After such a long snow day, it's finally time for things to start winding down! It's been a long, rough day, but hopefully things will look brighter in the morning! Or not.

KedharS: Yup, an adorable Alolan Vulpix!

Thunder Fire: It's not that simple. Unlike the Eight Leaders, the Daevas aren't really a position to be filled. It just so happened that around the same time four different students rose to prominence among the student body due to their talents, and formed a lot of important connections, to the point where they rose up to be influential figures within the campus community. It's an anomaly, not something that's a given for life at Pokemon Academy. Hence when they graduate, there may be a power vacuum of sorts in need of filling.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 349

Walking back to her dorm, Julia was shivering in the cold. Ever since night had fallen, it had gotten so very cold, and it was a long walk back to Bulbasaur House from the beach and Marion's fishing shack/aquarium. Her face was bright red and breath was escaping her mouth in a thick fog. She held her mitten-covered hands up to her face and blew on them.

Julia sighed. She wasn't even halfway back. She was looking forward to curling up in her nice, warm bed and getting a good night's sleep.

"Julia!"

Julia turned and looked over her shoulder to see Sango tromping through the snow, her puffy jacket pulled up to her nose and her hood over her short blonde hair. The only reason Julia recognized her is because of Silver floating above her head, and even he was hard to recognize at first, his normally pale gray body having transformed into a swirling mixture of light blue and violet, looking a little like a mixture between a hail cloud and a tornado. Of course, it was the perfect reflection of the current weather, as one would expect.

"Hey, Sango," Julia said, acknowledging her friend and roommate but not stopping for her, or even slowing down her pace. She was exhausted, and her energy was running low. If she slowed down she might not make it back.

…Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, she admitted to herself. More like she was just impatient to get to warmth.

Regardless, the more athletic Sango caught up to her rather quickly, and the two were soon walking abreast as they headed back to Bulbasaur House.

"Where've you been all day?" Julia asked. "Haven't seen you around."

Sango sighed.

"Difficult stuff, long day," she vaguely replied. Julia smirked at that, and nodded in agreement. Rough day for her, too.

"Reiner and I fought against Elaina Bishop," Julia replied. "If you want to know what a 'rough day' looks like."

"Seriously?" Sango gasped.

"Yeah, we got stomped," Julia sighed. "Luckily, we both made it out okay. But Elaina… she was in bad shape."

"I know, I saw her," Sango agreed. Julia turned to her, surprised.

"What? When?"

"After, I think," Sango replied. "She came up to me and Maddi outside Pikachu House, and she fought with Ayame for a while, before Marion stepped in and ended it. Luckily for Ayame, because she was nearly killed, I don't know what would have happened to the rest of us."

"Elaina is dangerous," Julia acknowledged. "But it looks like she's suffering herself. Harmonia is really terrifying, for both the opponent and the user."

"…You're worried about Kitty," Sango realized.

"Yeah," Julia nodded. "She… Kitty has harmonia too, and with what happened to Elaina, I don't… I don't want Kitty to go through something like that."

Sango sucked in air through her teeth with a hiss, not sure what she should say in the current situation. She let out a sigh.

"I actually fought Kitty for the tournament," Sango replied.

"What?! You fought her?" Julia knew that Sango was taking part in the tag tournament, but she fought against Kitty, too?

"Yeah, she put up a real good fight, too," Sango said.

"What happened?! Is she okay?!"

Sango understood where she was coming from. She had been worried for Kitty too, back when the two had first fought. Her fear of hurting her friend had nearly caused her to give up the match, which had made Kitty end up in even worse shape somehow.

"She's fine," Sango reassured her. "We managed to win, but it was a really close fight. She's really strong, Julia."

Julia let out a sigh of relief.

"So her harmonia, it didn't…"

Sango winced at that. She didn't want to tell Julia that Kitty's harmonia had, in fact gone a little out of control, and put her in a position where she was in really bad shape, causing her some major pain and suffering.

"Of course it-" She turned to Julia in an attempt to alleviate her worries, but the look of desperation on her friend's face made it hard to spit the words out. Julia's eyes were so hopeful, so scared, that for another person it would make them that much more sure that she should keep the lie going, so as not to worry her.

But Sango wasn't like most people. She didn't like lies or secrets. She could see the raw care in Julia's eyes, and recognized that Julia wanted to know if Kitty was okay. KNOW if Kitty was okay, not be told that she was. Sure, Sango could say that Kitty was perfectly fine, that there was nothing to worry about, that their match had just been that, a match, with nothing going wrong at all. And Julia would accept that, she might even believe it. But Sango couldn't do that to someone who was so concerned for her friend's wellbeing. Julia deserved to know the truth, even if that meant that she would be even more worried about Kitty.

"Of course it what?" Julia asked, her voice carrying a tone that was a mixture of relieved and hopeful, which to Sango felt accusatory.

"Nothing, no," Sango said, shrugging off her guilt with a shake of the head. "Actually… this is important, Julia. Kitty… Kitty did lose control of her harmonia, for just a little in our match."

"I knew it!" Julia said, and suddenly she was tense all over again. She quickened her pace, beginning to divert from the path to Bulbasaur House and head towards Charmander House.

"Julia!" Sango called after her, catching up to her friend. "It's okay, she's okay! It was just for a little bit! She got back under control, and now she's perfectly fine! You don't need to worry, okay?"

"Of course I need to worry!" Julia insisted, whirling around and jamming her finger into Sango's puffy jacket. "You saw what happened with Elaina! You saw the damage she did!"

"Kitty isn't Elaina," Sango said, unknowingly echoing Marion's words from earlier. "If Kitty thought that she was going to hurt someone, then she would quit the fight. She wouldn't lose control like that and risk hurting anyone, not even a stranger!"

"Well what about herself?!" Julia demanded. "You didn't see Elaina in her fight against Reiner and I. When our attacks hit, it looked like she was dying! And we were doing it! We were the ones hurting her, because that damned power made it so that she felt all of her pokemon's pain! And you expect me to just be cool with the fact that my friend is suffering just like that?"

"I hurt her," Sango said coldly. Julia needed to understand that. "I didn't want to. But she wanted me to fight. With everything I had. I couldn't disrespect her by giving up, not when she was willing to risk herself like that. She wanted to fight, Julia, she wanted me to fight. You can't protect her from what she wants."

"The hell I can't," Julia coldly replied.

"If you keep acting like this, treating her like someone who can't do anything for herself, you're going to lose her," Sango said. "Can't you see that?"

"I'm trying to keep from losing her!" Julia exclaimed. "Losing her to whatever this is! What do you know about it, anyway?! You've already lost someone after all, what do you know about trying to keep from losing someone?"

"…What?" Sango asked, totally flummoxed by Julia's exclamation. "What are you talking about?"

"Blake," Julia said. "You like him. You did. You still do."

"What? I-" Sango sputtered, unsure of what Blake had to do with any of this.

"Don't try to deny it, I'm not an idiot like Cynthia, or clueless like Blake. I have eyes you know, you think I can't tell that my roommate has the hots for one of our friends?"

"That's… fine, yeah, you're right," Sango relented, crossing her arms in front of her and puffing her chest out defiantly. "But what the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"You never told him, did you? Still haven't," Julia said. "I don't know why, maybe you were too scared to do it, maybe the timing was wrong, but if you did, then I would be able to tell. No way things would just go back to normal if he knew. So that's what it has to do with things. You liked Blake. But you waited too long to confess, and he fell for someone else. You lost him because you sat back and did nothing, even when you could see him slowly getting closer to Ayame. You don't think I hear you at night? When you think Cynthia and I are asleep, and you cry into your pillow? I'm not going to be like that. I'm not going to see someone changing right in front of me and slowly leaving my life, and sit back and do nothing. You lost Blake, I'm not losing Kitty."

Julia finished her screed, panting.

"…Are you done?" Sango asked calmly.

"…Yeah, I'm done," Julia scowled, nodding her head.

Sango slapped her across the face.

The action was somewhat less impactful due to the fact she was wearing padded fuzzy mittens.

"Hey!" Julia growled angrily.

"I never 'lost' Blake," Sango said, her eyes tearing up slightly. She blinked them away and shook her head. "He's with Ayame now, but he's still my friend. It's not the same thing at all! I understand, you don't want Kitty to get hurt. But Kitty wants to be strong. Can't you understand that?"

"I understand, of course, I get it! She… she's trying her best, but… but I still…"

Julia shook her head.

"I don't want anything bad to happen to her. Why is it so wrong to want to protect her?!" Julia's voice was filled with desperation and it was clear to Sango what she was going through. She had wanted to protect Kitty too, she still did. And yet she understood that Kitty didn't need her protection or her pity. She was growing on her own. Why couldn't Julia see it?

"Julia, she's going to be fine. You have to see for yourself just how strong she's gotten, okay?" Sango asked, reaching out and placing her hand on her friend's shoulder. "You don't need to worry about her, okay?"

Julia sighed, and wiped her eyes.

"I know, it's just… it's been a rough day."

Sango smiled, and held out her hand to her friend. Julia blinked, looking down at it and then raised her head up to look Sango in the eye.

"Let's go back," Sango said.

Julia took her hand and nodded, and the two turned down the path up to the Bulbasaur House.

When Sango and Julia got back to their room, they were in for quite a surprise.

"My baby is adorable!" Cynthia insisted. She was hugging a white Vulpix gently to her chest.

"Willa is." The terse voice of Caelia Auburn replied.

Julia and Sango walked into the room, and gave each other a confused glance.

"What, a… what's going on here?" Sango asked.

Cynthia turned to look at her.

"Sango! Julia! Look! My egg hatched!"

Cynthia proudly presented the baby Vulpix to her friends, showing off her new pokemon's beautiful white coat.

"Whoa! Look at this adorable darling!" Sango cooed, reaching out and taking the Vulpix from Cynthia, holding her up to look at her. "But why is she white?"

Cynthia shrugged.

"Is she a shiny?" Sango asked, remembering Maddi's Spheal from earlier in the day, and Julia's Umbreon.

"She isn't," Julia said, shaking her head. "Look at her fur, it's different from a normal Vulpix. A shiny pokemon is only a different color."

"One of the pokemon on the team I borrowed from Maddi is a Ninetales that's an ice type," Sango replied. "Serefina said she got it from some place called the Alola Region. Maybe your Vulpix is from the same place?"

"Wow, you think?" Cynthia wondered, nodding her head eagerly. "Dude, that's cool! I've got an adorable foreign pokemon! Mine's the super-specialist most cutest one in the world! Isn't that right, sweetie?"

She leaned over and kissed the Vulpix on her little nose, the small pokemon licking her in response. Cynthia giggled.

"So if this is such a happy occasion, why could we hear your shouting from the hallway?" Sango asked, handing the Vulpix back to her friend.

"Because Caelia over there was saying that her Vulpix was cuter than this little snowflake darling," Cynthia said, turning back to Caelia and cradling the cooing baby pokemon. "And she's just wrong, isn't she, sweetie?"

Cynthia planted a kiss on the Vulpix's forehead, the small pokemon letting out a kind murmur in response.

"That's what you two were fighting about?" Julia asked, rolling her eyes. She stripped her jacket off and tossed it on the floor, climbing onto her bed. "What a ridiculous argument."

"I know, right?" Sango sighed, shaking her head, removing her coat as well and closing the door behind her.

"Not ridiculous," Caelia growled.

"She's right, this is important!" Cynthia exclaimed.

"Ridiculous," Julia said, shaking her head. She reached down to her belt and unclipped a pokeball, pressing the button. In a flash of light, her own Vulpix emerged.

"Nuri is the cutest, after all," Julia replied.

"Vulpix!" The new Vulpix chirped, running over to Caelia's, who was still sitting on the floor. The two fire pokemon greeted each other.

This set off a brand new round of debates and discussions between the three girls, though Julia was taking it a lot less seriously than the other two. And finally the answer became clear.

"Sango!" Cynthia demanded. "Which Vulpix is the cutest, huh?"

"Answer," Caelia coldly insisted, coming way too close to Sango's personal space, staring up at her with that dead blue eye of hers.

Julia only smirked.

"I can't fucking believe this," Sango shook her head, looking to Julia for some help.

"Nuri, right?"

Julia was gonna be no help at all.

"That's for the slap," she mouthed to Sango, who flipped her off in response.

"Well, I still think mine's the cutest," Cynthia asserted.

"Willa."

"Oh! Nearly forgot," Cynthia said, turning to Julia and Sango. "Is, um… is 'he' back?"

Sango blinked. He?

"Who?" Julia asked.

"You know," Cynthia said, glancing at Caelia knowingly, then back to the two girls. "'Him'."

"Oh," Sango said, nodding.

"Who?" Julia still didn't get it. "You mean Blake?'

Caelia's eye twitched, a spark lighting in her eye.

"Blake? Here?" Caelia asked, walking over to them. "Where?"

"Uh, no, he isn't here," Sango said, shaking her head.

"Oh."

"So he's with Ayame then?" Julia asked her, Sango and Cynthia freezing up, their faces going whiter than the snow outside at Julia's unknowing slip-up.

"Ayame?" Caelia asked, blinking. "Ayame Toujou?"

The atmosphere around her had frozen, though Julia didn't understand what was going on.

"Yeah, Blake's gi-"

Sango clamped a mitten-covered hand over Julia's mouth to shut her up.

"Don't worry about it," she laughed. "He's just going to, um, do some training. Ayame's friends with the Empress, after all, and he's working with them, so that's all."

"R-right, right," Cynthia said, nodding. "That's what you were gonna say, right Julia?"

Julia caught on to the very blatant fact that they were NOT talking about Blake dating Ayame. Sango removed her hand from Julia's mouth and she nodded her head.

"Yeah, that's what I was going to say."

"When… back, when will he…?" Caelia nodded, accepting what she was told. Sango and Cynthia let out a slight sigh of relief, making sure to hide it from Caelia.

"When will he be back? Um…"

Cynthia and Sango looked at each other.

"I guess… soon?" Sango asked.

"Then I'll wait."

"…Or maybe not," Julia said, not thrilled at the idea of hosting this girl who was becoming increasingly harder to get a bead on, and who Sango and Cynthia seemed to be treating like she was only slightly more stable than a nuclear reactor in meltdown.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I think he said something about some late-night training? You know, um, with Elaina? Because they're in the Tag Team Tournament," Julia said, quickly realizing she was a rather shitty liar under duress.

"Blake. Elaina. Training. Alone. Night."

As Caelia rattled off those words, Julia knew she had said something real dumb. She wanted Sango to smack her across the face again.

Caelia recalled her Vulpix.

"Going," she muttered, turning toward the door. "Need Blake."

Without a word she stormed out of the room.

Sango and Cynthia immediately turned on Julia.

"Are you nuts?" Sango hissed. "You just told Caelia that Blake is spending some alone time with a girl, and that he might be out all night?!"

"Uh… yeah?" Julia said. "What, I thought… I didn't know what the big deal was, what's wrong?"

"Let's just say that she's not exactly a bastion of mental health," Cynthia grimly replied. "She has a crush on Blake, best I can tell."

"Putting it a little mildly," Sango said, rolling her eyes. "A crush, in the sense of a freaking terrifying obsession that may or may not result in graphic violence should certain truths about his relationship status come to light."

Julia sighed and flopped back on her bed, staring up at the ceiling.

"Great, what a pain in the ass."

"Vulpix," Nuri purred, jumping up on the bed and nuzzling her trainer's cheek with her nose, licking Julia gently.

"Thanks girl," Julia smiled, reaching up and petting the small fox pokemon.

"Well I guess we can only hope that she doesn't find them," Sango sighed, sitting on her bed, resigning herself to the "holy shit this is really gonna suck" aspect of all of this. "If she runs into Blake and Ayame together, then…"

She shook her head.

"Doesn't help that Blake is dense as a doornail and doesn't even realize how she feels about him, either," she muttered. "That moron might just bring it up in casual conversation like the total freaking idiot he is."

"Yes, Blake is an idiot, isn't he sweetie?" Cynthia cooed down at her Vulpix. "He's a big ol' dumb wittle idiot, isn't he?"

"How can he be both a 'big' and a 'little' idiot?" Julia asked, not even raising her head to look at Cynthia. She could already tell this ridiculous baby talk was going to give her a migraine.

"Baby talk doesn't have to make sense," Cynthia snapped.

Meanwhile, Caelia had exited Bulbasaur House and begun the walk back to Pikachu House. Her progress forward was not impeded in the slightest by the weather, and thanks to her constitution she couldn't feel the stinging cold on her skin. Even though she wore baggy clothes, it was damn clear that she wasn't exactly well-suited for this weather.

"Hey now, what's this?"

A voice called out to Caelia but she ignored it.

"Oh, is little miss Fire Girl ignoring me?" Sylvia's obnoxious voice rang out over the chilling winds as she approached Caelia, who looked directly forward and still refused to give her the time of day.

"Busy. Find Blake."

"My, what a coincidence," Sylvia purred. "I was just looking for him myself. Why don't I join you? I'm sure we have much to discuss along the way."

And so after a brief, refreshing absence, Sylvia returns to once again stir up more shit. She just can't help herself, can she?