Chapter 18

Moats and boats and waterfalls, Alleyways and pay phone calls, I've been everywhere with you" Home by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

Roses. Orchids. Tulips. Violets. Geraniums. Gardenias. Dahlias. Peonies. Daisies. Sunflowers.

An endless field of flowers of all colors surround the area I'm in as far as the eye can see. There's a small grassy pathway adorned with a narrow white fence leading to a small lake, which on the other side is a whole other flower field. There's a white marble bench by the end of the lake.

Where am I? And where are my Pokémon? In fact, why is there nothing here?

But its so beautiful and fragile. It reminds me of a long time ago when my house was once adorned with elaborate gardens in the backyard.

I stare into the water's reflection and I see that same green cap, green vest and white shirt with the puffy sleeves underneath it. Same face with the bright green eyes and wideset forehead, small nose, and short blonde hair.

The last thing I remember is flashing lights. But why were there flashing lights? Did I see the light at the end of the tunnel?

"OH NO! I SHOULDN'T HAVE LOOKED INTO THE LIGHT! WHY DID I LOOK INTO THE LIGHT?" My voice doesn't echo across the flower garden nor does the water bounce at my yelling.

"Don't worry! You're okay!" A voice comes from...Where does the voice come from? "In here!" I look at my reflection in the water and its me, but not quite me. She's still got the wide forehead and the bright green eyes, but her nose is slightly more upturned than mine and her blonde hair is much longer than my short hair. Her outfit is essentially a dress that resembles my skirt.

"Mom?"

"Ehhh not really." Her voice is still deeper than mine, resembling the voice I remember from so long ago. "I'm actually part of your subconscious. These images live through your the back of your mind with all of the other ignored things. Sorry if you were expecting a heart-to-heart or something really inspirational. Your mind isn't really tasked with those as a priority."

"No, it's okay, Subconscious Mom Thing. So what happened? Why am I here?"

Subconscious Mom's lips pout. "You fell down. I mean, you're always falling down, but that's all I really know. I guess this one was worse than your usual fare, which is saying something for you."

"So why am I having this elaborate dream?"

"I dunno." She shrugs in the reflection. "Look, I'm just here to help you see the light."

"Okay. So now what?" I cross my legs on the marble bench that I don't quite remember every sitting on.

"Your journey is kinda coming to a close, isn't it? You don't wanna battle Clay or the rest, do you?"

Now it's my turn to shrug. "I'm not sure. Like, I felt so humiliated at the time. There was also this feeling of inferiority compared to you. I mean, my actual birth mom. Being a trainer is fun but it isn't me. Not really. I was just collecting the badges to mostly keep both my Pokémon and myself fed. I tried a bunch of jobs but then got myself stuck into White's problems as well as helping Juniper out. I will say that it was soooooo much fun helping Professor Juniper out. We work well together, you know?"

"Yeah. You don't really work well with other people. Remember back in Science Class when you did all of those group projects?" An image of me adding too much baking soda into the model volcano instantly comes to my mind, then I see it reflected on the lake. The reflection in the water then decides to montage every time I opened a can or bottle of soda and how all of the fuzz just fizzled out.

"It was weird how bad I was at doing the experiments yet did well on my own because I can't take direction very well. And that's kind of why I went on this journey. Only me and me alone could help myself figure out what was good in the end."

"True." Silence. "We're not really going anywhere with this. Maybe I should just cut this short since I'm not really getting through to you."

"NOOO! Please don't! I'm thinking! I know I didn't like being a caterer. Or a teacher. Or a surveryor." I shudder at the last one. "Thinking back, that's the one that turned me off odd jobs. I mean, there were more options, right? But the thing is, I didn't have the 'this is the future I can have' sort of fun from any of them'. I didn't really get that at any point in my journey except for maybe..."

"Go on..."

"I guess at the cave, when I was looking at the Klink and the crystals before the whole crazy hippie guy White's got her tensions with came over and was being weird. I saw that maybe they have a future to their past. A purpose for them being there. Am I making sense? I'm totally not making sense."

"You're only supposed to make sense to yourself. I'm just a spirit guide."

"I thought you were my subconscious."

"Meh. Well, anyway, time's pretty much up. I'm hoping these five seconds of peace and quiet somehow got through your Slowpoke mind. I'm out." She crosses her arms mockingly. It's still so bizarre she's doing that in that form.

"My mind is not a Slowpoke! Just because I forgot the existence of that ticket Burgh gave me weeks ago doesn't mean that—WHOAAAAA!" I fly out of the bench and into space. The fields all quickly turn to white. All of it.

Everything's white again. I'm guessing this is the tunnel back to life?

"Bianca!"

I jolt up out of wherever I am. It's a cream colored room with flowers everywhere. So many flowers: roses, daisies, tulips, orchids. I could name them all, but it's take too much time. On the foot of my bed is someone I wouldn't totally expect to see: Professor Juniper. My Pokémon are all in the room. Ganon is sitting in a chair on the other end of the room, sleeping while Sheik and Poe are huddled with him. Madge is also sleeping by a window, and Munny and Courage are directly on my bed, with Munny right in my arms. They're the first to react.

"Sharna!"

"Simi! Simi!" Courage's shrieks are enough to wake the rest of the gang up and they are all excited to see me.

"Where am I?" I have a feeling I know, but I want to confirm it.

"You're at Castelia General Hospital. You had quite a tumble last night. Doctors said that you weren't accustomed to the changes in altitude, which caused you to feel dizzy and faint. They also blamed a poor nutritional diet."

Looking back, did I even eat that day?

"Oh." The question that's burning in my mind needs to be asked right now. "Did White beat N?"

Juniper's silent. If N beat White then, wouldn't my lovelies not be here? "I don't know, if I'm being honest. For all I know, the battle is raging on."

"Wouldn't it be on TV?" I ask.

"All of the stations are currently on stand-by. The Internet seems to work just fine despite the heavy traffic, but the last time there was an update, it said that Alder was unseated by an N Harmonia, meaning one of the worse outcomes happened."

I gasp. "No!"

"Though there is some good news. You managed to round up enough Gym Leaders so that most of Team Plasma would get taken in for questioning, with the exception of the Striaton trio. The only ones that were not arrested were N, Ghetsis, and a couple of grunts as well as two young ladies that lived in the mansion. All of these flowers are thanks from the Gym Leaders. Oh. I forgot to tell you the big thing everyone's talking about. Bianca. You'll never believe it, but there are reports that there was this gigantic castle that was underneath the Pokémon League. Isn't that really cool? Oh ad scary, I suppose."

"Yes! I still have hope for White though. Even though I was unable to help White in actually being there, I'm glad to know I made a difference, even if it was a small one. By the way, where's my dad?"

"He's on his way."

"Wait...how long have I been out?"

Juniper begins counting with her hands. "About seven—" a loud rumble echos through the hospital and Madge begins to bark up at the sky. Through the window I see a similar sight that occurred in Icirrus City: a white spot in a see of blue leaving behind a trail of smoke.

"Is that N and Reshiram?"

"I don't know, maybe?"

"Turn on the TV, Professor Juniper!" It turns out Juniper's right that the TV is still on stand-by, which frustrates me to no end. I don't have my X-Transceiver on my hand so I can't check my messages or the Internet. This stinks.

Then the music plays. The Rickroll one and it's all muffled. And I have no idea where it is. It startles my Pokémon, especially tiny Poe, who has no clue what's going on and clings onto Sheik the best she can.

"What's that?" Juniper asks.

"It's Cheren calling."

Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down. Never gonna—

"Where is it, Juniper?" I try to get up, but Courage and Munny restrain me.

"Boar?" Ganon sits up and the music becomes clear again. He takes the small device and answers it. "Emboar." Ganon nods, smiling. "Emboar!" He gives it to me.

"Thank you, Ganon. You're so sweet." Ganon flashes me a smile before I break our gaze. I see Cheren looking frazzled yet again, but not as bad as he did the other day. His clothes are all ripped now for some reason. His face is a bit neutral. "Cheren!"

"Hey Bianca. I'd love to give you my sincerest thanks. We wouldn't have been able to defeat Team Plasma. I know I give you a lot of crap for all of your faults, but you're a lot better than that. You came through, for once!"

I giggle. "Really?" I exchange a glace at Juniper, who is petting Sheik.

I know Cheren well enough to know when he's being sincere. "I can't be here long, since I'm needed as a witness to the League, but I'm calling to let you know that White did defeat N not too long ago. It turns out Ghetsis was the one driving the schemes and wanted people to release their Pokémon so that he could control Unova."

"That doesn't make any sense!"

"I know?" Cheren nods. "N took off on Reshiram and we haven't seen him since. It's inconvenient because we needed him for questioning but now he's gone. I guess we'll have to make do with what we've got. So that's the situation."

"How's White and her Pokémon?"

Cheren's quiet, his face in deep thought. "She's had a rough few hours, to say the least. She won't say much about it through so good luck trying to get it out of her. She's on her way home right now so I'm guessing you'll see her soon?"

"Okay! And then you'll come soon after, right?"

"Of course. Through not for long, because Alder Sensei is going to help me train in Victory Road so I can challenge him someday." I just have a feeling White will beat him to the title, but I let him talk. "I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"Bye!" And I hang up.

"I'm going to go get us some coffee. Though not from this hospital. Hospital coffee is such dreck," Juniper says. "Is that all right?"

"Totally!" Juniper walks out of my hospital room.

I check my phone and it has thirty-one unread text messages. I take the time to read through them all. Half of the text messages are Iris using Skyla's phone and live-texting her battle with a Sage named Zinzolin (also, that reminds me, I need to ask her where she got my info). All of her texts are long-winded and amusing to read as she knocked down his Scrafty and Watchog. Some of the other messages include some from the other Gym Leaders thanking me for gathering them up. I decide to save the messages into the archives. I read them all out loud so that my Pokémon can hear them and get a good laugh out of the battle.

One of the messages is from Roxie, telling me I'm a meme now. About an hour after that message is sent, she then remembers to wish me a good recovery, which makes me laugh. I wonder why Colress hasn't messaged me back? I click under his name and realize I never sent him a message back since the plane ride!

Oh how stupid of me!

"Sorry...I got...caught up in some drama..." I say as I text. "Currently at the hospital. I'm fine though." And I press send.

Not long after I hear a slight knock on my door.

"Come in!"

It's Colress, who comes in rather awkwardly, with his Klink and Elgyem by his side. Speak of the devil.

"Hey!" I say.

Ganon and Madge wave and bark at him while Poe gets out of Sheik's embrace to greet him. Meanwhile I see Ganon and Madge make conversation with his two Pokémon. Sheik, Munny, and Courage don't join them, instead, Sheik stays at her corner. Courage is still skittish around people and Munny keeps him in check.

"I saw you on the internet last night. Well, a few hours ago. You were at some kind of gala and you collapsed." I forget he's got a soft spoken Castelian accent. It's kind of calming to hear especially since I still feel kind of disorientated.

I can feel my entire body go red. My Pokémon all sense my nervousness, but as always it's Courage who's the first to react, taking a step forward towards my bed. I remember the last thing I saw was flashing lights. "Oh goodness, did I really become a meme?"

Colress is silent, which I take as a yes. "I brought you this. I didn't know which you preferred so I went with all three." It's a chocolate set with milk, dark, and white chocolate. "It's not often when I talk to people who are made into image macros and gifs. I feel...honored."

The mood lightens. "I'll look at it later, I'm sure it's quite a watch. By the way, I was at that gala because I had to help a friend out. I'm sorry it seems like I've been ignoring you. I've just been caught up in a few things, though that shouldn't be the case anymore."

"Oh, that's fine. I've been busy too doing some computer repair so I'm a little bit unresponsive myself."

"Computer repair?"

"I'll repair broken computers, pads, and Xtransceivers at a cheaper price than those kiosks you'll see at the mall. I'm self-taught so I'm not so good at coding or good with software as much as hardware. Still, I have to pay the bills somehow."

"That's really cool! So if I need your help with that, I'll call you, then."

"Why, yes."

"I'll keep that in mind. So how have your Pokémon been with you?" I say, glancing up at Klink and Elgyem. Elgyem seems more comfortable around Poe the Litwick but doesn't communicate as much as Klink does.

"They're great. Elgyem helps me gathering supplies and with my work. Klink is an interesting study subject. I'm still learning about it." He pauses, looking at Sheik. "I see you have a new addition to your team."

I look at Sheik the Meinfoo myself, who is still at her corner. "She's great. A real fighter. She hasn't warmed up to me yet, but that's fine!" I don't tell him that despite Poe's constant ball of happiness, she's also similar to Sheik in terms of her warming up to me. I'm okay with this because it's natural with friendships to start off awkward and shaky.

Juniper walks in with a cupholder in her hands. "Hey I remember you!" she says to Colress. "You're that student from the Chargestone! And you've got a Klink. We should talk about its behaviors some day." Juniper is eyeing the Klink to the point that it looks at Colress in despair. It starts to hover very close to his direction.

"That sounds great."

"I'm sorry I didn't get coffee for three."

"I was about to leave, anyway. I've got a couple of errands to run and decided to stop here to wish Bianca a speedy recovery on her fall."

"Thank you!" I say.

"I'll talk to you later." He leaves and Juniper turns back to watch him leave along with his Pokémon. Poe and the rest go back to their places and talk amongst each other. She quickly gives me my coffee, which tastes succulent against my taste buds.

"Since we're waiting for your father to sign you out of her, why don't we talk about a few things first? There have been a couple of things on my mind."

"Okay!"

"The last time I spoke with White, I asked her about her journey as a whole and what she thought of it. She said that she had no regrets. I remember when reading her essay last year, she said that her goals were to have fun and see the sights, but that didn't go as planned."

Oh right. Our mandatory five hundred words essay on why we wanted to be a trainer and what we wanted to do while on our journey. I can barely remember what I wrote due to being so emotionally stressed at the time. I just typed in the text box and hit send without even checking for errors.

"Now I have to ask you the same. Do you consider your journey to be a fun experience?"

"Of course! I've learned more about myself than I thought I could. I don't have any regrets and I wouldn't change a thing, even though it got weird at times."

"I have your essay typed here, if you want to read it and compare yourself from back then to the person sitting in front of me." She hands me her Xtransceiver.

Hey Professor Juniper,

It's me, Bianca and Im writing to you for some reason despite that I live close enough to you and stuff. Honestly, this was a decision I'm making hastily and I don't know if I'll even get accepted. I dunno what I want to get out of this journey, but Im a caring person who has a big heart and would treat my Pokémon with love and respect. I guess the main thing I totally want out of this is to find something to do in the meantime because I currently have no idea what I want in life! In fact, I shouldn't even be doing this because my dad will freak out but I think this is what I should do for the time being and yeah. I think there's many things I can go and do, but I want to try as many things as possible in order to find a perfect fit. I want to study them and see what I can do. I want to make an impact somehow and even though I have no clue how, that's what I want at the end of the day far in the future and maybe going on a Pokémon journey will do that for me. Maybe I'll help peoplee or maybe I'll help Pokémon. Either way, it'sd be a really cool thing, wouldn't it? My prefered start date would be in the summer time at around White's bitthday. My friend Cheren has expressed interest in that date as well and if we start on that day, we can all measure our progress as friends and grow up together!

Sincerely,

Bianca

Wow that was a terrible essay. Now I know never to to write an essay at four in the morning every again. Though my reasoning for why I did it was because it was the only time when the lights in my room are off and I couldn't risk dad finding out.

"So what'd you think?"

"That was so badly written. I'm sorry I wrote that." So many spelling errors, too! "It was at four in the morning."

"You're a lot more competent than that. You've proven a lot more that what you expected. You have a great capacity for research and asking questions as well as having a compassion that balances that sense of curiosity. My father even told me about how interested you were in the story about Unova's Ancient Tribe. Tell me, how interested would you be at the opportunity of exploring new stories behind Unova?"

I don't pause to even think about it. "There's more stories? That'd be totally awesome!" I rise out of my bed instinctively at that.

"I'm going to give you an offer that I'll give you a few days to think about. I'd like you to be my assistant Pokémon Professor. The job isn't easy, but I think you and I have the perfect rapport going on and you get along easily enough with my father as well. I think only a few people could handle the job and you're the best candidate." My ears almost deafen as she talks and I tell them not to drown them out.

"OH MY GOOOOOSH THAT'D BE SO COOL, PROFESSOR!"

"I told you to think about it. I'll send you an email of the job description and in a few days time, your acceptance of it."

"Okay! It's definitely something I'll do when I get home." But this sounds absolutely incredible!

Dad rushes into the hospital room as I say this. "Honey Bee! Are you okay?" His face is full of concern.

"Yes daddy! I'm totally fine! I just fell down, that's all. I'm ready to go home now." In a way I'm speaking the truth. I do want to go home and eat a solid three meals again, but the wanderlust will kick in eventually. But stability against the madness of these last few days is what I needed, anyway.

And besides, I might have just found my purpose.

And it looks like I'll go home again.

I'm actually debating on writing a one-shot for Iris's text messages to Bianca. I might as a companion piece.