Aftershock
Chapter 8: Aftermath
(AKA Aftershock)
I still marvel at how young I once was, running all the way back to Saffron with fear alone driving at my heels; no demons, no threat to my life, no glittering obsession dangling before me. But I suppose grief played its own part in my maddened rush, deep down beneath the denial and the dread. Old, withered sadness had already become the father of my emotions, since that very moment – though the thought of Ferena's death had not yet impressed itself entirely upon me.
And I had burst like a train through the crowds of startled city-creatures, diving instinctually into my last pillar left unshattered, feeling, perhaps for the last time in my life, alone. For a great waste of chaos lay behind me, a thousand thoughts and memories I never knew I possessed (and indeed had never done), and I wished, more than the reversal of this event, drunk as I still was upon confusion and bewilderment, a voice of reason to pull me back into bearing. Why, oblivious ignorance itself had seemed unbearable to me at that moment, though I know now that the alternative is far bitterer.
Kalens Oak, the old gentleman biologist, had steadied my ramblings as I had hoped, directing me into a narrative (if not analyzation) of the events preceding. Ah, reason, lucidity, the draught of cold water before the inevitable illness.
I watched, then, as he heard the full expanses of what I insensibly uttered, taking the sudden grief with his characteristic, subtle pain, and working soundlessly into an organization of the tragedy. Certain laws of the universe, he began, and then trailed off in his struggle to articulate the concept to follow.
Then had the first stroke of the separation rang out, second only to the very incident from which I ran breathlessly. For the professor had replied with what I can still clearly see to be a half-truth, a veiling of the full course of events. From his suddenly brusque explanations, what had afflicted Ruki was a very anomaly in the laws of the universe. As to why it had come, the extent of the damage, further explanation, he moved completely from attention, responding fully to no remark; and there I suddenly felt the sharp blow of all I had been holding off, sinking me into a dark depression.
The wooden boat can only sail so long in the merciless waters, its prow still tasting air and sunlight, before it goes entirely under.
Indeed, the length and intensity of the fits of self-pity which soon came over me conquered the records of all other endeavors made by man, swinging violently as I did between intense, rebellious anger and overwhelming apathy, before springing up out of my room into the snow outside. I still trained, my Pokèmon (their indubitable telepathic links) reflecting the grim, hollow dedication I took to my dearest obsessions, after all desire or joy from their execution was leached out. But this was no distraction from my main matter of thought, as it had been so long ago when I registered the death of my village. The utter absence of my old light, Ruki's enthusiasm, served only to plunge me deeper into my depression: where, in the first case, training had been entirely apart from my mourning (or lack thereof) of the village, now it was connected intimately with death in all its matters.
Which is not to say I did badly in my pursuits. Those were the days of my peak of glory, dark as it may seem to you, reader, and I soon took to traveling far and wide, the dark young man with the godly Kadabra and Mightyena who ripped wordlessly through each Gym he encountered. Ah, don't misunderstand me; where I say a dark young man, I mean merely a man – brooding, joyless, but still human in all respects. Folly to think I couldn't have still turned back then, though I understand now the course of thoughts which ravaged my mind.
After all, without the young girl at my side, eternally cheering all within her vicinity, I was but Amaren of the village, the primeval sea-creature awkwardly stumbling onto land. And then, later, Luphinid (whose full extents no analogy can encompass!).
There was, believe it or not, a twisted meaning to all my wanderings. I no longer wished for the Indigo Plateau, but I was near certain that somewhere, deep in the world's corners, I could learn more of these "anomalies", for the reason which has become my trademark over time: absolutely none. No reason, I mean to say. I can only suppose the twofold grief of Ruki's death, and the razing of the village (held off for so long), overcame the occupying distraction training had once given me, and I wished some more novel task. And so I found, after five badges came under my name, this entry hidden within classified folders of my trainer card alone:
"A little-known (though extremely important) fact of the universe is that the physical world in which all existent beings interact is not the only plane of existence. Every particle of matter is a branch from a single, common point of origin, and different universes with different properties and laws can theoretically arise if the level of complexity (i.e. the degree to which the point of origin separates to form separate objects) differs from our own.
"While attempting to interact with this possibility by physical means is virtually impossible, certain advanced Psychic-type Pokèmon possess the ability to deepen their perception into levels below our own in complexity. Thus, from our primitive understanding of this field, we have found that very few planes of existence exist below our own, though our level of complexity is far above zero. (One can analogize this to a radio tuning device: our plane of existence can be (somewhat roughly) said to be in the middle frequencies, and though there are many frequencies between ours and the lowest setting, there are very few stations which our radio can attune to.)
"Planes of existence higher than ours are impossible to detect using earthly measurements, and should not contain any value other than that of scientific interest. However, at a certain point above the point of origin, one encounters what has been termed the theoretic plane."
I delved deeper into records of this plane, deprived of the familiar sense of full understanding, and discovered a vein of gold (or lead, depending on perception – read on).
"The theoretic plane is a level of complexity of the universe which seems to serve as a base for the laws of our own. On this plane, energy is shaped in various ways and purposes to create a consciousness (more accurately, an existence). Blocks of energy are shaped into different concepts and assembled into roundabout, symmetrical units, which, when amplified into our level of complexity, form objects. It is essential that each block of energy – each attribute of the object – interact with at least one other, to form a stable object. If this is not fulfilled, the independent energy is discarded as soon as the object is formed, or otherwise the object forms an abnormality in the physical plane."
I read only as far as this sentence, though there was much more still; I had seen the word abnormality. Anomaly.
Why, I realized, these were hardly the sole types of anomaly. Anomalies appeared at contradictions in the laws of the universe, at certain mental illnesses, at points of indefiniteness. There were as many anomalies as stars to the sky, and enough taxonomists, enthusiasts, hunters of these "wrongs" to rival astronomers. All eternally damned, of course, often for the mere heresy of thinking upon the topic for too long. Such was the sheer corruption of this game, and the fledgling corruption of my heart rang alongside it, attracting me like a moth to the lethal candle. Within a matter of weeks, I had become enraptured with the art of Righting.
Righters, for various personal reasons, took to hunting down such wrongs by varied means and attempting to 'debug', for lack of a better term, the contradiction in laws which arose to its existence. If any nobility can be construed by this simple definition, it is a misnomer. The level of power and strength required for such a task is impossible to gain through any means but entirely ignoble, and these personal causes were also exceptionlessly entirely ignoble, usually the aftermath of a severe nervous breakdown and a maddened spiral into their own grudging demise. Such as mine.
But for a while progress into the art ran most sluggishly. While I was entirely certain I was destined for this beautiful vocation, I understood not the rudiments of information or strength required for my graduation into the art; and the majority of the world felt (most rightly) that such information, being unfit for living ears, was best kept hidden deep in the confines of the earth. Not more than a single mention of Righting did the trainer card allow, even when, in my delirious obsession, I gained the clearance of seven Badges, and ancient texts upon the subject were likewise banned from such public libraries as I perused in my early days. Of course, I had merely to look in the correct places and I would have discovered all I required – but, had I known this then, I would be deprived of an anecdote to add to this merry narration of my lie.
For I once sought conversation with a certain man while in my wanderings, a seedy king among beggars living in the Saffron Underground. (Yes, indeed, even a city as Saffron contained its fair share of back-alleys.) Countless ancient buildings had never been renovated during the transformation of the concrete city into steel, and vermin, generating spontaneously from sources unknown, seemed to flood these decrepit relics, driving out whatever light still remained.
His paltry abode was an abandoned warehouse, the joy of all objectionable practitioners; a stone hangar of a building resembling a hypothetical soiled remnant of the Saffron Gym. Unrecognizable letters marched over its rain-stained walls, obscured by a series of badly-impressed graffiti records announcing the current 'owner' of the warehouse at their time. Their quality was such that not only did a later inscription cover an earlier at its place, the earlier sign bled slowly into the later, to the effect of an indistinct, continuous scrawl of shaky lines.
[Colourful, I remarked to Ytarrik.
We stepped inside, Lepena in his Pokèball, to meet a most surprisingly vacant sight: a single, ancient rug at the very center, orbited by a circle of seating arrangements and covered by a metal table (and a flickering light bulb above it). The man himself stood behind the front chair, a medium-built, scrawny affair in an oversized trench coat. His dogged faced glinted hungrily out of a mess of black razors which served as his hair.
"You're that trainer, eh?" he shot out in an unrecognizable accent.
I replied that indeed, I was a trainer.
"Yeah, but you're not just a trainer, are you? You've got, ehh, nine badges or whatever?"
I soundlessly corrected this to seven badges.
"Why not. Look, what'd you come here for?"
"I heard you knew something about anomaly hunting," I droned. I rather recall losing all hope in this endeavor from that early a moment; this man was nothing close to a typical Righter.
"Uh, sure. I know a lot about Righting. 'Righting is the systematic discovery and repairing of natural anomalies' and all that jazz."
"I think I also know that already," I said impatiently.
"Fine, I'll tell you something you can't possibly know. Stop getting into this business. You probably think you've got nothing left to you in this world and everything, but you don't ever get that bad till you start Righting. You're doing pretty good, I think" – and he shot a furtive glance of lust at my physique – "compared to a Righter. Or a freeler. Trust me, I've done both."
Later investigation afforded me this: "'Freeling' (slang), or assimilation heightening, is the deliberate consumption of raw Pokèmon flesh for various purposes: most often a momentary burst of pleasure, but also sometimes for the heightening of that skill in the human which the Pokèmon possessed during its life. For example, an assimilation heightener of Fighting-types gains superhuman strength. This practice is so unhealthy and immoral as to be illegal in all regions of the world except Orre."
I had only to glance at him and see the truth of his words.
The need for a 'getting down to business', as it were, was becoming increasingly obvious, and so: "Will you teach me to Right?"
He cackled here, his cracked throat convulsing from strain. "Do I look like a Righter?" and he spread his arms wide, indicating his prized possessions.
I didn't bother to slam the door shut on my way out.
My brief encounter with him was not entirely profitless, however. I returned to his warehouse the very night, ransacking each hidden compartment I had noticed on my time there, and found a storehouse of books upon the subject, many smuggled from libraries full of Righting texts alone. It had seemed to me, at first, as though my new storehouse was sufficient to understand the basics of the art: but, indeed, if any analogy can be attached to it, this information was only the tip of the topmost peak of the iceberg. Here, the countless libraries mentioned within the books sufficiently filled my lack (or so I then thought).
Twenty-one years of age melted eventlessly into my thirtieth, and through all the time I neglected training entirely, drowning myself almost day and night into a complete memorization of theory. Whatever health I had inadvertently kept up during Pokèmon training balked in the face of my dogged obsession, such that the hospitals of the cities I frequented received several emergency visits by myself – until, at last, I discovered the secret to a Righter's path: assimilation heightening.
Indeed, for a time, the cluelessly desperate Amaren (I had not yet changed my name, though this conflicted young man was most certainly me) deigned to eat the repulsive meat, procuring blocks of Jolteon flesh by objectionable means and consuming large quantities at intervals as prescribed. And, for a time, the explosive speed and energy of the electric type spurred me on as a piece of sharp metal to a dying horse. Ah, but that would soon stop.
No, of course, I would never quit assimilation heightening. I would merely find more effective spurs to jar this downtrodden horse into forced motion. If you suspected the former for a moment, reader, you have spent too little a time with my life. Yes, surely, by all moral perceptions, this should remain so.
At last, however (preventing all further sidetracking and slips of chronological order), I deemed myself worthy to take on the rather paltry force of a minor Wrong, anomaly 3S1: an abomination of Decay.
How wrong I was, with my inexperienced assumptions and hideously rough estimations.
But isn't that the story of a Righter's life?