36.

The Diamond Dust Girl


The girl in the rain thinks, how DARE that asshole Volkner.

He IS an asshole. A fully-evolved asshole. A spoiled, stubborn, selfish jerkwad who wouldn't understand love if it plunged a Thunderbolt right between his sad, slouching shoulder blades.

He'll die alone, she thinks. Of course he will. He'll overload a circuit and start a fire, or get fried on some big brain Electric combo move he thinks he can handle, or just get old and gross until that smirk of his just looks creepy. Volkner wants to surge through life and flicker out without anyone by his side. And he WILL, because the smart girls he wants are too smart even for his genius. The asshole. The absolute asshole. How DARE he. How DARE he!

Rain without thunder pours down in the darkness. Turns her hair into a slick black stream that clings to her back. Drains her mascara. Steams away her mint perfume and leaves her breathing what seems like coconut-and-cupcakes scumming up the glass-tiled walls. The hot water turned off after seven minutes — because of some fricking stupid eco-conscious machine in the heart of Volkner's shimmering city she isn't allowed to disable. Now it comes down frigid. Her muscles tense. She stares at nothing, feeling an eyelid twitch.

Stunted love still pulses in her brain. It's no longer pure pleasure. It's frozen fog — imaginary even — when she's completely naked and fully exposed.

A soft knock summons her. Breathing in, she turns off the rain and steps out into greater darkness, sharp and strange. She grasps a scratchy towel and wraps it fast around her chest.

"Talk and hot choccy?" comes a man's voice from beyond the bathroom door.

It's not Volkner's sleepy tenor. It never will be. Volkner doesn't apologize. Sunyshore's sunshine boy doesn't reflect. If he did, he'd do something about those dark circles and shitty yellow bangs without her having to force him.

"Did you tell him to fix the lights and get lost already?" she rasps.

She's been crying; her throat is parched. A silence comes that tests every fiber of her frozen, soon-to-be-fiery, frankly exhausted soul.

The other voice goes soft. Concerned, she knows, and she loves it.

"If Volkner tries anything funny this weekend, you just leave it to me."

Ugh. "That's not the point. He can't come back here."

"I'll… talk to him about where he's going."

"After this weekend he doesn't have to show his face around here ever again."

A grander silence this time. Weighing options. Don't you DARE…

Her defender sighs. "It's not like we can banish him from the city. Geez, babe. I'll try talking to him again, all right? Sometime this weekend l'll sit him down and we'll have a good, honest chat about the whole thing."

Boys like Volkner don't "chat," she thinks. Boys like that draw Poké Balls and settle their feelings with flaming fists and arcs of azure lightning.

"You'd better win," she says.

It won't be pretty otherwise.


On the night before the sky turned red, Coin's Toxicroak had fallen ill. Its skin was sticking to its bones, and the bright red sac of its throat had gone bloodless and wrinkled, shaking weakly as it breathed.

"Roak-roak-roak-roak."

"Coward," said Clover, the bandit with black braids so tight they twisted upwards.

"Roak, roak, roak?"

"I wasn't talking to you."

Clover had learned, when she lost her Diamond Clan religion, that a quick death was always more profitable than a slow one. If you torture the Ginkgo Man, he has time to cry for help or summon a Pokémon, and you might not get the entire caravan of goodies. But if you kill him quickly — steal the time from his body without even letting him see you — then the whole lot is yours. You might even get to drink tonight. If you're lucky.

"Blood is lucky," she reminded Charm, who was still standing on wobbly legs at the mouth of the cave they currently lived in. The whole place stank of blood — of hard-earned luck. The Miss Fortune three had amassed years' worth of granola. Of dried, smoked Basculin filets. Of coffee and chocolates and wines and hard little amber candies that tasted like lavender and honey. They had whole reams of silk. Black thread. Gold thread. Blue thread. They had books with crisp new bindings. They had real ceramic bowls and cups. They had jade rings and silver pendants and copper wire reclaimed from the legend of Galaxy Hall.

They had their lives. Still. Hardly.

"If you came with me," Charm offered cautiously, "we might be able to reach Jubilife Village without getting attacked. They'll have leek juice and poultices we can snatch. Or we could barter."

Clover swung her legs over the mound of carpets she was using as a bed. Below her on the cave floor, Toxicroak and the feverish Coin continued to groan. The burns all over Coin's body had festered — of course they had — and if Coin chose to close her eyes for too long she'd turn into a stupid sleepwalker and die anyway.

"You could put Coin out of her misery," Clover offered instead, "and then you wouldn't have to worry about running into bald-faced little Cyllene and the Commander."

She smirked seeing her sister's fists clench up. Drawing the dagger from her satchel, Clover strode out into the darkness to stand beside Charm. The Highlands buzzed with nighttime violence. Somewhere Lady Sneasler had caught another human victim. Somewhere else an Ursaring had found a Chansey nest.

The starry storm above ignored it all.

"Or you could just deal with Kamado's favorite Captain and avenge our sister. But I don't know. Unpleasant and unattractive people should be left to die on their own, and from the sound of it, she's hideous."

Clover had been sleepwalking on the night Cyllene tried to murder Coin. Vaguely dreaming of somewhere icy cold and hateful, though that must have been her Abomasnow's power freezing over the Fieldlands.

"I understand," she continued. "Life in Kanto must have been sweet. You never thought one day you'd be a bandit in a wasteland with no boyfriend even in your horoscope. Say the word and I'll take care of you and Coin."

"You will not talk to me like that," said Charm.

"Why not?" said Clover, bluntly tapping Charm's collarbone with the hilt of her dagger. "You couldn't even stab that dreamy freak with the Luxray. What makes you think you'd survive out here without us doing all the actual work!?"

"We swore an oath of sisterhood."

"You fell in love with him, Kiku, and when you let him go he survived for what, five seconds? Does love really set you free?"

The older woman's lips and shoulders stiffened. Above her, Gengar materialized, frowning and raising its chubby purple claws to prepare for a fight. At this, Clover turned up her nose. One great whoosh of steam and suddenly her own partner was towering over all three of them. Abomasnow's white whiskers twitched. The pine needles on its back bristled.

"Use Ice Punch," hissed Clover.

Charm flinched, but it wasn't her the massive Ice-type was aiming for. In an instant, Gengar was sent hurtling down the mountainside, a trail of diamond dust following its flight.

"Now use Razor Leaf, and make it Strong Style."

"You're CRAZY! DON'T YOU DARE!" Charm shrieked.

"Don't you dare, you bitter old crone! Fight me!"

Clover knew she wouldn't. Of course she wouldn't. The younger bandit giggled, tearing out her braids and letting her hair blow freely in the freezing mist that came with her partner's next attack. Abomasnow puffed out its chest and with both arms flung a barrage of sharpened leaf spears down toward the wilderness where Gengar had fallen. Down among the dark, sparse pines there came a purple puff of smoke and a wheeze.

Charm gasped. "GENGAR!"

Gengar heard her. Shakily it levitated upward, ears twitching, but it had barely cleared the highest trees when Clover nodded to Abomasnow once more.

"I want your coldest Blizzard."

Abomasnow's fur thickened with crystals of frost. It opened its maw, where a storm began to brew in the back of its throat. Snow swirled — a sparse, wet, snow, but a snow nonetheless, that heightened as the beast raised its mighty arms and bared its blue fangs to the sky.

"Night Shade," Charm uttered at the last moment. "Night Shade! Make her hurt!"

Powers collided. Darkness surrounded the grinning black smudge of Gengar. It hurled a fluid nightmare toward the girl and her snow beast. Clover threw a punch to the air, and Abomasnow launched its wave of frozen crystals.

The effect was bone-chilling. The smaller bandit snarled and stumbled and clenched her teeth. Pain sliced deep beneath her skin. The snow bit her face, and a nightmare forced its way down her throat until all her muscles loosened and she slipped, falling right off the ledge.


Another nervous twisting of her hair. Another red dreadlock snipped and left to lay in the middle of a Pokémon graveyard.

arezU had heard about the Croagunk and Toxicroak dying. They weren't Water-types, but if they got tired and their soft skin dried out too quickly, then the sun could cook their bones and sometimes set their whole bodies alight.

They'd clearly tried to flee north into the Coronet Highlands, and northeast toward the caldera of Lake Valor. As arezU hiked deeper into the valley, she came across a few half-buried and unmoving in sticky clay. More prominent were the unlucky Eastern Shellos — a Water-type whose death rendered it nothing more than a slug-shaped pile of filmy bluish skin. A legend said eating this substance could repair dry hair and make skin smoother. arezU had eaten it herself. She made tsubakI eat it, and that was how his hair came to be so long and smooth and perfectly, naturally purple.

But she never thought she'd see so much of it. See-through statues lined the paths and clung to tree trunks. They glowed like amethysts beneath the red sky; some of them still visibly steamed and shrank as the heat grew fiercer. And all of them used to be alive. All were at one time submerged in a swamp in the deepest heart of the Crimson Mirelands. Now forced to look elsewhere for water — even if only to attempt a Rain Dance and summon the moisture to breathe through their skin.

At the base of the hill she wandered down, a large, amorphous pile of film blocked the path entirely. Two wilted knobs jutted out from the side of its "head," while along its body a series of black, melted stretch marks swirled and circled holes in the former flesh. This Shellos had attempted evolution into Gastrodon. Burned up purely by the energy within and left frozen in time.

The thought was so horrifying arezU lowered her head and sprinted south until her chest hurt and she almost dropped her satchel. The scent of smoke was settling now. Faint white trails of flames made the faint horizon shimmer.

Recently Warden calabA had set up camp in the Solaceon Ruins, a few miles south of Sazaria, the Diamond Clan's oldest permanent settlement. She was (supposedly) responsible for Lord Ursaluna, a formidable Pokémon whose golden frenzy had already claimed three Diamond lives. The settlement could defend itself — mostly. But now that Lady Lilligant had gotten her way and escaped, arezU's imagination swelled with images of fire and ruin.

What if her bones cooked beneath her skin? What if her time was stolen? Or her siblings' and mother's? Or the old men and Irrelevants, sleeping naked in the bog with their long hair tangled up in pondweed?

She closed her eyes, thinking of adamaN. Of the way he never seemed to worry. Of the faith he had in a god that refused to show him visions.

"All things remain to be seen," arezU whispered, surveying the brownish open landscape before her and trying to remember which way was south through the billowing smoke. "No one knows his own future, or the future beyond his death. No one can change his fate, nor the fate of the world. Only Almighty Sinnoh will see a universe after history, when spirit passes away and timE remains."

They were The Sekki's maxims, and also his nemeses, if the legend of sazariN was to be forced down their throats any further.

Suddenly, the air went thick.

CRA-CK-CKK-CKK!

arezU shrieked and fell flat on her face just as a blue-hot bolt of lightning snaked and split the atmosphere above her. It struck a dry shrub she'd nearly tripped on moments before, and now a small fire was blooming around its branches.

CRAACK!

A Pokémon leapt over her, snarling and hissing and crackling with the power of its own hot static. arezU waited to hear Rampardos' roar, but it never came. She crawled forward as quick as she could while thorns and stones bit into her palms and tore her leggings.

"TAKE ME TO YOUR MASTER! SHOW ME WHERE HE IS, YOU BEAST!"

Luxio bristled at the voice. Along his mane, the black fur was parted and blood oozed from a few shallow cuts. His star-shaped tail hummed and pulsed yellow in time with his heartbeat. He growled and let another bolt loose from his jaws, aiming squarely at the slight figure sprinting toward him in the haze.

The figure leapt, arcing up over the blast in a backflip. A small blade gripped between her teeth flashed greenish in the light of the storm.

Luxio snarled again. He flattened his ears and turned crazed golden eyes suddenly toward arezU, who had fetched her scissors out of her satchel and sat with them in quivering hands.

"He's still here, isn't he!? WHERE IS HE!?"

She pounced like one of the frenzied Nobles. A girl with black hair snaking down her back, and crusty makeup smeared all over her face and chest. She swung the dagger, baring all her teeth. Her eyes were desperate. Movements confused and ungainly. Voice a hollow, piercing shriek.

"WHERE IS VOLKNER!?"

Luxio flinched at the name.

"You know who I'm talking about," taunted the bandit, waving the knife and inching closer. "Blue eyes to die for? Commands currents with the precision of a beacon? The Shining, Shocking Star? He'll get what's coming to him. It's unwise to play with lightning."

arezU breathed in slowly. The sparkling haunches of Luxio was growing closer and closer to where she sat, while the girl with the dagger barely seemed to notice. Maybe if she got up slowly… felt her way to the Fire Clock in Sazaria and hoped Lilligant hadn't razed it to the ground…

She placed her hands in the dust behind her and pushed. "Ow!" she cried when a thorn smarted in her right palm.

Luxio turned and whipped around to roar at her. Lightning flickered between his teeth like spittle. arezU could feel the current racing through her veins. She tried to drop the scissors, but her muscles were stuck in place — pointing the blades right toward the creature's neck.

The bandit descended. Dagger gripped tightly. Black hair swinging.

"You're his favorite Pokémon. I remember that now. You're not his strongest, or his fastest, but Volkner loves you. He takes you everywhere with him. You can read the electric currents in each other's bodies. I wonder what he'd do if your heart stopped beating?"

"STOP!" arezU cried, raising the scissors higher. "Don't come any closer!"

It was enough to distract the girl. Vicious eyes bore down on the Warden in the mud, and the dagger shook.

It was arezU's turn to flinch. "suzU?" she whispered.

"WHAT!?" the bandit shrieked, tears on her face as she raised the handle high in the air to strike.

arezU climbed to her feet, her lungs burning with panic. "suzU! A girl of the diamonD claN I refer to! Your body remains animate along with breath within the respiratory organs you possess after several revolutions of our planet around the singular sun in which none of my Sekki's, that is to say — my husband adamaN's — dear people have laid their ocular faculties upon you."

suzU — the one she thought was suzU — paused for just a second. Her eyes turned entirely away from Luxio and focused on arezU. arezU put up her hands in defense. Finally the scissors dropped and landed heavily in the dry, dry dirt.

"suzU! You're still alive! We all thought you'd been killed by bandits! The Sekki scheduled your mourning for eighty years from now!"

"I KILLED BANDITS!" replied Clover, nearly losing her balance she was so full of fury. "I KILLED BANDITS! I KILLED GINKGO MEN! I'LL STEAL TIME AND BREATH FROM ANYONE! ESPECIALLY VOLKNER!"

"Who's Volkner!?"

"I DON'T KNOW!"

She swung the dagger, slicing cleanly through the chest of arezU's tunic and grazing her collarbone. arezU screamed. The Warden scrambled downward, fishing for the scissors again, but now a bright blue glow was flickering between the two girls, blinding them and pausing all threats and confusion.

Luxio's body was shaking. Pulsing. Growing. His fur rippled around swelling flesh and stretching skin. Steadily his small maw was pushing outwards into a deadly muzzle. His golden eyes went wide as reddish rims squicked out around them. His black mane flared out, growing suddenly long and full and fluffed while the cuts thinned and closed in an instant.

His voice was deepening — from a growl to a ferocious popping hiss. Both girls jumped when the static in the air exploded, smoke and haze coating the Pokémon in darkness.

In a storm cloud he skulked, ripping two-inch claws out of the small, blackened burns in the earth they'd outgrown. He was massive now. All the fur on his head and shoulders sticking out straight and sparking deep cerulean.

Clover lunged with the dagger, but Volkner's Luxray leapt up, taller on his hind legs than the bandit, and swiped so quickly with a paw that she was sent rolling across the dust and thorns toward the flames. Then he pulled back his lips and roared like a crash of rolling thunder before leaping off into the burning haze and vanishing from sight.

arezU rushed to Clover's side. Smoke stung her eyes. She couldn't stop shaking when sparks were burning holes in her tunic and singing the back of her neck. Still, she heard the former Diamond girl's sobs and latched on tight around her chest.

"We can make it!" arezU cried. "Please don't tell me you want you want to get cooked out here!"

Clover responded by trying to bite her. They'd found the main path again, and when arezU was sure the other girl could stand on her own two feet, they ran.


Sazaria had been prepared. When the two girls arrived at the jagged quartz spires that defended the settlement, they were greeted by the stocky form of Warden iscaN, who had been commanding a troupe of Floatzel tired from a hike to Lake Valor. The sleek mammals' eyes were all bloodshot from the smoke. Their tails drooped, but a Rain Dance had been somewhat successful in protecting the settlement from flames.

"Warden! Warden! Warden!" he murmured, amazed. "And who is this? And who is this? And who is this?"

"suzU," arezU said, and marched past him. Nevermind the sentence fragment. Don't even try to explain how the girl killed by bandits somehow became one herself. adamaN wouldn't care. adamaN would have other priorities. Like keeping people safe.

adamaN…

"My loquacious one?" she asked, a fierceness in her blistered features.

iscaN shook his head. "You know I don't trust the spirits of the Cobalt Coastlands, but as Lord Basculegion's Warden I hear their whispers wherever I go. There is trouble with The Sekki, they tell me. Almighty Sinnoh has put a… a curse upon adamaN's body. There is no way to find him. He must reveal himself and accept his ultimate fate. The spirits… they speak the name of… s-sazariN."

arezU wanted to scream. But if Almighty Sinnoh isn't real… If adamaN has never had a vision…

What has adamaN seen!?

There was no time. She shuffled with Clover through the assembled yurts and cabins — through the Fire Clock, which had been lit for months while The Sekki failed to extinguish it, and brought the girl up to the front steps of The Sekki's lodge. arezU turned the quartz handle on the door. Clover growled and stumbled and wept at her feet.

"One I refer to," said arezU. "Become content."

"But I wish I was still dead," whined the bandit. "When I was dead at least I knew what I wanted."

"What vision did you have, traitor of timE?"

She knelt next to her, gripping her scissors lest the girl decide she was still quite crazy.

"This is sacred ground in the eyes of the eternaL onE. Do not attempt to steal timE from The Sekki's wife. Just… what's going on, girlie? You're safe here. You can say."

Clover shook her head. The few people who weren't catching up on sleep in the underground pit gawked up at the two of them, some blanching at the idea that Lilligant's Warden had left her seat, others wondering why a girl wearing a shredded Ginkgo coat was allowed within the spires.

"arezU, have you become a sleepwalker?" Clover asked.

The Warden nodded. "I am one. My partner Rampardos always defended me from the Nobles, but it's hurt now, and before I found you I was on a mission to find a remedy."

The bandit's whole body clenched in a cold sweat. She hacked and sputtered and nearly puked before arezU signaled for one of iscaN's loyal Buizel to spray her in the face.

"Then…" Clover managed to gurgle, "You know that when we sleepwalk… we have dreams… and the dreams become stronger sometimes. The longer we're asleep, the less we are… ourselves…"

"I've tried to ignore them."

"You can't escape them. You can't… you CAN'T ESCAPE THEM!" Clover screamed, thrashing and punching until iscaN came near and held her still.

"THAT BLOND FREAK CHARM KISSED… THE OTHER ME KNOWS HIM TOO! THE GIRL IN THE RAIN IN THE DREAMS! SHE HATES HIM!"

"Who are you in your dreams?" iscaN asked calmly, giving arezU a warning look to distance herself.

"WHEN THE NOBLE KILLED ME, I BECAME THE GIRL IN THE DREAM! I REALLY WAS HER! I KNEW EVERYTHING SHE KNEW! I STILL FEEL HER NOW, AND... UGGNHHH, I DON'T KNOW WHO THE HELL I AM ANYMORE!"

"She's dangerous," arezU warned.

The large man understood completely. Bracing Clover with one arm, he used his other to shoo The Sekki's wife away and point back toward the smoke-filled sky and the mountain.

"There is timE yet," he told her. "For Rampardos and for our claN, with or without adamaN. If I send my biggest Buizel with you to the Ruins, can you follow my instructions? Can you follow my instructions? Can you fol… Can you… STOP SQUIRMING SO HASTILY, INFIDEL!"

arezU opened her mouth to respond, but despite iscaN's courage time had left the situation completely. Clover's teeth flashed once, then twice, dry, then dripping, and Basculegion's Warden cried out as loudly as he ever had while Lilligant's Warden turned her back and fled.


where there's nothing wrong


~N~

Some little secrets revealed here and there. And more to uncover, where legends are concerned~

Published and illustrated by scrivenernoodz on FFN and AO3 May 13th, 2024. Please don't repost. Please do review!