Disclaimer: Midori: Thanks! Ugh, I can't choose between Cress and Cilan- but Cilan is absolutely adorable, no doubt about it.
Question: What are your thoughts on the newly-announced sequels of B/W?
My Answer: This oneshot pretty much sums it all up, because I am so scared for my Cheren, and maybe even teared up a little while writing this. ; w ;
Characters: All, really.
Summary: I am so excited for the B/W sequels, don't get me wrong, but… I'm terrified, too. And this is just me sharing my thoughts.
B/W Sequels
~You're changing me,
Casting these shadows
Where they shouldn't be~
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A long time ago, in a faraway place, was a place brimming with the bitter reminders of inhumanity. To keep their world intact, the people there were forced to make a deal with the demons that lurked in a dimension opposite from theirs.
Now, for every new generation that is born, two children are chosen to act as the champions.
They are hollowed out, crafted into vessels that are ready to be possessed. Surgeons inject their faces with Botox to give them eternally smiling mouths, eternally creased eyes. They clip out their tongues to ensure that they cannot speak. Their minds are wiped of the lives they lived prior to the game.
The fathers- among some of the mothers- of these chosen people were the first to fight back. They fought to remedy the mistake their ancestors made, and while some, such as Norman and Palmer, backed down, some did not.
So they were slaughtered.
Their lives were erased in the blink of an eye, leaving their wives to drown in depression as their children were taken from them at the tender age of twelve to be possessed. They drink their days away in front of the TV screen, because they think that if they watch the actors play their role some of their talent will rub off on them.
"All kids leave home someday. It said so on TV."
"You should thank Prof. Rowan."
"I can save some of your money for you, if you'd like."
Their words are polite, but they are staring at the shells of their sons and daughters and they are thinking, You are not my child.
The rivals are the same. They pretend that their friends' eyes aren't empty, that they are still the person they used to know, because they know that if they don't, they'll be replaced. They'll be erased, just like their fathers before them.
Still, it's impossible not to grieve.
"Smell ya later, loser," Green says, pushing past Red in a desperate attempt to get away from the boy who smells like anesthetics and dead flowers: the one who used to push him out of trees and laugh long and loud at him, but won't- can't- speak a word now.
Silver shoves Kotone away, and then continues to press his face against the window of Prof. Elm's lab. The coolness of the glass helps calm him as he remembers the old Silver, the one he replaced, and the girl, Crystal, that was also taken away. They were erased for rebelling against the order of things. He won't make the same mistake.
"H-hi; I'm May," greets the brunette, and the shell's blank eyes bore into hers. She stumbles a step back, running a nervous tongue over her lips. "Look, I've gotta go- but i-it was nice meeting you, o-okay?" She backs away, and even though it's the seventh playthrough she still wants to cry for him. She would, too, if it weren't for the fact that her tears have ran out.
Jun talks so that there are no breath-breaks to fill, no silences at all: he talks because if he stops talking, stops moving, stops only for a second, realization will set in and he'll have to finally realize that his best friend is dead and that he is battling an imposter.
Cheren copes in the beginning, but he cracks eventually, like they all do: he talks about power- gaining power, being powerful, utilizing power- because he believes that if he becomes powerful enough, he'll finally be able to beat this. He'll finally be able to beat the world he lives in.
Bianca never coped: she tried her best not to go receive her pokemon, because she believed that if she never set the game in motion, then things could somehow be reversed, but the game forced her to go in spite of it. She runs away from home when really all she wants to do is run away from reality. She holds the hand of the shell as they step onto the first route, but it's like holding the hand of a corpse.
There are chosen ones that have disappeared, too. If the demon chooses to possess the female, then the male with vanish: it has happened with Kate and Kellyn, and now with Touko and Touya as well.
But now the demons are changing up the gameplay. They're creating sequels.
And the people are scared.
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"What will they do to us?" shrills Bianca, tears causing her eyes to swell.
Cheren presses his fists to his mouth in reply, breathing into his palms.
"I'm Prof. Juniper's assistant- they could make me replace her," she says, sobs beginning to flood her lungs. "They could make me older, make me different…" She lifts two shaking hands to her eyes, and tries to block out the world. "I don't want to disappear, Cheren. I want to live. I want to keep living as myself."
"You can never live as yourself, Bianca," he whispers, eyes closing behind his glasses. "You either live forever and watch everyone around you die, or you die because you dared to actually want to live a real life."
She goes on as if she hasn't heard him. "Unova, too. They'll change Unova, won't they? They'll make it so it's not home anymore."
He won't answer that. He can't.
Hiccupping, tears stream down her face. "We have to warn Alder. At least N escaped-"
"They'll probably bring him back," Cheren whispers.
She shakes her head in vehement denial. "No; he's free now, he deserves to exist-"
"And he might. Either that, or they'll kill him, too." Cheren's eyes flutter open, and the pain in them is excruciating. "They're going to erase me for sure, though. Me, Touko, and Touya won't make it."
"Don't say that." The plea slips out of unmoving lips. "Cheren, please, don't say that."
"It's true." He takes off his glasses, his mouth pressed into a thin line. "You know it's true, Bianca. I was never liked that much. N will survive, I'm sure- everyone loved him- but me…"
"How can you say that?" she weeps.
"I'm saying that because it's true. And as for Touko and Touya, it's likely that they'll be replaced, since it's a sequel…"
"You all deserve to exist!" she wails, her voice breaking. "We all deserve to exist!" And inside, she's screaming:
Don't take us please-
Don't take us-
Don't take-
Don't-
"That doesn't matter to them!" he shouts back. His glasses snap cleanly in half from the force he's been putting on them, and he glances down at them, looking as if he's about to start yelling again.
Instead, he cries.
Tears trickle from the corners of his eyes, and he hides his face in his sleeves, sobbing soundlessly into the fabric. Bianca latches onto his trembling shoulders and cries as well, cries like the young girl she is.
"Just because we're not alive doesn't mean we deserve to be killed." The tears are pouring down her face, but she doesn't bother wiping them away. "I'm scared of dying, Cheren. I'm scared of the dark." Her chest heaves. "How can you say goodbye when you know you're going to die?"
"Like this." The reply is almost incoherent, but she understands.
"Don't the demons have emotions, too?" she whispers, her voice soaked through with tears. "Can't they imagine themselves knowing that they're going to die, and having to say goodbye to their parents, their pets, and their friends? Having to say goodbye to the bed they sleep in, and the movies they watch, and their favourite time of day? Can't they imagine having to feel themselves fade away? Can't they imagine having to revel in each sensation, since they know that they'll never get a chance to feel it again? Can't they imagine having to say farewell to themselves?"
"I don't know." He takes a deep breath, and lifts his head. "Bianca?"
"Yeah?"
"They're going to come for us soon."
"I know."
"You're going to have to be brave."
"I know, Cheren."
"Good. That's good, Bianca."
The silence that spans between them is watery.
"Cheren?"
"Yes?"
"No matter what they do to us, at least we'll exist here." She gestures to the world around her, and then presses a palm against her heart. "No one dies as long as they're remembered, right?"
"Right." He stands, and wipes the wetness from his cheeks. "Come on. We should go warn people, find N, and…and say goodbye."
The first rays of adulthood colour her eyes. "That's all we can do, isn't it? Say goodbye."
In the background, the internal battery hums its reply.
And in the alternate dimension, the countdown to the B/W sequels begins.
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~'Cause I'd rather pretend
I'll still be there at the end.
Only if it's too hard to ask,
Won't you try to help me?
Won't you try to help me?
Won't you try to help me?~