Okay guys, I apologize that there were no April updates besides this one and that this one is incomplete. I may upload a part two or just edit this document. Hopefully things will pick up by May but I've been planning to work on Joe's "Week" series scripts more extensively that month.
I don't have any other April updates though the updates are still monthly and Amber is bi-monthly but just so you're all aware. I have a good reason. On April 12th, roughly around 10:45 p.m. my grandmother, who'd been suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia passed away after half a year of being tortured by her own mind. I'll try to get back on track but this sort of thing takes time. Enjoy the story as it is and I'll update it later.
Of all the updates this one was the most important. C'mon Crys, you didn't really think I'd miss your birthday did you? ^_^
UPDATE: Okay, so what I planned to do was resume this story collection again on Crystal's next birthday. But my computer died and, well, drama. So it's a day late, technically that would make this a dead fic but now we can consider it revived. A lot's been going on and I've had time to get back on my feet, so whether you were on time or a little late like I was, let's all wish Crystal a happy birthday. And heck, let's make it relevant and wish everyone who was born in May, assuming that we wouldn't hate these people if we knew them, a happy birthday. And let's hope everyone born in April had a great birthday too, again, assuming we wouldn't hate them.
_
It was news to no one at this point that Crystal was a busy worker. Her usual quota had her working so hard that not even her employer Prof. Oak could keep up. But recently the standards she set for herself had gotten high for just about anyone. If she wasn't capturing or performing some laboratory related task, she was training, or so it seemed. She would do this for hours, every day.
The only problem was that just like everybody else, even she wasn't physically capable of meeting her standards. Of course that has yet to have stopped her from trying. Her free time seemed to be getting thinner and thinner. Even when Prof. Oak himself confirmed to her friends, the other Dex Holders, that he'd let Crystal have the entire day or even week off, she would still say she was too busy and had too much to do. It was hard to keep track of what she was doing, or where or why she was doing it.
Crystal had two main sides to her personality. Her serious side and her normal side. Her serious side didn't have to be seen as serious, it was just that she was very devoted to what she was doing. When contemplating her "serious" side, many people, particularly those that don't know Crystal well, skim over the fact that Crystal finds what she's doing fun. She had no more of a passion for capturing than Red did for battling, or Ruby for contests, a law maker for justice, a warrior for combat. Problems of course, arise when that passion is taken to such an extreme that it isn't fun anymore.
Crystal seems to have fallen victim to this recently. Her stress levels are so high that she can't see that she isn't having fun anymore. She gets stressed, frustrated, angry, like every failure or miscalculation is mocking her. It's a lot like getting mad while playing a game; you completely forget that the game isn't fun anymore. The obvious solution is to take a break and have a cool off period so that the fun may once again be sought and attained. Crystal of course is also suffering from the fact that for every time she's missed a capture opportunity or the trail of a Pokémon, usually of the legendary sort, has gone cold she becomes more determined and can't stop. For like many who refuse to have a cool down period, she wants to avoid the feeling of defeat she would receive in doing so.
Crystal was in the living room of hers and her mother's house. She hadn't actually been there for a long time and it was very different from the way she remembered it. Due in no small part to her mother's tendency to change her surroundings. Of course it didn't really matter since her mother, being the free spirit wanderer that she is, was basically never around. She was seated uncomfortably in the couch, before her was a table and on the table, the couch, nearby chair and all over the floor, papers, Poké Balls, and various other belongings like mugs, a digital stop watch and a white Nintendo DSi XL were scattered around and the entire area was difficult to walk through. Yet Crystal knew exactly where everything was and wanted to keep it that way.
She was only getting winks of sleep. The feeling that sleep deprivation was giving her wasn't new but she hadn't come to invite it anymore than before regardless. The roots of her hair, while dry somehow felt wet and damp, prompting her to run her hand through her hair several times as if trying to feel what made it wet but it never actually was. Her skin, while it looked otherwise normal, felt saggy and strange, like their were multiple layers of skin that she could feel, or as if something was peeling off of it. Her eyes felt heavy, her muscles worn and her bones almost brittle. She had bags under her eyes, thick ones and it almost appeared as though she had black eyes, she was very weary and it took extra amounts of energy to move and extra brain effort to perform even simple tasks.
Her doorbell rang. She didn't get up; she was in the middle of writing down a string of attacks for a capture strategy that she'd been trying to pull off for a while and was going to get the door in a minute. She had to stop to try and keep herself awake and double check everything she was writing; all the while her doorbell would ring every so often. She finished quickly; she was rereading it for errors in strategy, execution, or even spelling being the perfectionist she was. Then, all her concentration was broken as, annoyingly enough; the person at the door rang the doorbell repeatedly in quick succession. Whoever it was at the door, they knew she was in there.
She slammed her pencil down on the table and stood up. She marched up a small flight of five stairs and over to her front door, even stomping on her way over.
She opened the inside door and kicked the second windowed door as it flung open over her porch, "WHAT!" She yelled in a fit of rage before bothering to see who she was yelling at.
And as coincidence would have it that person, or rather those people, were Blue and Yellow.
"Mm temper temper Crys." Blue just about hummed saying that sentence.
Crystal sighed and collected herself, "Blue, that was the single most annoying thing you have ever done. Please don't do it anymore, okay?" Crystal said in a very annoyed tone.
"Okey-doke." Blue said relaxantly.
"Crystal, are you alright?" Yellow asked.
"Yeah sure never better why?" She replied.
"Well, it's just you're always gone, and right now you look like a mess, are you really okay?" Yellow continued.
"I'm fine." She insisted, she had work to get back to and tried to wrap this up, "Okay, have a nice night." She said.
Technically it was around seven or eight and it was actually nearing dusk, the sky was painted orange by the setting sun and similar, redish or even magenta colors followed. As Crystal tried to shut her door, the ever assertive Blue placed her hand on the door.
"Hold on there, you heard Yellow everyone hardly sees you anymore, you could at least let us come in." She said.
"I'm kind of busy." Crystal said back.
"Well-" Yellow started, like she preferred Blue's idea but didn't want to bug Crystal.
"And?" Blue quickly interrupted.
Crystal sighed again, "Fine. Come in." She said exhaustively, like she was trying to avoid sounding annoyed or rude. She turned and walked back inside and Blue and Yellow followed, "If you're hungry help yourself to the fridge, you can do pretty much whatever you want but don't touch anything in the living room, I know where everything is and I'd like to keep it that way." With the one ground rule set she groggily walked back to her living room and plopped down on the couch.
Blue leaned over the couch, catching Crystal's attention, "Hey Crys?"
"Yeah."
"How long have you been at this?" Yellow asked, accidentally interrupting Blue.
Blue opened her mouth to talk but paused, "…Yeah actually I was gonna ask that."
Crystal turned away, facing forward, and rubbed her temples, sighing again, rather annoyed sounding.
"Grouchy?" Blue asked.
"Of course I'm grouchy, if you really must know I've been at this for four days straight." Crystal replied and quickly went back to what she was writing before.
"You must be really stressed out." Yellow said.
"It's more exhaustion than anything. When I say four days straight I mean it."
"You haven't been asleep for four days?" Yellow said in a concerned, even alarmed tone.
To Crystal it was rather ear piercing and annoying due to tiredness making her irritable.
"I don't know about you but I gathered that when I saw all the coffee cups laying around." Blue said.
"It wasn't really caffeine so much as it was insomnia. I couldn't stop thinking about a failed capture attempt and then I couldn't stop thinking about a capture strategy I've been working on and I had to get up and do the math for it, then I couldn't stop thinking about my Poké Ball stock, then I needed coffee to stay awake and I couldn't stop thinking about things in my head that needed written down. And then I couldn't stop thinking about coffee." Crystal explained.
"Should you even be drinking coffee? Is that healthy at your age?" Blue asked.
"It doesn't matter. Crystal, you need to rest." Yellow said very worriedly.
"I'm almost done." She insisted, still writing very quickly.
"Actually I have to agree with Yellow, have you even fed your Pokémon in the four days you haven't slept?" Blue asked.
"Their food bowls were full, yes." Crystal replied, finishing what she was doing and laying her pencil back down.
"Okay." Blue said skeptically, "So where are they?" She all but challenged Crystal.
"Well don't move your foot because you're standing right next to Xatee's Poké Ball."
Blue looked down to see the little bird Pokémon asleep in its Poké Ball.
"You just left their Poké Balls lying around on the floor?" Yellow exclaimed in concern for the poor creatures.
"I-I know where they all are." Crystal began before nearly falling over on the table.
"We should get all the Pokémon on the table." Blue said, holding the bird Pokémon's Poké Ball in her hand.
"Right." Yellow agreed and walked from where she was around the couch to where Crystal was.
"I thought I told you not to touch anything." Crystal said tiredly and even sickly while holding her hand to her head.
Yellow grabbed Crystal by the arm and lifted her up, "We know Crystal, come on."
"Where're your other Pokémon?" Blue asked.
"Well Mega's already on the table, Bonee is on the couch by where I was sitting, Parasee's on the shelf by the stairs and," She stopped to yawn.
"Where's your Hitmonchan?" Yellow asked.
"Oh you didn't see him? He's out of his Poké Ball, he's in the kitchen." Crystal said, walking over to her fire place, "And Arckee's." She started, but she stopped and stared before picking up an empty Poké Ball, "Well this is his Poké Ball."
"Where is he though?" Yellow asked another question.
"I…" Crystal began, very startled from finding the Poké Ball empty and pausing, "I don't know." She said worriedly.
"Well where did you last have 'im?" Blue asked.
"I don't know." She replied.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Blue said back, Yellow wasted no time and started looking around for any sign of the dog Pokémon, he wouldn't be hard to find, he was bigger than most horses.
"I-I don't even remember letting him out of his Poké Ball." Crystal said worriedly.
"Well are you sure that's his Poké Ball?" Blue asked.
In response to her question, Crystal moved the Poké Ball to its bottom side, showing the word "Arckee" written on it in erasable black marker, "Sometimes I write the names of the Pokémon on the bottom so I can keep track of them." All of her worry came back to her tenfold, "Oh my gosh, what if something happened to him?" She said in an almost panicked tone.
"Don't worry." Yellow piped up. She was standing by the door in that room, glass but with a wooden frame, peeking through the blinds that were attached to it, "I see him, he's in your backyard, sleeping like a baby."
Crystal took a deep sigh of relief before speaking any further, "Well what-what's he doing back there?"
"Crystal, don't you think you should be resting? I mean your birthday is tomorrow." Yellow said.
"It is?" Crystal said.
"Yeah, Prof. Oak gave you all of April off just to be able to celebrate it." Yellow continued.
"Wait, he did?"
"Okay Crys, you're way too sleep deprived. Maybe you'd be recalling these things better if you were able to sleep on it." Blue suggested, guiding her to the nearby chair.
Yellow walked back over, "What should we do?"
"Well she's too out of it to think straight, we should convince her to go to sleep." Blue replied.
"I'm right here, okay? Stop talking about me like I'm plastered." Crystal said, finally just letting herself be annoyed.
"Okay, but it's still a good idea for you to get some sleep." Yellow said.
"Yeah sure." Crystal started, "But first I have to-" She began to get up but Blue held her hand in front of her to stop her.
"No. No 'but first I have to's, no 'before that I gotta's, no 'if I don't do it now I won't remember's, you're going to bed." She insisted, lightly pushing her to guide her back down into the chair.
"Okay, fine." Crystal said, she was too tired to argue.
Yellow took a blanket from the top of the couch and laid it on Crystal as gently as possible. If only from sheer exhaustion, Crystal fell asleep right there before she could make a comment about anything else.
"So, how do you wanna go about this?" Blue asked.
"Well, she'll probably be asleep for a while. Maybe we should just leave the paper here." Yellow suggested.
"Yeah, I don't think we'll get a chance to actually talk to her about this."
"I'm not one-hundred percent though. I mean we can't just leave her here can we?"
"Don't sweat it; she said her Hitmonchan was in the kitchen we'll just talk to him real quick. Assuming Crystal got that right and wasn't all messed up because of being awake for so long." Blue finished.
She then walked past Yellow heading to the kitchen to see if the aforementioned Hitmonchan was really there. Yellow took one last look at Crystal and smiled. Even in this circumstance it was nice to see her good friend again.
She pat Crystal on the head, "Happy birthday Crystal." She said happily.
"Yellow." Blue called.
"Coming." Yellow said, she then followed after Blue.
_
Crystal woke up some time later. It was dark out, she saw Arckee now in his Poké Ball by her other Pokémon and Hitmonee asleep on the neighboring couch. She'd assumed Blue and Yellow left and that they'd left Hitmonee to watch over her. She picked up the empty Poké Ball that said "Hitmonee" on the bottom and returned the sleeping creature. She placed the Poké Ball on the table and left the room.
She had no idea what time it was, and went to the kitchen to look at the digital clock attached to the stove. 3:38 a.m. it read. She decided she'd take her six Pokémon up to her room with her and go back to sleep. But as she turned she noticed a paper that was horizontally folded three times on the counter. Of all the paper she'd been using, she didn't remember bringing any of it into the kitchen.
Perhaps Blue and Yellow left it. Or maybe she just didn't remember bringing it in. Then again, after her nap she remembered a lot more. She remembered letting Arckee out of his Poké Ball to work out in the back yard. She walked over to the paper and opened it up. She actually found multiple papers were stapled together, and she was more surprised by what she saw than she thought she'd be.
_
April 29th, last year;
Crystal held her Pokégear to her right ear. It'd been ringing for nearly a minute. She felt a somewhat sad feeling in the pit of her stomach; she was hoping it'd be answered. She even felt a jolt of brief happiness when she heard her mother's enthusiastic voice on the other end, only to be disappointed to hear it say "Hi I'm not here right now, please leave whatever you need to say after the beep" followed by the high-pitched beep in question. Her mother's ditziness showing through by having a voice mail opening that forgot to even mention who the caller had reached.
Still, it's not like Crystal didn't know who it was, "…Mom, I." She stopped; she wasn't sure what to say.
She hung up and dropped the Pokégear, it was held by a cord that went around her neck. She had been hiking for a while. She was expected somewhere tomorrow for her birthday. But before then, Crystal stopped to try and reach her mom. She hoped that she would at least get a call or a message from her mother by tomorrow like she usually did. Then again, she never used to be on the road this much, up until she started working with Professor Oak, she had always been easy to find. However it may've been, Crystal was just hoping to hear her mother's legit voice.
_
It was a letter with written instructions of where and when to go stapled to a small map printed on plain white, printer paper.
"They're planning a party." Crystal mumbled, "Of course."
It wasn't a very original idea, it didn't seem like they were even trying to surprise her. Still if nothing immediately came to her attention before then, it seemed like it would be fun to go and do whatever it is they had planned. She wouldn't want them to go through all the trouble for nothing. Something felt off though. She couldn't immediately recognize the feeling but there seemed to be an air of envy around it. Like there wasn't any point to it. Well even so, her friends had gone to all the trouble to arrange something for her; it wasn't like she was going to ignore it.
She went back up to her room and laid her hat and jacket and such where she usually left them. She left her wristbands that held her Poké Balls on the nightstand next to her bed. Since she'd already had a pretty long nap as it was it was hard to get to sleep any further that night. She felt a lack of energy though and even if she was awake, she didn't feel like doing anything other than laying down. She didn't actually get to sleep though until she heard birds chirping early in the morning.
_
"Crystal, wake up." A womanly voice was urging her.
"Mm." Crystal groaned in refusal pulling the covers further up her face to her cheeks.
"Crystal. Wake up." The voice said more sternly.
Crystal got up slightly from the bed leaning on her back with a look of annoyance on her face, "I was up really late the other night and I want to sleep for a while before I get up, okay mom?" She laid back down quickly, pulling the covers back up over her. But when her sentence registered in her brain she bolted back up, "Mom!"
Sure enough, her mother was standing, bent over to be closer to her daughter at the side of the bed, "Hi Crystal."
Crystal went from surprise to beaming with excitement, "Mom!" She cried wrapping her arms around her mother's neck and pulling her into an embrace, a wide smile on her face the entire time. She pulled back briefly to look her mother in the eye, "Mom what're you doing here?"
"It's my house. I finally have a chance to sit down with my daughter on her birthday and I'm going to enjoy it." She explained.
Crystal kept smiling and hugged her mother once again.
_
Crystal's mom was over the kitchen counter, cutting up some fruits, "So how've things been?"
"Tiresome." Crystal replied.
"You always were a hard working little Oak's assistant." She said, bringing over the plate of chopped fruit.
"Actually, he gave me the month off. Oh thank you." Crystal said as her mother put down the plate.
"Then what's been tiresome?"
"Well, I've spent some time at the Pokémon School and helped with the kids like I normally do, but mostly, I think I've just been going overboard on the whole "catching" thing."
"Are you having another breakdown where you lose your ability to capture?"
Crystal held her forearm up to the side of her head, weary of the slap she'd received last time, which may've just been a "get a hold of yourself slap" but Crystal always thought it was a little much, "No," She put her hand down after that, "quite the opposite in fact. I just haven't been able to stop. I was working non-stop for four days until some friends came over and forced me to take a break."
"Well that doesn't sound anything like you."
"I know. I just, haven't been able to help myself."
"Why do you think that is?"
Crystal paused for a moment, "I haven't really thought about it."
"Well try to, then you might be your old self again."
"Okay." Crystal agreed.
"Is there anything else on your mind you want to get out as long as we're here?" The older woman added.
"Well. The friends I mentioned are planning a party. And well…"
"What's the problem?"
Crystal looked at her mother with eyes that seemed to want to say something but couldn't.
"You're not sure you want to go now that I'm back?"
"Well… Yeah." Crystal replied, a little surprised, "That was my exact wording even, you beat me to it."
The older woman just smiled, "Hey, just because we've been away for a while doesn't mean I'm not mom." She said her happy sing song voice, "I know these things."
"I still have to go, I mean, they went through all this trouble, I can't just not show up, ya know?"
"Well don't think 'have to', think 'want to'. I'll be here tomorrow, we can do something then." Her mother encouraged.
"You could come with me, I don't think they'd mind." Crystal offered.
"Well your friends probably did this because they miss you. I wouldn't want to divide your attention. Besides I'm back for a while so if you want I could have you to myself for the whole week."
"I guess but." Crystal stopped herself.
"But today is your birthday."
Crystal looked down and was silent.
"How long is the party for?"
"They didn't say."
"Well you have to come home eventually." She said, "And when you do, we'll do something quick, I don't care if we have to stay up 'til midnight."
"That's not very healthy is it?" Crystal said with a smile.
"Well... Who cares." Her mother replied, honestly not having a better response, "So is there anything else I need to know about this party?"
"They left a paper, oh what'd I do with that." She said to herself, "Be right back." She finished before hurrying upstairs back to her room.
After a short while she returned with the papers and handed them to her mother who briefed them over, "Oh. Well I know where this is, I can drive you there right now."
"Drive?"
_
Lights turned on in the garage and revealed what almost looked like an arcade. Dolls, neatly arranged floor tiles and rugs, a medium sized television among other trinkets and in the middle of the whole thing, a red convertible.
Crystal was astounded, "Wha? Where did all this come from?"
"You've never been in here before?" Crystal's mom asked.
"No, I always thought the garage was filled with storage stuff or somethi-is that an arcade machine?"
"Donkey Kong. See it's red, that means this is one of the machines that was converted to Donkey Kong from Radar Scope."
"Oh I didn't know that." Crystal paused.
"Well, lets get going." Her mother said ecstatically before walking over to the car.
"Mom why do you have a car?"
"Let's go!"
"No really, what do you need a car for?"
"Have you got everything?"
Crystal sighed, she looked herself over, her Pokémon were on her wristbands, she had her Pokédex and Pokégear, "Yeah I'm ready."
"Good, then I'll tell you on the way." Crystal just sighed and climbed into the car, "Buckle up hun." Her mother reminded her.
"Oh right."
It was a very different experience for her, she'd only ridden in car only once or twice in her life. With the human race having befriended Pokémon for more than at least 50 million years, people mostly used them or some form of public transit. Cars were little more than fashion statements. Well it didn't matter, Crystal wanted to take as much time as possible to talk to her mother.
_
They arrived at the designated building, the Pokémon School that doubled as an orphanage the Crystal worked at.
"Here we are." Crystal's mom said, again in her happy, sing-song voice.
"Okay, thanks, so I'll walk home then?" Crystal asked, climbing out of the car rather than opening the door.
"If you change your mind just call." Crystal nodded and turned to leave, "And Crystal." Her mother stopped her, "I'm still mom, okay? If there's anything you need, just say the word."
Crystal paused, "Really?"
"Absolutely."
The expression on Crystal's face was one of both curiosity and skepticism, and after a second of consideration asked; "Who's my dad?"
Her mother turned her head without another word and hit the gas. The car let out a loud screech and left skid marks as it tore off down the street. Crystal slammed her eyes shut as the violent and sudden noise hurt her ears. She then stared blankly in front of her as she listened to the car heading down the street.
"Every time." Crystal mumbled.
"Hey Crys!" A voice hollered from behind.
Crystal turned to see Gold walking up behind her with his hand in the air, waving, "Hey Gold." She said, turning to walk towards him and waving back.
"Who was that? Friend of yours?" Gold asked with his hand to his chin.
Crystal looked annoyed, as if she could somehow sense where Gold would go with this, "Yeah that's my mom."
"That was your mom! Damn girl." Gold said in astonishment, he then went back to his previous look, "Teenage pregnancy I have no doubt."
"Don't even think about it." Crystal said darkly.
"Ease up super ser-oops."
Crystal looked confused, "What?"
"I promised the others I wouldn't call you any names. Being your birthday and all." Gold grabbed her arm, "Come on, I'm supposed to show you in."
"Okay."
"Yeah we couldn't really make it a surprise so we figured we'd just let you know up front that it was a party." Gold added as they neared the door, he opened and announced in a subtly ironic voice, "You'll never guess who just showed up."
Crystal was suddenly met with wave of greetings all at once. In total, Blue and Yellow were there, she'd assumed it from the other day, Earl and the children were there, again, she'd expect it, it was the building they lived in, there was also Silver, Emerald, Prof. Oak, Green, Red, Ruby and Sapphire. Some were obvious, like Emerald, some were appreciated but unexpected, like Prof. Oak. For the life of she didn't know why Red was there, maybe it was just to be polite since everyone else came. She couldn't help but smile. All her troubles seemed to go away at the moment. She was here, she really needed to unwind, she may as well enjoy herself.
_
Three hours of their lives just seemed to zoom by. Crystal was happy she got to talk to everyone before it all ended, even Gold she would have to begrudgingly admit. It was mostly games, everyone who had a Wii had brought one for the occasion. She guessed that was why Red was there, though it got a little hectic because all the children wanted to play with her. Much to her surprise, the party was apparently Silver's idea originally and everything else went from that. Blue told her that and asked her not to bring it up to Silver because he would supposedly be embarrassed about it. She considered that it may have been a lie to try to convince her to talk Silver, for whatever reason. Crystal often wondered what went on in Blue's head. She always had a plan for something.
She was on her way home. Silver and Gold walked with her for a while until they came up to a turn where Gold needed to go and left, heading back to New Bark Town. Silver stayed with her for a while longer but eventually had to fly back to Viridian because of the time and left wishing her a happy birthday. Silver was a nice boy. But it was closing in on eleven o' clock she didn't have much of a birthday left. Now she was on her own, heading back to her house. She had a lot of fun but it slowly wore off and Crystal was once again looking forward to seeing her mother, assuming she hadn't done anything impulsive and left.
She had just come up on her house when a faint glowing sensation seemed to occur behind her. A bright light would glow on and off again. She turned to see what was causing it and her eyes burst open and her jaw dropped. A beautiful blue radiance emitted and she was taken aback but the sight she saw before her. A sight she once feared she'd never see again.
"Sui... Suicune?" She whispered in a breath-taken voice.
Sure enough, before her was the legendary Suicune. The world around her seemed to change. An aura or reflection of some sort causing an illusion that pasted itself over her surroundings. Everything appeared to be a grassy, forest area near a pond of water that Suicune seemed to be standing over. Crystal was absolutely amazed by all of this, but Suicune wasn't done yet. It pointed it's head towards the sky, as if signaling something. Crystal looked up. Brightly glowing stars seemed to spell out, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY CRYSTAL". She knew Suicune well enough to know this was an illusion, but she couldn't help the feeling of pure awe.
She looked at Suicune, who was now looking directly at her, "How... How could you have known?"
Suicune did nothing to answer. Crystal could barely believe all of this happened just now. Or at all for that matter. Suicune stood before her, doing nothing, as if waiting for something. She hesitantly reached her hand out. She didn't know what she wanted to accomplish in doing so but she just reached out to Suicune.
Once her hand was nearly at arms length Suicune stretched it's neck out as much as it would go and nudged Crystal's hand. They both took a few steps forward and without really thinking about it, Crystal was petting Suicune, petting Suicune. She brought up her other arm and held it under Suicune's chin, scratching his neck. She couldn't believe this. Suicune, a powerful legendary Pokémon was being submissive enough to let her pet him. Suicune turned his head in comfort and if only because she couldn't help herself, Crystal rested her head in Suicune's soft mane. This feeling, it was something she couldn't put into words if she spent the rest of her life trying to do so.
Suddenly, Suicune lifted his head up and straightened his legs. Standing 6'07 it still towered over Crystal, yet just a second ago, it had lowered itself enough for her to pet it. It dashed off as it liked to do. The illusion it had created disappearing and the image of the small street in Violet City.
Something came over Crystal, "Suicune wait!" She gave chase, of all places Suicune seemed to dash into her open garage, "Please wait!"
Once she got there though, Suicune was gone. All she saw was her mother, "Oh there you are." She said, "It's getting late, I was going to come looking for you in a minute."
"Did you see it!" Crystal asked frantically.
"See what?"
"But, it ran through here just now, i-"
"What?"
Crystal stopped and held her head down, staying silent, "...Nothing mom... I'm just happy." She brought her head back up, her eyes beginning to water, "I just ran into an old friend, that's all."
Her mother smiled and brought her arms up, hugging her child. In addition to going over her encounter with Suicune a hundred times in her head, Crystal couldn't help but think, what drove her to work herself half to death in the first place? While her friends' attempt to solve the problem helped a lot and made her very grateful to them, it was really when Suicune appeared and did what it did, that all of it went away. She had no idea why she was so worked up. Maybe she was afraid of never seeing Suicune again after that time two years ago. Maybe, not likely though. Crystal decided she wouldn't think too hard about it, it wasn't important and she promised herself she wouldn't let it happen again.
"So does that Donkey Kong machine still work?" She asked.
_
"I'm on my 13th run, I'm so gonna beat your score." Crystal playfully boasted.
"You can try honey. But you will fail, they always do." Her mother returned with a high and mighty attitude in her voice standing a few steps behind her daughter, she turned around, looked at an Ultra Ball and started whispering, "So why the wait? You know she loves you to death." Silence, but she seemed to be communicating with what was in the ball, "I see, well if you insist. But that was still awful nice of you Suicune."
"You talking to me mom?"
"Oh no hun. Don't worry about it." She said and walked over.
"You know, in light of how things have been, Prof. Oak gave me another week and a half to myself."
"Oh goodie, then we'll have to think of things to do while we're both around."
Crystal smiled, she and her mother spent the rest of the night playing and talking, looking forward to the following week, and this same time next year.
_
Well, there it is. I feel I broke one of my own rules with this. I don't normally like it when Crystal is portrayed as workaholic. She's normally able to freely do a crap-load of work without any frustration, and other people, including the great Prof. Oak, have trouble keeping up with how much progress she makes while she's not even trying. It's a lot of work but she's naturally able to handle it, and it's a healthy amount of work for her. Now think about how much work she does with no problem or concern and without realizing how much she wears out her employer, in fact in this story Prof. Oak probably gave her time off to give himself a break, imagine her actually getting to the point where she's worked too hard and needs a break. Can you imagine what kind of hell that would be for a normal person?
If you've read "Alone in an Elevator, No One Needs to Know", you'll know what I'm talking about when I say I've given Crystal's mom a hard time. I don't really know what to think of her other than "Diet Lady Gaga", incidentally the fan nickname "Lady Gaga" for Crystal's mom was a rare stroke of creativity in the fanbase, considering they normally give us names like MangaQuest, but anyway. I went with a more positive interpretation of Crystal's mother in this story because I'm exploring that. I don't agree with the idea of slapping your crying child when they're begging you for help, but Crystal turned out just fine, and just think of how sweet Crystal is, her mom must be doing something right, and far be it from me to tell a fictional character how to raise their kids.
The red Donkey Kong cabinet story is true by the way. For those of you who remember "Amber the Florence Nightingale Effect", which seems to have disappeared on me(check my page for more info remember to vote if you want it rewritten), you'll remember that it was rife with pop culture references. Which, I would always find okay but I think I went way overboard. I'm still doing it but it's more fitting this time around, semi-Nintendo characters discussing a Nintendo game sounds cute and clever(to me anyway), it makes a lot less sense for them to talk about Two and a half Men. So I'm trying to make any further references be something that might be relevant to Dex Holders. And the part about the Wii comes from Generation 4 games, in which you can go into player character's rooms and they have Wii consoles. Before that they had Gamecubes, Super Nintendo's and in the case of Generation two, an NES, an SNES, a Nintendo 64 and even the frikin' Virtual Boy.
Also I don't think enough stories feature Crystal and Suicune enough. Suicune is way more important to Crystal's character than say, Gold.
Partly dedicated to the memory of Ida Lily-Belle Thompson. In the exact words of my dad, "We all wanted her to go for so long because of her suffering. But the second she was gone, we all wanted her back."