Cynthia dropped a major revelation on Caelia's head last chapter, let's see what will come of it! She keeps a super positive attitude, but just like Sango, she's certainly had her weak moments. Remember to review!

Also, thank you to everyone who read my story "The Heir to the Dragon". I would appreciate if you continue to read and support it in the future! You can get there through my profile! The story is finally completed! Thank you for reading!

The Elimination Round is reaching its climax! Today is the final day! Make sure to get in votes for who you think the best girl is! Also, because it's been brought to my attention that Valerie was indeed nominated to the contest, but was not given a vote, she will be getting a bye to the next round. This is the final day, everyone, after today all votes will be final!

Nominated: Alcea, Ayame, Carrie, Caelia, Cynthia, Dakota, Darla, Elaina, Elizabeth, Julia, Kate, Kitty, Lila, Maddi, Marion, Nikita, Olivia, Sango, Sylvia

Rowlets and Oshawotts: I'm not great with the MCU, it's been a while. For now, I'll confirm that Elaina is Scarlet Witch, Blake is Hawkeye, and Ayame is Captain America. That's America's ass. Oh, and Sylvia is Nick Fury. Honestly, there aren't many good fits for the MCU. Cynthia is probably Iron Man, okay I'm done now. Also, Gwen is the Winter Soldier. Now I'm done. Maybe more later. Sango is Thor. Okay, that's it.

Just a Bad Writer for Fun: What's less than not caring?

KedharS: And then up another couple hundred.

Hellraiserphoenix: You thought we'd be getting a breather after that strange world? Nah, right back into drama, glad you like it.

JoshGamerV: So, so much.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 658

Caelia sat in silence. Cynthia had just told her that her emotional state was so damaged by Blake's disappearance that she had contemplated suicide.

Caelia didn't know how she was supposed to respond to that. So she decided to ignore it. After all, she had contemplated ending her own existence before. It wasn't like her life was anything that special, after all. All that mattered to her was living life of emptiness and doing whatever she wanted to do, which was nothing.

To that end, she didn't expect for Cynthia to be thinking similar thoughts. It was rather difficult to believe. After all, Cynthia had so much that Caelia didn't. Not only did she have a body that could feel the warmth of others, but she had friends that cared about her, and above all, she had the ability to interact with Blake. Blake cared about Cynthia.

He didn't care about her.

As for the other news, that Cynthia had feelings for Blake as well… that was something that Caelia didn't have to concern herself with.

Whatever Cynthia's feelings were, they weren't reciprocated. Blake loved Ayame Toujou, which was what mattered to Caelia. Caelia hated that senior, for having the love of Blake that she coveted so dearly. She didn't have to worry about living a damaged existence like Caelia did, so of course Blake would choose her.

So while she loathed the fact that Cynthia was closer to Blake than she was, she had no hatred for the other girl's feelings. That was just a waste. There was no sense in caring about feelings like those when Blake didn't care about her anyway.

"I felt like ending my life," Cynthia continued. She winced in pain at the fact that Caelia didn't seem to care, but she tried not to let it bother her. She was going to push through whatever difficulty she encountered if it meant connecting with Caelia and helping her even a little. So she continued to explain what she had gone through in the wake of Blake's disappearance.

"That was how damaged I was. Thinking about Blake… wishing that he could be here with me, and knowing that he wasn't… I always try to conceal my pain with a big smile on my face, keeping my energy up. But knowing that the guy I loved was gone for good… there was no way I could brush that away with a smile."

Caelia stared at her. Concealing her pain with a smile? That made a strange amount of sense. When was the last time that Caelia had smiled? She couldn't remember. Maybe never. Smiles were things that other people did, people who weren't damaged like her. She didn't smile, her expression was as empty as the rest of her, a blank slate with nothing to show. With a body that never felt pain, she had nothing to hide behind a smile.

Well… not quite true, Caelia admitted to herself. She did experience pain. Pain of the heart, like when Blake was gone, or when she knew that she didn't have a place in his life. Those had made her hurt quite a lot, it was all she had felt.

That was the sort of pain that she had gone through, and it sounded like Cynthia had gone through that pain herself. She'd tried to conceal with a smile what Caelia just lived through without a care in the world.

But she had failed, apparently. Caelia wasn't sure what she was supposed to think about that. She didn't feel anything for the other girl, she just wondered why it was that she of all people was being told this. These details sounded like the kind of things that should be discussed with Cynthia's friends, people who could comfort her.

Not some broken shell of a girl.

But there was one thing that Caelia found curious about Cynthia's story. She had explained how she had felt like ending her life. But in the end, she was still alive. She hadn't ended anything. The reason why Cynthia had kept her life, in spite of her feelings…

Caelia wanted to know if there was something that she had held onto to find a reason to keep going. Because for her, without a body that could touch, she couldn't find that reason herself, she had no hope ahead of her.

She just had nothing to live for, not even for the sake of her pokemon. She would continue to live, of course, she couldn't abandon them. Was Cynthia the same? Only going through the motions while being empty inside? Or was there something else? Something that Caelia couldn't see? She didn't understand it.

"Why?" Caelia asked quietly, startling Cynthia, who had been about to continue. She blinked, not sure if she had heard properly.

Was Caelia actually… participating in the conversation? She had added something, which meant that not only could she hear, she was listening, which meant that she was engaged. And that filled Cynthia's heart with a sense of relief.

Now if only she knew what Caelia actually meant by her question. She raised her eyebrow quizzically. "What do you mean by 'why'?" Cynthia asked.

"Still alive. Didn't end it. Why?" Caelia clarified. Well, mostly clarified. In Cynthia's humble opinion, this girl could use some sentence structuring. But Cynthia was a little more concerned with what she had just asked.

"That's a little… ouch," Cynthia said, smiling a little even though she was kind of wounded by the brusqueness of the question. "Why aren't you dead?" wasn't the kind of thing that many people would want to hear.

Caelia wasn't exactly apologizing, so Cynthia brushed it off. If that was what the girl wanted to know, then Cynthia was happy to tell her. She really hoped that Caelia was asking because she was looking for some reason to stay alive. Which had been Cynthia's intention from the beginning. So she was happy to give Caelia some hope to grasp onto.

Especially considering what it had actually been that had saved Cynthia.

"If you want to know why, I'm happy to tell you," Cynthia murmured, her eyes watering a little just remembering how much pain she was in. "I really did feel miserable. Like I had no reason to go on, like everything was over. And looking back now, I realize that was the stupidest thing I ever could have felt. Even if Blake was dead… there were so many other things I could have focused on, so much more in my life, I never should have even thought about ending things."

She shook her head, smiling solemnly. "What I wasn't seeing were my friends. My friends, who cared so much for me, who loved me so dearly. They were what kept me from falling apart completely, my friends and my pokemon. I kept going for their sakes."

Caelia didn't really feel disappointed. Disappointment was for people who had hopes and aspirations, and that wasn't her. Rather, she felt like now that she knew that Cynthia's reason for living wasn't helpful in the least for someone like her, she just wanted the other girl to stop talking. She already tried living for her pokemon, and it wasn't enough for her to enjoy her life. And unlike Cynthia, she didn't have any friends.

Cynthia didn't know for sure what it was, but she saw that Caelia wasn't responding much to her story. Maybe that wasn't the sort of thing she could connect to…

How could I have been so stupid?! Cynthia realized. Caelia didn't have friends! Of course she didn't see anything in a story like that to hold onto!

But luckily, that wasn't the end of the story. It was just the beginning. Cynthia put her disappointment aside and replaced her worry with a smile.

"Don't worry," Cynthia continued. "That wasn't all there was."

Caelia blinked. Oh, so there was more?

"I had lost just about everything that I had," Cynthia admitted. "It wasn't until later I realized that I cared about my friends and that they were the reason I had to keep going. No, I had something far more important happen that caused me to realize that, and brought me out of my fog of emptiness and depression."

She took a deep breath, and pictured her beloved friends. And there was one friend in particular that she owed so, so much to. Someone who had saved her by being strong when Cynthia had felt so weak, bringing her out of the darkness.

"My friend helped me realize that the world wasn't ending," Cynthia confessed. "And she didn't even have to do anything. Heck, she probably doesn't even know that she was doing it, either. But she saved me." She smiled warmly. "Do you remember my friend Sango?"

Caelia vaguely remembered a blonde girl somewhere in her memory, another girl who hung around Blake. She had been annoyingly friendly towards Caelia on the class field trip she remembered, and had ended up dragging her into those hot springs.

She didn't really care much for the other girl, so she began to check out of the conversation again now that she knew that Sango was the focus of Cynthia's explanation.

"I could see how hurt that Sango was by what happened to Blake," Cynthia explained, refusing to let Caelia's detachment keep her from getting through. "She was devastated, almost as badly hurt by it as I was. Maybe even more, because she was the one who heard the truth and then had to explain it to the rest of us."

Caelia raised her eyebrow, slightly curious. The truth? What did Cynthia mean by that? Was there something that she wasn't telling her? Now that the topic was raised, Blake hadn't actually explained where he had been, Caelia realized. How odd…

"Sango was really beaten down badly," Cynthia continued. She actually broke down crying at one point. But when she realized… no, when she thought that Blake wasn't coming back, that he was gone for good, she did something that I never would have had the strength to do on my own. She pushed through it."

Cynthia turned away from Caelia and stared wistfully out the window, admiring the white snow covering the patio.

"Sango forced a smile onto her face and went to school like nothing was wrong. She forced herself to keep going on with her life, and threw herself into her work helping out her friend while I curled up in bed all day feeling miserable," Cynthia sighed. "She's so strong, not at all like me. I was so awed by her strength that I began to wonder what I was doing, getting all hung-up like that. I asked myself why I couldn't be strong like she could. Was it because I loved Blake as more than a friend? Was it because she'd already… no, sorry. That's not something I should be talking about."

Cynthia remembered where she was and quickly shook her head, turning her attention back to Caelia, who was still staring at her with a dead look in her eye. It hurt that Cynthia couldn't see any positive reaction at all to her revelation, but she supposed there was nothing that she could do about that, not yet, anyway.

A little bit at a time, she reminded herself. I have to help Caelia out one step at a time. It's going to be a tough road there, but I can do it, I'm sure.

But even as she said that, she felt her guilt begin to rear its ugly head.

Right now, what I'm doing… do I even have the right to be trying to help her this way, after abandoning her? Cynthia wondered. It didn't feel right. She quickly shook her head. She didn't have the time to focus on that, she had to finish what she was talking about!

"Caelia… the only reason I was able to find that thing I couldn't see, that reason to keep going, was because I had a friend who showed me that she was strong enough to bear that pain without breaking," Cynthia explained. "Seeing that it wasn't the end, that I could move on like that and find a way to keep going, that's what brought me out. My friendship with Sango. And that's what I want to be to you, if you'll let me."

Not that I deserve it…

She shook away those doubts again. "I want to be someone capable of showing you that that pain you're dealing with, that emptiness you feel, it's not something you have to keep holding onto. You can find other things that matter to you." She slapped herself in the chest and gave her a broad smile. "Just look at me!"

Caelia was looking.

She didn't see much.

Cynthia didn't understand, she couldn't understand. So she had felt bad and wanted to kill herself. So what? She still had people that cared about her. She had a world that existed beyond what she could see in her eyes.

Someone like that had no business telling Caelia that she could move on and be happy. Move on? Her body was ruined. She could never "move on" from that, and Cynthia should know that. So saying something like this was meaningless to her. Cynthia couldn't give Caelia a reason to keep on going and try to live her life.

No one could.

Caelia would continue down the road that she had been, living an empty, meaningless existence and refusing to kill herself for the sake of her pokemon, with no hope left to be found.

But what would have come as a surprise to Caelia was that Cynthia could, to a degree, see that reflected in her eye.

And it broke her heart.

More accurately, she could see the lack of effect that her words had on Caelia. The girl's eyes were as dark and hollow as they always were, to Cynthia's regret.

I was too late, she thought, lowering her head in shame. I couldn't help her…

Cynthia had wanted to be for Caelia what Sango had been for her. But she'd missed her opportunity. Coming to Caelia only now, after the girl had learned that Blake was alive? That had been the wrong thing to do. Cynthia should have gone to Caelia from the beginning. She should have known how badly Caelia would have taken the news if she found out about it. And instead of trying to help her through her pain, what had Cynthia done?

She'd only been thinking about herself, and how miserable she was. How her friends had given her a reason to keep going, but how she hadn't done anything in return.

She should have gone to Caelia. They could have healed together. Caelia was broken inside, and Cynthia knew it.

But when Caelia had needed her, Cynthia had been gone. What was Cynthia thinking, trying to help her now? All she was doing was trying to assuage the feeling of guilt she had. If she really cared about Caelia, then wouldn't she have-

Caelia let out a small gasp of surprise. What she hadn't been expecting was for Cynthia to slap herself across the face. Caelia couldn't understand what she was doing. She quickly resumed her usual nonchalance, but it looked like Cynthia wasn't even caring all that much about Caelia, which was odd in and of itself.

Then she turned back to Caelia, her cheek still hot.

"Sorry about that," Cynthia said, nursing her cheek, smiling sheepishly. "That was just a bit of punishment to me, for being such a bad friend. I should have been helping you out all along, Caelia. But I screwed up, big time. You can hit me if you want."

Caelia didn't do anything. She didn't even know what it was that Cynthia was apologizing for, and even if she did, she probably wouldn't care. It wasn't like she gave much thought to what Cynthia did one way or the other.

Cynthia certainly was too late, in a manner of speaking. But not in the way she thought she was. She was punishing herself for not being there when Caelia needed her, but unless she'd had a time machine there was nothing that she could have done.

It was "too late" for Caelia since long before Cynthia had ever laid eyes on the poor girl. Sitting at her side and comforting her about Blake's loss… that probably wouldn't have even made a dent. But Cynthia refused to think of it that way. And because she refused, she punished the only person she could find fault in, herself.

"But I'm not going to let it end here!" Cynthia declared, leaping from her seat, her passion reignited and drive to help Caelia burning brighter than ever. Caelia didn't seem all that inspired by Cynthia's return to form, but that wasn't important.

Caelia needed help, and Cynthia was going to help her. It was as simple as that.

"I wasn't there when you needed me," Cynthia explained. "Well, that stops right now. I'm going to find a way to help you, Caelia! Just you watch! If you won't believe me when I tell you that there's something worth living for, then I'm going to drag you along with me until you find it! And I know just the perfect thing to do!"

A wry grin spread across Cynthia's face. Her feelings of depression and guilt had fallen by the wayside, now wasn't the time to be solemn and mopey. NO, now was the time for Cynthia to help however she could.

And she knew just the way to start.

Walking around the table, Cynthia took Caelia by the wrist and lifted her from her seat, ready to drag her off. The girl still hadn't eaten anything, but Cynthia had decided it was important to pick her battles. Right now, the important thing was improving Caelia's attitude! She could work on improving the girl's diet later.

Cynthia also wasn't so foolish as to believe in blind optimism. The fact that her story had had a negligible effect on Caelia wasn't lost on her in the slightest. She wanted to help Caelia, but knew that it would take more than just some pretty words.

She really needed to prove that she would be there for her. That there was something worth living for, something that could bring Caelia joy.

Because that thing couldn't be Blake.

Cynthia understood just how much she couldn't understand about Caelia's condition. She couldn't begin to imagine how hard it must be, growing up without being able to really feel anything.

And because of that, she knew that she would have to work that much harder at getting through to Caelia and helping her, because Caelia really was damaged. Damaged in ways that Cynthia didn't have nearly the experience to help fix.

But she had to do something anyway. Because if she couldn't, who could? Caelia had no one to rely on. She needed someone in her corner. Cynthia had vowed for it to be her, but she had failed in that goal. Well, she wasn't going to fail again.

She didn't know what hope and happiness would look like to Caelia. But she was desperate to find it, in order to help the other girl however she could.

Cynthia was the kind of person who would impulsively decide to do something, and then figure out the details behind it later!

But there was one thing she knew for sure, and that was the best way to find someone who could hopefully help her.

And that someone just happened to be Sango, the girl who had helped Cynthia see the light! Surely, Sango could do the same here!

Good thoughts, Cynthia. Positive thinking, that'll get you there, I'm sure.