The Starlight Mage and The Outcast Pokémon
Chapter One: Starting Over In A New Place Far Away

Engetsu

You've heard about Maximum Ride, the leader of the Flock, the one who saved the world.

Well, I have my own story to tell, and it starts with when the other members of the Flock (Angel, Max, Iggy, Gazzy, and Fang) escaped.

Unlike the others who were fairly close, I wasn't really close to any of them. I was only escaping with them because I wanted out of this stupid place, even if I did have Mother, and I could always send her a message telling her where I was later.

I was just about to escape when I got caught, and they darted me with some kind of poison. It was supposed to just be a non-lethal knockout poison, one that only lasted a few minutes, but it was designed for purely human use, so I guess it reacted badly with the bird, and more specifically raptor, DNA I had flowing through my veins.

For the longest time, I felt like I was just floating.

I wasn't in any pain (which was definitely a first, considering I'd been in pain almost every day of my life), but I couldn't really feel anything either, whether it was literally or emotionally.

Then, Mother (or at least I considered her a mother, because she was the only one to take care of me in that hellhole) created a new daughter, a girl who had animal DNA like me. I think she was supposed to be me, but since I wasn't really dead but wasn't really alive either, it didn't work. Anyway, once Kangetsu was created, I was finally able to pass on and didn't have to stay between the borders of life and death anymore. And unlike before, I could actually feel.

However, I didn't go where I expected. I expected to go to either a nice heaven-like place or some place like the Fields of Asphodel from Greek mythology, for those who weren't exceptionally good or bad, but just lived. Most of my life had been spent in a cage, after all. How could I truly live, and be either good or bad, when I had spent almost my whole life stuck in a cage and only let out so that they could do tests on me?

Instead of going to the place I expected, I went to a black plane of some sort that seemed to stretch on forever filled with more swirling holes than I cared to count just in my line of sight.

"Welcome Engetsu." A voice said. I whirled around to face it.

"Who are you?" I demanded before I saw exactly what it was I was talking to: a white-ish gray horse like thing with yellow rings around its midsection. "Better yet what are you?"

"I am Arceus, and I've come to offer you a choice. Now that your mother has Kangetsu, you're free to move on. However, as I mentioned, you have a choice. You didn't really live— only six years and most of that was in a cage. For that reason, I'm offering you the chance to go to another place where you'll have a chance to live out your life. There's someone there who needs a friend as much as you do— an outcast, not accepted in any world he might belong to, because of circumstances beyond his control. His name is Darkrai, and in a sense, he's one of my children. If you accept my offer, I'll send you to where he is. Will you accept my offer?"

I thought for a few minutes. "But what about Mother?" I protested. "What if she doesn't treat Kangetsu like she should, and just sees her as someone who's not me and someone who should have been me? What if she refuses to acknowledge Kangetsu as her daughter?"

"She won't." The thing, Arceus, informed me. "If she only saw someone who wasn't you, she would have just called her second daughter Destiny, after the project name. But instead your mother gave her a real name, called her Kangetsu."

That made sense, actually. I recalled, faintly, from my time hovering between life and death, that Project Destiny, the same project that gave Kangetsu life, was supposed to be something that could bring the dead back to life, or something like that. If Mother truly hated Kangetsu, she would have just called her Destiny instead of giving her a real name with meaning.

"Because everything has a name." I finished, remembering a riddle from a book Mother brought me to read once when all the big bosses were gone. "While calling her Destiny would have been a name, it wouldn't really be a real name, one that actually had meaning."

"Exactly." Arceus agreed. "So will you accept my offer?"

I thought it over one more time. "On one condition." I said. "Promise that Kangetsu won't have to go through what I did just because she has wings."

I didn't want anyone to have to go through what I did— from living in a cage, to being treated like some kind of freak or science experiment, to only being let out to do tests on, to living in constant fear that they would kill me for no reason or that their tests would kill me.

"I promise." Arceus agreed, and it/his body glowed. I somehow knew that meant that its/his promise couldn't be broken without serious repercussions.

"Thank you. I accept your offer."

"Good. Now, all you have to do is walk through this portal here." Arceus gestured to the portal directly in front of me and between us. "Remember to go through this one and not another because if you do, you'll be in a dimension beyond my control until your death in that world."

I nodded. "It's this one?" I confirmed, pointing to the one directly ahead of me.

"Yes. Go straight through it and hurry, or you'll be trapped between dimensions forever. Even I won't be able to free you." Arceus warned. "And I can't guarantee that it would be painless or pleasant in any way. Also, once you go through, you won't be able to come back. Do you understand, Engetsu? Your new life depends completely on you."

I sucked in a breath and let it out. "Alright. Here I go."

I took a few steps back before I bolted straight through the portal. I couldn't— wouldn't— look back now. Not when this was my only chance for a new life, one away from the cage, away from the testing, and away from worrying about if the scientists were going to kill me simply because they could and they wanted to dissect me.

I was finally free, and there wasn't anything that could change that now.

Because no matter what happened, things would be better from here on out.

I was going to make sure of it.

And as I emerged from the portal to see a beautiful town with two gigantic spire-like towers, I couldn't help but cheer and take to the skies above the town.

Because now, at long last, I was finally free.