A/N: Hey guys! It's finals week right now, so I apologize if this chapter seems rushed or if there are multiple grammatic errors (⊙﹏⊙✿). THANKS FOR ALL THE REVIEWS BTWS IT REALLY MEANS A LOT TO ME I AM SO HAPPY RN!

MeliaAntiqua: Thanks! I was trying to make it as realistic as possible, and I'm glad that you think I did. Hope you like this chapter as well!

Sakura Touko: Thank you for thinking that! Hope you enjoy this chapter!

mednin (2): Thanks! Hope this chapter also has nice writing in it too haha

flower power: oh don't worry you'll get LOTS of ikarishipping. And thanks!

EEVEEpokemonDEDENNEdragonair24: Can I just say you have the longest username ever LOL. I was trying to depict the school as very rigorous and intense, which will show up later in the story. Oh yeah, she does! Thanks for catching my mistake. Hope you also like this chapter too!

SosoAndGlaceon21: Who knows? Maybe it will! (actually idk myself I haven't really planned out this story completely… whoops). And yes I agree with that too! But i think instead of hanging out they'd probably just sit next to each other in silence and tolerate one another. But majority of the time Paul would probably be training his pokemon and Leaf would be too (not in the same area, or maybe they will?) or reading a book.

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inspirare

[in-spee-rar]

verb (latin root for inspiration)
1.
to breathe life into
2.
to instill something in the heart or mind of someone else

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Chapter 3: Inspirare

Okay, I think I should take back what I said earlier. September 12th, me and Paul didn't really collide. Nothing happened except we met each other, nothing destructive happened when we touched hands. Instead, I realized we were on a collision course for each other. Like two different planets attracted towards each other we were coming closer and closer until collision was inevitable. And in that collision debris and memories will fly, dust and sadness will suffocate us until we are nothing. Our planets would learn to cope and develop to become something greater.

It was now September 20th, and during that time Paul was in the back of my mind. I had more important stuff to focus on, like me and May's tag team performance, cheer practice, grades, training my own pokemon, and the overall stress from such a demanding school. So it wasn't really a surprise that I had forgotten my birthday.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAWN!" Melody yells and tackles me as I'm getting breakfast. "I'm soooooOoOooOo glad to be your friend and sooooOoOoOoOoOo glad that you're here with me! You're the best!" Melody holds me in a tight grip, rubbing her face on my face. I giggle and playfully push her away.

"If you keep rubbing your face on me I'm gonna break out in pimples!" I tell her and she giggles and tackles me again.

"Can you move." A gruff voice behind me says. I turn around swiftly but Melody beats me to it.

"Excuse me? Can you wait? It's not like you're in a rush to get anywhere? Besides, it's fucking DAWN HIKARI'S BIRTHDAY! So if anyone should be moving, its you!" Melody half yells, poking the guy in the chest. My eyes slowly wonder up to the face of the voice.

Paul.

"Paul." I say, absentmindedly. He rolls his eyes.

"You better not be expecting me to grovel at your feet like half the school is now." He muttered darkly, glaring at me. I raise an eyebrow, but he ignores it and pushes me to the side. Melody yells at him

"HEY PAUL YOU DOUCHEBAG SHIT HEAD LAME ASS DICK SHIT FU-" I put a hand on Melody's mouth, but she continues to babble and make animated gestures at Paul's retreating figure.

"MELODY! STOP IT!" I yell at her, laughing at her expressions. She stops and smiles.

"Just looking out for my girl." She winks, drops a fruit parfait on my tray and we walk away. Melody sits next to Drew and I sit next to Gary.

"What took so long?" Drew asked with a mouth full of pancakes. Melody rolls her eyes.

"Some guy was being rude to our princess on her birthday."

"Oh shit." Drew and Gary said. I gave them a smile.

"Hey! No worries! I don't even know when you guys have your birthdays!"

"Hikari…." Gary said sympathetically. I give him a look.

"Gareth, chill. No need to worry or feel bad!"

But in my chest my heart was beating fast. Fast because Gary cared, because they both cared even though we've been friends for a year. My heart beat fast from the rush of seeing Paul, from hearing his voice, from looking into those dark, endless abysses that he calls eyes. My heart beat fast because today was my birthday, a celebration that I pushed through for another year.

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"Happy Birthday!"

"Hey girl, happy birthday!"

"Dawn! Oh my gosh, happy birthday!"

"Happy happy happy birthday!"

"…happy birthday."

I smile widely, happy with all the attention and love I was getting from the people around me. Even people that I barely talked to wished me happy birthday! I was truly, truly amazed at everything that was happening. I went to my locker to drop off my books, and I turned around to see Melody with a big fat grin on her face.

"Hey princess, happy birthday." She hands me a small blue box and I take it slowly. Inside is a silver bracelet with a silver Cresslia charm, with blue sapphires for the eyes. I gasp.

"Melody… how did you?"

"Don't question, just accept the gift and love me." She said, giggling. I hug her and stare at the bracelet in shock.

"Seriously this is amazing. I'm not sure if I can t-"

"JUST TAKE IT!" Melody yells passionately and I laugh. She slips it on my left arm and shows me her left arm.

"Look, I have one with Lugia too. Now we're matching!" She clasps my hand and we walk down the hallways together, our melodious laughter echoing through out the hallway.

"WAIT! THY FAIR MAIDEN PLEASE DO NOT WONDER ANY FARTHER!" A voice cried. I stopped walking and Melody clenched my arm tighter and giggled.

"MISS HIKARI, PLEASE ACCEPT MY LOVE, CUPID HATH PIERCED MY HEART, AND I YEARN FOR YOU." A second voice hollers. I turn around, knowing the two voices.

Drew and Gary are sprinting, trying to see who can get to me first. Drew has a bunch of balloons, about 10-15 and Gary has a huge bouquet of gradacia flowers, the flower of Sinnoh. I laugh at them.

"You guys!" I run up to them and hug them tight, laughing still at their idiotic motions. The hallway is silent, everyones eyes on are us. Drew hands me the balloons first.

"Dawn, I know you love balloons, and pink, and Piplup and girly stuff and m-"

"Got it." I said, stopping him. He also pulls out a medium sized black box.

"Open later." I nod.

"Well… I'm poor now since the Prof doesn't send me money all the time, but here." He shoves the gradacia flowers into my face and the smell is overwhelming. It reminds me of home.

"101 Gradacia flowers to show graditude for one of my closest friends." Gary says softly, running his hand through his hair. "It's nothing compared to what everyone else got you, but I hope you like it."

I give him a big grin, hoping my smile will cover my red cheeks. "I love it."

Melody tackles us and hugs all of us somehow.

The sunlight enveloped us, warmth coming from outside and inside. In that moment, time seemed to stop. I was so content with everything that had happened in my life. To me, high school right now was like sitting at the beach and watching the sunset. The waves are not wreaking havoc, they're calm. The sun illuminates the brown sand and finds something good in them. These people were my sunset. They were bright and could turn something gross and flawed into something extraordinary and breath taking.

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I was skipping down the illuminated hallways aimlessly, forgetting every 5 minutes that I had to go to my locker. I passed by a class, when a deep voice dragged my attention and pulled me towards the class. I perked my head in, and noticed Paul was giving talking about something.

"Time is an imprisonment." He said confidently, not muttering. I looked at him and say that his eyes were ablaze with interest with an underlying ray of power. He wanted the people in the class to be swayed by his opinion. A hand shot up.

"Time is a unit of measurement." A girl with thick brown hair said. I realized that girl was my roommate, Leaf. "Are you saying that you feel imprisoned by a useful, and well needed concept that humanity has constructed?" The class got silent, waiting for Paul's answer.

"That's a very naive point of view. You call time well needed, and that's why you are imprisoned by it." Murmurs run through the class like fire spreading through a vast field of grass. Another hand shot up.

"We aren't imprisoned by it! We just utilize it! With out time, how would we know when to go places? How would we know when to keep track of things? Important events, the history of our world… it would all be forgotten! Now, Paul Shinji, please explain to me why time is such a prison, something that hold you down so much you need to call it an imprisonment." Once again the class was silence. Paul clasped his hands and leaned forward.

"Time doesn't exist. Time is something that humans have constructed in order to control the passing and going around them. Yes, I will admit- it is good for keeping track of things. But time is not real. Minutes, seconds, years and days… They all last a certain amount of time, something we made up. Why do 60 seconds even make a minute? Why is one day 24 hours? Who decides how we control the world around us? We try so hard to control time when we forget that we are subjected to time, we rely on it so much we can't even think of a reality with no clocks, nothing to keep track of what is happening. " He took a pause and breathed in deeply.

"Think of it like this. On our planet, 1 minute is 60 seconds. But on other planets, 1 minute could be 100 seconds, meaning their days and years are entirely different right? They view our history different than we do theirs, us saying 1 am is completely different than their 1 am. A pokemon has no sense of time. They see life grow and die, but they don't have something to measure when all of this happens. They are subjects to the force of nature, not the controllers."

A hand shot up, but someone slapped that hand and it when back down. Paul smirked an continued.

"We are imprisoned by time. This unit of measurement controls us. How do we even know that this unit of measurement is legitimate? We could have a completely wrong sense of time. Because time is something that happens, something uncontrollable." He stood up and our eyes met. I gave a small wave and dashed towards my locker, heat flushing towards my face. I ran away fast, not even noticing the smirk on his arrogant face.

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"Alright… Typholsion and Togekiss, spotlight!" I threw my poke balls in the air and my pokemon came out, ready for whatever was going to be thrown at them. I raised my head to May.

"Right! Wartortle and Blazeiken… you guys are up too!" Her pokemon came out quickly, with smiles and joy. They were obviously well groomed and taken care of.

"So for the first appeals round we can use Typholsion and Blazeiken… and then for the second appeals round we can use Togekiss and Wartortle?" May nodded in agreement.

"That's the plan!"

I returned Togekiss and she returned her Wartortle. "Well, this will be interesting. But that will make our appeal a lot more cooler."

"Y-yeah! We can do it!"

"Typholsion, Inferno!"

"Blazeiken, Flame Thrower!"

The two moves collided with each other, my blue flame and May's orange flame created a bright white light. Heat from the two attacks warmed me, more violently than the sunshine. This was harsh, this was brutal and so intense.

"Dawn! Cover your face! Focus!" May yelled from across the field. I nodded.

"Typholsion, shoot your flames up and spin!"

"You too Blazeiken!

Both pokemon spinned swiftly, the flames that once blinded us swirled around each other in a captivating fire whirlwind. I looked at my pokemon, seeing it wobble slightly and knew they couldn't last any longer.

"May, they can't last longer, we need to finish this!"

"Spin faster!" We both shouted, and once again the blinding white flames appeared. The heat returned, and I threw off my blazer and wiped my brow. The light seemed brighter now, and so intense I wanted to fall on the ground and hide. Our pokemon abruptly stopped, and the white flamed whirlwind had bits and pieces flew everywhere, but the flames scattered in a perfect circle, hiding our two pokemon but later revealing them standing tall and proud. The heat finally died down and I grabbed my blazer, missing the heat. I smiled at May.

That appeal was a demonstration of our pokemon's power. There were no sparkles, no rainbows or sunshine, just pure power. Our goal was to intimidate our audience, make them feel weak and give ourselves advantage in battle. She gave me a wicked smile.

"Let's do it again."

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I ran across the campus, trying to make it to cheer practice on time. I had stayed a little too late with May and I would now face the consequences. Even if it was my birthday, I still couldn't afford to be late to practice. Harley, our coach, was very intense. I spotted a peck of lavender hair ahead of me, and new who it was already.

Before I could say anything or skillfully avoid Paul after that awkward moment today, he walked towards me with his hands in his pockets. I stopped in front of him.

"Please make this quick, I have cheer practice and I-"

"Shut up." He said aggressively. I raised an eyebrow at him.

"Alright, what's up?" I asked him, not sure what to do in the situation.

"Can you stop staring at me in the hallways?" I widen my eyes at him.

"I'm doing what?!"

"Was my sentence to advance for you?" He said dully, as if it was something he said all the time. "Stop. Looking. At. My. Face." I looked at his face, and those dark eyes pulled me in again.

"You're still looking!" He said, frustrated. "I've had 4 or 5 guys come up to me and push me around, asking if you and me had sex or something." I widen my eyes and pushed him away.

"What the heck?! Are you serious!?"

"It's so troublesome, you're so troublesome." He said, pointing a finger at me. "Just leave me alone!"

"Me? Troublesome? Sorry that you slightly peeked my interest!" I say harshly to him. He shows no expression, just a cold hard glare with those cold, dark eyes.

"Are you really getting annoyed by a simple comment? You're troublesome, get used to the harsh criticism!"

"You're troublesome!" I shout back, clenching my fist. A smirk appears on his face.

"Sh-shut up! Jerk!"

"Are you at a lost of words? Is this your first time being insulted? New flash, not everyone is your lap dog, like that girl Melody. Not everyone likes you! You are troublesome bitch!"

I glare at him, tears brimming in my face. He doesn't seem to show any remorse or empathy at all.

"You know, I just wanted to say that whatever you said in that class about time was very insightful. And I wanted to thank you again for helping me up that day, but I changed my mind." I wiped my eyes, smearing my mascara but at the moment I didn't give two shits. I looked at his eyes and pushed away from the gravational pull that they had. Paul was an enigma to me for the past week, but now I see that he was just a jerk. A cold hearted, irrelevant jerk.

"Fuck you." I whisper to him, and dashed to practice, not letting a single tear fall.

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"Happy Birthday." Leaf muttered when I walked in, and went back to reading a book.

"Thanks." I turned to her, remembering the words Paul had told me.

"Hey Leaf, do people hate me?" She looks up with curiosity. We rarely talk.

"I'm not sure, I don't socialize if you haven't noticed." I rolled my eyes.

"No shit Leaf, but I mean the people you hang out with. Do they hate me?" She looked at me for a long time, trying to figure me out. When she couldn't find an answer she just sighed and pushed up her glasses.

"They don't know you Dawn, so no, they have no reason to hate you. Maybe they hate the person you seem to be, but no one hates you."

"Do you hate me?"

"I don't know you that well, so you really shouldn't care what I think."

"Leaf…."

"No, I don't. You're bearable." A knock came from the door.

"Thanks Leaf, I'll get the door."

"Okay."

I swung the door open and began to talk. "Melody I will not sneak out past curfew for y-"

"Save it troublesome." I look up to see the last person I wanted to see.

"Bye!" I say, closing the door. He puts his foot out, preventing me from closing the door.

"…What do you want? Did you not insult me enough early?" He rolled his eyes.

"That was merely an observation." Now it was my turn to roll my eyes.

"What do you want?" I ask again, now curious. "How did you even know this is my room…"

"Don't worry about it." He shoved a red spiral notebook in my hands.

"What is this?"

"You said you thought my writing was insightful? Here." I looked at the notebook, confused.

"Why are you giving me this?"

"I'm sorry."

"What?"

"I said I'm sorry, and I won't be saying it again. So just take the apology gift an-" I slapped a hand on his mouth and stepped outside. Surrounding both sides of the hall was a couple of members from the varsity football team. They looked shocked to see me.

"Boys… what are you doing here?" I ask in a sweet voice, extremely curious. One of the guys came up to me.

"We saw you crying when you were talking to him, and we gave him two choices… clearly he chose the right one."

"Which was?"

"Apologizing to you. Honestly, you shouldn't even talk to him. He's irrelevant Dawn. Don't waste your time on garbage." I gave him a look that told him to shut up.

"You guys can leave now, thanks!" I say, forcing a smile. The guy who came up to me winked and the whole team shouted happy birthday. Paul also tried to walk away.

"Not so fast, plum head." I grab his arm and turn him around. "Take this back, and sorry you had to go through that. I didn't mean it."

Paul turned back around, not happy with something. I didn't know what, but I assumed everything. When was Paul ever happy?

"Just keep it."

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I sat down and opened the notebook. The moonlight lit up the room and I adjusted myself so I could get all of the light. I stayed up all night, reading Paul's notebook. He was a jerk, a douchebag, and I hated him. But reading his notebook I learned more about him and his pessimistic nature. Paul wasn't a black hole to me anymore, he was something else. Something intangible.

I grabbed a pen and a spare notebook and began to write about something that imprisoned me.

Paul.

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A/N: ALRIGHT THE POWER IS ABOUT TO GO OUT LIGHTS ARE FLICKERING AT MY HOUSE SO I'M GONNA KEEP THIS SHORT.

I apologize for the seemingly cliche part where the football team hounds Paul and forces him to do something, but stuff like that does and has happened, so I tried to make it not as cliche as possible. Also the whole "time" speech thing that Paul gave… idk what to say about that LOL but if you're curious you should look up stuff about how we don't really need time, or how time really is an imprisonment. Trippy stuff guys. And also I'm not really good at contest appeal stuff so I TRIED GUYS

HOPE YOU LIKE THE CHAPTER! PLEASE REVIEW! :) :) :)