Ray's POV

My body… felt heavy… and a little tingly. I wanted to move, but I felt sluggish. What was this? It was the sensation of being tired… but, it was more than that. I couldn't put my finger on it. Maybe it was… I didn't know.

I opened my eyes, but my eyes were heavy. This was no ordinary exhaustion. Whatever happened here, whatever was done to make me like this, it was quite strong. I was… it looked like I was on the deck of a ship. I tried to move again, and realized that it wasn't just me being tired that kept me down… I was being held by ropes. I was tied up. That wasn't good… Waking up being tied to a pillar was never a good sign. It usually meant you were a prisoner, or you were about to get killed, or you were a prisoner who was about to be killed. None of those options sounded very good to me.

I looked around. There was nobody around… But that was only a deception. There was no way this place was abandoned. This was a giant ship, like a ship that would be on the ocean, but we were very clearly in the sky. The sun was in the sky, it had not been when I was knocked out. It must have been at least a few hours, then. Great… I wanted, I wanted to be free, and now I was even more trapped than I had been before. I sighed internally. I just couldn't catch a break, huh? Get free of this web of lies and entrapment. What was I talking about?

Anyways, a thing like this huge ship in the sky, people had to be running that sort of thing or it would fall right out of the sky. Not to mention someone must have been there to tie me up. I wouldn't tie myself up or something. And… and where was Emerald? I was pretty high up. Our tether did not go that far. So… either she was dangling midair… which sounded hilarious, or…

"Hey Ray!" Emerald jumped down from a place above me and slashed a sword in the air. It made a swishing sound that made me flinch a little. What… what was she doing? Why did she have a sword now, and where was she jumping down for. I looked up. I was tied to a pillar that helped to hang up a sail. What was the point of having a sail if this was just… a magically flying ship? Sails only made sense if you were in the water and used the winds to move you.

The winds… I was supposed to rule the winds, supposed to regulate the winds of this world with my princess. Back when I was training to become a chosen one, I would often fly high in the sky and imagine she and I combining our magical strength in order to control the winds, alter storms, do all sorts of good things for people. That… was a life I would have been satisfied with, if she hadn't made me wait so long. If she hadn't taken long enough for me to give up and live my life there. I wanted to be back with Mel… but… there was more than that. I loved her, but I also loved my family. I had not thought about them as much because I was taken away right in the middle of the wedding… but my parents, I had lived with them in the castle, and king Mewtwo. He was cool, he was a good king, and a good father figure, secondary father figure.

And… life in the palace had been great… and now, now I was tied to a column on a pirate ship, on the run from a royal court, a dark royal court. I wasn't loving this life. It would have been better if she had just let me alone… and now she was dressed as a pirate. He only place she could have jumped down from was… there was a little basket looking thing. She had probably been waiting there for me to wake up? Or… something. That girl was a bother, that was for sure. I wasn't going to kill her, though. No, I wasn't going to kill her for what she did to me. It wasn't worth that moral weight. Although, it seemed a lot of people here didn't have such moral qualms. I was better than them, and my world, my kingdom was better than theirs.

"…Hello." I said, my words seemed a little slurred, and I didn't know why. "What's happening?" I felt really out of it and really, um, sort of heavy.

"Don't push yourself too hard, you've still got some of the anesthetic in you. It's this liquidy stuff that knocks you out and makes everything sort of blurred and heavy. I don't quite get it myself, but you're going to be feeling sluggish for a while."

"What…?" I asked weakly. I was… I had no idea what Emerald was talking about… liquid stuff that knocks you out? Like a medicine or potion or something? What kind of weird magic was this… it made everything difficult, I felt heavy and did not know why. I couldn't grasp the concept very well, but that was because I was tired? I wasn't tired though. I didn't feel tired I just didn't have any energy.

"Poor guy." Emerald said, she almost seemed to be mocking him, with her crisp and clear thinking and her nice outfit. She looked like she belonged here, no matter what was actually going on here, and I still wasn't convinced she was real, completely, she belonged here more than I did. I thought, perhaps… could this be a hallucination too, part of the affliction. And, what was she doing, looking at me like that? Was that pity? How dare she pity me. I felt like she was about to turn on me any second. There were so many ways to betray me here. Here I was in a place, tied up, no idea where I was. If she had the mind to, she could dispose of me right here and sacrifice me to her own power.

I didn't think we could do anything about this. I didn't want to play her game, I didn't want to play anymore, I just wanted to go home. Emerald would not take me home, so I had to find my own way there.

I was really out of it, like really out of it. I shook my head, trying once again to fill my head with clear thought and clear it from this nonsense and confusion about the situation going on here, about… I didn't know what I was talking about. I just wanted to get untied.

"Untie me." I said simply. Of course, it wouldn't be that easy, things were never that easy, not for me, at least. Emerald looked up. I couldn't tell what she was looking at, up at the mast where she came from, maybe. Then she sighed. A sigh at a simple request was never a good sign.

"I can't right now." She said, frowning. Of course she was, and now I would have to, I dunno, promise to stay here forever and be nice and stuff. And what would she do to me if I refused? Had I underestimated her character, or, rather overestimated her.

"Why not…?" I asked.

"She won't let me yet, not until she is sure that you aren't a threat to the crew."

"The… crew?" I asked.

"They're all below deck." Emerald said, still frowning. "I told her you were fine, but she wants to make sure of that for herself. It's something I can respect, wanting to make sure of the safety of the crew."

"The crew." I stated this time, trying to comprehend. There were others, that was what this meant. There were other people on the ship, all below deck because they feared me for some reason. Sure, I was a large dragon, but they sounded like they had numbers on their side. And besides, if they knew Emerald well enough to give her a brand new outfit, they should have known that she did not have strong magic, which meant I was not strong either. They should have figured that out, so surely they would have known I was not actually that big of a threat. If they thought about it for a second, they would come to that conclusion.

So… why was I here? Maybe it was… so I could not fly away? I struggled a little, squirmed against the ropes. Whoever tied this really knew what they were doing. Having whatever this was coursing through my veins didn't help, either.

"Yeah. I can go get her, so we can get you out of those ropes, like me. What do you think? Feeling up to it?" She asked.

"Uh… who?" I asked in return.

"Wow, you really are out of it, huh?" Emerald giggled. Mocking me still, huh? Always mocking me… "The captain, remember. I'm pretty sure we just went over this. Although, I was kind of this loopy when I woke up, huh? There's a lot we can learn out here…" Emerald seemed lost in thought for a moment, and the old coot wasn't around to whack her on the head, back to reality, and I certainly couldn't do anything about it when she got lost in her own little world. He was right about her. Her biggest obstacle was that she completely lacked concentration. Well, that was one of many flaws, one of many obstacles to her mastering magic. Though, seemed there was more to magic than I once thought, at least in this world. I could not help but wonder if magic in her world and magic in my world were different, any. To be honest, I had never paid much attention to magic in my own word. It wasn't something I deliberately avoided, it just wasn't very important to me.

Haha, look at me, going on a tangent of my own. I was really no better than her, was I? I was no better… we were both helpless, huh? Tossed on the… or the sky, in this case. So, I refocused, with some significant effort on my part, to place my focus once again on Emerald. I looked at her outfit, trying to latch on to something to anchor myself to reality. She was in a puffy of-white shirt and a brilliantly green coat, boots, nice leather boots. I had only seen her in a dress before, and now she was in pants and a shirt. I had to say, this suited her more. Something about her outfit looked very… right. She had hair all tied up, too, with a plain white cloth. This was a lot more fitting for her than the princess outfit. She looked a lot more comfortable in it, too.

"Well… are you going to get the captain or not?" I asked. My words still slurred a bit, and my voice lacked the edge I wished for it to have. My authority was all but gone. Anyone looking at me would never believe I was in line to be a king.

"Right. I'll go get her." Emerald said, after what seemed like a rather long time. Was she pausing more than usual, or was my brain processing things slower? Who could say, who could say… I blinked slowly. She studied me, again with that sickening look of pity, like she was looking at a small hurt pet.

"No need, I'm here." Wait what? I heard a voice off to the side. As fast as I could, I swung my head around to see another lady in a similar outfit to Emerald's, although the color was much more tame, somewhere between red and brown, a sort of rusty color. She also seemed much more assured of herself. She didn't have to do a single thing to impress anyone. In fact, she wasn't even trying to impress, and that, in and of itself, was impressive. She just… exuded confidence. She seemed, to me, at a glance, to be everything Emerald was not, the kind of person I had wanted to have as my princess all along. But, that was just at a glance. I could have been wrong, I had no idea.

Then there was the other question… where did she come from and how did she get there so fast? Had she been listening in? If so, where from? Had she jumped down from that same place Emerald had, or come up from below the deck where the rest of the crew supposedly was. Had she been listening? It wasn't like there was a whole lot to listen to, what with my sluggish brain and her vague responses. That conversation had been going nowhere. Maybe this captain could liven things up around here. Or at least she would explain what was going on around here.

"Who are you…?" I asked, and the captain chuckled.

"I am the captain of this ship. My name is Jesse. And who are you?" She asked.

"Ray." I answered simply.

"I've been told you are Emerald's familiar. Yes?" The captain said.

"Yes…" I said, cautiously, and with the littlest bit of a grudge. I did not like being called a familiar. It sounded like a pet, it made it sound like I was lower than her. In this world, or in the capital at least, we were treated as second class, attachments to our human partners. I would not blindly follow Emerald. I had my own things to be doing.

"Ah, perhaps you don't like that term? My apologies." The captain said. What, did she see that? She was a perceptive one, it seemed. More perceptive than Emerald, it would seem. I already liked this lady more than Emerald. The feeling I got from her, she didn't pretend to be something she wasn't. She was what I saw… I wasn't exactly sure what I was seeing, though. Something sharp and free, like a blade swooshing through the air. I glanced at her belt, she actually did have a sword. The hilt glinted dangerously at me. Her eyes dangerously glinted at me. And this was her normal state of being, I was pretty sure, she wasn't actually trying to intimidate me. At least, I assumed that was the case. She would have no need to intimidate me, I was already tied up and useless. There was no need to put in the effort, so this must have just been natural for her.

"So… what is it you want?" I asked, I could feel my mind coming out of the fog, coming back to my normal self. Whatever it was that had happened to me, that anesthetic thing that Emerald mentioned seemed to be wearing off.

"I just want to see if you are a threat… I have my crew to think about, you know? Emerald says you are just fine, but I have my doubts. So, tell me about yourself." She commanded.

"Tell you about yourself? Like… what?" I still felt like I couldn't think completely clearly. What was it exactly she wanted? What was it I wanted? I felt like I was losing it.

"Like, you know, how you came to be here."

"You guys hit me over the head and knocked me out." I said bitterly, cutting her off. She looked a little taken aback, but recovered quickly.

"Right, my apologies. I did not command such cruel methods. My second in command acted without my consent. He can be a little… rough, along the edges." So it wasn't this woman, but someone else. That made sense, she didn't look like she was strong enough to knock me out. That wasn't meant to be an insult to her strength, I was just particularly hardy. My skull was rather thick. I was supposed to be able to break up meteorites. So, whoever that guy was, it was clear he was a very strong guy.

"Why did you take me out of the sky?" I asked.

"You were in our territory. The rest doesn't matter." She said simply. What was her territory? Just… the sky? Was the entire sky their territory, then how was I supposed to stay out of their territory? Something told me she was withholding information.

"I was flying, following a teacher for Emerald, an old man." I started to explain.

"The old man below deck we found a few miles away. I assume." The captain said, turning towards Emerald, who nodded. She nodded back and turned towards me again. The old man was below deck, too? Then, Strider and Flygon were probably here, too. Where was Flygon? He was about the same size as me, and the same danger level, more or less, in their estimation, I assumed. Humans seemed to think we were dangerous. Well, we were stronger than them. Still, where was he? Was he tied up somewhere too?

"Where is the Flygon?" I asked. I cared more about him right now, you needed to look out for your own, didn't you? Not that he was my own, but… I had warmer feelings towards Pokemon than I did towards humans, let us just leave it at that.

"Down below as well. You can go check all you like in a few moments… if I deem you safe, that is."

"Why wouldn't I be safe?!" I demanded. I was seething, and I didn't know why. I struggled against the ropes, again.

"You aren't helping your cause right now, Ray." Emerald frowned. It pissed me off, but she was right, I was not making myself seem safe right now, and they had the power right now. Captain Jesse had the power. And I was thrashing about… I would not apologize for it, though. Still, I didn't understand why she thought right off the bat that I was dangerous, before I even woke up, before I even spoke a word. Did Emerald tell her that I was dangerous? What did the two of them talk about?

"Are you in control of yourself?" The captain asked. It was a simple question, and my immediate, gut reaction was to answer yes, of course I was in control of myself. But, for some reason the question caught me off guard.

"Yes." I said. But, then I looked back at what had happened to me, there were times when I had thoughts that were not my own… and then there was that shadow of myself. When my mind wandered and did all sorts of weird things, was that… was that him thinking it? Not me? And, if that was true… I guess I could understand why she was so cautious of me. I would be cautious of me, too. Was that what was happening? Was that what this affliction was? But I got rid of most of it. That shadow, even if it was still around, should not have been able to control me. I got rid of a lot of it, didn't I? He wasn't strong enough. Still, I understood, if that was the case, I understood why she was so concerned about me being here. Emerald had given me a shining review, but that didn't matter if at any point I wasn't the person in control of this body.

"Are you sure… all the time?" The captain said, glancing from me to Emerald. I paused for a moment. I guessed the answer was.

"No, I guess I can't be sure… not all the time. Who can be really? Especially if memory is distorted by that sort of thing. Who's to say who's ever in control, if that's the case?" I spouted out. I wasn't entirely sure where that came from. That in and of itself was very concerning. The captain and Emerald were both staring at me.

"You are talking like you were back there in that world." Emerald said, rather concerned. Why was she concerned about me? Why did she even act like she cared about me? She only wanted me safe so that she could turn around and use my powers to magnify her own. She really was no better than the rest of her family, no better than that dark court she claimed to be fighting. Maybe she would merely deliver me to them. Not if I had anything to say about it, not if I-

That world, that world… the city of blood, the jungle of stone, meshed together… our twin hells, the inside of my mind, of my heart. I didn't quite understand. In fact, I still couldn't reconcile the fact that I had actually been there. I had actually… been inside my mind and heart, and it was terrifying, and so was Emerald's. Or maybe, we delved into our own souls? That could be why they were so intricately connected, and why one had sort of phased into the other. There was no real way to know where my soul ended and hers began, what with this tether… it was truly a union, a bonding, and I was bound… bound to her.

"That world, huh?" I asked. "That was an interesting time, hm?"

"You're telling me…" Emerald said.

"Emerald told me about your trial of the affliction, how she passed… and how you did not. That is why I doubt your word. You are no longer pure, even if you think you are. You pose a threat, even if you do not mean to, because you are not predictable." Captain Jesse said. I frowned. That was not the thing you wanted someone to tell to your face. That was not the kind of thing someone just said to your face. I was not used to being talked to in this way. I used to be a part of the royal family… I was about to be part of the royal family. I was technically part of the royal family here, but the princess was an outcast to begin with, and now we were on the run. This was not the life I wanted. This was not the life I deserved.

"I see." I glared at her. She had told the captain about that, she had told the captain that I had failed my test. Well, I guess I could understand that kind of thing, especially if the captain gave her the save treatment she gave me. If that was the case, I suppose she couldn't have helped but to confess anything the captain wanted to hear. Then I turned back to the captain. "Yes, I failed the trial. That version of myself that told me to steal her life is still inside of me, and told me he would be back. I suppose that means I am dangerous. So, I guess I get to stay tied up forever?"

"Eh, if he gets out of hand I'll just give him another knock on the head. He seemed to go down easy enough." I heard a new voice, a gruff voice. Emerald flinched a little. I looked over in the direction of the voice to see who it was. I saw a burly man with unruly orange hair and a huge beard. Who was that…? Knock on the head? Was this the guy that knocked me out?

"Ah, James, nice of you to join us. Emerald, I believe you have met. Ray, this is my first mate, James. He tipped his hat to us.

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