And were back again, after so long. In hindsight I probably shouldn't of said that I would write and do revision for my final exams as I had no idea of how much time it took up. Now I'm not going to stop writing, I really do like doing it but it's just that school has drained my soul, most days I can't be arsed to do anything aside from school, so fanfiction kind of stepped down in my priorities, but I know for sure that for the months I have off between secondary to 6th form (If I get in *touch wood*) I'll will be writing. Now when it comes to the chapter, please don't expect the best from it, I've been out of practise for a long time so I'm a bit rusty..
So, on with the chapter.
Chapter 11: Reunited.
Ash was walking through the gloomy forest carrying a sleeping dawn. Ever since they had left the group, Umbreon had been staring at him, his eyes drilling in the awkwardness until Ash couldn't take it.
"What's up Umbreon?" Ash said slightly frustrated.
"Why won't anyone tell me what happened?"
Ash went red and wanted to scratch his head but couldn't due to Dawn.
"Um... Well." He was praying for something to happen to try and change the subject.
"Tell me!" Umbreon wined.
"You'll find out when your older."
"You know I could just read you mind and find out" Umbreon said, devilishly.
"Well if you do I'd tell Pi."
"No no no don't tell dad! I'll stop." He dropped his head and kept his eyesight straight as Ash laughed to himself at how much Pi can influence his actions. The sounds of foot steps and Pokemon could be heard from behind them, Umbreon was the first to notice this and turned around in battle formation.
"Calm down little man, just us." Tyranitar said as they appeared from the misty darkness. Ash looked at everyone one by one when he noticed that two were missing.
"You know where Pi and Charizard are?" The response that Ash got was a mix of shrugged shoulders and head shaking.
Further Back In The Forest.
"You know you started it." Pi said.
"Uh no you was the one who..."
"I can't even believe were talking about this."
"About what?" A voice came for the shadows.
"Oh fuck." Charizard said under his breath "How much did you hear?"
Zoroark appeared from behind the trees, much to Pi's annoyance.
If word gets 'round what happened I'm gonna rip Charizard's head off
"Not as much as I hoped." This gave them both a confused look "Anyways I didn't come to spy on you lot."
"What you here for." Pi suddenly turned on the offence.
"I wanted to bring you back to Pallet." A certain feel of anxiety started to seep from Charizard's bones, fearing the worst for Heddwch. A dark void open up from underneath them, sucking them all into it.
Inside the void was complete darkness with waves of dark azure floating like the aurora borealis. From inside the darkness appeared Darkrai, angered at the new Pokemon in his domain.
"Zoroark! What have I told you about bringing Pokemon into here!?"
"It's fine don't worry." He said, laxly.
"You know Arceus gets pissed when Non children are brought into our domain."
"Geez don't get your... Black... Tail... thing in a twist were going." Zoroark opened another portal which showed the blurry buildings of a familiar place. Home.
Lab Porch.
On the porch; Luca, Gengar, Alakazam, Raichu, Altaria, Leon, Veigus and Tracey were all sitting around while Yin and Yang were running in the fields. Just by the front of the porch, the dark void opened once again and Zoroark, Charizard and Pi all jumped out.
"Hey fuck face." Gengar said.
"Which one of us are you talking to?" Charizard asked.
"Hey fuck faces, happy?" Zoroark laughed as he pulled up a chair that was next to Raichu who was staring at Gengar.
"Oh come on he's practically an adult now, you can't get mad at me for saying fuck." Gengar was launched off of his chair by Altaria's dragon beam.
"But I can." Altaria turned to the two Pokemon who stood slightly awkwardly "I'm not too sure where Coeden is at, I presume that's why your here."
"I think he's at the house, I'll come with. I want to check up on Ryusui." Leon said, stretching from his seat and walking towards them. Veigus also got up and followed Leon.
Pi looked over to in slight confusion as Leon put his arm around Veigus.
"So are you two...?"
"Yes, I heard some things about you two." Leon punched his in the arm and whispered "Shhh your not supposed to talk about that." Pi looked up at Charizard in disgust and rage.
"Look I didn't..." Charizard was stopped as Pi turned his tail into sharp, cold iron and slashed the side of his neck, causing a deep and wide gash.
"WHAT THE FUCK!? YOU SAID... WHY!?" Pi said, being held back by Leon.
"Calm down I shouldn't of said anything!" Veigus said.
"Yeah it was my fault." Leon finished.
"How!?"
"That's not Important, come on just bring him to Coeden he'll sort this shit out."
The House.
Coeden looked over on Heddwch and Ryu as they both slept on the couch in the front room. They both had been allot weaker than he'd hoped, but being so close to death will do that to you. His attention was drawn away from the two as the door flung open with Charizard being supported by Leon and Veigus and rapidly bleeding from the open wound on his neck.
"What are you doing where?" Coeden ran for a jacket that was on the arm of the couch that his son was on, but before he got the jacket, Pi saw thick horizontal scars that littered is arms. Noticing Charizard's neck, he said.
"Oh for Arceus sakes it's one thing after another."
"Life would be boring any other way." Leon said as they laid Charizard on the table, knocking over plates and glasses. Blood was seeping through Charizard's fingers, staining his orange fur.
"How did this happen?"
A look of guilt swarmed over Veigus' face as he said "I said something about that happened between Charizard and Pi, he got angry at Charizard for talking about it and then... This happened."
"Really you did this over him talking about what happen 'bout 10 years ago?"
"YOU KNOW!?" Pi shouted, more annoyed at the size of people who know.
Not finishing his conversation with Pi, Coeden turned to Leon saying "Get me a bucket, some bleach, burn heal and lemon." Leon ran of into another room to get the supplies needed.
"What you going to do with the bleach?"
"If you mix it with burn heal, it helps heal the wound." Coeden explained, moving Charizard's hand away from the gash and placed a folded up cotton table cloth telling him "Keep pressure on it." Leon ran back into the room carrying the bucket with everything inside. Grabbing the bottle of bleach and burn heal, Coeden started to mix the two together.
I have to put this here and say do not put bleach in any cut or wound, I know it sounds stupid but I thought I needed to put that here because, people be cray cray.
Although he'd calm down, Pi still had a look of anger on his face that wasn't going away any time soon "So how did you find out?" Pi demanded.
"Well Veigus found his way into my liquor cabinet and pulled out a few bottles, Charizard just so happened to be there and well, he gets talkative when he's drunk."
Pi moved away from Charizard and, with his new founded information, made his way over to Veigus.
"So it was you who got it out of him." He said, trying to build angst in Veigus.
"Why do you even care? The only people who know are me, Leon and Coeden and it's not as if we don't a hat in the ring." Coeden immediately stopped with the bucket and walked over to Veigus "Don't bring Dio into this."
"In fact most people here have done the exact same things, Charizard with the valley and you and Ryu with.." The blade of a knife laid pressed against his throat, the girth was around half of his neck. Coeden's eyes were now dark red but had a cold, dead feel to them. The blade pressed further into his skin causing it to slightly puncture.
Sitting up from his slumber, Heddwch looked over to his father.
"Dad, what are doing?" Coeden cracked his neck left and right, causing his eyes to back to its original blue colour. Ryusui was also awake and jumped over to Charizard, shaking his head.
"I've seen worse." He picked up the bucket of bleach, burn heal and lemon then took the cover that he was holding, dipped it into the bucket the dabbed it onto the wound. When the cloth made contact with Charizard, he instantly screamed and he threw one of the chairs into the kitchen which exploded into small pieces, Ryusui pulled on Charizard's tail, bringing him back to the table which surprised Charizard with his strength.
"Now are you going to do that every time?" Ryusui said sassily. Now sitting down on the table, Charizard braced himself for the sting of the mixture.
"Hold it." Ryusui said as he ran over into Coeden's room and pulled out an orange box, opened it and pulled out a thick needle and thread.
While this was going on, Coeden turned away from Heddwch and walked back over to Veigus.
"If you wasn't family..." Coeden was too agitated to finish what he was saying and turned to Pi "What do you know about... What he said about me?"
"I only know about what I'm part of." Pi had a slight idea of what might of happened as Veigus said it was something similar to what happened at the valley.
"I know what your thinking and I'd advise you to stop." Pi's anger had now faded and was replaced with a look of shock.
How can he know what I'm thinking?
"All done." Ryusui said stepping away from Charizard, admiring his work.
"Probably one of the neatest jobs I've done." He looked down at his arms to see about half of his forearm was covered in blood.
"Sorry." Charizard said, feeling weird about a child having his blood on his hands.
"Don't sweat it." Ryusui dipped his hands into the bucket from atop a chair. Loosing his balance, he fell into the bucket.
Laughing, Leon walked over and pick Ryusui up by the back of the neck and started shaking him to try and get most of the mixture off of his fur.
After being placed on his feet, his fur had puffed up, causing the whole room to laugh.
Well he said to get over it so, I suppose this is my chance.
Everyone in the group turned to each other and started to talk. Ryusui started to move his hands towards his head, shaking violently.
Come on just do it!
His hands got closer and closer to his head until he was close enough to untie the bandanna around his eyes. As he was loosening his binds, his whole body began to shake and Leon noticed what he was trying to do. With bandanna undone, Ryusui started to lift it way from his eyes, reviling his scared self.
He's done it...
Although he'd managed to take it off, his conference quickly ran it's course and he turned around, squeezed out the excess liquid and tied it around his eye.
I'm sorry Rio... I can't live with out my mask.
Heddwch looked down from the arm of the couch to see Ryusui's ashamed face, he then picked him up from underneath his arms, fell backwards and placed him of his chest.
"What's amater?" Heddwch said with his classic childish smile, this did make Ryusui smile but it also reminded him of how much he has hidden his past. How much his father has hidden his.
Over with the adults, the subject changed to Garry.
"So... How's you feelings with Garry?" Pi said, treading lightly.
Coeden sighed "I think I'm good now, I'll just need to talk with Zapdos and all be good."
"How do you know you can talk to him?"
"Most children of Arceus can have cross species communication, but if not, I can hear what Pokemon are saying anyways."
"So I'm guessing that your heading over to Mt Silver?" Charizard asked, more brave then Pi.
"Yeah, we was going to head off tomorrow but." Coeden looked back to see Heddwch and Ryusui playing on the couch "Since he's seems a lot better we might head off to day." Coeden climbed into his attic bed room and pulled out 3 bags for himself, Cynthia and Heddwch "You all ready to go?"
Charizard got back onto his feet and followed Coeden and the others out the door and headed to the ranch.
Ranch.
Tracery and the Pokemon still sat around in the same way they was when Charizard and Pi arrived. Tracery had gotten used to talking with the Pokemon, although Oak still tries to do test to see how it works. The double doors of the ranch swung open as Coeden walked into the main room to see Oak on his computer with Mari looking over his shoulder.
"So if you click there it will run the program." He moved the mouse onto the "start" button which sent text flying up the screen which eventually turned into the normal pc box screen.
"And there you go, you've made your own private storage box which is outside the normal box servers, so no one can look inside of it unless you let them."
"Oh that's... Amazing, but Ash won't be able to get onto it."
"Don't worry we're going to see him now."
Lifting a brow, Coeden asked "How did you know that? We only just decided that?"
Mari lifted up an electronic device with a speaker above a screen. "I said no hacking Mari!"
"Oh calm down, the law is completely oblivious to this."
"Well I don't care, no more." Turning to Oak, he said "Do you know where Mum is? Where planning on heading off soon."
"She's headed out to Viridian to see the damages and to do a bit of shopping so I doubt she be back any time soon." Shrugging his shoulders, Coeden and Mari walked back out of the ranch and said.
"Time to go guys."
"Why can you never stick to what you say?" Raichu asked.
"Yeah you said we'd be going tomorrow?" Luca continued
"Are plans mainly revolved around yours and my son's health, they seem fine so were going."
"Can I stay here? It's not really my thing to 'move' ." Mari said, bending her fingers in air quotes.
"Or do you want to say with Oak?" Veigus asked, wrapping his arms around Leon.
"She wouldn't do that, stepping on Delia's game." Leon finished.
"What in Arceus' name are you talking about? That's my mother!?"
"Just pointing out the obvious."
"Little son of a bitch." Coeden said, receiving glares from Cynthia for swearing infront of the kids.
"Don't talk about her like that!" Luca forced himself to defend her.
Leon felt similar to Ash when people talk about missing parents, although his case was due to something different.
"Fine stay and flirt with Oak." Her hand smacked the side of Coeden's face but he continued like nothing happened. "And we'll had off to Mt Silver, Zoroark how many people can go through the dark void?"
"Well, technicality only Darkrai should use it for transportation but..."
"Of course the dark type would take way too long to get to the point." Alakazam said.
Everyone turned to Alakazam with the same expression "Did you really have to say that?"
Sighing, Zoroark said "All of us should be able to get through." He open the dark void once again, the black emptiness seemed to never end and whenever you look into it, you feel it sucking you in. Heddwch walked over the his father and grabbed his hand, he'd always been scared of the dark void as he couldn't develop the resistance against Darkrai's lunar abilities, so nightmares were the norm.
"You've stopped having nightmares now, you'll be fine." Coeden reassured him.
Taking a deep breath in, Heddwch, still nervous, walked towards the nothingness and walked in. Entering the dark void is like stepping off a cliff then being suspended in motion, no solid floor to walk on but still able to walk.
"You've got to be joking?" Darkrai asked, not amused with Zoroark ignoring his plea.
"It'll be fine Darkrai." Coeden said, beating Zoroark with his predicted response.
"Well it's not that reassuring coming from you, using legendaries to go places you shouldn't is your call to glory in the legendary world." Coeden's eye's went slim and flashed red for a split second then returning back to normal.
"Dad, what is he talking about?" Heddwch panicked, since he didn't know what they were talking about.
"It's nothing to concern yourself, or anyone with, come on Zoro, open the void."
"Shit you've not called me that since we were kids." He opened the portal to reveal the normal world, Heddwch practically dived through, anything to get out of the blackness.
Looking down, Ash saw his nephew face down on the ground "Hi uncle Ash." He said, face still in the ground.
A hand came into Ash's vision followed by the words "Get up you Muppet." Coeden started wiping Heddwch's face, trying to get the specks of dirt off of his face.
"Dad stop!" Heddwch said, face red.
"You need to get the dirt off of you face and it's only Ash." Once he was finished with Heddwch, Coeden looked up at Ash, then to Garry. Just the look of his face reminds him of how Entei sacrificed himself due to his Pokemon's mistakes.
Stares of anger were drilled into Garry, bring back his anxiety over the situation which amplified when Coeden said "Garry... Come outside... And bring Zapdos."
He walked outside, followed widely by Garry, shaking as he grabbed his Pokeball.
"Release him." Coeden demanded as he tried to hold back his fiery rage, but it still seeped through. Garry eventually forced himself to bring him out and from the second the Pokemon was out, fear struck deep into his soul.
With him dragging heavy feet across the dirt, Coeden made his way towards him.
"Your the reason Entei's dead."
"Please I'm sorry, I wasn't taught anything about the links between humans and us, I didn't know that he'd get." A hand rose up to stop his fear filled ramble.
"You were never taught?" Zapdos shook his head.
At this time Ash had poked his head out of the double doors and said "So... What's happening?"
Garry had a marble like face with the same confused look "He's talking to him, but I can't see him responding in any way, I don't know what the fucks going on."
Coeden chuckled slightly under his breath "Kids today, not even the old stories? Like the old one or the three brothers?"
"Well yeah we've been told about the Three brothers but, I thought it was just something that the older ones said to keep us out of trouble."
"It is." Coeden lied "Sigh, well it kills me to say this but, things can go back to normal, doubt Arceus is going to do anything."
Zapdos exhaled quickly, feeling like he'd just dodged a bullet until he grabbed him in by the neck fur and yanked him close "But if anything like this happens again... Well lets just say it wont be a happy ending."
Coeden broke away, still filled with rage, he turned back towards the Poke centre to see Ash sitting at the table, he'd ran back in when it had all ended. Around two tables sat both groups, with each table having a mix of Coeden's side and Ash's. Once Coeden sat down there was an awkward silence that filled the air around his table, the angst was cut when Heddwch walked from the other table and sat on his lap.
"How you feeling Heddwch?" Ash asked, slightly hesitate.
He looked down the the smoke filled orb that hung around his neck, the vapour like substance had stopped moving completely at this point, the sight of the orb had caused his eyes to water slightly as he tried to hold it back and just blurting out "Fine."
Coeden glared towards Garry once again but rapidly shook his head then looked up when Joy walked through the door of the kitchen.
"Fancy seeing you here? Thought you took down the training dojo?"
"You had a training dojo here and you didn't tell me?" Ash asked, a little annoyed that he'd wasn't using his time efficiently.
"Well we took it down because no one was wasn't using it, sorry."
"Well it wasn't like training was your main aim yesterday." Garry mumbled, the chance for a joke overwhelmed the tenseness between him and Coeden, who still laughed. After shaking her head, Joy's face dropped and turned to a look of annoyance when she heard a noise coming from the ceiling.
"Raichu I swear to Arceus if you've..." When she turned around a ceiling tile had been moved and the wood the covered a hatch like door had been ripped off.
"How did you even get in there so quick!?"
"What even is it?" Ash asked only seeing a black hole in the roof.
"Well Raichu and some of the other Pokemon didn't like the rooms of most centres, so they'd build their own."
"Yeah and it gets annoying, as a rule we can't have holes in the roof so I have to climb up there every time they come."
Ash raised a brow to what she said "How many times have you been here?"
"Not too many but allot of the Pokemon come here and sometimes they want to stay here instead of the normal training dojo."
"Allot!? How many do you have?"
"Well... Don't tell Oak but... Every one."
Ash drew a blank stare "You mean you've completed the Poke dex?"
"... Yeah."
Shaking his head, Ash turned his head to Dawn who he had his arm around "We'll probably be doing more training, to cover from yesterday." Charizard and Pi both looked towards each other smiling "Don't see why you two are smiling." Both of there faces dropped.
How does he know?
"Well I mean Charizard you have... Three kids?" He asked, not remembering how many he had. Rolling his eyes, Charizard nodded, not reacting the same as Pi did.
"Well since you're here." Ash turned towards Coeden "Do you want to help us with training?"
"Why not? Cynthia is proof of his training." Coeden through a tray at Gengar, which just fazed right through him, gaining a stare from joy.
"What's that suppose to mean?"
Standing up, Coeden started to walk towards the door "Nothing lets go!" When everyone started to get up to train, Ash lent over to Pi and whispered.
"You shouldn't react like that if you don't want anyone to notice." Pi instantly started to produce electricity, shocking Ash.
"It was only a joke." Coeden was tapping his foot at the double doors "We'll talk later, if you want." Standing up from Pi, Ash walked out the door, soon followed by his team.
At The Training Area.
Leading the group into the main area, Ash turned to face Coeden and the rest of the group "Well this is where we've been training."
Coeden tilted his head then brought it back to normal "Not to bad, grounds torn." He twisted his head towards Ash's Pokemon "I'm guessing that it was due to you, well lets get started, who's first?" Floatzel walked forwards, slightly intimated by Coeden.
"Well then, lets see what you can do, the rest of you train with Ash and the other Pokemon." When the other Pokemon all walked towards the opposite end of the indented training area, Floatzel faced the opposite direction to Coeden and awaited his command.
"Show me your strongest move, don't hold back." Tracing through his memories of what he could potentiality do, he opened his jaw wide almost to the point of dislocation then released gallons of water which sliced though the trees until it met the cliff face.
"Not bad." Coeden admired, but he wasn't finished, the soaked rock face started to corrode, breaking off chunks when soon disintegrated under pressure.
"Huh, I wouldn't of thought of braking away the rock and using it, now... Show me scald." As Coeden was pacing left and right, boiling water rapidly escaped from his mouth but at a slower pace and smaller size then the hydro pump, the scalding hot water left a burn on the trees.
"Good now you know toxic?"
Floatzel nodded. "Well prepare a toxic attack then fire out a scald." He nodded once again, forming a purple sludge in his mouth, barely being able to keep it down he quickly shot out a water gun instead of the expected scald, he lowered his brow in anger and embarrassment.
"I wasn't expecting you to do it first time, it takes a while to find out ways to combo moves together, we only found out pillar moves recently."
"What's that?" Ash asked from across the training area.
"Well why don't I show you." Zoroark said walking out to the middle of the area and summoning a Dark void then firing a ball of fire then closed the portal. Time past and nothing else happened, when suddenly another void opened up and everything underneath was engulfed in flames, the thick pillar barrelled down towards the ground as speeds that seemed impossible to come from anything in this universe.
"Well... That's... Wow" Ash said, jaw dropped. "I've never asked but, how is it possible for a normal Pokemon to be able to summon a Dark Void? I thought that only Darkrai could do that?"
Zoroark felt nervous talking about, mostly due to how Coeden was affected by it "Well, it's because of this." Moving his hair to the side, he revealed a cycler scar on the back of his neck "I was kidnapped by Plasma and was a test in their DNA splicing scheme, there original idea was to give my shape shifting ability to Darkrai but it just ended up giving me his DNA which gave me his moves."
Tyranitar managed to pick up on the hidden pain that Zoroark had, but it was more apparent on Coeden and Luca's, this look was one that he'd had embedded within himself.
"Well there's no point wasting time, better get back to training."
Coeden turned back to Floatzel "You keep on practising that and." He turned back to the group Pokemon training with Ash "Who's going to train next?"
"Hey, where's Umbreon?"
"He's coming with me to do some one to one training." Pi had a look of concern, not fully liking the idea of Umbreon training without his supervision. "Don't worry we'll be find, doubt he could hurt me that badly."
Further Into the Forest.
"Come on, try harder." Zoroark said, in a meditation position on top of a tree stump, surrounded by a aura, forcefield like dome while Umbreon was concentrating his energy trying to break through. Even with Zoroark's strength, Umbreon was still making his way through the barrier, but he couldn't his barrage of aura any longer and he dropped down, turning his previous solid beam of energy into mist.
"You did well." Zoroark said as Umbreon sat in his normal position, front paws between his back and head tilted. "Come over here." Umbreon waddled over and sat back down.
"You're much more special than you think." He tilted his head from the left to the right, this time in confusion, Zoroark continued "And although I don't want to scare you, you need to know this. People will come after you, but you have to remember that if you ever get lost... Remember the one who gave a voice and have loved you... And you'll come back."
Although this only confused rather then scare or inform the young one, he still locked these words inside of his memory.
"UMBREON!? COME ON WE NEED TO GO NOW!" Ash screamed, manically.
Without a second thought, Umbreon sprang towards the general direction of the voice. Once Umbreon was out of mind reading range, Zoroark pulled out the aura crystal from his long hair.
"Such a small object with so much power... Sigh... I wish there was an easier way." Temptation was brewing inside his mind, which he rapidly subdued in disgust of his weak mind and swiftly hid the crystal once again and followed Umbreon's example and when to find Ash, jumping into a Dark Void and disappearing.
Somewhere...
Soon... Soon I will retrieve my rightful place in that disgraceful world... And be born again... As the old one could not.
And finished, it's getting around the time where the good stuff starts to unfold but... I'm not very good at finding out how to tell the story, not say everything in one chapter and still keep it around 5k per chapter, but I'm sure that I'll be able to do it and I'll be able to get to the interesting parts, it's been along time since I've said this but.
Until Next Time.
