Hello again everyone! Today is my last day of exams, and I'll be heading home on friday for a month's break. I'm not sure how often I'll be posting during break, but we'll see. Bit of a short chapter but I hope that's forgivable.
Bob Loot: I really appreciate that, I really dislike leaving things unfinished. I do however understand losing interest with a project, I tend to only focus on one at a time.
Shieldliger001: They weren't meant to make you suspicious, and there's no reason not to trust them. Some of them will show up eventually, but not for a little while.
Rocker on: Dramatic irony is the best kind of irony if you ask me. The novel is going to be a fantasy story like most of my short stories I have on FictionPress (same username if you want to see those). I'm planning to have it from mostly one perspective with a few chapters of another person's. I'm aiming for the chapters to be ~3000 words. It's 'Hello again everyone'. I'm not big on catchphrases so that's all you're gonna get. The way the compass works isn't really important, it's more just a Macguffin, to borrow a term from D&D. Let's say Arceus makes it work because why not.
On with the story!
The morning was dreary and overcast, the sun hiding behind grey clouds. I awoke to Alejandra getting up, extracting herself from my arms. "Good morning." I said, pushing myself into a sitting position.
"Good morning." She said, stretching her neck.
Jake looked over at us. It didn't look like he had gotten much sleep, there were bags under his eyes. Swift looked just as good as ever, perched in her usual place on his shoulder.
"Hey." He said, obviously stifling a yawn. "I've been thinking about what you said last night. About stories being pointless if you don't share them. I haven't told you two my story yet."
Alejandra cocked her head slightly. "The comment wasn't really aimed at you, you don't have to if you don't want to."
"It's alright." He said. "Let's get walking before I start though, it's a long one." We packed up our things, drops of rain beginning to fall. Jake took Swift under his shoulder, his jacket shielding her from the light drizzle. She looked indignant but was obviously grateful.
Alejandra put on a jacket, but I refrained, the rain on my skin refreshing to me. We set out, and Jake started talking almost immediately.
"I'm a clone of a man named Jack Walker, another ranger, since they couldn't get their hybrid pokemon to work out so they made me to bond the DNA to. I was raised in a lab, I didn't know anything of the outside world until the people who made me captured someone else and subjected them to their experiments. He told me about the outside world, and for the first time I realized that what I had experienced wasn't normal. The group I would come to call friends broke me out of the lab along with the other, and I traveled with them for some time. We actually saved the world, once, before we were even adults. Our group parted ways not long after I turned eighteen. I ended up at Ranger School after a while, and I met the man who is the genetic template I was made from. When I was with my friends I felt like I fit in, but without them I believed myself to be out of place because of what I was. It wasn't until later on during Ranger School that I realized I could fit in, and be accepted for who I am regardless of what I am. I graduated and was assigned to Kalos. That's the jist of it."
We were silent for a minute after he finished speaking. "It's strange, how so much can happen to one person but most go through life without knowing these things are possible." I said.
Jake grimaced. "Arceus knows." We passed through Geosenge without pause, the relentless pitter-patter of rain and the sound of our footsteps the only noise audible.
"You forgot to mention me." Swift grumbled.
Jake smiled for the first time that day. "Nothing personal, just didn't feel like saying everything." He said. We trudged along, traffic on the road much diminished with the rain. Probably most people sought shelter or just weren't traveling.
The rain began to fall harder, and I heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. I pulled on my coat, no point in getting my clothes completely soaked.
I looked back at Alejandra. The rain on her face evaporating in seconds. Her hair still looked mostly dry. She noticed me looking and smiled, closing her eyes for a second. I stopped for a second, letting her catch up with me, her pace quickening for a moment. Our hands clasped, we walked side by side down the muddy road.
I pulled out the watch, for once using it for its intended purpose as telling time. I had gotten so used to estimating time by the sun that I hadn't really thought about using the watch before. It read twelve thirty, the numerals running around the edge of the watch face a pristine black in stark contrast to the silver. If the thing ticked I couldn't hear it over the rain, and I had never heard it do so before, as far as I could remember. Was it mechanical, or something else?
I put away the watch. I would have to check once the rain stopped. Time wore on, and the rain worsened if anything. Alejandra's hand in mine warmed me, a flame unquenchable, unable to be smothered. Where did all that fire come from? There was still so much unknown about pokemon, let alone hybrids like us.
I had to wonder how many of my cells had chlorophyll, or if I had rigid cell walls, or just what percentage of me was plant? I had found myself doing this a lot lately, wondering about things like that.
I pushed it from my mind, there was no point to those thoughts. I had no way to answer them. The rain was starting to lessen, no longer coming down in torrents.
A glance back at Jake showed Swift to be asleep, still tucked under his arm. His tail lazily swished back and forth as he walked.
Without warning he whipped around. "Who's there?" He called out, voice raised against the rain. The sudden motion awoke Swift, as evidenced by the annoyed squawk from under his arm.
I turned around fully, nearly slipping on the muddy ground. I couldn't see anyone at first, but after a moment I made out a figure walking towards us through the gloom.
I shifted as best I could into a fighting stance feeling inwards into my well of power. The lack of sun was costing me, I had but little to draw from. "Don't make me repeat myself!" Jake called out, his voice deadly serious. "Who are you and what do you want?"
The figure moved closer. I could now make out an impossibly tall man, about half again my height. He stopped a few feet from us, his long white hair and ragged clothes now visible.
"Strange beings, unlike that existed back then..." He said, his voice deep, and sad. "Do not impede me…" It wasn't a threat, more a command. The man lumbered forward, brushing past us.
I watched him vanish into the gloom, eyes searching even after he had been completely obscured. "Who or what was that?" I asked.
Jake exhaled slowly. "That." He said. "Is someone that I've only heard of before. He's called AZ, and he was a king of this region almost three thousand years ago."
"Three thousand years? How is that possible?" Alejandra asked.
"No clue, I just told you all I know. We should get a move on, no point in standing here in the rain." Jake said, striding forward. We follow as we followed behind him now, the rain falling ever downward as we went ever onward.