28.
Rei
I'm afraid of getting transformed by a witch
I'm afraid of never seeing Laventon again
I'm afraid of no one loving me
I'm afraid of dying — but — Pesselle's notes said — the leek juice — one drop used to kill grown men — I've drunk too much of it — I'm dying tonight — I didn't want to die tonight — and Professor Laventon — I could've stopped the spell… I could've stopped her…
Some nights Rei felt the weight of his weakness all at once.
Usually it was no more than a moment. His heart stalled in his chest. He couldn't breathe. He lay straight and rigid on the floor, eyes plastered to the infirmary curtains and thoughts churning all out of focus. Seconds later he shivered and whined and sucked in as much air as he possibly could, letting it out slowly until his whole body ran hot and he felt terrible all over.
"Lies," the Matron would always tut in the morning. "You'll get no more leek than the rest of the invalids, so don't be making up disorders."
But her warning only made Rei want more leek. It was funny how that worked. Leek juice soothed his aches and pains. It eased his mind and erased his worries. It made him feel useful, more human than usual. It made him happy. And he was happy to find, when he did some digging, that Pesselle didn't keep it all to herself. Many in the village had secret vials of leek juice, in fact. It was all a matter of who you asked. Captain Tao Hua was willing to part with some of his — in exchange for secrets. And so Rei went to Tao Hua's quarters and told him it was Cyllene who had turned Ginter into an old man.
"That's a useless secret," Tao Hua spat in the boy's face. "That imitation Ginkgo was a real devil, and at last his days of lording over us are over! So what if we never saw his true form? A decrepit old man is the tamest form a devil can take!"
"Ginter wasn't a devil!" Rei insisted.
"Didn't you clean out your ears and hear what he said when he was banished!? He burned down Galaxy Hall with that Electric beast of his! Don't try to convince me anyone is innocent in this village. I've seen it all."
"But you haven't seen witchcraft like I have. Cyllene reveled in turning Laventon. It was like she'd been planning it for ages!"
Tao Hua looked sour at this. Then he raised a knobby hand to his chin and smiled with those rotted old gums. "Then I raise my price! I want witchcraft! Teach me how to cast spells like Captain Cyllene, and I'll give you a pouch of leek seeds that survived the fire. The same goes for anyone else who wants it, if you're willing to spread the word. Hush-hush!"
Rei was alarmed. He had no way to fulfill that request, nor did he want to.
"I'll bring you Ginter's pack," he offered instead. "I'll show you what he brought with him from the Land Where No One Dies of Consumption."
It was an empty promise, and emptier when Zisu tugged Rei out of the caravan by his ankles so Kamado could stuff it with tinder. Rei couldn't find Ginter's pack anywhere. Somehow it had vanished along with the old dark sorcerer and Cyllene. The only way to get Tao Hua's leek seeds was to steal them, and Rei wasn't about to get himself banished the same way Ginter had.
Even if Ginter really was a demon in the end, Rei thought as he lay in the cramped infirmary, the groans and snores of the other invalids keeping him from rest. I can still remember standing on the third-floor balcony and thinking Hisui could be home. Now it's all ash, and Laventon's not even human.
Suddenly Rei was afraid to even close his eyes. He counted his breaths and the seconds between them, all while focusing on the warmth he felt within his blue jacket and trousers. But his thoughts were growing ever darker and colder.
Shame on you, you egg powder. You don't know anything. You just do what you're told, whether it's a devil or a witch with the poker. You tosspot. You dimwitted crybaby milksop. What're you good for? Looking stupid in front of grown-ups. Trying to keep the professor from drowning in his bathtub and hoping one day Cyllene might smile at the both of you.
When she was just…
He could see her every feature perfectly. Hack-job blue hair slicked sideways over her head with plum perfume. Skin stretched taut over sharpened cheekbones with deep-set eyes that couldn't catch the sunlight. Small, pale lips always tightened in disdain.
You were nothing to her.
And all at once, Rei thrashed in the rough ropes binding his wrists and ankles together. "To keep him from sleepwalking," everyone said. Accursed, blasted, bloody nonsense. No one thought he was good enough for leek, and it wasn't fair! His muscles and his mind needed their constant flood of healing! And Tao Hua had the seeds to grow it. No — Tao Hua was too stupid and frail to brag. If he had seeds, then someone else would have stolen them already. He was bluffing. He was lying!
Rei broke into a sob, confused by his own sudden bitterness. His face felt hot. His wrists were chafing, and his chest was getting tighter by the second. His skin crawled and tingled as the aches of all his shock scars began to pour back in.
"Reiiii," came Laventon's gummy voice in his memories. Now Rei could see the professor's body expanding out of control while Cyllene laughed and spun her fingers in enchantment.
A sharp pain struck him in the back of the knee, and he almost choked. In the "new" infirmary, there wasn't room for separated cots.
"SHUT. UP," Deputy Rye of the Ag Corps hissed. "If I wasn't bound up, I would beat you for crying like that. Stupid boy."
"I JUST WANT SOME LEEK!" Rei snarled through his tears.
Rye kicked him again with both heels. The invalids who weren't sleepwalkers clapped. Someone had been doling out extra juice amidst the drought, and if the Ag Corps wasn't whining…
Rei felt nauseous, and winded, and rather terrible all over. His heart jumped at last, and he sucked in his breath, holding it in like it could cure him.
Reinold, your breath tastes like bathwater.
This was his final thought before a harsh red light broke through the gloom. Rei squirmed and squinted, craning his neck as much as he could to peek past the canvas curtains. It was decided that sleepwalkers couldn't be locked inside, the hemp manacles deemed safer, so it wasn't unusual for someone to enter or leave the sparring hall at night. Still, no lantern nor candle could cast that kind of eerie glow. And it was only swelling as the door fell open wider.
Suddenly Rei felt it. It was just like the tingling felt beneath his skin just before he fully fell asleep and he reanimated. An electrical charge was spreading through the air and filling his lungs like fire. It crept down the nape of his neck, prickling and popping along his spine. Brief fork-shaped flashes lanced out across the ceiling — blood-red, then shadow-purple and gone.
He rolled onto his side and tried to prop himself up on one shoulder, but that was when the slimy thing came over his hands. Rei gave another loud shriek, and was expecting another sharp kick in the legs when he realized that his own legs were entirely free of the ropes. He was kicking!
He was punching, too. Rei sat up immediately and marveled at both hands, which were coated in a silvery-purple slime, made mauve in the pulsing static. His numb fingers quivered and twitched, reacting to the shift in the atmosphere. All the rope at his ankles had come untied, and the knots around his wrists had simply slipped away.
"Please… come with me… please," came a small voice from somewhere near the door.
Rei furrowed his brow. "Right," he said, and picked himself up, only to give Deputy Rye a pathetic punch on the elbow. "Right. I'll…"
"You try to pick my pockets for seeds, and I'll kill you," the gardener hissed.
The boy saw his death glare and skittered up and over to the door of the place, surprised when the guard stepped aside for him. Instantly, the young surveyor felt winded. And then wired. The sky seemed to be shaking, or rippling, or… bleeding? Red was running down its dome in thick clots streaming out from the wound above the mountain, which was even bigger and brighter than before.
"It's bloody bright as day out here," Rei remarked, suddenly scratching at his arms and stomach as the static charges wormed their way beneath his clothes. His heart ached at once to be at Laventon's side, hearing the man's anecdotes of Alolan weather and theories on Copperajah's dandruff. The usual afternoon self-deprecation. Anything.
"I've been laughing at lemons for three straight days.
It would take me too long to explain."
The voice was even quieter. Rei turned and found himself staring down at a ridiculous wide-brimmed hat on the head of a scrawny little boy in a white-and-magenta tunic. The slimy thing — a Pokémon with a body like a quivering pink pudding and beady little eyes, was perched in his hands and dripping all over the boy's boots.
"I'm in no shape to be up and playin' the riddle game, mate," Rei told the boy. "Leek's wearin' off, n' I'm a sleepwalker. If I get tired, I might as well be dead where I stand."
The boy — liaN, Rei thought his name was — suddenly tipped his hat up so his fierce little gaze was easier to see. He made a few haphazard gestures with his hands. Signs without purpose, or incomplete thoughts.
"Come find me in the real morning," Rei said, then, and began to retreat.
But liaN grabbed him by the back of his jacket and tugged, grunting. "She… needs… She needs… sky bleeds… thinks… a drink? Pain… insane… I'm insane. She's in pain. Sprain. Drain. Retrain. Campaign. Golden chain."
"Who's in pain?" Rei asked, now feeling forced to figure this out.
Skinny twin thumbs tipped the hat, and the boy recited:
"History repeats itself — the sand comes back to sand
But I am that which now remains attached to foreign land
A man who speaks the names of nations buried without care
The tender of a generation layered sparing wear"
"Right… it's… a flag? It's a flag, innit?"
liaN just tugged harder, jerking multiple times, until Rei felt like pathetically punching him. He would've considered pathetically punching him, had the boy not been Pearl Clan, or more importantly one of their Wardens. This was the child who had been looking after Kleavor before it killed maI in cold blood and started the war talks. Obviously he was going to be shaken, but speaking entirely in riddles?
The village felt deserted. Zisu's guards, (those who felt awake enough, anyway,) were all patrolling the perimeter. The smell of smoke hung heavy in the air, richest where the caravan's remnants smoldered. Ginter's ratty old ash-bitten canvas was somewhere else now, in the form of thin strips for wrapping wounds and dribbling bathwater and strange, citrusy beer between desperate lips.
"She is… here. Clear, or…" liaN said, taking little notice of the mercantile carcass. "No one goes in. Or… No one finds fun in…side? Guide. Ride. Lied. Verified. Wry. Try."
"You don't have to rhyme all the time," Rei tried to explain.
liaN grimaced. "I'm not good at thinking. Drinking. Fast. Past. In my own thoughts, or shots, or… Speaking is more than words. Birds. I'm still learning. Burning. Discerning. And discerning what words to put where in the air! Or…
He was gesturing so furiously now that Rei imagined a whole rhyming dictionary flapping in his head.
"But I won't understand what you want unless you give it plain. We're using the same words, after all."
But liaN shook his head, and Rei suddenly wondered, alarmed, if children of the Pearl Clan were forbidden from speaking to each other in any way but verse.
"Right then. If it's that difficult to form sentences, you can recite a poem you know that explains your situation, and lend me something visual, too."
Rei said it slowly and signed the act of writing, just to cement the idea.
"Professor Laventon taught me how to read and write. That's why I've been so useful to the Survey Corps. If I try, I might be able to decipher what you're tellin' me. 'Less you mention you've got wrinkled tits or somefin. Then I'd no clue."
He paused. They were standing on the threshold of Cyllene's quarters.
"I hope that kind of poetry hasn't come to Hisui."
liaN gripped Rei's left arm and began to slowly slide the door open.
Rei's brain clicked.
"Oh, you can just FORGET THAT ALL TOGETHER!" he spat, easily jerking away. "Why are we at the Captain's quarters!? Captain Cyllene is evil, don't you understand!? If she's come back to curse me, then I swear I'll find that rowboat and drown myself!"
This was the first time Rei had ever sworn such a thing to anyone, and it made his chest feel ever tighter. He reeled back, almost stumbling from the threshold, before liaN gripped his trembling wrist again and pulled.
"Or… Sorry, liaN, that's a bit of a harsh thing to say to someone your age. When you're fifteen, and in pain all the time, and watching everything you love turn to ash and flab and being quite useless to stop it, then you might feel this way too. It's not that I want to drown myself, but I drank some port after Ginter left, and I did think for one moment being drunk might be a nice way to go."
liaN groaned in frustration. He clapped his hands, and the little slimy Pokémon now sitting on his shoulder unleashed a Water Gun all over Rei's face.
"Hrghhh!" he grunted, pointing inward at Cyllene's empty quarters.
Cautiously, Rei looked in, and then entered.
A slight woman was lying on the futon in the back. But this was not the witch. It was iridA, and she looked ghostly. There was no more red billowing gi nor thick glass bracelets to make her look larger. Now she rested under a thin silk sheet that contoured the utter spindliness of her body. Her hair was like greasy straw. Her chest was almost flat, and her stomach softly rose and sank into a pit of itself beneath her ribs.
She peered at him, weakly raising a wrist to wipe a yellow stain off her chin. And failing.
liaN began to recite once more:
"In times before the universe, when all was cramped and mean,
And things were small — too bright to bear, an everlasting sheen,
And things were hot — with energy to tear the whole world clean:
A golden jar was filled with stars and nothing in between.
Then Sinnoh Great drank in the stars and made the vast serene
And everything relaxed and nevermore was horror seen:
So man was made, and clan expanded into Hisui green.
The Kkai in nacre kneeled and prayed on Sinnoh's Word, quite keen:
"I will not eat," said Sinnoh Great, "for I am full of energy."
"I will not eat," the claN repeat, "for Space gives the entirety."
On ore of origin we wrote this down to make eighteen.
It was hypnotic, and when the boy finished speaking, Rei could feel the static begin to creep over him again, pulsing as if it had enjoyed the regular meter. He slid the door closed behind him and went closer to the dying Kkai on the futon.
Then he flinched. Zisu was already kneeling over her, hovering a spoonful of something thin and greenish toward her lips. iridA pinched her whole face up, turning her head to the side while her stomach betrayed her.
"Not a flag then," Rei remarked. "Your riddles are on about death. How is The Kkai, Captain Zisu?"
Zisu was hardly gaunt, but even she looked ragged when she raised her face and the red light pooled in her curls. She jabbed the spoon into iridA's mouth and made sure she swallowed before replying.
"Rei, I need you to summon one of your Pokémon and help guard the door. No one can know iridA is here."
"What? Doesn't the Commander know?"
"NO, HE DOES NOT," snarled Zisu, dipping the spoon again in the teapot and ladling out whatever pithy sustenance she'd brewed. "He won't touch her, just like he won't see me bound up in ropes and screaming again."
She gave Rei a cup of tepid bathwater tea, then gestured toward the door again. "Guard it. Have liaN and his Goomy help you. If anyone comes this way—"
"I am not afraid, Zisu," came iridA's voice, weak and gurgling with the liquid she tried not to drink. She coughed and trembled, and Zisu frantically pulled her up into a seated position so she wouldn't choke.
"adamaN broke the truce by leaving. There are people outside who want to kill you right now."
"And you will not harm those people," iridA cut. "tsubakI the coward will not kill me plain. Your Commander abides by his word. If blood summons Sinnoh, I stall for Her counsel. My ribs for the whispered reward."
Zisu sucked in her breath. "Kamado will only keep his word if Cyllene holds him to it. That's how it's always been. But Cyllene isn't here right now, and—"
iridA wouldn't have it. She was frightened and crying, and when Zisu leaned in to rub her back, she fell onto the large woman, hugging around her tightly with spindly white arms and leaving wet spots all over the breast of her jacket.
"The verse my young Warden just recited for you is among our most sacred. Almighty Sinnoh is the spacE that connects us all. She does not sleep. She does not eat. We are meant to feel her energy in everything. Yet I… have never seen the extraordinary visions my Wardens claim to have seen. I am… Am I… not faithful enough? Or is it all just a prayer on empty spacE that someone might be keeping us from harm?"
Zisu squeezed her gently back and sighed.
"People always pray in one way or another when life is uncertain," she said. "That's why I couldn't kill Ginter yesterday. I just knew he needed me to protect him. I would've spared his life even with the whole village watching. I just didn't want Kamado to rush in and kill him instead."
Up until now, Rei had been watching quietly — pity piling on top of every other grievance he could vent. But with this new revelation, something slipped within him. Hope? Hatred? Restlessness?
Restlessness. That was the right word. iridA had said it herself. The unavoidable need to pathetically punch someone. The feeling of screaming at everyone above — whom he thought were above. Until they weren't. Because no one was. Because…
His muscles were too tight and too painful and—
"YOU SET GINTER LOOSE!?" Rei shrieked, whipping around. "DIDN'T YOU HEAR WHAT HE SAID!? HE BURNED DOWN GALAXY HALL!"
"That doesn't mean I have to murder him, Rei. He's still a pathetic old man."
"RIGHT! AND HE KNEW CYLLENE WAS A WITCH! THAT'S why they were such good FRIENDS! IMMEDIATELY, you know! Kamado's right-hand woman and the WIZARD GINKGO!"
Zisu shut her mouth. She looked at Rei in shock, and if she weren't cradling the deathly ill Kkai, she might have gone over and smacked him.
"I had to let Ginter go, no matter who he really was, or what he did in this village," she said as civilly as she could. "I felt… I… When I started looking at the coot closer, I felt…"
She blinked and shook her head, troubled by the thought, before finishing much quieter:
"Ginter only came here to help us. I know it."
"How do you know?" Rei growled. He flung the tea bowl across the room, barely reacting when it smashed against the back wall and shattered into five sharp pieces that fell to rest not far from where iridA's head had been. Once more, he flinched at the static continuing to crawl over his skin, reddish and piercing. Then he drew back one of the deep blue curtains and squinted out into the blood-red night-day.
"You don't know," he said then. "Nothing can remain. Isn't that what the witch said? Everything you thought was true is wrong now. That includes whatever blasted fuzzy feelings keep you tied down to this place. We're all drowning. The sky itself is changing into blood, and you're waiting on some fickle God of Sonnets and Rhymes to guide you!?"
liaN shook his head and recited:
"The currant menace left us yearning
Indolence of Time and Dream—"
"SHUT UP!" Rei spat. "All a lot of cryptic nonsense coming from a child!"
"DON'T SHOUT!" Zisu shouted.
"What are you, then!? A renegade among us!? You don't even trust Kamado to keep the Clans from warring!? You'd trust Cyllene, though, wouldn't you!? YOU'D TRUST HER IN A HEARTBEAT!"
"BECAUSE SHE'S MY FRIEND!"
"SHE'S A WITCH!"
iridA sat up, shaking, and looked Rei straight in the eyes.
"She is a prophet. Sinnoh has chosen to bestow Cyllene with power and wisdom—"
"WISDOM FOR WHAT!?" Rei shrieked. "SHE MIGHT AS WELL BE BLOODY POSSESSED IF THAT'S WHAT YOU THINK!"
The pain sharpened into blinding focus. Rei clutched the wooden panel that would slide the door open again, wincing as his knees went weak and his lungs hitched. He could feel his pulse pounding in his fingertips and thundering through his brain.
"The one person who would be rational right now… who I knew I could trust… was taken from me. I wanted to protect Laventon too, you know. But I'm just a bother. Shouldn't even be trustin' myself. Not if I… couldn't… Not if I couldn't just strike her, n' stop her from casting her spell…"
"Rei, would you please just help guard the door? At least for an hour or so, until iridA is strong enough to—"
Rei fell right into the door. He managed to slide it open with his elbow and stomped outside. He then shook two Poké Balls out of his satchel and popped them open so Oshawott and Rowlet would appear. "Guard this place," he told them. "Make sure no one gets in, on Captain Zisu's orders."
A trill and a chatter proved they would obey, and then Rei stumbled beneath the roiling sky, muscles throbbing. Even his shadow grew restless, twitching and skittering about him as the light shifted into odd shades of umber and green.
He raised his chin to keep from getting too dizzy and looked toward the Sparring Hall. One Security Corpsman was swapping out for another, red jackets making them both almost invisible. Then Rei looked behind him, at the crumbling heap of dry, gray ash where a caravan had been. With a light gasp of pain, he stooped and curled his fingers around the nub of what once was the leg of a stool, its smooth grain gone all puffy and light as dust.
"I… don't…" he sputtered, tears blurring the wood as it fell from his grasp and exploded into real dust on the ground. It was too easy now to tell how parched his throat was — how his nerves stung as static coursed through them without his consent — how he was thirsty and delirious — how it was all wrong—
"I DON'T BELONG HERE!"
He lost his balance in the middle of the waterwheel bridge, fingernails just barely managing to claw into the guardrail and keep him from completely collapsing. Plip-plip went his tears into a silver trickle far below. The mud stank. The smoke burned his throat. Rei shivered.
"Don't fall asleep. D-don't… Y'can't. You'll… you'll die. You're… I'm going to…"
Kamado would not sleep, he had decided, until the ship arrived. If he had miscalculated the day of its arrival, then that was his mistake. He, like all the others, was condemned to die at the hands of the Nobles, whose power was neither earned nor worthy of respect.
All the same as tsubakI.
"It is as I have both said and reiterated, great Commander and leader of the village, not to mention high peacekeeper and designator of capriciousness. Lord Electrode and his kin cannot be destroyed, Kamado. Destruction is a fickle and finite phrase when we are speaking of timE. Things that are destroyed are always remade, by themselves or by someone else. Almighty Sinnoh will see another world or universe after this one. A bigger and better and flashier one, perhaps. Where there are no infidels, no traitors, really no need for betrayals and usurpations. There shall be… nothing, perhaps."
Kamado could've bit the spindly man's head off.
"Members of your own Clan have come alive in their sleep and died. Are you content with that, great Sekki?"
"Ah, well, as I have both said and reiterated, we, the diamonD claN, have allotted time for the grievance of my sister Warden maI. It shall not take place for yet another ninety-nine revolutions around the sun. I am not involved at all in the current menace. I am simply The Sekki, and I am guarding my territory fiercely."
The two men stared up at the sky from the top of the watchtower beside the village gates, grimly marveling at how the celestial blood trickled down in great dark clots.
tsubakI brushed long lavender hair back over his shoulders and gave Kamado a critical eye.
"We are civil now," he quoted.
"So it seems," replied Kamado. "adamaN and iridA are nowhere to be found, and you'd rather not search for them. A pity, I should think. It would take up so much of your time."
"Hm," tsubakI grunted. "You sound like my cousin. He teases me with his absence, yet as I am Sekki I am not to sin in haste. Blood runs vile in these sorts of paradoxes. But on a different subject I suppose I am now allowed to ask. What are you going to do when that ship from Kanto arrives?"
Kamado remained silent. The thunder in the distance crackled constantly. Mount Coronet was becoming hidden in a noxious curtain of fog and snow.
"And do know that I'm not referring to your… kindred villagers."
The large man grit his teeth. "I plan to perish with all of my failures, if that's what you're fishing for," he said, quite gruffly.
tsubakI smirked, catlike.
"But you are, in your heart, a sinful and hasty creature. Why not perish now, when Sinnoh makes your failures all too clear? I, tsubakI, The Sekki, will put you to sleep — into a deep slumber — from which you shall awaken strangely and unwittingly — and then I will summon my Lord Electrode again to kill, annihilate, and utterly, ah, destroy you for the time being. And then the chapter of Jubilife Village will end as it began. This will be quite agreeable to both our parties, I imagine.
"It is all almost like a pearL claN fragment I once heard whispered on the wind. The currant menace left us yearning/Indolence of Dream and Time… They say neither imagination nor patience will cinch the story in the end, but that only applies to those who fail to read between the lines. Words are infinite where life and energy fall short. Paragraphs are made of primal longings."
Kamado quoted:
"And the Duke of Darkness was ready to descend upon his realm."*
He turned his back on the bleeding sky and curled his thick fingers around the back guardrail, peering far, far down toward the village where a teenage boy sobbed alone on the waterwheel bridge.
"I was beguiled into thinking we might all drink to peace someday."
The smirk fell. tsubakI now drew away from the horror of the sky. He drew out his dagger and let a spare reflection of bluish lightning catch along its blade.
"But you pathetic losers were never welcome here," he hissed. "You don't speak our language. You don't worship our Almighty. You are marauders. You came here to mock us and kill us!"
"Then we shall all perish as you wish," Kamado stressed. He drew his sword, and with both hands aimed its tip at the screaming teenager in the distance. "Rei Fisher is an orphan who doesn't know his own birthday. Should he die first?"
And when he said this, the look on the serving Sekki's face became totally unreadable. He was frowning, but his lips were tight. His small silver eyes widened. Behind his back, he snapped his fingers, and at the base of the watchtower, his faithful Skuntank bared its poison fangs.
"I'll kill him first," tsubakI whispered.
"Why?" asked Kamado, twisting his blade to admire his red reflection.
"Because he's going to die anyway," said tsubakI, drawing his flute out of his largest satchel. "He's a sleepwalker. He's cursed—"
Quicker than the lightning, the katana swung fast. A screeching CLANG rang out, and tsubakI's flute glinted as it quivered in his hands, a hair-width of steel catching against the tsuba and stopping the sword from slicing through his chest. In another second the long blade retreated and swung again. cutting through the air with a casual swish right toward the spindly man's stomach.
tsubakI stumbled forward, losing his flute over the guardrail and watching it stab the ground far below. He squealed, ducking down to dodge, then popped back up on steely legs to thrust his dagger toward Kamado's heart. Swiftly the Commander shifted all his weight, raising the sword high in both hands so its tip brushed the ceiling. His forearm had managed to block the piercing blow, but now the black fabric of his sleeve was split, and two deep red gashes were oozing fast.
The dagger thrust again, jabbing the Commander in the meat of his shoulder with an audible squelch.
That was all it took. Kamado unleashed his rage. He roared and threw himself on top of the spindly usurper, all his weight crashing down on slender sinew. Something popped. The false Sekki gasped and gurgled.
Skuntank roared beneath, spitting globs of purple sludge onto the rickety legs of the watchtower. A sizzling and hissing emerged, and the platform started to creak.
"I was right to come north, to the waste," Kamado growled as he twisted his knee deep into the Warden's sternum. He sheathed the sword and watched contented as the dagger fell fast and clattered on the shrunken pine floor.
"Gilderang would never grant me asylum. Neither would any great city in Kanto. I'm a murderer, you see. The southern kingdoms believe murder is unforgivable."
"Get… off… me, interloper..."
tsubakI's face had turned bright red. He looked younger. Too young? No, Kamado thought. Too old for this kind of behavior. Old enough to know the pain of consequences.
"You change when you kill someone," he hissed, pivoting as the watchtower started to rock. "Your head becomes filled with phantoms, and your muscles are always twitching with an agonizing terror of being found out. You're soulless. Nothing but an empty skin, and even then you want to rip that skin away and become nothing but ash."
Purple oozed up between the floorboards. tsubakI snapped his fingers again, but it was too late. The tower was creaking, then leaning, then accelerating. With one hand, Kamado tore the button off one of tsubakI's satchels and fished out a thin, corked glass vial full of clear juice.
"It began with ash," Kamado finished, not quite putting breath into his words. "So that's all I ever care to remember."
He kicked off and somersaulted into a storm of dust as the wooden platform smashed on top of Skuntank and collapsed. tsubakI screamed. Skuntank snarled. Kamado paid them both no mind. He grunted and coughed as he found his footing within the dry miasma, gripping his bloodied shoulder and blinking until his village stopped spinning and solidified.
Red static hung in the air like cobwebs as he marched to the waterwheel bridge. There lay the boy on his back, skin gone a pale, pale pink and breathing shallowly. Above him hovered a Munchlax and a Piplup.
"Rei Fisher," said Kamado.
Rei moaned. The Piplup noticed Kamado and launched a rather weak Bubble attack that sank and turned into mud before it could even reach him. Then came a peck that couldn't even pierce the silk draped over his chest, and a curious bite from the Munchlax the Commander shook off all too easily.
"Rei Fisher," he said again, stooping. He uncorked the vial of leek juice and poured it directly into Rei's mouth, then began to pump his chest, until minutes later, he sucked in a gasp and choked on the dust all around him. His cap had fallen off, and his hair all stood on end, sparking where it came together in points.
He pushed himself up onto his knees to meet the face of Kamado, who eyed him without any sort of sympathy.
"You were seconds from sleepwalking. Did you want to get yourself killed tonight?"
Rei gave no pretense. "Of course I did. And I shall kill myself right here and now if you don't give me Professor Laventon."
Kamado huffed. "You'll kill yourself? How will you do that?"
"I'll have Raichu do it."
"You won't."
He was expecting the boy to cry, but Rei felt he had done quite enough of that already. That vial had contained leek juice of the purest and richest and cleanest specimens stolen right out from under Tao Hua's nose, and in seconds Rei Fisher had become fully human again. He was more than human, anyway, now that his mind was clearing and the air he was breathing was turning into lightning in his lungs. He strengthened his glare, remembering the hateful way Ginter had looked at him after that badly-aimed Thunderbolt and how iridA had scolded him for calling Cyllene a witch.
Rei forced himself to smile. His neck was tingling. His chest was itching, and his stomach clenched as a giddy, gurgling nausea swirled within.
He could forgive himself for what he didn't do. That was all in the past. That was years ago, in the morning, when he was just an ignorant, restless child who couldn't take matters into his own broadening, lengthening hands.
Rei stood up tall, taller now than the failure who was kneeling. Taller still as his flesh redistributed — strong, solid muscle swelling into place where softness had been before. The remains of the watchtower were just another smudge on the Hisuian landscape, made fuzzy as the red sky overtook his vision. He inhaled and drank lightning. His spine straightened. His eyes went sharp, and his lips twisted into a much more calculated grin.
"Did you hear me, Kamado? I want him back."
Neither noticed. Neither wanted to notice. Rei had begun to transform, using only the power of the crimson electricity writhing over his skin. A bubbling purple aura had opened above his head like a halo, slowly spinning and distorting everything behind him.
Kamado looked down at his knees. He hadn't understood magic that morning, and he wouldn't now. From inside his chester coat, he grasped one of the Poké Balls knotted with red string around his waist, then drew his sword to cut it loose and handed it up to the surveyor. "Last time I checked, the professor is still in the form of a Snorlax," he said. "No ounce of intelligence left in him, and fatter than he was before."
"That's all right," said the man in the too-short trousers, scratching at a short, dark beard that was sprouting in waves down his chin and neck. His upset stomach settled at last, and he ran curious fingers over his biceps and chest, daring to lift a full-on smirk. That, too, he had learned from both Ginter and Cyllene. "I'm going to change the fat blighter back."
Kamado hadn't felt as powerless as when he told the latent Galaxy Team that Pokémon had set his village on fire. He looked at Piplup and Munchlax, cowering in confusion at the way their trainer had aged. What an utter lie it was sometimes to say Pokémon were terrifying creatures.
"Can you work magic, too, Rei Fisher?"
Rei shrugged. His mind was drifting up out of the haze as he peeled off his failure in the morning and all the useless years between that followed. Ten years felt about right with the way his black hair fell long down his back. One flex of his shoulders forced the jacket seams to rip.
Reinold Fisher was twenty-five now, and he'd never scream or cry again. He took the Poké Ball with the Snorlax inside from the pathetic Commander and gave it a kiss on the latch, then stooped down once more to snatch the katana right out of Kamado's lap.
"I know one fing," he said, his voice deep and calm. The distortion above his head was wide-open now, and hot sparks filled his lungs with a power that wouldn't hurt him if it dared.
"Men are freed from curses when the witch that made 'em dies."
why can't you see it...?
~N~
**The Duke of Darkness — Kamado is quoting the ultimate line of my first published fanfiction Hetafata, a work infamous for being unnecessarily verbose. The "Duke of Darkness," Ludwig, is a former villain in the story who redeems himself through realizing he has become an adult and must start behaving responsibly.
FIRST FANFIC DATESTAMP FOR THE NEW YEAR! I was working on and off on this all of December but didn't get it finished until now. Work and various knitting projects had me absolutely kNACKERED!
Anyway! Stahlflower Animation has a toothsome new video out! ILikeShorts just posted her STEAMIEST one-shot yet! We're all good! It's gonna be great! (I don't think the cards will give me a boyfriend this year either but at least my new year's resolution is to finally touch a pigeon in real life.) 😭
Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net January 2nd, 2024. PLEASE DON'T REPOST. PLEASE DO REVIEW!
