"Do you want mercy?"

"I didn't know you cared so much."

Protector of Silence

Chapter Two – The Silent Child

Luke gave a sigh as he watched the woods on either side of the path fly by him in a flicker of green, black and brown.

"Whoa Rapidash" he said, halting the Pokémon he was riding under a big tree just north of the village. The fire horse immediately lowered its head to munch on the withering autumn grass.

Luke sighed and looked around, taking in the early-morning forest. He was unaware that behind him, a figure was stalking like a tiger through the bushes towards him. The figure was, like a tiger, on all fours, hidden by a brown jacket that was too big for him which had a hood hiding his face. As Luke stopped to sigh, the figure sprung like a cat out of the bushes. Luke turned just in time to see what might be a massive flying squirrel before crashing to the ground on his back. Said large object landed on top of him, his legs folded to the left in dog-like fashion, grinning down at Luke with a pair of blue-green eyes with unique snow-white pupils. The boy whipped a notebook out of his pocket and let the black ring binder do its job. His grabbed the front cover and let the pages hang down in front of Luke's face. Written on the front page in neat but large letters was:

Got you! Did you miss me?

"Kellyn!" Luke complained "Get off me! You'll break my ribcage!"

Kellyn sat there, a finger on his chin and a 'Hmm, let me see...' expression on his face. He then grabbed a small yellow pencil out of his pocket and wrote another sentence underneath the previous two.

How about...no?

"Move Heffalump!" Luke complained, struggling to get away, but despite his naturally small size Kellyn seemed heavier than the average eleven-year-old. Or at least, when he's sitting on top of you that is.

Kellyn folded his arms and wore an 'Oh yeah, make me!' look on his face. Luke blew two strands of stray black hair out of his eyes before attempting to roll Kellyn off him.

"Move it!" he barked. Kellyn though was having fun overpowering his older and usually stronger friend. He shook his head and shifted his weight so the brunt of it came down upon Luke's thighs. The older brother winced with pain momentarily, but then realised Kellyn had made a fatal mistake. In the process of inflicting teasing pain, he had slackened his grip on Luke's wrist. The dark-haired boy reacted quickly and, wrenching his left hand free, seized a handful of Kellyn's chestnut-brown hair. Kellyn raised both hands to try and free his hair, but Luke was quicker. The second his right wrist was free, he dealt Kellyn a swift blow to the jaw. The younger boy opened his mouth to give a yelp of silent pain before countering. He grabbed a hold of Luke's jacket collar, lifted his neck and head up and slammed his friend into the ground. Luke, momentarily winded by the attack, had just enough time to think up a plan as Kellyn raised his hand for another strike. As the fist came down, Luke caught it and rolled over. Now Kellyn was on the bottom with his wrists pinned to the ground with Luke kneeling on top.

"Ha ha! Got ya now Kellyn!" he laughed "And the mighty warrior has overpowered the monstrous Gyarados! Now, beg for mercy!" Kellyn blinked and then rolled his blue-green eyes. Luke suddenly realised what he just said.

"Okay then, rephrase question!" he smiled "Do you want mercy?" Kellyn's eyes blazed with determination as he struggled against Luke's grip and shook his head defiantly. "Then thee shall suffer the consequences!"

Luke let a dribble of saliva hang from the corner of his mouth. Alarmed by the dangling spit, Kellyn performed his own party trick. His eyes changed to a white colour that had a tinge of blue in them just to separate them from his ghostly-white pupils. Automatically Luke felt himself being lifted up in the air, carried to the left before landing in the dirt, hard.

"Ow!" he complained, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head. He turned hissed to the right and saw Kellyn was still lying on his back, panting like he'd run a marathon.

"Great Arceus, Kellyn!" Luke gasped for breath "You nearly gave me a heart, attack back there!" Kellyn sat up and wrote in his notebook:

Don't pretend you were surprised, you knew it was me.

Luke sighed. Kellyn knew him better than he knew himself.

"Okay, I knew it was you" he sighed "But you just jumped out of the bushes like that, what were you doing in there?!" Kellyn wrote another word.

Training.

"For what?" Luke asked. Kellyn rolled his eyes and added three more words to the last one to make a sort-of sentence.

Training for Ranger School.

"Oh!" Luke nodded "Now I remember! You're leaving tomorrow aren't you?"

Kellyn shrugged and nodded. But behind those white pupils, he looked worried.

"Hey, don't worry, you'll make new friends" Luke reassured him. Kellyn have him a 'How?' look. "Well you just walk in there, sit down next to someone, say hi, start a conversation and... oh..." He stopped when he saw Kellyn was looking at the ground miserably and he realised he'd used the words 'Say' and 'Conversation' in the same sentence. Some best friend he was!

It was no secret Kellyn couldn't talk. It was no secret he was a psychic being either. Luke knew the story of the psychic beings well - a powerful race of pacifist humans, their children mute and their adults terrifying. Most had fled the regions of Almia and Fiore when the war broke out, but Kellyn had been born right in the thick of it. Apparently he'd been abandoned, before being brought to Chicole Village by the most unlikely of people. But the signature feature of young psychic beings, besides their amazing powers that grew as they did, was their inability to speak. Kellyn could groan, moan, snort and give a funny sort of squeaky-laugh or sigh, but talking was out of the question. He had explained he wanted to speak, but every time he did it was like something physically blocked his throat and refused to let him. Luke had made himself sure the whole psychic power things were the result of a vocal-sacrifice on Kellyn's part, but he knew the brown-haired eleven-year-old would trade those powers for the ability to speak. So naturally, he was rather touchy on the subject.

"Um...Kel" Luke tried the change the subject "I-I was heading up to the cliff. You know, the one above the beach? You wanna come too?"

Kellyn paused for a second before nodding, but as Luke walked towards his grazing Rapidash, he gave him the notebook with a new sentence written in it, Luke barely had a second to read the message before Kellyn sprinted off at an insanely fast speed down the path towards Vientown. Luke sighed and shook his head at the message:

Alright then, but you'll have to beat me there first!

The sun was warm on Kellyn's face as he folded his arms behind his head. The grass tickled his bare arms and lower legs as the wind blew the peak of his chestnut-brown hair back and forth. Beside him, Luke was also lying down in the grass, his blue eyes closed and a blade of grass floating out of the corner of his mouth. The sea breeze was peaceful and if you listened carefully you could hear the sound of the waves smashing into the rocks of the cliff below.

Kellyn smiled the two of them had shared some good times out here. For instance the time they and a couple of friends had come for a picnic here. An Aipom had stolen one of Luke' sandwiches and he chased after it for a good hour before finally returning with twigs and leaves in his hair and the world's angriest expression on his face. Another time was the football competition. They'd been playing around was a football and marked out two goals to shoot in. The game had ended in fits of laugher after Clio's Houndour had grabbed the ball in its mouth and burst it with its fangs.

It also held one bad memory. Luke had almost fallen to his death here. He'd just been playing around when he'd walked too far backwards and just disappeared. That had been the time Kellyn had first revealed his psychic powers to someone who wasn't his family. He'd just willed Luke to stop falling and he had. He was suspended in air with the same glow as if he was being controlled by a Psychic attack, only instead of blue it was white. Then the same power had lifted the black-haired boy back onto the cliff.

Until then, Kellyn had discovered he had the power to move small objects with his mind. He had even found a way to clean up his room fast by moving multiple objects at a time. But Luke was the biggest 'object' he had even moved mentally, and even then he felt like he'd sprinted half-a-mile when he did. So he'd stuck with small objects with the odd acceptation of getting Luke off him when he ended up in tackling-to-the-ground situations like that morning. Even that had a reason. Ever since they could walk, Luke and Kellyn had been having competitions to see who could win a sort of pounce-and-wrestle competition each day. At first, everyone had feared the much stronger and slightly older Luke would easily overpower Kellyn and may actually cause harm to the latter. But they discovered that actually Luke was as gentle as possible with Kellyn, that had been until his younger friend had learn of his psychic powers which could now easily win a fight if he wanted them to. For this reason, even if Luke won the fights at least Kellyn would be able to avoid the ending tricks such as today's saliva trick. But recently, Kellyn's sneak-and-pounce techniques had won him more fights than anyone had expected.
"By the way, I'd appreciate you tapping me on the shoulder to let me know you're behind me" Luke spoke up as if he could read Kellyn's mind, letting the grass blade fly away into the wind, like he could read his companion's mind "You should save your tiger/leopard tricks for the real bad guys."

Kellyn sat up, opened his notebook and double underlined a previously wrote sentence:

Training for Ranger School.

"Oh, you and that school!" Luke sighed with exasperation like they'd been through this many times before. "You treat it like it's Arceus' courtroom or something!"

Kellyn frowned with disapproval. His blue-green eyes darkened and even his strangely white pupils took on a grey glint.

"Geez, it was only a joke!" Luke said quickly as he sat up, waving his hands in front of him to try and ward off the younger boy's glare "I'm sure becoming a ranger's very important to you! Your friend was a ranger, wasn't he?"

Kellyn cocked his head to the side in thought, then frowned and wrote something:

Lunick wasn't my friend, he was my brother.

"You weren't exactly blood-related" Luke snorted, staring up at the sky "He and that friend of his."

Kellyn clutched the pencil, wrote something else, tapping his pencil to the side of the notebook when he was finished:

Solana was my sister, as Lunick was my brother.

"Yeah, sure, whatever" Luke sighed "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't be expected to like your 'siblings'. My parents have convinced me of that. They were both outlaws after all."

Kellyn's anger boiled. He pushed so hard on the pencil he subconsciously worried he may snap the lead and have to travel all the way back to the village to get a sharpener. He then threw his notebook and pencil into the grass beside Luke and stormed off towards the steps leading down to the bench.

Solana and Lunick gave their lives for me! Lunick died begging that I should be protected! I owe them more than you will EVER understand!

"Argh! Kellyn!" Luke grabbed the writing instruments, got up and grabbed Kellyn's arm to stop him from going. "Look, I'm sorry okay! I didn't know you cared so much."

Kellyn paused for a long time before he took the notebook and pencil from Luke and wrote something, a slight tear in his left eye. He handed it to Luke.

I want to be a Pokémon Ranger, like them. I want to make them proud.

"That's why?" Luke asked. Kellyn nodded, took the notebook back and wrote something else below.

I want to show everyone. Show them it is possible for a mute to be a ranger.

"I see" Luke nodded "You...you'll be a great ranger, I'm sure of it."

Kellyn gave a small smile. He didn't need to tell Luke that he was grateful for that comment, Luke could often sense what his closest friend was thinking.

"So you're leaving tomorrow?" Luke asked, Kellyn nodded "Boarding school, ironic isn't it? You're starting boarding school just as I am leaving it."

Kellyn smiled and nodded. Luke had returned from his year of boarding school in Pueltown that summer. Now he was heading to Sinnoh to study as a doctor. Kellyn was happy it was this year he was going to boarding school, the year Luke and his family were moving to Sinnoh. Luke would be studying in Jublife City, meanwhile his parents would be moving to the nearby Sandgem Town for a happy retirement. Sinnoh was a peaceful place to live in peace, far from Almia and Fiore, far away from the line of fire. But also, far away from Kellyn.

When do you leave?

"I dunno" Luke shrugged "A month, maybe a bit longer." He looked worried "You...you will come to Pueltown to see us off, won't you?" Kellyn smiled.

Of course, I would never let my best friend leave without a proper goodbye.

"Best friend huh?" Luke asked "Does that mean we're still buds?" He clenched a friendly fist. Kellyn nodded, cupping his opposite hand. Luke's fist pressed itself into Kellyn's palm, something they made up when they were kids. A symbol of friendship.

"Promise never to forget me, silent child" Luke smiled. Kellyn smiled back.

It's a promise I will never forget.