Prompt: The hero remembers who they were.
The duo walked through the portals, like everyone else. One for each pair was a bit strange, having them only respond to a specific pair was stranger, but Vei thought that they could talk about that one later. For now, she and Sear had something to do, but as they were warped to their destination, something felt odd. Vei couldn't put her paw on it, but it seemed really familiar.
When she came to, she was on the ground, and from instinct she had thought forgotten she moved a hand to her head.
"Wait..."
She opened her eyes and looked at her outstretched arm, and behold, it was a human arm in a cheap, slightly ruined brown jacket. Afterwards, she got up on her feet, as if she had never been a pokemon and gave herself a lookover.
Aside from the horribly maintained jacket, she wore a white shirt with a few holes in them, brown pants of similar color of the jacket, but with more wear and tear. Her shoes seemed to be decently maintained though.
She took a look at her surroundings. The alleyway was dirty and hidden in between two tall buildings leading out to a larger street where people were huffing and puffing towards whatever important thing they had to do. She walked to the entrance and from the sight, she remembered.
"Urgh... This... This is awkward..." a familiar voice came from behind her. "Vei, kinda need some help."
The woman turned around to see an asian looking fellow, well shaped with black hair, red eyes, clad in some pale-brown pants with matching shoes, and a hooded black leather jacket, rims on the hood and waist decorated with flame patterns.
"Uhm, Sear?" she asked him.
"Yeah..." He squinted his eyes. "Vei, that you?" He pushed himself up awkwardly, using the nearby dumpster as support.
Vei turned away as her gaze went to the ground. "That would be my name..." she said, trying to remove an image from her head, and the blushing from her face. "Well... kinda." She turned back around, her second viewing of her partner not hitting her as strongly as the first.
"Do you know where we are?" Sear asked as he awkwardly stumbled towards her.
She went in and supported him, so he wouldn't fall over.
"Also, is that how you actually look like?"
Vei pulled some of her hair from the bangs of her bob haircut and pulled them in front of her eyes. "From my quick overview, yes. Well, I was brunette and not having this bluish white hair, but the rest adds up." She helped her partner straighten up. "You are taking this entire thing quite well."
"And you aren't?" He asked in a sly tone.
"Well, that is because..." Vei started as she grabbed Sear and pulled him out of the alleyway. "Welcome to my world."
The towering buildings with crazy billboards strewn on their facades, cars stuck in traffic like always, people pushing past one another as they run for a bus, or down a stairway to the subway.
Sear was overwhelmed by the looks of the place. Since being sent to the Nexus, they had been to rather populated places, but this one took the cake. "You sure this is where you are from? How can you live with this noise?"
As if on cue a blaring of car horns sung through the air.
"Dumpy dead-end alleyway next to one of the largest roads in the city where people can just hide from their problems when suddenly you think you are hallucinating from hunger as some bright light begs of you to go to their world and save it?" Vei took a deep breath. "Yeah, this is... I would say home, but this place can get a foot showed so far up its ass that it comes out the mouth. Fuck this place!"
"Vei, that language!" Sear protested in shock.
"Oh, and I may also have begun remembering everything so... Amanda Vei." She changed her grip on Sear and gave him a handshake.
"What?" Sear was confused about this entire thing.
"The Vei you know? She... How can I say this?" She scratched her head. "I guess she was the ideal person I wanted to be. To have lived as her for these few years? That was a great vacation, but I think I'm staying. So, sorry for my more crass language from now on but unless I manage to forget this place and everything related to it again, it'll stick." She walked out into the busy walkway and turned around. "So, here's the real me, Amanda Vei." She stretched out her hand. "Hope this reacquaintance won't put a hamper on our friendship, partner." She gave a wide smile.
"Uhm... Well, hi then?" Sear took the shake properly this time, blinking twice as he thought he had seen Vei blush.
"Now, let's see what date it is. If lucky and we got dumped close to when I took that offer, I can show you the ruin that the landlord calls a 'modest one room apartment'. Still haven't removed all the shhhhhhhhtains. Though I am still convinced some of it is blood."
"You didn't specify what the stains was originally, why would..." Sear paused for a second. "Shhhhhtain... I get it..."
As Sear took the three wobbly steps to join Vei in the crowd of people, Vei dragged him back into the alley.
"Maybe we should get you to get used to walking first."
"One more thing, how do you not know if the stains are blood?" Sear asked, not sure if he would like the answer.
"Trust me, in that neighbourhood, you just have to assume the worst." Vei said before starting to instruct Sear and help him with his balance.
In the back of her mind though, a little voice hoped that the specters or whatever would appear so they could go back to the Nexus and as far away from this human hell as possible.
She knew she was the one who proposed it, but she really hoped that Sear would have wanted to see literally anything else.
They had gotten far away from buildings reaching the sky and the glamour of the big city and were walking through a rather run down neighbourhood. Boards covering broken windows, graffiti everywhere and Sear clung to her even tighter as a gunshot went off. She herself continued walking, unflinched.
"What was that?" he asked nervously.
"Some asshat trying to act tough, most likely. Nine out of ten case."
"And that tenth?"
"That another poor guy is going to live with stains in his cheap apartment." Had she been the Vei of a bit more than an hour ago, she would probably be horrified of where she lived and how uncaring she was about this whole thing. "God, am I gonna miss having that innocence"
They turned a corner and Vei headed straight for one of the apartment entrances as she heard that same door open. "Please don't be him, please don't-"
"Ahh, no tear stains down your face today? Does that mean you can pay your rent in time, or did you clean yourself up as if you could ever be presentable." The man exiting looked stereotypical for someone owning such a crap apartment complex. Balding, fat, permanent five-o-clock shadow, wifebeater shirt with a large grease stain. "Though I guess it must be the latter, cause I know coloring hair ain't cheap. That you could waste your-"
"ACTUALLY!" Vei yelled to interrupt the man. "I managed to get this for free. And these last five hours have felt more like five years, and the best five of my life so far." She walked up to him with a confidence she had never had before. At least not from before her pokemon adventures. "And I will see if I can scrounge up enough for this month to tie up this loose end, and then hopefully, we never see each other again."
The man chuckled at her words. "Yeah, and where would you..." It was then he noticed Sear, looking scared behind her. "So that's how?" He leaned to the side to see Sear better. "Whatever deal you got with this broad, it ain't worth it. You can find better," and he looked at Vei as a smug grin formed on his face. "for much cheaper."
A strong cold wind moved down the road on the otherwise warm autumn day, as Vei restrained herself from punching her landlord. She took a deep breath as she walked past him, Sear meekly following her. 'He ain't worth the trouble.'
The door opened up to the small room, empty instant noodle cups littering the floor, though most were strategically placed to hide brown-reddish stains.
In the far corner was a mattress on the floor, opposite it a microwave oven, and two bags with clothes and towels next to it.
"Welcome to this queens glorious palace." Vei said as she bowed and gestured for Sear to enter. "It smells better than how I remember. And don't worry, even the rats and roaches think this room is unlivable, so everything is fine."
Sear, mouth wide open, went to the mattress and just sat down, not believing what he was seeing. Vei had pulled out an envelope and a pen, wrote something on it and started rummaging her pockets.
"How were you able to live like this?" he asked, still unable to close his mouth.
Vei sighed in relief as he was asking about that instead of the implications of the landlord.
"I weren't. This dump's only use was to shelter me from the weather and give me a bed. The less time I spend in here, the better." She pulled out two worn jackets out of one bag and started fishing through them. "Besides, my neighbour would always complain if I cried in-"
Suddenly, loud moans, grunts and other sounds could be heard from the room next door. "URGH! Gimme a second." Vei walked to the wall and started hammering on it. "Really, you... carrot munchers!" Vei glanced at Sear. She was gonna struggle through this one. "You just had to start when I got home? Do you dibweeds really hate me this much?"
The sounds stopped for a moment. Then it got louder, and the duo could swear they were hearing laughter mixed in.
"Of course they are just screwing with me, figuratively."Frustrated by them, Vei decided to just return to go through her old clothes again. She didn't even notice the temperature drop as she counted the money and shoved all of it into the envelope. "Just enough."
"Vei, are you doing that?" Sear asked her as she sealed the envelope.
"Doing what?" She turned around and saw a few snow crystals fluttering about before melting away. She stretched her arm and focused, small crystals forming around her hand. "Cool, we can use moves." She stopped her channel and picked up a bag. "Anyway, you take the other bag. I have something in one of these I ain't leaving without. But first!"
She walked out to the hallway and to her neighbours door, placed her hand in the gap under the door and blasted a powerful icy wind into the room, and just as quickly she ran away, giggling like mad. "YOU DESERVE EVEN MORE THAN THAT, YOU FUCKS!" She ran down the stairs, dumped the envelope with money into the landlord's mailbox together with the key and exited the building, a confused Sear frantically trying to keep up.
A few blocks away, Vei could still not stop giggling. "That felt good." She leaned up against a wall.
"So now that you've gotten some revenge, what now?" Sear asked, sitting on one of the bags.
Before Vei could answer, multiple guns could be heard being fired. "Great, more asshats that... No, this is..." She listened to the shots. "That is frantic shooting from too many... I think that's our objective." She picked up the bag and ran towards the shooting, her partner right behind her. There were specters to be hunted.
AN: So, one thing about this stuff being written on reddit, is that I have to be sort of careful with how many f-words I cram into a prompt without getting a banhammer. No such restrictions here, aside from me having to adjust the age rating if it ends up as too much.
Fun fact about this chapter, though. I don't actually have to de-censor the prompt because Vei is actually supressing herself from swearing. Don't want to soil Sear's poor ears more than necessary. Future prompts with Vei after this point in the timeline will probably have swears thrown in.