Yellow's night was sleepless. She'd spent the hours between sunset and sunrise lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying desperately to clear her head of what she'd witnessed. The few times she'd managed to drift off, her dreams had been stormed with eerie wailing, ghostly figures, and bloody hands.
She gripped the mug of coffee on the table before her with both hands, squeezing it tight to soak in its warmth, and ground herself to reality, with minimal effect. Yellow didn't often drink coffee, but she was sure that if she didn't get caffeine in her system today, she was liable to collapse. She suspected that if she had to use her healing powers, she might end up comatose.
She closed her eyes (always a dangerous gamble–she never knew what she might see) and ran through yesterday's phone call.
Yellow had called Blue, her friend and somewhat-former-employer, because she'd been the first to spring to mind when Yellow had realized she needed help.
Blue had almost instantly agreed to come back to Viridian. "Of course I'll come!" she'd exclaimed. "If you need help, I'll be there as soon as possible." A pause had followed during which Blue must have noticed the quaver in Yellow's voice, or else the shakiness of her breathing, because she had asked, hesitantly, "Yellow, are you okay?"
It had been Yellow's turn for a pause. Her fears and doubts had swum around in her mind until ultimately, she'd decided, "I don't know. I honestly don't."
Blue had gone silent for a moment, then said, "Right. I can get there by tomorrow. Whatever's going on, just try to hold out until then, okay?"
Yellow had agreed, though more mechanically than sincerely, and the two had hung up.
Back in the present, Yellow opened her eyes. Her hands were numb; the coffee had gone cold without her even realizing it.
She forced herself to stomach the liquid and stand, and then went about preparing to set out for the day. She changed from her pajamas to her normal day wear, pulled on her boots, clipped her belt around her waist, making sure her Pokémon were okay, packed her fishing rod and a few miscellaneous items, and tucked her hair inside her hat as she went out the door.
The walk to where she had arranged to meet Blue wasn't far, though it felt like an eternity to Yellow. The Forest with which she shared to intrinsic a bond had become fearful and foreign. The wind in the trees sounded uncannily like ghostly whistling. At every turn she thought she saw a portal in the air. Behind every tree she imagined a pale figure with hollow eyes drifting towards her, hands raised to grab her, drag her beneath the earth...
When she reached the meeting place, the same clearing where Red had rescued her from the wild Dratini years earlier, she found Blue already waiting there, and with company. Waiting along with her were Red and Green. Despite her tiredness and paranoia, Yellow's heart involuntarily skipped a beat when she saw Red. He hadn't changed since he'd left, aside for a few fresh scrapes that told he'd recently been adventuring.
Green had acquired a cape since he'd left, like the one he'd had when Yellow had first met him, but more tattered, as though he'd been in a few dangerous situations while wearing it. He and Blue, who hadn't changed much since Yellow had last seen her, were bickering, with Red watching them like a tennis match.
"I don't understand why I have to be here," Green snapped. "I was dealing with important business in Kalos, and you and Red are perfectly capable of handling this on your own."
"Yellow is our friend," Blue shot back, just as agitated. "If she needs help, it's only right that we all should be there for her–even you."
Green crossed his arms. "Perhaps, but how bad could this 'problem' possibly be that all four of us would need to address it?"
Blue scowled. "Gee, I don't know. Perhaps it's another world-ending calamity? It's not like we haven't seen those before. Or maybe Team Rocket's resurging again. We just met Giovanni; it's possible."
Green rolled his eyes. "There's no winning with you, is there?"
"Not a chance."
"Fine. She's here, by the way."
Yellow had been standing apart from the three other Dexholders, not wanting to interrupt, but now they noticed her. Blue's face broke out into a smile. "Yellow!" she exclaimed, rushing over and wrapping her in a big hug. "It feels like I haven't seen you in forever!"
Yellow didn't return the embrace, too unfocused to register that she should. "It hasn't been that long, only a few weeks," she said.
Blue released her, chuckling. "I know, I know. It's always good to see you again, though." Her expression suddenly turned utterly serious. "Okay, what's going on? Are you okay?" she asked in barely more than a whisper, such that Red and Green couldn't hear her.
Yellow blinked, surprised at her friend's sudden mood change. "Maybe," she whispered, matching Blue's volume. "I'll tell you guys about it in a minute."
Blue nodded sharply. Then in an instant she was laughing as though Yellow had just told her the funniest joke, and Yellow came to the realization that she hadn't told Red or Green just how shaken up their junior Dexholder had been during the call yesterday.
Red came over as well, a warm smile on his face. Yellow felt the urge to smile back at him, as she always felt when around him, but couldn't bring herself to do it. "Hey," he greeted her. "How's it going, man?"
At his words, Yellow's pulse quickened in irritation, and she replied curtly, "Fine."
Red looked almost as taken aback as she was at her cold response. 'Why did I do that?' she thought, almost panicking. 'He just said "hi." What's wrong with me?' Her stomach twisted at Red's hurt expression. "Oh," he muttered, not meeting her eye. "That's good."
Blue shot her a mystified look that clearly asked, 'What was that about?' Yellow hoped her face conveyed how confused she was about her own actions and how terrible she felt for them. All she could guess was that something in her cesspool of muddled emotions and fears must have bubbled up at the wrong time, and she'd ended up lashing out. Yet guesswork didn't cause her stomach to unknot.
An apology rolled to the tip of her tongue, but refused to move any farther. Her heart hurt to see him hurt, and yet she couldn't bring herself to make reparations. Again she asked herself, 'What's wrong with me?' for this wasn't like her at all, and yet she found no good answer.
Blue cleared her throat while her mind was still racing to find an explanation–any explanation–for her behavior, and said, "Sorry it took us so long to get here–it was a bit of a long journey. Red was with in Hoenn with me, so we had to come all the way from there and pick up Green from Kalos."
So Blue and Red disappearing at the same time hadn't just been a coincidence, Yellow realized. They'd gone to Hoenn together. But what had they been doing there that they'd had to rush off from home with so little announcement? Why was Red in Hoenn with Blue specifically? 'And more importantly,' an unbidden voice in her head whispered. 'Why wasn't I the one there with him?'
Green cleared his throat. "Speaking of how we had to leave what we were doing to come help, would you mind telling us what we've all rushed here about?"
Yellow blinked as the three senior Dexholders gave her their attention, and nearly jumped in surprise when she realized she couldn't stay in her thoughts any longer. "Oh, right." She clasped her hands in front of her in a manner she hoped seemed nonchalant, and was startled to find that she gripped them so tight that her knuckles turned white. Somehow, even with her friends–three very strong Pokémon trainers each capable of going toe to toe with some of the most powerful foes around–present, her nerves were undiminished. "Er... so you all know about the connection I have with the Viridian Forest, right?"
They gave various signs of confirmation.
"Well, something is going on in the Forest–something weird–and the Forest doesn't like it."
Green raised an eyebrow. "Is that it? 'Something weird?' Why did you ask for help if you don't even know what it is?"
Blue glared at him. "Perhaps because a lot of the time when 'something weird' is going on with Viridian, it's a bigger issue. We're all from Kanto, so it concerns all of us." She turned her gaze on Yellow, her eyes softening. "Do you know what it is?"
That was precisely the question Yellow was trying to figure out how to answer. How was she going to phrase it? 'Some guy is opening rips in the sky'? 'A man with a Pokémon I've never seen before is using a machine to make holes that whistle'? 'I'm going out of my mind with fear that a guy I'm pretty sure I killed seven years ago is coming to get revenge on me from beyond the grave'? Nothing she ran through sounded right. And now the seconds of her silence were sliding down her spine like chilled water. 4... 5... 6... 7...
"Portals," she blurted suddenly, then bit her tongue. Whatever kind of answer she'd been trying to give, that certainly hadn't been it.
"Portals...?" Red asked hesitantly. (Yellow's stomach clenched again when she saw that he was still looking anywhere but her eyes.) "What sort of portals are we talking about here?"
"Er..." Yellow hesitated, trying to remember what she'd seen yesterday. She found it difficult to recall the portals themselves, since every time she thought of them, her mind's eye was swallowed with shrill whistling, breaking her concentration. Eventually, she settled on, "It was sort of like a... a crack in a wall. Half-formed, really, like it was supposed to be a full hole, but it wasn't finished."
Green raised a skeptical eyebrow. "What was on the other side? Did you see or hear anything?"
'Hear anything?' The question made Yellow's stomach turn again. Yes, she'd heard something. High-pitched wailing that made her want to hide and never come back out. The answer rose to her throat, but died there. She knew that telling her friends would make her terror ten times worse. If it was only in her head, it might not be real. But the moment she voiced it, it would be undeniable. "N-no," she replied, as confidently as she could muster. "Nothing."
Her tone must have wavered. Green raised an eyebrow, looking unconvinced, though he merely grunted and said nothing. Blue's lips tightened in a concerned frown. Obviously she too wasn't totally satisfied with Yellow's answers. Red still stared at an area somewhere upward of Yellow's eyes, and she got the feeling that he was looking at her hat. His expression betrayed some of the same concern as Blue's, but was otherwise illegible. Whatever he thought of Yellow's cold, abrupt 'fine' was still a mystery.
Blue broke the gathering silence, clapping her hands together energetically and attempting to clear the gloomy atmosphere with a smile. "Right then, we're all caught up on the situation! The portal thing happened later in the day yesterday, so it's probably not going to happen again today for a few more hours. That means we've got a bit of time on our hands. It's, what..." she checked a watch on her left wrist. "10:27? Why don't we go get an early lunch and catch up and make some plans?"
Red glanced over and nodded (Yellow noticed with another twist of the guilty knife in her stomach that he looked Blue straight in the eyes). "Sure, that sounds good. I'm starving."
"You just ate two hours ago," Green scoffed.
Red shrugged. "I'm a growing boy–I need food."
Blue rolled her eyes. "So we're all good for lunch, then?" She raised an eyebrow, glancing at Yellow.
The Healer was so queasy that she didn't see how she could possibly eat anything, but despite that, her stomach still involuntarily growled at the prospect of food, and she realized with a shock that, without meaning to, she'd skipped breakfast. "Yeah, okay."
Blue grinned. "Great! I know this great place that has hamburgers and stuff. Let's go!"
A brief walk later, the four Dexholders were in Viridian City, and at the restaurant Blue had spoken of. Despite living in the Viridian area since she'd been born, Yellow had never seen this place before. Most of her visits into the city had been restricted to the general store and occasionally the Poke Mart (though she didn't really need items all that often), and she supposed she must have overlooked this place until now.
Service was slow, giving the four time to talk. Green told them about his recent exploits in the Kalos region, where they spoke the language he'd been practicing, involving two new Dexholders and a whole host of unfamiliar Pokémon. Yellow tried to listen attentively and comprehend what he was talking about, but the mixture of her own confused thoughts and utter unfamiliarity with the subject matter left her with as much knowledge when Green finished his long story as when he'd started.
The food came after this. Yellow, who usually didn't eat much meat, had this time ignored the salad entirely and obeyed the empty pit in her stomach and ordered a large hamburger and a milkshake, which Blue had advised her were excellent. When it arrived, though, she began to wonder whether the empty feeling was truly hunger. After two bites, she found she was having trouble bringing herself to eat any more–even though the burger was incredibly tasty.
The milkshake presented the same problem–though it was delicious, she was unable to force herself to finish it–so after a few sips she began absentmindedly stirring it with her straw and listening to Blue and Green debate back and forth about the best choice of action, seemingly independent of any information she could offer.
"We should watch the same area–if it happened there before, it's likely to happen there again," Blue insisted.
"That's naive," Green countered. "The Viridian Forest is tens of square miles large. It's not that easy to predict where something like that is going to happen, especially with only one know instance to go off of."
"And what if the portals only open in that spot?" Blue suggested. "Who says they have to be in different parts of the forest?"
"Who says they have to be in the forest at all?" Green rolled his eyes, exasperated. "This is just conjecture without any empirical backup!"
"And since when has my conjecture ever been wrong?"
"Do you want me to bring out the tally sheet for that? Because I will bring it out."
At this point, Yellow stopped listening. Whenever those two started arguing like this, the conversation–whatever it had been about–was effectively over. She'd give it a few minutes, she decided, and then intervene if they hadn't made up by then.
She turned to Red, whose sole focus had so far been, and still was, his hamburger–the largest the restaurant had to offer. As he devoured the last of it in ravenous bites, she again wondered how high his metabolism had to be to eat like this and still keep in shape.
Summoning up her resolve and trying to push the lingering guilty feeling (as well as her mild nausea) to the back of her stomach, Yellow attempted a conversational, 'So.' The word encountered an unexpected, nonphysical blockage in her throat, however, and the resultant sound was little more than a noncommittal lisp.
It was enough, however, to catch Red's attention. He paused, looking up at her (the guilty feeling lessened when she realized he was now making eye contact), set down the little that was left of his burger, swallowed, and asked, "Sorry, what was that?"
Resisting the urge to brush it off as 'nothing' and lapse back into uncomfortable silence, Yellow asked the question she'd meant in the first place, "Uh... so, how was Hoenn?"
Red's face broke out in a broad smile, obviously eager to recount his adventures. "Oh jeez, it was a lot. First Bill's place got wrecked back here after he was doing some research on Deoxys, and we tracked the guys who did it all the way to Hoenn, and it turned out it was the Team Aqua and Magma leaders, Archie and Maxie–you remember them, right?"
Yellow blinked, trying to bring mental images of the two men in question to mind. With the rest of the thoughts swirling about inside her head, it was rather difficult. She managed to recall a strange suit of armor and an incident involving ultimate moves and a legendary water type. "Yeah... I think."
"Well they were using Kyogre and Groudon, and then they used Mega Evolution, and then Blue and I used Mega Evolution, and there was something about an ancient dragon people, and Sapphire and Ruby were there, and there was a giant meteorite that was going to hit, and..." He paused, breathless, his hands in the air from how he'd been using them to illustrate his story. "And I'm honestly not really sure of everything that happened, but I know it involved Rayquaza."
Yellow felt the urge to smile at his enthusiasm. Seeing him this excited always made her want to do that. However, this time she failed to actualize the expression. "Sounds fun," she said.
Red grinned. "Yeah. It was incredible."
A moment of awkward silence followed before he asked, "So... uh, how have you been, man?"
Yellow felt another rush of sudden agitation course through her veins. "Fine," she answered coldly, her eyes hardening. "Just fine."
Immediately her insides twisted with panic, confusion, and guilt as Red's smile faltered and his eyes shifted from hers to her hat. "Ah. Good," he said tonelessly.
Yellow felt as though she wanted a hole to open the ground and swallow her up, or else to wake up and realize the day so far had only been another nightmare. 'What's WRONG with me?!' she demanded of herself, but no answer presented itself.
She suddenly felt very sick, and stood up. "I... have to go to the bathroom," she muttered quickly, wheeled around so fast she nearly knocked her chair over, and made a beeline for the restrooms.
Thankfully the restroom was empty, or else there may have been an unpleasant scene, for Yellow didn't bother knocking before shoving the door open. Locking it behind herself, she stumbled over to the sink and gripped the edges tight.
She stared up into the mirror. Her skin was pale, either from her nausea or the panic that clenched her stomach with an iron grip–possibly both. "What's happening to me?" she demanded of her mirror-self. "Why am I acting like this?"
Her reflection was silent.
'I've never been mean to Red like this before,' she thought, squeezing her eyes shut and attempting to close her ears to the noise from outside the locked door. 'Why is it different now? He hasn't done anything weird–so why am I?' Her chest tightened as if she had heartburn, and she took deep breaths to try to calm her system.
Nothing added up. A million explanations rose to her mind to reason away her agitation, but fell just as quickly, for none of them held up. It felt as though she was grasping at straws–as though there was no explanation, until her grip landed on something of substance–thin substance, but substance nonetheless.
'I'm eighteen,' she thought slowly. 'My uncle has talked to me about how... how people my age sometimes have emotions that are hard to control and explain because of hormones. Maybe... maybe it's just that?'
Just hormones. The explanation didn't sit well with her knotted stomach, or her pained heart, and yet it was entirely reasonable. Perhaps the reason it wasn't sitting well with her was because of yet more hormones. It made sense, even if she didn't like it.
"Just hormones," she muttered. "Just... hormones..."
A minute or two passed during which Yellow stared down at the drain of the sink, her mind, despite the whirlpool of thoughts and feelings thrashing about inside it, managed to bring nothing to the forefront. "Just hormones."
Suddenly she stood up straight. Despite how vehemently her guilty conscience insisted there had to be another, better explanation for her actions, this would have to do. She twisted the metal doorknob, sending shivers through her system (she supposed she'd gotten the chills), and reentered the dining floor.
As she approached the table, Blue and Green looked up at her, while Red resumed staring at her hat.
"Hey. Are you okay?" Blue asked, her expression concerned.
Yellow drew a shaky breath. She hesitated for too long, then said, "Y-yeah."
Blue was obviously unconvinced–sometimes Yellow despised her friend's ability to see through her–though she didn't press the issue. "We've decided that we're going to head back to the place where you saw the portal right away instead of waiting–if you think that's a good idea," she added hastily.
Yellow took a moment to register what Blue had said, and agreed without thinking. "Yeah. That's good."
Blue smiled. "Excellent. Let's go, then. Green, you're paying."
Green glared at her as though he wanted to argue, then took a deep breath and grumbled, "Fine."
One payment later, and the four were on their way out of the restaurant. As they walked through town, headed toward the forest, Yellow shot a glance at Red, who was currently looking everywhere but in her direction.
'Just hormones,' she told herself as her stomach twisted and her heart ached. 'Just hormones.'