Lot of bad things happened in my life but I'm back. Hope you enjoy!

Continuing along the path, the strange sight of a duo broke into laughter once again. Yawning, Angela caught Harvic's attention. "Oh, hey, look who's tired." He smiled and feigned a yawn himself. "I need to feed everyone too, Jeremy is going to literally maul me." His lips curled into a smile at the thought of the angry Pignite charging after him. "Care to stop and camp for the night?"

"Sounds nice." She mumbled, eyelids slightly drooping.

Heading into the forest and noticing a nice dry spot to set the tent, he slid his backpack off and onto the ground. "Alright…" He said bending down near it. "Tent supplies…" He grabbed a large piece of canvas fabric and its support and staves, throwing it to his right onto the ground. "I'll set that up later, now is food time…" He licked his dry lips with a smile, placing his miniature cooking pot behind him before turning back. "Okay, so stew tonight…This'll do…some spicy berries, Oran berry to balance it out…and…That's everything!" He smiled holding up the small bags of food.

Harvic's jaw dropped as he noticed Angela had set up the tent and fireplace. "Oh…You. Are. Awesome! Come on out dudes!" He let loose his team onto the surrounding clearing. "Jeremy! Get ready to use flamethrower to start up that fire! Angelica use your psychic powers to get fuel, you know what I mean. Joey…keep being an adorable little guy.

"Zor-ua!" Joey barked with satisfaction.

The Gothorita glared at him while Jeremy got pumped in the background, jogging in place and breathing smoke from his nose.

Harvic held up his hands, "What I do now?"

Angela giggled under her breath, "She's mad you called her a 'dude."

Harvic stared blankly at steaming Gothorita. Knowing she was also psychic, he kept his sarcastic head in check. He gave her the same rights as Angela when it came to mind-reading, anyways. "Well alright then, I mean it not like gender-biasing but as in…" He paused when he realized he was going nowhere. "I'll refer to you all as 'guys and girls' from now on, that alright?" He said with a sigh.

Apparently good enough for Angelica, Harvic chuckled as she walked into the woods.

"Okay, once the fire is going, then it's my time for some work to do! The cooking!" He exclaimed, pointing a finger in the air.

After the fuel was set, and Jeremy blew fire from his nose to start the cooking, the pot having already been filled with clean water; or at least what he hoped was clean. "Alright guys…and girls!" He continued, glancing at the nodding Angelica. "Let us commence the cooking!"

An hour later, after having filled their stomachs with hot food, and put out the fire, Harvic opened the tent flap for his companions to enter. "I swear if one more of you evolve, we won't have enough room in here.

Then maybe we'll have to kick you out then! Came a laugh from Angelica, building up the fort of small blankets where she would be sleeping.

"Eh!? Why me!?" Harvic asked with humored curiosity.

You snore. She shot back, pausing and staring directly at his with a humored grin.

"I-I do not snore!"

With the help of translation through Angela, he was lectured and given a copious amount of examples about his snoring in the deep of night from all of his companions.

With nothing else to result to, Harvic panicked and veered the conversation "W-well Jeremy snores too!" Everyone but Jeremy broke into a healthy laughter. Once the laughter died down, they each took their places, and Harvic calmed down with a smile. Angela; however, without his knowing, stayed outside as Harvic returned to the fire-pit and began kicking dirt over it and moving the stones used back to general areas around him.

"Hey." Angela spoke softly, still managing to startle him, but much more subtly.

"Ah, hey…why don't you go inside? Get some rest." His voice was course, leading him to clear his throat from the slight scare.

"You know I can't sleep without you there…" She led on, twisting her fingers together.

"I never asked. Well I did, but now that no-one else is here, maybe you'll answer this time: Why do you hold onto my arm when you sleep, and when you're awake and…"

She stopped him with a raising of her hand and she smiled sadly, sitting on the dry ground. "I…" She paused, unsure of what to say, or whether or not to say anything in the first place. "When I was...a ralts, I was with a very nice family of people, the Newtons."

Brushing aside his thoughts of the famous scientist of his world, Harvic nodded and walked beside Angela, sitting down next to her, looking to the sky as she continued.

"My trainer, was a young boy, I don't remember how old. His parents were smart and kind. And I'd sleep with him every night. We were both afraid of thunder you see and…" She clenched her hands together tightly. "I loved that family."

With a boost of confidence to peer into her past, Harvic pushed the conversation. "Angela…I-What happened to them..?" He could tell it wasn't something good, but it felt like the only chance he had.

She gulped visibly, her bottom lip trembling just visibly. "His name was Brian, his parents called him Bri." She continued with a gulp. "One day some men came in, they took some things and being a ralts I didn't know who they were…but now I do."

Harvic nodded sadly. Robbers… He thought to himself.

"Once they took what they wanted, they set the house on fire and hurried away in some sort of silver and red truck." She continued. "And the only other time I saw fire when I was a ralts was when it was used for cooking, so I didn't know it would…" She burst into tears and Harvic quickly lunged over and held her, allowing her to cry into his shoulder.

The story itself was enough to dampen his spirits, let alone the terrible sadness that she radiated from her very being. And despite it intensifying when her horn pressed up against him, he knew he had to console her.

"Look, look; you were only a little Ralts. You couldn't have known." He said in a whisper.

She cried more, "It should have been in my instincts! And the policemen that came afterwards wondered why I was crying outside the house. Eventually he realized I was theirs and had me taken in by the Pokémon Protection Agency and eventually reintroduced into the wild…"

There was a long pause filled with crying. Eventually it died down with whispered words, but he could feel the pain was still there. "I'm sorry," was all he could get out. "I'm so sorry."

Noticing stars break through the clouds of the sky, Harvic marveled at them. "Hey, look."

Tearing away her face from his shoulder, she turned and looked to the sky, her eyes widening and her mouth falling slightly agape. "Wow." The tears on her face were glowing with the light of the stars.

"Billions of galaxies, with billions of stars, orbited by billions of planets, and many moons…We're so small." Harvic smiled.

"D-do you think there are aliens?" She asked timidly, wiping away her tears.

"I can't see there not at least being a chance with all those galaxies." He answered honestly.

"Do you think someone's looking back at us now?"

"That's an interesting thought."

Noticing a meteor whisk across the sky and burn into the atmosphere, Harvic pointed. "A shooting star. Make a wish! Oh…whoa." Suddenly the flashes multiplied, as a single falling meteor became a dozen, then a constant stream of hundreds. It was a Meteor shower. After watching it for quite some time, it eventually ended, with the last star falling from existence.

Angela made a wish as Harvic smiled. "Ready to head inside?" He asked, as she nodded.

Holding open the tent flap for her, he watched her climb inside. "Red and silver truck, huh?" He spoke more to himself than anyone.

Walking inside, he noticed the others were mostly awake, having been listening in on their conversation; Causing Harvic to sigh. "Alright knuckleheads, get to sleep." Climbing into the sleeping bag himself, he felt his left arm be grabbed and held, and he allowed it with no thought. His eyelids began to feel heavy, slowly closing as he lost consciousness and fell into the realm of sleep.

He was walking on a dusty old road, leaves were scattered across it, and every step resounded with a loud 'crunch.' Looking around, he was in a forest, a seemingly familiar one. So familiar, he realized he was just walking this path what seems like yesterday.

Suddenly, he felt a jolt. His body shook, and he fell to the ground. A stinging pain came from his heart. And he could see in the cloudy sky, a light. The jolt came a few more times, before leaving him alone on the ground. His eyes closed, yet opened at the same time.

He was in a hospital bed of his hometown's clinic. He was back in the real world, or so it seemed.

Looking around, he noticed many medical personnel, "Welcome back to the land of the living!" the satisfied man in a Doctor's coat exclaimed. The rest of the personnel congratulated each-other on saving another life.

"Wh-W…" He tried to talk, but only ended up coughing. He couldn't move his legs.

"You've been in a coma boy, your heart suddenly stopped so I performed resuscitation, and for some odd reason, it jumpstarted you to a conscious state. Apparently you got struck by lightning a few years ago, shocked your metabolic processes, so jolting them defibrillators must have started them up again. That will look strange on my report." The doctor chuckled, followed by the laughter of his peers. "Alright, I'll leave you be, and I'll send in a nurse to check your vitals see that they stay stabilized, and I'll have you scheduled for physical therapy tomorrow!"

Harvic tried to speak again, but only coughed, causing the Doctor to put up a hand to stop him.

"No need to thank me, take it easy; we don't want another heart failure, if you feel pain or strange at all, you press this button on the remote." The doctor handed him a remote that was attached to the hospital bed. "The red button." He smiled, before walking out with the others to check on other patients.

Could he really be back in the 'real' world? Somehow, it didn't feel real, it was far too clean, and the people were far too young to work at the clinic he remembered from his childhood. The corners of his vision were blurred as he examined himself. His body didn't look his, it was frail and lacked color.

Giving his room a quick look, he noticed a few get-well cards, and some wilting flowers. A crisp calendar was hanging on the wall with important dates listed, and past days scrawled out. Squinting his eyes he could make out it was September 23. Looking at the calendar, he noticed a small number printed onto the top right labelled 2016. He jumbled around the words of the doctor, only to place the pieces together and realize he had been in some sort of coma for more than two years?

His panic subsided, it had to be a nightmare, wasn't he just walking on a dusty road a minute ago? Or was that a dream? His confusion escalated as he realized he didn't know what was real, causing a laugh to echo in the back of his mind, not of his own voice.

The nurse shuffled in with a smile, a syringe in her hand filled with clear liquid. Quickly piercing it into a thin tube connected into Harvic's arm; something he hadn't noticed earlier.

His vision faded as if blacking out, he was fighting a losing war in keeping his eyelids open, and the second they closed, he found he was somewhere else.

He was back on the path it seemed, the sky was black, and no other light was visible other than the trail itself. The darkness was suffocating, it seemed too close in around him on every chance he gave it. Paranoia set in, as he quickly turned left to right to make sure the darkness kept its distance. It was chilly out, a harsh wind blew across him, looking down, he noticed he was still wearing hospital garb.

Walking forward, he couldn't help but hear whispers emerge from the darkness. Clamping his ears shut as he walked, the voices did not recede. In fact, they were not around him, but inside his mind. Trying to push the whispers back, he realized soon that the path wasn't empty, drained bottles of booze and liquor dotted the trail now, and when he went to examine one, he was torn into a memory from years ago, not long after his mother passed away.

"Damn kid!" The voice yelled out, He felt immense pain in his gut, looking around, he noticed his father standing over him. "You thought you could hide my liquor! You f***ing prick!" He roared before giving another kick to his son's side. Causing him to double-over in pain.

Harvic's side was on fire, he couldn't begin to imagine the bruises he held now, or would hold the day after. His pain surged across his body as he struggled to stand, but failed.

Once the father turned away, having thought the boy's lesson taught; Harvic struggled hurriedly to his feet and pulled out the pocket knife that his dad had given to him. His real dad, the one that came before the beast Harvic knew now. The man unchanged by alcohol. Flipping out the blade with a satisfying Flick! He charged at the man from behind.

Hearing the creaking of heavy rushed footsteps on the cabin wood, the man turned around and threw his nearly-empty bottle of booze with all his might, smashing into Harvic's chest, and exploding into glass. The pain was too immense, and he just wanted out now.

The man, smiling with his handiwork, took away the knife, and threw the boy into his room, locking it from the outside before continuing his work. Harvic cried on the floor, he was pretty sure he felt some of the glass in one of his arms, bleeding. But he didn't care. He felt a hand reach out and touch his shoulder, causing him to look up in shock. Only to notice it wasn't his father. It was a bearded old man with complete black eyes. "Now boy, you're not gonna' put up with that are you? Here, lemme' help you." The man said with a smile and extended hand.

Hesitantly at first, Harvic extended his hand, a part of him was screaming for him not to, but the whispers had returned, covering his own judgment; the whispers continued getting louder the closer he got to the man. Without thought he touched the man's extended hand, watching mesmerized as he seemingly vanished, dissipating into dust. There was a long silence, and paranoia set it. Was it just a hallucination?

He jumped, when he heard a voice in the back of his mind, clearly the old man's once again.

Alright, let's get to work Harvic. The man commanded absentmindedly.

"You know my name?" Harvic asked far too loudly, as if trying to speak over the whispers that came and left continually.

Of course…I know everything about you now. I can see it here. In your subconscious… The man's voice easily peeled through the sound, as if taking over Harvic's entire mind just to utter each word.

"Oh…"

The memory froze, and the fabric of its existence cracked, revealing a void below it. Harvic's conscious pulled back as he felt himself exiting the memory.

When it felt safe, he opened his eyes. Finding himself on the trail again. He was lost in his own mind it seemed. Being sure not to touch any other objects he found on the road, he continued his trek onward. He hadn't been aware until he heard a slight whisper, but it felt like something was following him. Turning around to look in paranoia, he noticed it wasn't just a feeling. A tidal wave of darkness was closing in on him, and the second he noticed, the slight whispers broke out into a hell-ish choir in his mind. Breaking into a sprint, he watched as the darkness kept speed with him, eventually overpowering his own speed and catching up with considerable force.

Noticing a candle flicker in the distance, he attempted to run for it, but it was too late. The darkness consumed him, wrapping him like a blanket and holding him like a parent, and all he could hear were the screams of a million at once. His body was numb and he could feel some sort of vibrations through-out his chest. It continued like this for what seemed like an eternity, until he was able to grasp onto something. It felt familiar, warm. The more he focused, the more he pushed himself further from this dream, until he was completely out of it.

Blasting awake, covered in sweat, Harvic lost his breath, was it all a dream? It had to be, right? The confusion from earlier was returning. What was real? His throat was extremely dry to the point of paining him. Gulping visibly, he frowned, and huddled near Angela, who obliged happily in her sleep. The confusion pulsated and he heard that same chuckle in the background of his mind. Freaked out and afraid to go to sleep, he frowned, holding onto Angela. Suddenly he realized she was radiating warmth, and he could hear the light snores of his friends, as-well as the sounds of night; and it was that, which lulled him back to a now dreamless sleep.

Hope you enjoyed and a big thanks to TheRandomind for Beta Reading!