mine." Oak's eyes gained a fond glint. "Oh, my virgin eyes… woefully unprepared for the magnificent it would bear witness to. Fortunately, that specific evolution is one of the lesser arduous and perilous, because its trainer was as ill-prepared as me for it." He shook his head, laugh dying on his lips, though you could still detect the shadow of his smile. Like a cursed mirror meant to mock you with what could have been. "It would set me down onto a path. A path that would, inevitably build me and break me… only to rebuild me again…"

I got the build-part – him becoming the man before me now. Though the other part… "Break you, professor?" I inquired. "I don't follow you."

A part of me, the part no teacher of my past life had been able to unleash, sat before the professor now – partly awed and partly regretful. I could have been a great student in school, but none had been able to motivator me, been able to get through the armor of cockiness and hidden insecurity I'd cloaked myself in.

The sad truth is that it's my own damn fault.

Oak could inspire, however. Inspire even the sorry likes of me to listen to a simple tale from an old man.

A great man, though. A great man indeed… The world misses men like him, I often feel. Not men like me.

"Ten years after the fateful meeting with the Caterpie, I was nearing my thirties and rising in the world of academic. I was making a name for myself, becoming more and more renowned for my genius and intuitive understanding of Pokémon's nature." A soft chuckled escaped him, almost against his will, it seemed. "I was still beset with arrogance, of course. It had only grown worse. Unrelenting in its unbound form of unseen self-destruction." He scratched his cheek with a careless move of his hand, not pretending or trying to hide that his body had grown weaker over the last couple of weeks. He was too old to play-pretend to something he wasn't. Wish I were that secure in my sense of self-worth. Wish we all were. "Oh, I kept up with the appearance of a humble man," he said, continuing his tale. "I got a wife; I got a son – a family. Not out of love, mind you – though I knew they loved me – but out of a need to appear human to my colleagues and admires. Appearances are important, you see. Sadly. Sometimes I feel they are all that matters. Alas, I had a taste for politics back then. Luckily for all of us, nothing came out of that particular ambition."

"What happened?"

"I grew up. Happens to most of us." He shrugged, then sighed. "And the temple tumbled down around me," Oak was all heavy sighs and old aches. "I… I grew to love them. My wife and my kid. I won't recommend gaining love in that sort of way, but it – wickedly – worked for me. With time, I grew out of my arrogance and ignorance, the tempestuous fires of my ambition tempered by the loving care of a family. My son grew old, gained a wife of his own… and then Gary, my grandson, came along. You remember Gary, right?"

I nodded. How could I possibly forget that arrogant little prick? Though I'd never call him that to Oak's face.

"In my youth, I made enemies – enemies that will sustain me to the end of times. Some of them could have been avoided, sure; some of them were bound to happen, because I wasn't, for all my faults, a bad man. One day, whilst you were out there... rising-" he said 'rising' with a rasp sort of voice, heavy and low; it frightened me terribly, for I didn't fathom the meaning he was implying. "-we got attacked by Team Rocket. You remember the letter I wrote you afterwards? Explaining what happened?"

Yeah, I nodded again. Sure I did. There was a funeral, of which I didn't attend. I had no part to take. Gary and I had never seen eye to eye, his parents had never liked me – only Oak had seen a light in me. I almost attended just for the sake of the old man, but it wouldn't have made my presence right. Oak's letter had even implied as much. Though he was far too kind to outright say that I should stay away, the meaning hadn't been lost on me back then.

"My whole family, Ash! Butchered for my defiance. Left alive long enough so I could watch as they gasped their last remnants of air… they tortured me with their pain and suffering." There were no tears on the man's face. Part of me wondered if he had shed all the tears he could over this matter a long time ago. "Leaving me with little to nothing to show for. Leaving me with little life worth living. For the longest time, for years, I thought that whatever I'd amounted to, whatever I'd accomplished, was worth nothing compared to the anguish those deeds ended up costing me." He raised his eyes to mine again, holding my gaze. "But… but my research ended up giving birth to the single greatest creation of man – the Pokédex – saving countless of lives, solving millions of perilous situations, which had been unsolvable before, brought humanity and civilization to another level." He smiled, and though it wasn't necessarily a happy smile, it was a goddamn honest one. And that's really all that matters. "You cannot always see the end of the path, Ash – sometimes you have to trust that your choices will guide you the way you want to go. To the destination you want to end up on. Sometimes that's all you can do. And hope. Always hope. Even if it is an impossible thing to do, do it anyway. Do it for all of us."

Oak sat back in his chair, throwing back his cup of lukewarm water, wincing at it as if he had forgotten how long he had held it. There were few things that could make Samuel Oak uncomfortable. The loss of his family was one of them, talking about it even more so. He was an old man – five or ten years was nothing to him and yet so very much at the same time. The wound of the loss was old in one way and so very fresh and eternal in another, carved forevermore onto his soul.

He left me alone not long afterwards.

Did I really believe that, to Oak, the light of his greatest creation had made up for the anguish of losing his family? That all the lives he had saved and fought for – and all the lives he had helped others save – would somehow make up for his loss? Even if only for a moment? No, of course I didn't. It wouldn't even cover an ounce of the vast misery that must have torn his soul asunder. For humans – not even someone as good as Oak – were not that selfless. He only told himself that lie to get through the goddamn day without decapitating himself. But that was hardly relevant to the point he was trying to make.

The point is that life's not fair and you either grow up and grow hard, or you grow fuckin' dead.

Or that's what I took from it, at least.

---

The line between sardonic and sarcastic can be almost impossible to see. One man would say I have been sarcastic this entire time. You, Drew, on the other hand would find me sardonic – perhaps even a touch cruel. Okay, more than a touch perhaps. But it all depends on the eyes of the beholder, on the mind of the beholder. Impressions can vary from person to person, and what might seem ordinary to me, would be heartbreakingly miserable to you.

I could say that inside I am more than this, more than I've chosen to show you. You wouldn't believe me; for you feared and despised me in equal measures from the moment you laid eyes on me. Before that even, right? Others would know that I am more. And yet others would know that I am less. It all depends on what we choose to reveal about ourselves. You are a blank canvas to most, Drew. A man that walks a fine line of anonymity. I couldn't say the first thing about you with the utmost of certainty. I could speculate, analyze your behavior, and make an educated guess, but know without a shadow of doubt?

No.

Okay, I can. But I am different.

Your behavior towards me suggests a man of unbridled fear – fear of his work, fear of his boss, fear of getting fired and fear of speaking out of turn. Simply put, a spineless weakling who's attracted to power but cannot seize it. But that would be an unfulfilled assessment of everything that encapsulates an individual, everything that might encapsulate you. You see, you are, even if I don't wish to admit it, more than that. You chose to be here, you chose to talk to me. You had the stones to, even if you cannot hide it from me, conquer your fear of me and step into the arena. That takes courage. It reveals something about you, something other than the first impression I, and countless of others, must have made about you in the course of your life.

And something else other than courage, I guess. A motivation.

By the interest in my love life - which aren't really a specific interest in my love life so much as in whom - I've been led to believe that you harbor some feelings of doubt about your own marriage. Not uncommon for men of our considerable young age, granted, but this is uncommon in that you have shown an unusual amount of interest in the specifics about the women of my life. You have undoubtedly noticed the care and lengths I go to describe the visions of May and Serena and even Sabrina, right? I know of lust – I know a great deal of it. I know the lengths it can drive a man. But the emotions your body and eyes have betrayed every time I even mention May's name (the rising body temperature, the laboring of your breath) suggest a deep and disturbing whiff of jealousy and – dare I say it? – love.

You didn't honestly think I didn't know about your feelings for May, did you?

I don't care, which you know… which only serves to anger you even more. May chose me, and you have no idea who I even am. And even further, you have no idea why a girl like May – a supposedly nice girl – would choose a monster such as me over a guy like you.

I could tell you why, but again – you've already made up your mind about me, and everything I could say to persuade you otherwise would be a meaningless pursuit.

Like most people, however, you are attracted to the pain you feel. You say to yourself that you ought to just forget her and move on, but you cannot do that. You keep coming back. You keep seeking that same fuckin' subject, keep asking me, keep trying to steer me back towards her. Even your bosses have begun to find it peculiar. I can sense their thoughts from behind that one-way mirror.

Now they know, of course. Not long before one of them comes in here and replaces you, Drew…

So, anger and jealousy - and love, I suppose - drove you to meet me here, drove you to find some semblance of courage within yourself.

You have lived an unfulfilled life. You got a wife because, well, that's what you're supposed to do, right? That's what everybody does. You even manage to convince yourself that you loved her. But at the one off chance - not even a clear possibility, just a small glimmer of hope - you jumped and hoped. Dreamed of seeing her again. May.

You got a kid or two, I wager. I don't know, and don't give a flying fuck to be honest. But that's my guess. You love them, obviously. You are a good father, I suppose. A good husband – if not a loveless husband. You have followed the rules of life all your life. And for that you have lost.

Lost it all.

I don't know if you are a sad, sorry fuck not worthy of the sole of my shoe, or if you, in your stoic manner and your miserable endurance of the hardships of life, have become a source of inspiration to someone like me. Maybe you are just human. Wonderfully flawed and wickedly perfect in equal measures. Maybe you are just everything I am not, and I am everything you are not. Maybe the two of us were meant to meet here, two opposites battling in a duel of wits.

Mayhap the sinful hand of destiny touches this meeting. Isn't that a nice thought, Drew? That, in your self-destructive pursuit of love and the red light of your life, you found a meaning for it all?

One thing's for sure: you will never understand me, and the fuckin' annoying thing – the thing that makes me wanna fuck you up right now – is that you never intended to even try. You were never interested in my story; you weren't here out of a sense of duty or curiosity. You never intended to solve any mystery. Only your personal vendetta mattered to you. Only your pursuit of May mattered to you. And I never even saw it; I never saw your disinterest. I should feel violated, compelled to utterly destroy you.

But you are not worth even that. Instead I am going to tell you the truth (and that truth will destroy you slowly, tortuously). I'm going to tell you the truth you have been too chickenshit to admit to yourself, for you are not stupid enough not to have seen it: the moment I tell you who I am, the moment I reveal my deepest secrets, will be a warrant for your head, Drew. You are a lowlife to the organization you work for; you are the cannon fodder fed to someone like me. The moment next to this, when our conversation comes to an end, the people next room will weight you too light and too unstable and too fuckin' corruptible. You will be brought to some dark and murky room, where you will be killed to secure your eternal silence.

They will cover it up, of course, and in the end the only one who will remember you will be your wife – for a marriage without love (for deep down she must know) – and your children, though I'd guess they are rather young, considering your age. They probably won't remember much. Perhaps some fragments. Perhaps your freakish green hair. Did they inherit that? Ha, maybe your hair will go down in history.

Anyway.

You will be nothing. Less than nothing.

You will be all loveless and fragments of dreams.

History will remember me.

Nobody will remember you.

Perhaps, if you are lucky, Legend will remember this conversation between you and I. Perhaps there will be a shadow in my legacy where you can fester. A footnote in my legend.

That's all you have left to hope for, motherfucker. Take shelter in the tremendous strength of my shadow.

That's all there is left. For all of you.

The line between sarcastic and sardonic can be impossible to see, right?

Which one am I right now?

---

The weeks went by, frivolous and slow, like time had stilled in terrible anticipation of oncoming times.

When the sun sets, the light reveals we are just the same. Just the same. You and me, two titans of the dying light, at opposite sides we fight every night in my dreams. In the shadow of the darkened apathy of God, we are bound in the eternal struggle of opposing ideals. Of good and evil, of blurred lines and making the wrong choice in an impossible situation... Oh, can you feel the choice... Moving ever closer to us – to the last of us – inescapably in its persistence.

Ya feelin' it, motherfucker?

Nothing seemed to happen in the Kanto Region. Terrible anticipation was all I had left in these times, when nothing moved, when nothing withered and died. People almost seemed to forget about the happenings in Saffron – forget about me, which was a blessing, I suppose. And for a time, it was like people convinced themselves that it wouldn't happen again, that the danger had passed and left 'em untouched, and that they had weathered out the storm into a blissful sense of security.

I grew scared and restless in the nothingness. I grew more and more dangerous in the stillness of the world, for I knew the prophesied dangers lying in the scorched remnants of the bleak future. I knew of their powers to distort the faith of a man. To distort me.

We fight every night for something.

It wasn't until a good couple of days before the plan was to commence that I heard from the President again. Only a short message, mind you, only so I got the bare gist of things.

I, of course, couldn't know too much. I might actually tell someone. Someone with less compelling reasons to keep their fuckin' mouths shut. To the President – Hell, even to Misty, for all the fuck I know – I was a liability. A fucking liability – that was what I'd become. My cowardice and selfishness had made me into this creature of fictitious dreams and hopes.

Things were spiraling out of my hands, if you haven't noticed. I wasn't in control anymore. I wasn't the man with the plan. I was the man held by the strings of greater men than me. Men with plans and puppets. A mere fuckin' puppet!

A mere fuckin' puppet…

Yet, funnily, it was my neck that was put on the line, anyway. Like all good Lords and their funny little creatures, their errant boys. Seldom was it the king who died for his nation, for his beliefs. Not anymore. Those days had passed a long time ago. Now there are only grunts like me, doing the dirty work, doing the dying.

Shrouded half in shadows and burned half in the flames, we risk our souls for the beliefs of the greater man.

Anyway, don't mind my bitching. I'm just having a bit of a bad day. Not a Bad-day, just a bad day.

Misty had agreed (reluctantly allegedly) to host this gathering of treachery. How he had managed to get her to agree with such a gruesome misstep of a plan was beyond me, but alas he had managed. And so, a new festival was born. One meant as a tribute to the Pokémon of Kanto, for we really needed another one of those, didn't we?

Can you taste the bitter irony in my voice, huh? Fucking preachers of goodwill! Strengthening our capacity for illusory thoughts and binding us to their whispered words of emptiness, of blackness. It's all false promises, man! Preachers, politicians, the great men of power.

Never underestimate the lengths a man of power would go to keep it.

Adverts were broadcast in the papers, in the TV; fucking flyers were delivered to the common folk of every city within close distance to Cerulean City. The tight timespan made it impossible to invite people from overseas, but the President, using his name and the influence it naturally bought with it, promised the world that – should it be a success – the festival would only grow bigger the next year and open for all the world to see.

It was authentic; I must give him praise for a job well done. He had the entire world spinning to his tune. Hadn't he, Drew? You must have believed it like everybody else. Hell, for a second there, I almost believed it. Or, well, believed the intentions behind it, I should say, for the festival itself was very, very authentic, of course. You see, it had to be if we wanted to lure him into our midst. He wouldn't suspect that I – the good guy in this – would willingly put innocent people right in his crosshairs, now would he?

And that, my friend, was the terrible devil in the detail. We were putting the lives of all our guests – all our innocent guests, Drew! – we were putting them all in harm's way. We were gambling without any chips left. But, and here's the truly sick thing, it was a gamble we had to take. The President knew that, Misty, somehow, knew that, and I most certainly knew it. Unfair world…

Unfair world with its unfair choices.

The plan commenced a few weeks ago and…

Hmm? Why did it take me so long to come to you guys afterwards? Well. Well, it can be hard for a man… to swallow his pride… and admit that he was wrong, admit that he made a mistake so costly… that he will never be able to pay back the price for his sins. I needed a push to get to where I am now. To get to this state of mind, where I can see (on my best days) the man I once was behind the monster I've now become.

I needed time, Drew, to process… to... think – oh God – to think on my next course of action… and I needed…

Ah – fuck man!

Death came knocking at my doorstep. Okay? Fuck you! Death, in the most horrible method imaginable to man, showed me its gruesome face.

A face with only apathy.

The face of God.

---

"Do you know where you are going with this?"

I sat in the window, half open and with a gentle breeze of evening air in my hair, looking out over the barren lands surrounding Pallet Town. Behind me, standing in the doorway and blocking the streaks of artificial light coming from the corridor behind her, was Serena. I didn't turn to look, but I could smell the wet of her skin from the shower she had just taken and the freshly washed hair, odor of shampoo, even from where I sat in the breeze.

I imagined she looked lovely. As she always did to me.

She sighed, and moved into the room. "You know," she said, and paused, unsure. "All these years, I never gave up hoping I'd see you again. Somehow I was able to ignore all the facts, and give into the idea that you'd come back to me. That we would be together. Finally."

I was afraid of this conversation. Had been since the moment I awoke and saw her again. Even more so, when May stepped onto our doorstep. Guilt, for I was indeed still capable of that, weighted heavily upon me when I thought of the kiss I shared with May. Oak's words of wisdom came back to me.

You cannot string them both along on the promises of delusions. Some day events catches up with you.

"But you are still not here, are you?" she asked, and her voice was right by my shoulder. I didn't dare to turn my head and look her in the eye. "The man I loved… the man that left… you are hiding him far away in your soul. And you are afraid, Ash. I can see it. You must be so, so afraid."

Her hands encased my shoulders in an awkward hug that almost broke me to fucking tears, man. Without Serena I wouldn't be able to move…

My soul weeps for the dying of my innocence.

I turned my head and looked down on my shoulder and her hand, offering her a view of my profile without meeting her eyes. "Serena… you know nothing." I paused, searching for a word of suitable violence, suitable enough to scare her far, far away from me. "It's been years since I knew of fear."

"Every man feels fear," she said. "Sometimes."

"Is that why you wish to attach it to me?" I asked. "Do you think that if you can convince yourself that what you see in my eyes is fear, it will make me attain a glimmer of humanity again?"

Serena was the girl that turned me into a man. May was my first kiss, May took my virginity, and May was the first girl I loved. But Serena was the girl that showed me what it meant, to me, to be a man. Without her – her golden heart and her blonde hair and blue eyes and simple understanding – without all that I would never have become a man.

Serena had always, from the first moment I met her, been so easy to talk with. I had been fascinated by the trust she could inspire in me, and she had been fascinated in me. Understood my pain, loved my drive and my old dreams…

I think she loved me… I think I loved her…

That was a long time ago, and yet here we were, climbing that treacherous, rainy road of hope again.

Her hands didn't slacken their hold on my shoulders, though my words were cruel and menacing. "You frighten me, yes. You still do, I suppose. When you threw one of those awful men out from the roof, killing him like it was nothing… I was… repelled. I know, though, that no matter what I tell you now, you wouldn't change your ways. Perhaps you can't. Perhaps you have to be this way. Perhaps the world needs the Rough Men. Perhaps you were meant to be this way, and the only thing I was ever suppose to love was the man you evolved from…"

"I should never have let you inside my dark world…" I sighed.

"I was already part of it," she said. "We all are. The only thing you did was open our eyes."

"You have no idea what I am capable of," I said, "what I have set in motion. People will die for my choices."

"Of course I know," Serena said, smiling sadly. "You are a human being, Ash Ketchum. As much capable of love as you are committing murder and debauchery. And I'm not trying to hide my eyes for the fact, either."

She released my shoulders and cupped my face, turning me to her fully. She was just as lovely as I'd imagined. "I still love you, Ash. I must be crazy, but I do." She laughed and kissed me on my cheekbone, right below my eye, her breath hot and wet. "Just promise me you won't lose yourself inside this monster you are becoming."

I'd never made love to Serena, and I didn't on this night, either.

Some things are only meant to happen under the right circumstances.

---

I mingled with the crowd. Thousands of tents had been erected for the occasions, and equally thousands of men and women and children were walking amongst the chaos of happiness and blissful ignorance. It shocked me the kind of gathering the President could attract in only a matter of days.

These people, here for nothing but honest amusement, had signed their own death warrants.

In the distant horizon, to the east of where the thousands of guests and I were, you could see the vast skyscrapers of Cerulean City reaching for the sky. The sun was up high and shinning, but you could see dark clouds moving closer to us from the south, brining with it rain and thunder.

None cared much for that, it seemed. Everybody was too caught up in their own little worlds to see reality come tumbling down upon them in the distance. I suppose that I, in some way, was exactly the same in that regard.

Cerulean City, the city of water and the city of Misty, stood prideful and vengeful in the distant, the backdrop of a line of mountains rose like a wall of snow and cliffs and earth and with the ominous promise of a certain, lonely, painful death reeking putridly from it. It blocked the way between the city and Pewter City. I knew that men would be out there, freezing and longing for home, risking their lives to forge a route between the two cities.

Could I ease their burden? The thought suddenly crossed my mind, as I wondered and prayed for the lives of the men. Could I really forge the road for them? Maybe I could blast my way through with my awesome Spheres of Aura? Mayhap, I could lay waste to the mountains; harness the light of darkness within me for something other than mere destruction. Maybe I could and maybe I couldn't. But one thing's for sure, I would be feared for it, I would be hunted for it, and there was enough blood smeared into the legends of my name already.

I didn't need more fear of my name. Not now.

"Mommy, I wanna try the Pika-spin," a little girl said, standing almost beside me, pulling on the hem of her mother's yellow summer dress. The girl couldn't have been more than five or six years old, wearing a crimson summer dress of her own. She had curly brown hair, which looked like it might straighten out naturally in the near future, when it grew long and natural. She pointed right by me to something over my left shoulder. "It's right over there, too."

The mother, gazing towards the pointed direction, caught my eye. I gave her what I hoped was a rakish, charming smile, but was somewhat disappointed when all I got in return was a nervous flicker of a smile.

Maybe I was too tense to truly hide the real emotion behind my smiles and waves. Damn, I thought, as the mother took her child wide of me. She had such a nice smile, too. Maybe her teethes were a tad too big and demanding of attention, but it gave her an air of charm, a whiff of imperfect perfection, which most extraordinary beauties couldn't really capture. You know, it's the imperfect things about us that truly gives character to the perfectness. If such a thing as perfect really exist.

I have said that before, haven't I? Yes, I have. Well, the statement can bear repetition.

Her brown hair, a tone darker than her daughter's, was straight and reached down to her shoulders. Her yellow dress was modest, not showing more of her skin than the occasion called for. And she didn't look like the kind of woman who wanted to reveal more to strangers, anyway.

"All right, sweetheart," she said, giving me a final, fearful-but-trying-her-damn-bravest-to-hide-it kind of smile. Then she disappeared along with her daughter, and I never saw her again.

For a moment, I wanted to drop it all. Wanted to pull out so that none of these people would be put in harm's way. That little girl, who had never done anything wrong and might not ever do anything wrong for the rest of her life, didn't deserve to be shown this world of darkness that was soon to be upon her. Why should she have to suffer from the sins of life? If she was lucky – oh, what a terrible thought – she'd die in the quarrel and wouldn't have to suffer under the curse of knowing the Dark.

What a terrible thought that is…

Why did the world have to be this way? Forcing us to do these kind of things.

I tried to find a glimmer of hope in the plan. There were all manners of escape routes installed all over the place to make the inevitable evacuation as painless and smooth as possible. With the least amount of casualties. Maybe we wouldn't loose too many. Maybe none at all.

Take what you need and say your goodbye. This is no land for hope.

Shitty odds of that, I know, but I was – deep down – a man of hope.

This is no land for hope.

"Hey there, handsome!" a female voice called behind me.

I didn't pay attention to the voice of the woman, didn't recognize it. Wasn't interested.

"I kill people without blinking," I said, not unthinkingly, wanting 'em all to go away. To be left alone in misery.

"Oh, I am not worried about that," Sabrina said, unafraid. "Trust me. I know."

She smiled.

I mustered some semblance of a smile in return and my eyes touched hers. They weren't there. Oh, sure the eyes were there in a general manner of speaking, but the light behind them, the light signifying a soul, a mind within, wasn't there. She was seeing past realities. Seeing beyond Time and Death. Beyond future and past.

"Answer me this, Sabrina," I said, though part of me, the part not scared witless, knew she couldn't possibly answer me. "Are you following me?"

"Thou shalt worry." She pulled the strap of her yellow summer dress back on her pale, delicate shoulder, an unconscious reflex born from the part of her mind that was bound to the reality as it is interpreted by the likes of you and me. "It's about to commence. The next course of action will set in motion your undoing."

"Drop the pretentious bullshit and answer me!"

"In fire, in ice, in thunder he roars… roars of the ascension of Guardian and Abominations," Eerily, she intoned the words in a whisper, her eyes distant and vivid, seeing what her narrative vaguely illustrated. "Upon black skies… Beneath black holes…" Her eyes gazed to the sky, seeing blackness. The look on her face suggested that she had given in to the situation she bore witness to. "Upon black skies… Beneath black holes… Death will come to us all. Time claims us all again and again. And you will do it all again, Guardian. You are lost in your own circle. And the world is lost for you."

"What's this fuckety, pessimism? Another warning? Fuck you."

"The next counts for all, Guardian. There are passageways into the circle of eternity." Some of Sabrina bled through the deity that had overcome her, some of her queer affection for me touched the light in her eyes again. "You can still change. This is the last stand – and the first fall."

Ya feelin' it, motherfucker?

I'm not.

"I don't understand, Sabrina," I said softly, begging. "Please, help me understand. I must understand!"

"The Crimson King rises…" she said, and dissolved away like smoke in the air. Leaving only the taste of her words behind.

The Crimson King rises…

The Crimson King rises…

The Crimson King rises…

"Oak, you hearing me? You fuckin' heard that?" I said, yelled, attracting stares.

"Heard what, Ash?" Oak's voice reached my ear loud and clear. "No sign of any unwanted activity, if that's what you mean."

"Poor choice of words," I muttered without thinking, barely lucid.

"How do you figure?" Oak asked, clearly puzzled.

"Nothing, nothing," I muttered, feigning distractedness. It wasn't hard. The Crimson King rises. The Crimson King rises. Mantra of dreams and reality colliding in fucked up proportions of lunacy. "Tell me if you see something; I cannot see everything, remember," I urged him, feeling like I was walking on the end of my line.

"Will do, Ash," Clement said, tapping away at his computers. Oak had left all the work to Clement. May, Serena and Oak were standing right behind him, no doubt. Listening and, when I put on the Suit, watching the action with him.

Trackers and sensors and cameras had been placed all around the fields of the festival, feeding me with information and video feeds. Most of it was directed directly to my signature, but some of it we had to route back to Pallet Town. Even the Suit couldn't analyze that much raw data coming in a continuous stream. It would be like getting stoned and then doing drugs and then trying to run a Marathon. A sensory overload that would unescapably make you feel sick.

And I'd be busy enough with doing all the fighting, I imagined.

The next thing that happened was impossible.

My ring throbbed, fear surging from it and to me, and a ripple of otherworldly strength forked through my body. I had a short moment to curse silently before the ring rippled outwards and consumed my form, expanding the Suit round me. By its own resolve. That got tiresome somewhere around a couple of weeks ago, man!

People around me, though none of them had eyes on me before my ring had gone haywire, went mad with fear when the big, bad Guardian stood in their midst. My form suddenly rippled with muscles beyond the restraints of man, a hue of blue encasing me, shrouding me in artificial shadows and lights chasing each other on repeat.

Why the fuck did that just happen, I wondered, barely paying attention to the people around me, who had suddenly frozen stiff at the sight of me. If I had noticed it, the looks would probably have amused me, but alas, I had other things on my mine.

And in my face, it seemed.

A message flashed in the corner of my visor. I frowned, focusing with my eyes on the small icon, and it expanded slowly to fill my whole line of sight.

"Oak, that you?" I murmured, my voice gaining the mechanic edge of immortality. No! Of inhumanity, not immortality! I don't know where that came from, man…

Then I noted just what it was I was seeing. "…What the blue fuck is this?"

"God…" Oak said, and I immediately knew this wasn't his doing. "What is that?"

The picture – a recording of some sort – played out in front of my eyes. A bridge, on the forefront of the frame, was on fire, burned almost to beyond all recognition. Acting as a backdrop to the bridge, a city encompassed by the ocean was on fire, though I couldn't really see much of it, for the video was blurring at the edges and the fire seemed to have restructured the city into an unrecognizable haze of melted steel and broken dreams. But though the bridge was burned, I – blessedly – did recognize it. Recognized to where it belonged.

"That's Vermillion City," I said, my breath ragged with rising wrath. "It's under attack!"

"He didn't take the ploy," Oak said, horror in his voice. "Clement just verified the feed. It's authentic. Ash–" Apprehension. Clear as day in his voice.

"Speak plainly," I demanded. "And do it now!"

"Ash – it's happening right now. The feed is live!"

"Who fucking sent it?" I snarled. "Clement – get me some fucking answers!"

"I don't know, man," he said, high-pitched tone of voice. "I – the feed just pounced up. Like it came from out of nowhere. We weren't hacked; we aren't linked to anything. It just happened, man!"

"Fuck this! Give me the fastest route to Vermilion City!"

A pause. Thinking. No fuckin' time for that.

"DO IT NOW!"

"All right, all right." Clement pressed the controls with the speed of a crazed Mankey on drugs. Not a beautiful picture, Drew, trust me. "Sending a route to you now."

A map of Kanto jumped to life before my eyes, mapping out a route between the mountainsides towards Vermillion City. It would take me hours to forge a way on such treacherous paths.

I'd be too bloody late. A chunk of dread settled in my abdomen.

"I'd be too bloody late," I said with my best Unova accent, voicing my point of view. "There must be another way!"

"You have your Pokémon, you fucking idiot," May snapped, and her voice released my sudden tension with an euphoria of relief, a catharsis to which I could place my hopes. "Use Charizard!"

I blinked, stopped all my movement. "Oh… Right. Charizard! For fuck sake, why didn't I think of that?"

"God," May breathed out with an air of incredulous disbelief. "Really?"

I held out my hand, palm open and turned towards the sky, and Charizard's Poké Ball coalesced in my hand in a bright flash of light. "Hey," I said, "this isn't as easy as it looks…"

The game was on.

And I was already billions of steps and possibly thousands of innocent lives behind.

I just prayed to Arceus that I wasn't too bloody late.

---

Oh, and when we are on the subject of Arceus, of faith in a general term, I do have something a case to make on this matter, as well. Of faith and sympathy – cause that's what it is, right? The acknowledgement of ones fears and dreams and love and hate and life. The acknowledgement of another person's predicament.

Right…

You are the kind of man (the common man), who'd argue that the world has shown time and time again that it understands the concept of faith and sympathy – and I quite agree.

The world understands the concept of sympathy. In a certain measure. In a certain amount of time. When the feeling of loss, of sadness, is new and raw and so fuckin' apparent on your face, people can relate, can understand, can sympathize with you. But only for so long, and then they expect you to move on, to move past whatever tragedy that has you stuck in a kind of apathetic limbo.

And if you cannot manage to do that, then it's your own fucking problem. And nobody will care. They will, with time, adopt another mindset.

If the girl you love – the love of your life perhaps, though I don't believe in the concept – slips away between your fingers, and there's nothing you can do about it (nothing that wouldn't make you a bad man by default), then people can understand and relate to your pain a day afterwards, a month afterwards, perhaps even six months afterwards. But then they grow tired of seeing the same misshapen, sad expression etched into your face. They grow tired of you complaints; they grow tired of your misery, of your lack of constitution to move on.

Given enough time and the world won't perceive you as a character of tragedy… but as a character of weakness. A character with the inability to move onwards and defeat your own pain. And the world has always devoured the weak.

This is what I mean when I talk about growing strong in life or growing dead.

The apathy of God. The supposedly creator of a world with a lack of want to make things better, to understand another one's pain. You see, truly understanding another person, another nation's quarrels, requires effort. It's hard taking the pain of others. According to Oak, I am an exception to the rule, and perhaps he is right.

Probably not, though. Probably not. Do I posses any real understanding of another man's pain or am I simply moving through the motions upon this path I have damned myself to.

Death. Death invokes a certain need for absolution in our lives. I think it does that for all of us. It's a genetic misstep, created centuries ago when man first began to develop its twisted sense of defiance with the world it was presented. So aware of our surroundings we take whatever closure we can get, if only to create the illusion of a meaning with our lives.

When we pass… over to whatever lies beyond, we – in our abundant capacity for selfishness – want to leave a lasting effect upon those whom we chose to share our lives with. We want 'em to remember us, to feel a sense of loss. We want them to hurt – very, very deep down that is what we want the most when we lie there in our last moments.

Sure, we wrap it in a nice package. We want to matter, out of love for one another. But really, we are just being selfish.

It has been that way forever. Don't try to deny it. Wars have been started over the selfish needs of a nation, or a selfish need of an individual in a position of power.

But rejoice! O rejoice for the Almighty! He was, after all, the creator of our wickedness. He created us that way with a purpose in mind. As the preacher will, no doubt, tell you. You see, it is an encouragement. They will lead you into the abyss with a certainty in their fallacy only a fuckin' psychopath could muster.

If – and though I have witness some things that might support the notion, that's a big 'if' – but if a Deity such as Arceus exists. If Arceus really created us all and this world we inhabit. Created Pokémon in the image of Itself and man as the balance to their powers of Nature (or simple play things, as is my guess), then that proves a valid point.

And that point is that there is no point in praying for better days. There's no point hoping that the world will be better once you move to another place, once you have proved yourself at your work: it's all predetermined madness. Random things happening in random tantrums of psychosis.

Arceus, after all, created us to be this way.

There is no point praying to Him, for either he doesn't exist, or He simply doesn't care. Which is worse I do not know and do not care to dwell upon. Sure, you could say he is given us a measure of lenience in our dwellings. That we, like the toddlers of God, has to pave our on path in life. But why let it come to this, why let the world turn so ugly and full of hatred, where injustice is the norm?

Either He doesn't exist or He doesn't care. No matter which, it only proves there is no point praying to the Monster of all monsters.

We all have an aspect of apathy within our nature.

According to Legends, we got that from God.

And Vermillion City is another excellent example of that.