Interceptor's Wish

by Masterdude21

What started as a young man's search for his abducted mother spirals out of control. Soon, he is fighting a desperate war for survival against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed. The enemy is everywhere and allies are far too few. With the entire region at stake, who can prevail when fate itself seems set against you? - Novelization of Pokemon Rejuvenation.

35. A Trial of Moving On

AN: I have rained down enough misery on these characters for now. It is time for fluff. Rest and recovery, then fluff. Coping with traumas and injuries and losses, then fluff. Mending broken friendships and torn families, followed by…you guessed it, fluff.

This chapter might as well be called "Amber and Tesla Fixing Stuff". Expect lots of different POV's for this one as everyone does their damnedest to pick up the pieces where they fell.

Chapter 8 – Those we Lose

A Trial of Moving On

~~~~~~~(I)~~~~~~~

---

Nobody heard Venam scream over all of the shit that hit the fan, but she sure did. She screamed when Will and Geara began fucking each other up. She screamed when the knife sliced across Will's face and nearly carved his freaking eyeball out and she screamed when she realized that Will wasn't going to stop punching Geara's face in even though the smarmy bastard had already stopped fighting back.

She wanted to move, she wanted to get to her feet and do something – punch Zetta's freaking face in for the role he'd played in this mess, pull Will off of that slimy cocksucker before he went too far or make sure that the freaking army of thugs Xen still had at their beck and call wouldn't show up and ruin things even more.

But she couldn't. She was frozen. Her limbs weighed a hundred pounds each and her muscles felt stiff and at the same time too freaking weak to do anything.

Just like in Angie's fucking tower. Weak. Useless.

She didn't know what to do. She had no plans, no ideas, no clue. Times like these she depended on her friends to get things done. Ren…Ren was gone now, a fucking turncoat who joined the enemy. Will had lost his fucking mind and that was putting it nicely and Melia had just watched her father die horribly. She…she…

Still, Melia snatched one of the Pokeballs from the ground[. She pressed the little button in its center and released whichever one was inside. Surprise surprise, it was Will's Blaziken, Not the biggest lunatic in his team, but definitely not the one Venam would bank on for mercy, if even half the stories surrounding that thing were true.

"You have to help him, you have to stop him!" Melia pleaded.

Blaziken looked at Melia with a hard, inscrutable expression. She looked over at her trainer, bleeding and screaming like a lunatic as he continued punching Geara.

No way, Venam thought. No way that thing is going to obey anyone else. A strong Pokemon wouldn't even obey their trainer if they believed their trainer did something bad. The kind of things Crescent had said Will did today, must have happened with Blaziken's full approval. No way –

But Blaziken stepped towards Will, gingerly pulled her arms around him and pulled him away from the fallen Xen Admin.

Will went ballistic. The sight was so fucking at odds with everything that Venam knew about him that it took her too long to realize that holy shit, holy fucking shit he was bleeding, he was bleeding from his everywhere. He strained against Blaziken, little sounds of agony and sorrow punching out of him and Venam saw the blood seeping from his chest every time he kicked and pulled and =

There was a moment, between one frantic breath and the next, that Venam thought of two things. a memory of Will reaching for the sealed gate Maria had punted them through, bleeding from a hole in his head. And Angie, grinning like the monster she was, impaling him through his chest with a frozen spear as he tried to get her back to her feet.

"Will - Will, Will!" Melia cried out desperately, her expression one of pure anguish. "Stop struggling please, please you're hurting yourself - "

And nope, Venam decided that she was done with that, done with seeing her friends bleed. Absolutely fuck that, and thoroughly absolutely fuck Team Xen for what they did today. That shit was unfor-fucking-givable.

"Don't move a muscle," Venam growled at Zetta, who had just raised his arm as if ready to give his pet-monster another kill order.

Lo and behold that freaking Giratina flickered into existence.

"I'll have my Seviper bite your head off," Venam said, surprised at the weird calmness she felt when she said that. Nevertheless, the asshole raised his arm higher and she saw his mouth open and the terror slapped her across her face. "Don't you fucking dare!" She screamed at the bastard.

Things got weird after that. Things always tended to get weird when she was involved.

Crescent. The weird girl that kept appearing at random times to make their lives infinitely more complicated. She teleported into existence and…

And this time around, Crescent started putting things back together. Venam didn't get half the things that were going on but, between Nim and Professor Jenner dying and Will snapping and Melia on the brink of a mental breakdown and her own brain starting to melt, that probably didn't matter.

It didn't matter that Zetta was some sort of freaky Pokemon experiment. It probably didn't matter that Crescent had thrown Geara's bleeding body through that stupid teleporter. It didn't matter that the freaking telepathic Legendary Pokemon broke that stupid teleporter.

What mattered was that everybody around her was hurt and that she couldn't help them.

Jenner was gone and Nim was gone and too many people were out there dead and dying and Venam didn't even know why anymore. Melia sank to the ground, holding onto Will's increasingly limp body as she whispered at him to stay with her, pleaded him not to leave her too and fuck, hearing how scared and defeated she sounded hurt.

Venam held on to her, clutching so tightly to her arm that she wasn't sure if it was her or Melia who was shaking. She knew that it was Melia who was crying. She'd seen her own father get murdered in front of her eyes and Will…oh god, Will. He'd saved them and -

The realization was so sudden that it actually startled Venam. He'd saved them, all of them. From breaking Team Xen's lines to pulling Amber and Tesla out of Kyogre to fighting his way back, however -the-fuck he'd done it, from almost falling into lava – he'd saved them all.

Just like in Maria's mansion.

Just like Angie's fucked-up church.

She had promised she would protect him, and he had promised that he would protect them. Only one of them had broken that promise and only one of them had been bitching at the other.

Holy fuck she had been a terrible friend to him.

"What happened?" Melia asked, as quiet as a whisper. Her brows were pitched together in worry. She settled her hand on the side of his bloody face. Will blinked – thank fuck, he's alive – and leaned into her palm.

"I don't know," Venam said. "Last I remember Giratina knocked Will over the edge. Next thing I know, he's waking me up. He must have climbed back over?"

Melia drew her thumb across his cheek, wiping stray blood off – a futile effort. One of her best friends had joined the sick fucks trying to abduct her, her father was dead and her other friend was bleeding out in her arms. "But he fell."

It was so fucking unfair. Venam couldn't think of any other way to describe it. The unfairness of it all made her swell with indignity. "Well, he's right here."

It had taken them just a few minutes, but already the rangers were flying helicopters in. Rescue choppers with medical workers, not many, but just enough to evacuate three hapless teenagers.

Almost as if a certain psychopath had told them what to expect, Venam thought.

They'd been here before, they'd done this before. She was pissed off and exhausted and it wasn't fair. These assholes kept hurting her friends and she couldn't do anything about it.

Will woke up halfway through the evacuation back down. How the fuck he managed to do so with the amount of blood he'd lost, Venam would never know. His eyes…well, eye fluttered open. A single emerald orb frantically moved around the helicopter's interior, hazy and unfocused, before finally resting on Venam.

"Did we make it?" He asked, uncertain and more than a little confused, considering they'd all made it because of him.

Helpless, Venam shot a look at Melia, but Melia had curled up underneath a rescue blanket, quietly sobbing.

Fuck.

Venam reached out and grabbed his intact hand. "Yeah, Will," she said, unable to look at that wide, frantic eye of his. It made her feel horrible and tiny and small, but she'd seen enough of his blood to last her a lifetime and that fucking wound on his face would make her puke her guts out across the heli's floor. "We made it."

Hearing her say that did something to him. It was as if everything inside of him stopped and just…short-circuited or something. He shut down and stopped talking, stopped looking around, stopped doing fucking anything. It drove Venam absolutely up the wall because holy shit, her friend was dead, he'd just fucking died in front of her and the medics were going nuts and no no no no, please don't die, don't you fucking dare, don't you fucking dare die now –

Will didn't respond when a medic began asking questions about his injuries – does your head hurt? Do you have other injuries? Can you tell me your name? – or even when they began tying bandages around his perforated hand and ripping his shirt open to reveal the true extent of the damage that little shit Geara had done.

There was so much blood,

Painkillers and bandages. Will didn't respond when Crawli came running towards them with Sam and Alex, asking them if they were alright, begging them to tell him what had happened and if they had done it, if they had succeeded in getting everybody out…

Venam wanted nothing more than to tear herself into two versions of herself, one who could keep supporting Melia as she wept in silence and one who could keep an eye on Will and make sure he didn't…didn't…

Tears burned in her eyes now. Venam grit her teeth and tried to fight them back, but she was exhausted and her head hurt and her best friend just lost her dad and her other friend just lost his friend and possibly his eye and she was pretty sure he'd lost his mind as well and it was too much. She had to choose and it was too fucking much.

It wasn't fucking fair. They'd won, and somehow they'd all ended up so much worse than before and it wasn't. Fucking. Fair.

~~~~~~~(II)~~~~~~~

---

Thirty minutes. That was how long it took Tesla von Brandt to get all the way back from Teila Resort to the pass. Thirty nerve-wracking, agonizing minutes where a quarter of that time would have been far too much.

As she flew overhead with Talonflame, she surveyed the battlefield with a practiced eye. The Xen Initiative's blockade lay in ruins. Two of their sizable battleships had capsized and were in the process of sinking. Another two were on fire, large sections of their armored hull ablaze. She saw one battleship with its entire bridge had been frozen in the midst of an explosion. No metaphor there; it was as if winter had erupted from within. Blood had frozen over in strange shapes through the shattered windows. A few bodies littered the deck.

The crumpled hull of yet another pair of those ships was only barely visible underneath the waterline. A pair of ranger vessels were in the process of putting out a burning stain of oil. Sections of broken metal jutted from the water. Hard plastic and glass floated in a radius of a hundred meters. Another pair of ranger speedboats cruised between the sand banks, solemnly fishing bodies out of the sea. Not all of them wore the jet-black Xen uniform.

Tesla felt her heart tear a little with every body she saw. So much death, so much destruction. A hundred families torn asunder and what for? What could possibly drive an organization to this…this senseless bloodshed?

From above, the images of the battle clicked together into a coherent puzzle. Rangers moved to and fro, carrying bodies or supplies with the help of their Pokemon. Already they were setting up large tents as improvised shelters. They had painted red crosses across their surface to indicate them as medical shelters. Someone else had painted white numbers below each cross, one through eleven.

Wounded and dead – rangers and Xen personnel alike – littered the area. From Valor Shore through Route Six, across the strait and around Jynnobi Pass. Death and suffering surrounded her everywhere she looked.

Tesla steeled herself to the best of her capabilities and moved in.

It did not take her long to spot the Head Ranger. Gym Leader Crawli was in the thick of it, one of his arms in a sling. He conveyed orders to his senior rangers. She spotted Captain Holly directing Pokemon and junior rangers alike.

Terajuma's defenders would have not been handling their dead and their wounded so openly if there had still been a battle raging. Team Xen's defeat in Teila Resort wasn't a fluke, then. The battle really was over. The enemy had lost. Good men and women had prevailed once again.

If at a horrible cost

"Crawli!" She called out when she climbed down from Talonflame. "What is the situation?"

Crawli took a moment to finish giving his orders to a dark-haired ranger officer, then turned to regard her. "Miss von Brandt?" He asked with surprise. "What are you doing here? You were evacuated only hours ago!"

"Yes, and after defending my home, I came back again," she said patiently. "The situation, please."

Crawli grimaced. "It's a mess, ma'am. We're still operational, but barely. If it weren't for the Island Guardians, we would still be contending Team Xen over Kristiline Town and the HQ in Kakori. We're still working on the headcounts and reports are coming in, but all signs point to Team Xen retreating."

"Retreating," Tesla repeated. "I assume that we won the most vital battle of all?"

She didn't miss how Crawli winced. "Y-Yeah. From what we've gathered, we broke their blockade completely. There are still pockets of resistance all around Route Six, but we managed to defeat and rout their main forces. We've won, Tesla."

Tesla closed her eyes. Yes, they had won, but at a terrible cost. "And…what of…what of the team inside Valor Mountain?"

"Wounded, but victorious," Crawli said. "From what we've pieced together, they defeated the local Xen leadership, shattered their hold on the Legendary Pokemon that had been wreaking havoc and succeeded in…well, freeing you and Amber."

"…and the other hostages?" Tesla said quietly.

Crawli took a breath. "I'm sorry," he said, and Tesla felt a pit of ice drop into her stomach. "Venam told us that, right at the end, their Admin or…Executive, Geara, took the lives of Professor Jenner and Nim alike. They're gone."

For a moment, Tesla felt her heart stop. The world grew silent and still. She…had misheard him. She needed to have misheard him, Jenner could not…he could not…

But he was. There was no way that Melia, Will and Veronica would not have brought them back otherwise.

Though her blood turned to ice, Tesla took a moment to steady herself. People looked up to her. People looked at her for guidance and support. If she lost her heart, morale would plummet. She needed to set an example. For them, she needed to be strong. When children were lost, a mother could not falter.

"They are dead? Both of them?" She asked, her voice not much stronger than a whisper.

Crawli's expression was clear enough. He looked torn between raw agony, grief and remorse. "They are," he said in a voice that was just as quiet. "I'm sorry."

She reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder. Crawli was barely more than a child himself. A teenager not even into his twenties. "Don't," she said. "Don't apologize for what they did. You did everything you could. Terajuma held."

"It did," he said wearily. "Terajuma held. We...we could not have held if the mission to Valor Mountain was a failure. I don't know what happened there, but…I don't think they're doing okay, Tesla. My people are taking care of them, but I haven't seen them since they came back. I have to stay here and keep things going. Can you – "

"Of course," she said. She did not need to hear him say the words. "Of course I can."

It did not take her long to find them. The rangers spoke of Melia, Venam and Will with a reverence that brought to mind the devastation she had seen.

They were of Crawli's age. They were hardly children anymore, but they were not even out of their teenage years yet. Kids at their age needed to go to parties and go on dates and explore the boundaries of their relationships, not wage war against an enemy as ruthless and violent as the Xen Initiative.

And they certainly had no business planning and executing an elaborate plan of assault that included rescuing hostages.

But they had. They had nearly succeeded. That fate had decided otherwise was an injustice.

Tesla strode into the tent. It was smaller than the others, less crowded. It did not smell as heavily of blood either.

What she saw there broke her heart.

Melia lay on one of the field beds, curled up and staring blankly ahead, tears staining her face. Venam sat by her side, a reassuring hand on her side as she struggled to hold back her own tears.

On the other side of the tent, a few meters away, lay a blood-covered and motionless Will. She saw him lying there and the world seemed to hold its breath.

Bloody bandages wrapped around his left hand, underneath his shirt and around his chest. The rangers had placed a wet towel across his face. It was soaked in blood.

"Kids," Tesla exclaimed, forcing herself to breathe. "What happened?"

Only Veronica responded. "Miss von Brandt," she gasped. "You're here – how are you here? What about Amber, what about the Resort?"

"Safe and defended," Tesla responded. "The enemy has withdrawn. Now, will someone please tell me what happened?"

"Uh…" Veronica looked back and forth between her two motionless friends, looking torn and helpless. "Oh man, so…we won, but the bastards cheated, and…we fought and we won but they murdered Professor Jenner and…and they murdered Nim as well and I think Will's really fucked up because he's not…uh…"

"Breathe, Venam," Tesla said, placing her hands on the girl's shoulders. "Breathe."

She did. She inhaled, blew out a nearly panicked sigh and then inhaled sharply. "We don't have bodies – there should be bodies for the funeral right? But we were fighting around a volcano and Geara killed Jenner and Nim and they both…they fell into the lava – "

Dear God.

" – and now we have no bodies a-a-and they keep asking us questions but Melia's grieving and Will's really, really fucked up and I don't have the answers – "

The words flowed out of her as if a dam had broken in her mind, frantic and shuddering. Tesla saw the emotions bubbling underneath the surface, realized how close the girl was to losing it and decided to switch gears. "Okay. Please, take your time. You all went through something horrible. Are you hurt, Venam?"

The girl actually looked herself over, as if she didn't even know for certain anymore. "N-No, I don't think so?"

"What about Melia? Is she injured?"

"No, no! The fuckers wanted her alive, they always wanted her alive."

Tesla nodded. Then, with a heavy heart, she asked, "What happened to Will?"

Venam's expression darkened for a moment. She stared at the boy in shock before she buried her face in her hands, swearing under her breath. Perhaps it should not have come as a surprise that her vocabulary was nearly identical to Amber's. "I think he saved us," she whispered hoarsely. "That little fucker had a knife and…b-but…fuck, I don't know."

That took Tesla by surprise. She didn't know? She had been there, had she not?

She glanced over at Will again. Those injuries…yes, she could see how they had been caused by an ambush from a knife-wielding opponent. "Did the medics visit you already?"

Wordlessly, the girl nodded.

'What did they say?"

"Uh…so…s-something about Melia being in s-shock, a l-light concussion for me a-and…" nervously, she licked her lip. "Uhm…he's lost a lot of blood, but he's stable and they stopped the bleeding…and he probably won't lose the eye, but they're not sure – "

Tesla stood up so fast that the chair she'd pulled up clattered to the ground. She crossed the tent in two large strides and bowed over Will's prone body. They said he was stable? His shirt was positively drenched in blood. How could they keep him here, in these unsanitary conditions?

Because, the rational part of her mind said, they have to triage their wounded, and his condition is not bad enough to warrant surgery.

With a trembling hand, she touched the piece of fabric that covered the left side of his face. It wasn't tied down with anything. Slowly, she peeled it off.

Her breath hitched in her throat.

Someone had…sliced a blade across his face, cutting it from his eyebrow to his cheek. It was a wet, bloody mess, deeper and broader than it had any right to be, and she couldn't see if the cut had spared his eye or not.

She couldn't imagine the pain. He wasn't her boy, not really, but he was. He'd saved her daughter's life, he'd brought her dear sweet Amber back to her when she herself hadn't been able to do so. To see him like this…it was almost more than she could bear.

She brought a shaky hand to her mouth. "You shouldn't stay here," Tesla said to all of them. "You have done your part. You have all done more than could possibly be expected."

Will blinked. Slowly, his single, unharmed eye came into focus again.

"Miss Tesla, I got nothing up here anymore," Venam admitted, her voice nearly breaking. "What do we even do?"

"Go somewhere safe. Shower, eat, drink, rest. Recuperate," Tesla told the girl. "When the time comes, you grieve."

She saw Venam glance down at Melia. "I'm not heading back to Gearen," she said, a hint of defiance in her voice. "I wasn't there when shit went bad. I couldn't…I couldn't help when they needed me, but at least I can be there for them now."

Tesla knew that voice all too well. She could practically hear her own girl talking. "Kakori Village is safe again. If you are up for the trip, my home is always open for you as well. All of you."

"I think Amber would stop recovering out of sheer spite if I moved in with her," Venam sighed. "I wanna stay with Melia. She shouldn't be alone."

No. She shouldn't. Losing her father when she had been so close to getting him back…it was too cruel. "I understand. You are exactly right. The rangers will have questions for you, a debriefing you will have to undergo. I think you are the only one who can handle that. So…you two head back to Kakori Village, first. It is safe again."

Venam hesitated, then looked at Will again. "What about him?"

"I'll take care of him," Tesla told her, feeling a fierce protectiveness settle within her heart. "And I will send him back to you when he is well again."

Shakily, Venam nodded.

With that, Tesla got them all out of that horrible warzone and back to a modicum of safety. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

~~~~~~~(III)~~~~~~~

---

Teila Resort

Von Brandt Residence

Amber hovered behind her mother's back as her mom carefully pulled away the bandages from the left side of his face. She nervously shifted her weight from the left to the right, dreading what she might see. She'd been showering when her mother came back from Jynnobi Pass, so she'd quickly dried herself off, thrown on some fresh clothes and hobbled downstairs to see what the damage was.

The damage, as it turned out, was pretty bad.

When her mom undid the final piece of fabric and very gently pulled it away, Amber couldn't help but suck in a breath of air in a sharp wince, to which her mother shot her a rebuking look.

It was a literal bloody mess. Amber knew that the dried blood made it all look gnarlier than it was – probably – but it looked gnarly. A big, straight slash ran across his face, starting just above his eyebrow, taking a piece of his eyelid with it and continuing for an inch on his cheekbone. Blood, both dried as fresh, made it impossible to see if the blow had actually nailed his eye or not.

"Fuck," Amber hissed.

"I know," her mom said with a reassuring tone.

"That's his fucking eye," Amber blurted out.

"I know. Language, sweetie."

She expected Will to make some sort of quip or dumb joke, but he didn't. He just sat there, staring blankly ahead as Tesla carefully cleaned the wound, dabbing at the big bloody cut with a swab of disinfectant. It would have hurt like a bitch, but Will didn't exactly react to that.

"Could you close your eye, sweetie?" Mom asked.

Will continued not exactly reacting.

"…Will?"

Nothing.

Amber shot her mother a look. What was that about? He hadn't gone deaf during the fighting, had he? Something like air pressure of a big-ass explosion or something?

Her mother's red eyebrows furrowed. She reached out and ever so gently put her hand atop the crest of his head and gave him a nudge.

Will inhaled sharply and he jerked away from her hand, as if shaking himself awake from something. He looked around, looking more than a little lost. "What?"

"Good morning dork," Amber said without really thinking about it. This idiot was the closest thing she had to a friend on this island and she had to get back at him for stupidly putting his life at risk for hers back in that depressing fuck of a mountain. The relief she felt upon seeing him follow her mom into their home had nearly floored her and she needed to get back at him for that, too. "Got your head back in the game? We were just telling you how dumb you were for – "

That was when she caught her mom putting herself behind Will, just out of his sight, making a very frantic cutting motion at her throat.

It was the clearest "Amber shut the fuck up" sign she'd gotten in a long while and that raised all kinds of alarms in her head.

Will stared blankly at her.

" – uh – "

Crap, crap, holy crap, ah shit, crap –

" - making us all so worried in the first place," Amber quickly improvised. Nobody had ever accused Tesla Von Brandt of having a good poker face and the expression she currently wore was bad. "Doesn't that hurt? It looks like it hurts."

"Y-Yeah," he muttered. "It hurts."

"Will, can you keep that eye closed please? I have to make sure the wound is clean."

As her mom continued doing the mom-things, Amber couldn't help but continue talking. She'd almost fucked up royally but holy shit was it that difficult to give a girl a heads-up? "So what happened? Did a Pokemon try to claw your face off? Also, where are the others?"

His expression turned from blank-but-helpless to flat and expressionless and that was a fucking problem. "A uh, a knife," he quietly said. "Venam and Melia are…in Kakori Village. At the moment."

"Hmmyeah, poor Melia," Tesla said as she began applying fresh, new bandages to Will's eye. The muscles in his neck tensed up and he clenched his hands into trembling fists, but he didn't flinch away again as she tightened them in place. "The girl needs some time for herself, away from all the others. Veronica's helping out where she can, keeping herself busy and distracted."

That…seemed weird. Veronica was a stupid brat but she was also a brave stupid brat. If she wasn't badly injured herself, how come she wasn't here right now, fussing over the guy whom she had literally stared death in the eyes with?

And Melia – she didn't know the girl herself, but people talked about her like her heart was in the right place. Keeping her safe had almost literally cost Will half his face, so why wasn't she here? Didn't they care?

Amber started putting things together.

Time for herself… poor Melia?

It hit her like a ton of bricks. "Ah, shit, where's Professor Jenner? Did he get hurt? He got hurt didn't he? How bad is it?"

"He's dead," Will said. His tone wasn't pissed off or sad or anything. It sounded…well, empty. Hollow. Yet there was an intensity to the green of his eye that Amber had to look away from. "They killed him."

The…the Professor was dead? But…why? How…they had rocked out against those fucking pukes in the cave together, and he'd turned his shit around to be a good dad to Melia again and he'd promised that they would get out of that stupid fucking rock together and…

…and he was gone?

"I'm…fuck, that's..."

And the guy was a childhood friend from her mom's and her mom trusted the guy enough that when even his own daughter didn't dare risk it, she had, and now he was gone?

That wasn't fair. It was fucking bullshit and it wasn't fair!

"How…?" How did he die? No, no, that question was fucked and she shouldn't. Better to ask, "How are you holding up? Holy fuck, I'm sorry, I didn't know!"

"Amber, honey, it's alright," Her mom told her with nothing but kindness and sweetness in her voice, though her eyes betrayed a horrible pain that Amber was sure would rear its head the coming days. "You couldn't have known. "

But…Team Xen had taken more people hadn't they? It wasn't just Jenner. Will had said that they'd taken one of their friends, too.

To keep herself from putting a second foot in her mouth, she was going to assume the fucking worst until someone confirmed otherwise for her.

The light was on, but there was nobody home. No wonder Will was like this.

Her mom finished bandaging the wound on Will's face, then all but carried both of them to the living room like a bunch of Littens. Amber scoffed disapprovingly, but didn't protest. "Alright children, as much as I'd like to give in and allow you two to eat junkfood tonight, I can't. You need to get used to normal food after the slop that they served us and you need to focus on replenishing all that blood you lost first. That means warm liquids, salts and sugars. So no – "

"That means soup, right?" Amber cut in. "That's okay. I can help."

Her mother shot her a surprised look. "I…yes, I would love that. I'll go check out how much ingredients we still have. If necessary, I'll have to see if they've reopened the supermarket in the meantime."

"Yeah, sure," Amber said, stealing a glance at their guest. He lay curled up on the couch, looking miserable and exhausted. That cut must have been agonizing, so he'd need some painkillers too. Was he cold? She'd seen a documentary that said people who lost blood usually got very chilly and needed to remain warm.

That was a problem; she wanted to give him a blanket, but she didn't want to be caught dead handing out freaking blankets to people. Normally she'd have thrown a bundle at his head and told him to deal with it, but she obviously couldn't do that.

So as her mother began putting together some stuff for soup, Amber snuck out, grabbed a bunch of blankets and dumped the neatly-folded squares right next to his face. She expected him to flinch or jump or something and then she would poke at him. But he didn't. It was like he'd fallen asleep with his eyes open.

"Uh, if you get cold, you can grab one of these," Amber informed him, feeling a bit awkward all of a sudden.

"...thanks," he croaked.

And hey, that was good enough for her.

After that, her mom needed her help in the kitchen. It had been a long-ass time since Amber had done anything cooking-related, but she was a quick learner and her mom still had the patience of a saint, even though…even if…well, her mom was patient and it was more than Amber could have asked for.

"Do did we win? We won right?" Amber asked as her mom started chopping vegetables.

"Yes sweetie, we won," her mother replied with a tight smile. "Everybody got together to defend their home. They broke Team Xen's blockade, assaulted their mountain base and defeated their leadership."

Their leadership…that would be those Admins or Executives or whatever stupid rank they held. "So are those assholes dead now?"

Her mother took a deep breath. "I don't know," she admitted. "Everything I know comes from Crawli. His people are still combing the mountain. What little he's been able to put together came from Veronica's eye witness report. But…a lot of people did lose their lives. Many more are wounded, or missing…it will take Terajuma Island a long time to recover."

"Yeah, uh, so, I'm really sorry about Professor Jenner, mom," Amber quietly said. "I think he deserved better. And…it really sucks that he's gone."

"Oh honey…" Her mom wrapped her arm around her shoulders and planted a kiss on her forehead. "Thank you."

"And…" she shot a quick look over her shoulders at the couch. Will hadn't moved. "There was another, wasn't there? Another hostage?"

"Yes…"

"Are they…?"

Her mother looked away with a heavy breath. "No," she said wearily. "She's gone. The same person who murdered our Jenner, took her life as well."

There it was. Amber had expected to hear something like that, but it still really, really sucked. Team Xen were just such assholes. Did that mean Will had somehow managed to fight off Team Xen and save the island, but somehow still ended up losing?

He didn't deserve that. Fuck, nobody deserved that, but Will especially deserved better. No wonder he was being all catatonic.

A part of her wondered if, somehow, taking the time to save her and her mom had ended up costing Will in the long run. If…he'd expended a lot of energy and some time to fight that fucking whale thing. If he hadn't…if had gone straight for Jenner and his friend…would he have managed?

Amber abruptly turned away from the kitchen counter, feeling horrible and sick and just horrible. Was that it? had others lost their lives because hers needed saving? If she hadn't been such a terrible person, if she hadn't screwed things up so royally, would Jenner and Will's friend still be alive?

She walked back to the couch where Will lay. She eased herself down atop the armrest. Rationally, she knew thinking like that was a one-way ticket to losing her freaking mind. Things weren't so simple when times were normal, let alone when they were all fucked up because of war and terrorists. Even so…

"What was her name?" She asked.

Will stirred. He turned his head up to look at her. "What?" He breathed.

"Her name," Amber insisted. She was done running away from things that scared or, or from things that she thought she couldn't handle. Her mom and her had gotten their lives back where others had lost theirs. it was fucked up and out of their control, but that didn't mean they just had to sit there and take it. "The friend you lost…what was her name?"

"...Nim," he said with the smallest, most struggling voice she had ever heard out of him. Even if she hadn't known him for much longer than a few weeks. "Her name was Nim."

Amber saw the muscles around his jaw tighten, like he was gritting his teeth or something, and he dug his fingers into his arms as if…as if he were in pain.

Of course he's in pain, you dumb bitch, Amber thought. She wanted to pull away and skulk back to her room, but she wouldn't. She couldn't be that person anymore. She had to be stronger, not just for her mom. "I'm sorry about Nim," she said. "I know "sorry" isn't going to do a fucking thing, so…if you need anything or…if there's shit we can do for you, just…I dunno, ask. Or some shit."

Ask or some shit. Way to go, Amber…

But Will looked up at her with his one, good eye. "I tried," he said, he justified, as if she were judging him or some shit.

Which…fuck. How was she even supposed to react to that? "Looks like you did more than try," Amber noted. "Sometimes, you can be the biggest fucking storm. The biggest, the meanest, the toughest. And life will still be shit. And Team Xen will still be assholes."

He closed his eye again. "Yeah," he sighed. "Guess so."

There wasn't much Amber could say after that. It felt pointless to try and comfort someone so soon after all this shit went down. So they made soup. Together. They ate their dinner at the big table. Together.

They had a lot of broken pieces that needed to be put back together. It wouldn't be easy. But…nobody had ever said this shit would be easy. Fuck easy. It was time to start putting this shitshow back together, one damaged piece at a time.

~~~~~~~(IV)~~~~~~~

---

Nim fell and he leapt after her. He hit the ground with a solid thump and his hand found Nim's outstretched fingers. He gripped her in a vice grip and nearly felt his shoulder dislocate in the process, but he had her.

She yelled something at him but he couldn't hear her over the constant roaring of the volcano.

He wanted to yell back, but the clouds of ash and dust billowing from the lake of fire seared his lungs, kept him from making a sound.

Still he pulled. Still he heaved. Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, he started pulling Nim back over the edge.

Nim laughed. The sound was hollow and dark, a pitch lower than he had expected from her. Startled, he looked down at her but Nim's hand shot out her cold, stony fingers wrapped around his throat. Her fingers found his windpipe and she began squeezing.

Horror and fear shot through his body. He couldn't breathe -

Nim spoke to him in harsh, gleefully manic tones using a dead language. He didn't know Garufan but he knew what she told him, he knew what she said. and she was right, she was right -

Her other hand sliced across his face, sporting inhuman black claws instead of nails. Will thrashed and fought back, but Nim was stronger, far stronger than he was. She'd always been stronger. Her claws scraped across his ocular bones, sending strange noises echoing inside of his skull. He felt her claws dig in, slipping once against his eye cavity and then digging into his eye.

Fire exploded across his face and he tried to scream, but Nim's single hand around his throat was like a merciless vice and he could only gasp and choke in response. He heard a sickening tear inside of his head, felt something snap and pop and then everything in the left side of his face went black.

His throat closed up and Nim brought her lips to his ear. She whispered at him and her words set him on fire, because it was true, it was true and he couldn't breathe so he thrashed around clawing and shoving at Nim's body and the sheets wrapped around his legs, but it didn't work because he couldn't breathe he couldn't breathe, Nim's body was gone now there was far too much space surrounding him and he COULDN'T BREATHE -

He focused his eyes and more darkness filled them. He couldn't see from his left eye - of course you can't it's gone Nim ripped it out oh god I'm sorry I tried I tried -

Nausea swept into his stomach and strangled his throat. He fell more than sprang from the rocky ground. A spear of bitter and burning sickness spiked through his stomach and he made it halfway away from the pit - your bed this isn't real you had a dream - before the ground suddenly rushed up to his face. He fell on all fours, wrapped his arms around his stomach and tried to breathe but he couldn't, he couldn't, something was inside of his throat and he needed it out -

Panic clawed at him from every direction. He would have screamed but he still couldn't breathe -

People rushed into the room - Xen reinforcements, they had finally arrived - but his body didn't obey him. He was vomiting even as he felt the hands of Geara's grunts pulling at him.

It was too much, far too much.

~~~~~~~(V)~~~~~~~

---

Amber knew it would be a bad night when she woke up to the noise of glass shattering, followed by something heavy slamming to the ground. She shot upright in her bed, clutching her blanket against her body as she thought of a dark cell and black-clad people sneaking through the house and fucking assholes out to hurt her –

It took her far too long to realize that the noise hadn't come from downstairs, but from the other side of the hall.

From Will's room.

Amber flung her covers off and leapt for the door. She was halfway out her door when she recognized her mother standing in the opening of her bedroom, her expression tight as she looked around. "Amber, honey, was that you – ?"

"No!"

Her mom was much faster than she was. She was still trying to process what she had heard and what she ought to do when her mother knocked twice on Will's door, listened for what had to be like a third of a second before suddenly throwing it open and heading inside.

Amber hurried after her, hoping to fuck that Will hadn't just rolled out of his bed and busted open all of his stitches or something. Mom was a miracle worker but she wasn't a freaking doctor and she hadn't been trained to put people back together –

It was so, so much worse.

Will had made it about three steps out of his bed before he'd collapsed on all fours on the floor. He was making choking and gasping noises, as tense as a freaking steel spring.

"Will! Sweetie, what's wrong, what's wrong?" Her mom cried out as she tried to get an arm around his shoulders.

Will pushed at her with his wounded, bandaged hand, shuddered and then tucked his head between his shoulders, before vomiting all over the floor. For a single, muddled second, Amber tried to remember what it was that they'd eaten that evening, before she realized that it couldn't be that, because she felt fine and obviously mom looked fine and – and Will didn't look fine at all.

His body convulsed violently as he heaved and groaned like someone had stuck a knife into his spine or something. His entire body was freaking shaking. It was as if he didn't have any control over himself at all; he retched and vomited again and he struggled blindly against mom as she tried to fasten her arm around his waist.

"Will, honey, sweetie, it's okay, we're here, breathe sweetie, try to breathe," she said with impossible calm, the way only a mother could, but it was as if Will didn't even recognize her. He clawed at the floor with his hands, dragging his bandaged and very much wounded hand through the vomit and oh god, that was nasty, it was definitely getting infected or something –

Will's other arm buckled and slipped and fell forwards and mom caught him. She brushed his hair back and out of the way with one hand while rubbing his back with the other. "It's okay," she whispered soothingly at him. "It's okay…just breathe sweetie. Can you do that? Just focus on breathing. Relax. We're here for you."

Amber felt frozen to the spot, torn between confusion and something that came really fucking close to horror. Like, what the hell was going on? Was this some sort of nasty side-effect of an attack he'd endured on Valor Mountain? Had some fucker poisoned him, which some fuckhead must have then missed during the medical checkup?

No, no, they wouldn't have missed that. Fever? An infected wound? What the fuck was going?

"I'm sorry," Will choked out, frantically. Scared. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry…"

Amber almost forgot how to breathe.

What. The Fuck. That…wasn't aimed at any of them, was it?

Tesla shot her a look that bordered on the helpless. She too had realized that this wasn't normal. "Amber, honey – "

"How can I help?" Amber said. It came out choked and uncertain so she cleared her throat. "What can I do?" She said firmly.

Before her mom could react, Will gagged and tried to vomit again. Nothing came out at first, because he'd only had a bowl of soup and that was now all over the floor and sure enough, little more than some bile came out and of all things, Amber felt that the most. She'd come down with shit like stomach flu before and there was nothing more agonizing than wanting to vomit and having to pull something liquid out of your freaking toenails because your entire body was fucking empty and your brain still went, nope, gotta go again! and settled for bile instead.

But holy hell where did this come from?

"No, no, it's all…where…" he shuddered, flinched, and then began trying to shove himself to his feet. "Where's…where's Melia? Is she okay?"

Mom stopped in her movements, perplexed. "Melia?"

He had a shaky, not-quite-there note to his voice and Amber started to think that their Will wasn't as awake as they had assumed. Sleepwalking was a thing, but was sleepvomiting and sleep-whatever-the-fuck-this-was a thing?

"Will, here, look at me!" Tesla urged him. "Hey, hey hey hey, sweetie, you're at Teila Resort! You're with…you're with family, now."

Amber stared. An irrational wave of anger coursed through her body. She knew, she knew that those Xen fucks were somehow responsible for this. They couldn't led them have this one fucking vistory, could they? They had to ruin everything they touched, fucking everything!

Will breathed, wet and ragged and loud. He went all slack in Tesla's arms, then shook his head and blinked a couple of times.

"T-Tesla?" He choked out, sounding lost and confused.

Her mother uttered a breath of relief. "Yes sweetie, I'm here. Talk to me."

Will looked at her like he wasn't sure what he was looking at, then glanced down at the floor. His eyes widened with shock, then fluttered close again. He moaned weakly. "I made a mess…"

"Oh, Will…"

"I'm sorry," he said again, and Amber hated that this time, it was aimed at them. "I'm sorry…I didn't…didn't mean to…"

Amber stared at him. Was that seriously his priority now? Again, what the fuck?

Despite everything, her mom still cracked a gentle smile. "Will, I'm a mother. You do not think this is my first time cleaning up after my child, do you? When Amber got the flu, I was cleaning her room every twenty minutes."

"Mom!" Amber hissed in dismay.

"Just last year after she stepped on a Mareanie I had to – "

"MOM!"

Will raised his left hand and stared at the sick that covered its wraps. The bandages around his eye were wet with tears and sweat. They'd have to replace both.

"I'm sorry," Will said again.

"Oh honey," Tesla said, her voice bleeding with empathy. "Don't be. Don't ever be sorry for something that's out of your control."

Amber saw those words slice open a wound in Will's heart in real time. Everything about him got tense and scrunched up when her mom said that, and fresh tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. It was like he fought with his entire body just to bite back a sob and holy shit that might well be the most horrible part about this whole thing.

What the fuck did they do to you? Amber thought, equal parts sympathy and dismay.

"Come on, let's get you a shower, okay?" Tesla said, helping Will to his feet. "Amber honey, could you bring me some paper towels, a bucket from our cleaning supplies and some – "

"Baking soda, I got it," Amber said. When she saw her mother's incredulous look, she simply smirked. "Yeah, I remember."

It had been too fucking long since she did anything to deserve such a grateful look from her mother. She still had a long way to go to make up for the bad years, but…hey, it was a start, right?

~~~~~~~(VI)~~~~~~~

---

September 21st

One day after the Battle of Valor Mountain

Melia had once told her that nothing was more exhausting for the human body than fighting, especially when someone's life was on the line. Back then, she'd only laughed; after all, Melia had never experienced the absolute wrecking ball that was hosting a concert all night!

After the rangers had offered them a ride back to Kakori Village, they had taken their time to thoroughly debrief Venam, trying to get as much details out of her as they could. She'd talked to them for four hours before they finally decided that she wasn't much use to them if she died of exhaustion during the interrogation and they'd let her go.

Medical personnel had dropped by every two hours to keep an eye on them. Venam honestly couldn't remember much more of the day after that; she recalled her pillow feeling rock hard while her body had felt like one giant bruise. Everything about her had gone soft and squishy and fuzzy. She hadn't bothered undressing herself before she'd slumped over in bed and fallen asleep.

Now, wandering over the breach towards Teila Resort, she wondered how she could have ever thought that fighting wasn't as bad as hosting a concert.

How the fuck had Melia and Will and the others kept this shit up for so long? Was it the calories? She bet it was the calories.

Angie's attack, together with the Xen onslaught, had ravaged Terajuma Island. The casualties were pretty bad on both sides. Much of Team Xen's infrastructure was now pieces of metal and glass and plastic at the bottom of the ocean and much of Terajuma's infrastructure had either been glazed over by ice or torched to ash by fire.

Venam had promised she would help out where she could. It was only fair. Melia had lost her dad. She had enough shit to worry about without Crawli asking her about all the official crap that went with organizing a funeral. Next of kin…bah. It was such bullshit.

Couldn't a girl grieve alone?

But even with all of her Pokemon helping her out, she'd remembered that she had another friend who needed help.

More help than she could offer, but help nonetheless.

Oh Will. The jury was still out regarding him. He'd been the coolest guy ever right up to the point where he suddenly wasn't anymore. Even if she disregarded all that crap that Crescent girl had thrown at his face, even if she didn't think about any of the crap he must have pulled to get to Valor Shore on his own, that final confrontation with Geara was pretty damning.

Try as she might, she couldn't wrap her thoughts around it. If Melia hadn't been thinking on her feet, Will would have beaten Geara to death right in front of her eyes. That shit was unacceptable.

Geara deserved the mother of all beatdowns, yeah, but Will had crossed a line. He had crossed a line and Venam didn't know if that was something new, or if he'd always been capable of doing that.

It put all their previous interactions in a new light.

Venam reached the Resort and looked around. The place was a mess; buildings had been destroyed in the fighting, entire trees had been uprooted and the people were struggling to put it all back together.

…what really happened on Valor Summit? Melia said Will had fallen. But that was impossible; there was nothing to fall into but lava. Obviously Will was still here. So he couldn't have fallen too far. And yet…those walls had been pretty steep.

It sucked. It sucked big time. She wanted to hate Will for suddenly losing his shit like that and she also wanted to steal him back from Amber and get her back in Kakori Village, back with Melia and her where he belonged.

But before she could do that, she needed to know he hadn't, like…started bleeding out at night or…or…

She needed to know.

Gathering her courage, Venam tapped her knuckles against the door.

Knock, knock, knock…

After one freaking eternity someone cracked the door open just an inch. Venam saw the one person she'd hoped not to encounter, peer at her from through that crack. "Uh, hey Amber."

"Veronica," the redhead said evenly. Her bitchy tone was cold as ever, but also a lot softer than the last time she'd heard it.

Venam bristled at the casual yet horrible usage of her condemned name. "It's Venam," she sternly reminded the girl.

Amber only barely rolled her eyes. "Fine. Venam."

She waited for the snide remarks, but none came, so she ventured forwards. "So, I wanted to see how he's doing."

Amber blew out a sigh. "No."

Instantly, her temper flared. "What the fuck do you mean, no?" Venam demanded, feeling her heartbeat quadruple with rage. "I – "

Much to her surprise, Amber pulled the door to their villa open and stepped aside. "No, because he's finally sleeping," she said, moving her head in a come-inside gesture.

Venam hesitated, trying to wrap her head around Amber's words and her actions. Two different beasts to tackle, she feared. "Uh, whaddya mean, finally?" She asked, closing the door behind her and following Amber to the living room.

Holy fuck this was a big-ass house.

"It means we had a bad night," Amber said, still using that reserved, almost patient voice. It was new. Venam didn't know how to handle that. "I'm not risking you stomping up the stairs like a Nidoqueen and waking him up."

"I do not stomp!" Venam snapped. She caught herself almost raising her voice though, and with a pang of regret, she realized that she wasn't really subtle about it either. What surprised her more was that Amber sounded so…like she cared.

"Coffee?" The redhead then offered, which made Venam's head spin even more. When the hell had they moved from bitches-at-each-other-throats to coffee pals?

Well, Valor Mountain, she supposed. "Uh…yeah, thanks," she awkwardly said while Amber started boiling water. "So he's not doing well?"

Still with her back turned, Amber said, "He lost his friend and Melia's dad, half the blood in his body and possibly an eye – "

Venam squirmed uncomfortably.

" – and apparently there's been so much shit before all of this shit that he's…," Amber suddenly cut herself off, as if realizing she was about to say something she wasn't supposed to. "So no. He's not doing well."

"Fuck, I didn't mean to say…I was just asking how he's doing," Venam protested weakly. Yeah, in hindsight, those words had sucked.

Amber turned around and carefully put down a big cup of steaming coffee. As she walked back to the counter to pick up some sugar and cream, Venam noticed that Amber wasn't putting down anything to drink for herself. "You're not having any?"

With a sigh, Amber put down the condiments and eased herself into the chair. She could have just smacked down some creamers and paper straws or something petty like that, but she hadn't. Venam saw a big crystal cup with fine, white sugar and something that could have been a freaking goblet for the coffee milk. "I'm…waiting for him to wake up. Before I do coffee." She glared at Venam as if daring her to say anything about it, but Venam wouldn't dare.

Not because she was suddenly above poking fun at Amber, but more because family wasn't something she wanted to poke fun at anymore. "As a family should," she said, reaching for the cream. Of all the moms still out there, Tesla was one of the best, and Will deserved a good mom. "Well, you should be warned. He's one of those lunatics that drinks his coffee black."

Amber raised an eyebrow. "All black?"

"Without sugar or anything like that," Venam said, adding a third heaping spoonful to her coffee. "Boiling hot. Straight down the hatch."

"…huh," Amber said, at a loss for words.

The Amber von Brandt she knew was never at a loss for words, that was how dangerous Will's coffee behavior was. "Just so you know."

Amber leaned her elbows on the table and gave a thoughtful hum. "Didn't know that."

"Yeah, he's a surprising kind of guy," Venam agreed. She poured some cream into her coffee, stirred it and then wrapped her hands around the cup. "Just…full of surprises."

Out of nowhere, Amber asked, "So, like, is he in love with Melia or something?"

Venam just kind of blinked at that. "Uh, what? Amber what the fuck?!"

"Hey, fuck off, it's a reasonable question," Amber spat, casting her eyes down at the table. "It's the first fucking thing he asked when he woke up, okay? Blind in one eye, half out of his gourd on medication and blood loss and all he can say is "where's Melia" and "is she okay" and shit like that."

The stab of jealousy was as surprising as it was fierce. For a moment, Venam didn't know what the hell that was about…until she did.

Will had almost literally appeared out of nowhere, became friends with Melia in one day and then started putting his life on the line for her. From Goldenwood Forest to Amethyst Cave to that evil fucking island to here, in Terajuma. No memories, no rhyme or reason, no real tangible motivation to get himself horribly hurt for the sake of a person he only knew for a couple of weeks, if months.

And yet he did. Multiple times.

Yeah, she could see how an outsider like Amber could reach that conclusion…

…because it was an idea that suddenly made sense to her as well. It made a whole lot of sense. A scary amount of sense, even.

Will obviously cared a lot about Melia. And Melia cared a lot about him, too.

…fuck. Amber may be on to something there, and she hated that Amber had seen that after spending just a couple of days with him, while she'd been hanging out with him since the S.S. Oceana went under and apparently she didn't know shit about him.

"I dunno," she bit at Amber. "I don't…look, he does weird shit like that all the time, okay."

Amber gave her a look that she really didn't appreciate. "Weird shit," the redhead slowly repeated. "Right."

Angry and frustrated now, Venam took a big gulp of her coffee. She spun the mug in her hands, suddenly feeling like she was unreasonable here. The silence stretched on until it became too awkward to linger and she asked, "Is Tesla not here?"

"Mom's out today, helping rebuild the stuff Team Xen broke during their attack," Amber said with a shrug.

That bothered Venam. "She's out? So he's here alone? Wait, what happens if something goes wrong, or…or some asshole decides to settle a grudge or – "

"Then I'm still here," Amber said firmly, and for the first time something like that familiar aggression and hostility slipped into her tone. She glared at her, eyes narrowed.

And Venam couldn't help but approve. She had a lot of different emotions to process, some of them stupid and others just plain shitty, but the image of Will lying helpless and alone in a bed without anyone to protect him, after all the things he'd done to keep everyone safe, just drove her nuts. "Good," she said, nodding. "That's…yeah, okay. Good. "

The idea of Amber being around to watch Will made her feel strangely comfortable. God, she was getting soft…

When she started heading back to Kakori, she realized that she'd forgotten half the shit she wanted to say and ask. Was he going to lose his eye? How was that cut on his chest? Was he talking again? If so, had he told them about what happened at the summit?

Eh. Fuck it. She'd drop by again tomorrow, and the day after that, and the days after those as well until he was fit enough to visit them on his own.

But at least she could sleep at night, knowing that he was safe. He had a family now, even if it did include Amber in that package. Until then…and she couldn't believe she was actually thinking it…she knew Amber would keep him safe if Tesla wasn't there.

~~~~~~~(VII)~~~~~~~

---

He barely slept for the rest of the night. By the time he finally slipped away again, the first rays of sunlight had been peeking through this window and when he woke, everything hurt. Every muscle in his body was on fire. He could barely move.

The left side of his vision remained dark. He remembered, very distantly, Tesla refreshing his bandages again. It was a feverish picture, one he wasn't sure truly happened or not, but when he reached for his eye, a layer of bandages stopped his fingers from exploring his wound.

He should have known the nightmares would have come back. Should have known they'd be worse yet somehow…somehow he'd hoped that this time…

Seeing Nim in his dreams like that hurt. It really, really hurt. He felt numb and delirious in a way he had never experienced before. He knew he should have dragged himself out of bed and gotten dressed, but he couldn't bring himself to move. Couldn't bring himself to start the day.

Nim is gone, he told himself, over and over again. She's gone. You did everything you could. it's not your fault.

Why did so many of his nightmares involve strangulation? Was that some sort of childhood trauma that Indriad Theolia had wiped from his head with the rest of his memories? If so, how come his mind still remembered? Did that mean he had a chance at recovering the rest of his memories eventually?

Did he even want to anymore?

Somewhere over the course of the morning, he forced himself out of bed. Almost mechanically, he put on a shirt, struggled to get his pants on, shoved his shoes onto his feet and started shuffling his way downstairs.

Did he smell coffee?

Will rounded the corner of the kitchen and saw Amber leaning against the counter. Behind ber, an actual coffeepot brewed and gurgled.

Amber caught him staring. She turned an eye on him and asked, "Sleep well?"

He grunted out a noncommittal sound and reached for one of the kitchen chairs. His head still felt cloudy and slow, like it hadn't gotten the memo that it was supposed to stop feeling sick now that the rest of his body felt better.

"If it helps, I don't think you look like hammered shit anymore," Amber said. She snatched the coffeepot the second it finished brewing and started searching the cupboards for mugs. "Just regular shit. Don't think I got room to talk, though. I had to shower for three hours before I started feeling clean again when mom brought me back to the resort. Being a prisoner is boring as fuck, but they didn't give us a lot of room for basic hygiene."

Will wasn't sure how to respond to that. He wanted to answer, ask her about the things that happened, if they treated her decently or not, if she got to see her mother at times or not. He wanted to show that he cared but…he couldn't get the words out.

"You know shit is sad when brushing your teeth is a luxury you didn't expect," Amber said, pouring steaming hot coffee into two different mugs. One had the face of a Toxtricity on it, with what looked like green flames pouring from its head. The other had the insignia of a talon clutching an arrow. Amber pushed the one with the hooked talon towards him and then reached for the sugar bowl.

Will wrapped his hands around the mug, savoring the warmth. "I…" he started, but it felt like he'd swallowed a mouthful of gravel and glass. Amber looked at him, and he took a careful sip of coffee to clear his throat. "I'm sorry," he croaked out. He cleared his throat. "It's your house and…and I made a mess and – "

Groaning in annoyance, Amber rolled her eyes. "Don't start with that shit again," she said, jabbing her spoon at him. "I let it slide the first time, but I will kick your ass if you keep it up."

Will stared into his coffee mug, trying to get some semblance of thinking going on. "But – "

"What do you think is more humiliating?" Amber snapped. "You having an episode because of some sort of fucking war injury, or me being…b-being horrible and selfish and still having people getting hurt trying to rescue me!" She let those words hang in the air for a moment. "Look, I don't care," Amber pressed on. "You could have Sludge Bombed the entire fucking resort and you would still be guy who put our broken fucking mess of a family back together."

It wasn't so much the honesty in her voice that shocked him as it was the blatant self-loathing. He remembered her words in Valor Mountain, remembered how surprised and angry she'd been when he told her why he was saving her. His first instinct was to try and comfort her, to tell her that she shouldn't hate herself but…wouldn't that make him a hypocrite, because he couldn't muster the same for himself?

He didn't know anymore. Something inside of his head was wrong. It felt like a trench, red and raw and bloody. Pieces of him were missing. They had fallen into its depths and he didn't know how to fish them out.

"Fuck, I hate talking about this crap," Amber scoffed, taking a sip of her own coffee in the process. With a heavy scowl, she added a bit more cream to it. "I'm still figuring shit out.'

Will looked at the coffee condiments, noticing how Amber had put them on her side of the table as if she knew that he wouldn't be using them. It seemed at odds with how open and decent she was being with him. Unless…

"…did you know I wouldn't use that?" He asked with a small voice, gesturing at the cream and sugar.

Amber pulled her shoulders up in a shrug. "Yeah."

"How?"

She gave him a look that suggested that, somehow, he was being an idiot. "Veronica told me."

"Venam did?" He blurted out.

Amber looked like she was about to eat her coffee mug instead of drink from it. "Fine," she seethed. "I'll call her by that…stupid freaking nickname."

But Will was staring at his own mug again. It felt strangely heavy against his palms. "She visited?"

"Yeah, that's why I – wait, hang on, are you for – why the fuck do you sound surprised about that?" Amber said with suspicion. "Aren't you friends? You said you were. She was right there when you…you know, dragged me out of that stupid fucking mountain."

He thought about Crescent's words. She'd called him a killer. She'd been right. He'd reasoned away Gyarados as being an angry spectre that had to be put to rest. He'd reasoned Galvantula away as being a monster in pain. He'd reasoned Volcanion's death as a mercy.

Reason stopped where the blood began. He'd left men and women behind, broken, mangled and dying. He'd left corpses floating in the water, body parts scattered across the route, blood seeping into the strait – red, red, red – and still he'd lost Nim. Still he'd lost Jenner. After that, blood and fire and…and Crescent, again.

Venam had seen him lose his mind and try to beat someone to death with his bare hands. She'd seen him at his worst, at his lowest and so had Melia. God, Melia…Geara's blood all over his fingers, across his arms, red, red red –

" – llo? Hellooo?"

Amber snapping her fingers a centimeter away from his eyes snapped him out of his thoughts and he nearly dropped his mug.

"Shit, dude, don't zone out like!" Amber snapped. She'd leaned across the table so far that one of her legs dangled over the edge. "S'fucking creepy. Not a hard question is it? Why're you all shaken up that Venam visited?"

"…why did she visit?" He asked.

Amber's brows reached her hairline in the very picture of exasperation. "Are you for fucking real right now? I think those useless medics must have missed a concussion or something. She's worried. Because you got cut up. Like a Halloween pumpkin," she all but spelled it out for him.

He felt sick and shaken. He knew he didn't make any sense to her right now, and he wouldn't unless he confided why Venam visiting didn't make any sense to him, but if he told Amber that, she would hate him too.

No, that particular cesspit in his mind needed some more time before he could burden other people with it.

…but if Venam had visited, that meant she still cared. If…if she still cared, then…maybe…

"Come on, drink your coffee before it gets cold," Amber said.

"I could just reheat it…" He muttered. Apparently, Venam still remembered how he took his coffee. That meant something. He had to hold on to that.

He had to try.

"Reheat it?" Amber looked at him incredulously. "Lunatic."

He was used to Amber calling him a lot of things, but somehow, that one surprised him. He lost his train of thought. "C-Come on," he sputtered.

She sipped her coffee, still fixing him with an unrepentant stare. "Dork."

"I…what?"

Her eyes seemed to glimmer with amusement. "Weirdo."

Will rolled his eyes. Every girl he met just loved to watch him squirm. Why? Did they put something in the water here in Aevium? "You're a bully?"

"No, I'm one of the cool kids the bullies are too scared to fuck with," Amber shot back, leering at him as if daring him to do something about it.

And she almost, almost got him to say something Saki would have brought up at parties for decades to come. "Yeah," he said, and the smile that tugged at his lips almost felt alien. "You would be."

She appeared supremely satisfied as she started drinking her coffee.

"I guess I'm the same."

Amber nearly spat out her coffee. "You? You think you're one of the cool kids? Get the fuck out of here."

Okay. He was lying through his teeth, but if Amber thought he was going to lie back and take it from her, she was dead wrong. "You don't think so?"

Amber snorted. "Maybe if you hang out with me, yeah. Something tells me you'd be a bully magnet at Axis High. Although…" She sized him up as if she were looking for the best spot to knock him on his ass. "I doubt you'd be an easy target."

"The last time I hung out with you, it was pretty cool," Will said.

Amber bristled. "Smartass. Oh, I am so going to kick your ass."

But she didn't. After the coffee, Amber and him went back to her room and she played the electric guitar. She invited him to watch, which he did. He liked watching her play. He didn't know the first thing about electric guitars but Amber handled that thing like she'd been born with the guitar in her hands, like it was an extension of her limb. Her fingers danced across the nickel strings as she closed her eyes in concentration, and let her guitar sing.

Will rested his back against the nearest pillow and just…listened. She'd been right; what she played back in the Aquamarine Cave and the Trial of Fire was different. Her…song? Number? …Riff? Her music was more subdued this time, but more complicated as well. He wasn't an expert - his first memory of music was listening to Painolady aboard the S.S. Oceana - but he felt like Amber played more differing notes this time.

Amber didn't talk when she played. All of her concentration went straight into her instrument. And…that was okay. Will laid back and allowed the music to slowly fill in the gaps in his mind. Slowly, slowly, the noise in his head quieted down somewhat.

Slowly, for the first time since he set foot in Valor Mountain, he felt the tension in his body start to lift.

~~~~~~~(VIII)~~~~~~~

---

The days came and went. Tesla ensured that each day had structure and a rhythm to it, a pattern her children could latch on to so that even if things went wrong - which they did, often - they had something to look forward to.

They did coffee when the sun rose, on their rooftop terrace. Teila Resort had a truly gorgeous sunrise and after all those days spent locked away inside Valor Mountain, neither Amber nor Tesla would ever take the sight for granted again.

The first time she caught Will putting his back to the sun and scanning the rest of Teila Resort as she and Amber basked in the light. At first, she pretended not to notice. Then, when she realized that those moments of staring off into space as if seeing something only he could see, would last for hours if she let them, Tesla started gently coaxing him out whenever they happened. They happened frightfully often.

It wasn't easy.

Amber cried at night. Not every night, but some of them. Tesla slept with her door open so that she could hear it when things went wrong. Most of the times, she woke up when the sobbing turned louder. Sometimes, she didn't. Those were the times where Will appeared by Amber's side. How he did that when he was still on pain medication at night, she didn't know. She asked, but he just told her that he was a light sleeper these days. She had a feeling he wasn't telling her the complete truth.

That was breakfast. After breakfast, she tried to keep her kids distracted. That usually took the form of going out somewhere, getting groceries, getting some shopping done and when they had the time, playing with their Pokemon. Amber had inherited her love for Fire-type Pokemon from her mother and Will's Blaziken was truly beautiful. Beautiful, but aloof. Amber tried everything she could to get Blaziken to even interact with the other Pokemon, but no such luck. Blaziken kept her distance, though never took her gaze off of her trainer.

Tesla…could not help but keep an eye on that Pokemon as well. She was still uncertain if Will had given the order to mutilate the Xen Executive Neved, or if Blaziken had acted on her own accord. Both possibilities were disturbing in their own way.

In contrast, Will's Nidoking was a big bundle of joy who loved nothing more than to roughhouse with Amber's Arcanine.

Tesla took note of the many scars that crisscrossed Nidoking's body. His forearms and his chest in particular seemed to have taken horrible damage at one point during his life. She vividly remembered him as a tiny little Nidoran back in Gearen City, when Will had taken that fateful train to Goldenwood Forest. He must have incurred those wounds during their many fights with Team Xen, then.

"Where did the big guy get those scars?" Amber asked.

Tesla saw those words freezing Will in place. It was almost frightening, the way his entire body just went still, and his expression turned from reserved joy to stone. "K-Kristiline Town," he muttered.

Oh no.

"Kristiline Town? Wasn't that place covered in a freaking snowstorm or something? You're telling me ice caused those scars?"

Angie.

Tesla interjected herself. "Speaking of; I think the sun is getting a tad too high. How about we go out and order some Berry Juice?"

Amber shot her an annoyed look at what must have seemed like a rather sudden intrusion, but her girl hadn't heard about the events surrounding the Ocean Relic. Crawli's report had been…vivid in its description. His eye-witness testimony had described the immense and overwhelming power wielded by the madwoman in possession of the Ocean Relic…as well as the traumatic experiences Melia, Venam and Will had gone through there.

She'd seen the scar tissue on Will's chest when she'd cleaned the new wound and refreshed the bandages.

Some things were best left unspoken.

That too wasn't easy.

Whenever she had the time to spare, Tesla spent large portions of the days helping out in the areas that most needed her help. Jynnobi Pass, being an extension of sorts of Teila Resort, was her responsibility as well. The damage to the other population was extensive as well. Everybody needed help, and though the Xen blockade had been thoroughly smashed, help trickled in far too slowly.

Like crap in a funnel, Amber had snarled during a particularly bad evening, and though she had chastised her daughter for the bizarre comparison, it was by no means a bad one.

The mainland was either unequipped or unwilling to provide the aid Terajuma needed in a timely manner. The days were frustrating for everyone.

The evenings were…not as bad as the nights, but they tended to go wrong regardless. They cooked together like a family, they enjoyed their dinner together like a family and they even had a movie night. A movie night! It had been years since Amber spent any meaningful time with her in the evening and Tesla enjoyed every second.

Until Amber cut herself on a kitchen knife one day and lost it. She'd backed up all the way to the nearest wall before the knife had even clattered to the ground. Panicked breathing turned into hyperventilating over the course of thirty harrowing seconds and Tesla had the hardest time getting her to start breathing along with her.

"Count to ten sweetie. Can you do that with me? Count to ten."

The tears in Amber's eyes tore deep furrows in Tesla's heart.

Shuddering and sobbing, her girl counted along with her, and they gradually managed to get control over the panic attack. Once an emotion slipped through, there was no getting rid of it. As panic struck, it carried with it a wave of hormones and chemicals. There was no fighting back a panic attack, only riding it out until it died down.

As she clutched her daughter in her arms, whispering soothing words and keeping her breathing calmly and evenly, she saw Will pick up the knife. He stared at it for a second, before his one eye snapped to Amber's face. Something in his gaze hardened. He glanced back at the knife and then, with deliberate and utmost care, dragged it across the nook of his arm to clean it, then placed it back in the block.

It was only after she brought Amber to her room and promised her that she would never leave her again that her little girl finally calmed down enough to go to sleep.

Half an hour later, once Tesla sank down in one of the sofas and buried her face in her hands, Will finally spoke up. "Geara hurt her."

Tesla lowered her hands to her mouth and peered at him. "I'm sorry?" She said, struggling to present a calm and reasonable picture of control.

"The knife. Everything was alright until she cut herself," Will explained. "In Valor Mountain, Geara carried a knife on him. I think…he hurt her with it."

"Geara…" Tesla muttered. She had not personally seen that deplorable young man herself. No, her main concern had been the obvious and rather confusing attention given to her by Madelis. It had been Neved who had taken her girl from her. "Is he the one you fought on the summit?"

Again, his soft expression turned into stone, but not before something like raw pain flashed across his face. Curtly, he nodded.

The thought of that miserable, petty little thug putting his claws on her daughter made her wild.

She is here, Tesla reminded herself. She is here now. She is safe. They cannot hurt her anymore.

But her girl was not the only one that pest had hurt. Every two days Tesla would help Will clean up and refresh his bandages. Keeping them disinfected was easy, and the few stitches he'd needed worked like a charm, but the injuries were just so…present. Will had, essentially, only one hand and one eye. Instead of simply asking either herself or Amber for help, or even asking one of his Pokemon for assistance, Will just…stubbornly tried things himself.

That led to a few admittedly hilarious scenarios such as him flailing around helplessly in a t-shirt that was two sizes too large, getting toothpaste on the walls when he used his elbow to squeeze the tube - Amber had poked fun at him the entire rest of the evening - and nearly flinging his plate off the dinner table when he tried cutting his meat with just a knife.

Seeing the enjoyment on Amber's face as she laughed at his mistakes almost made her miss the frustration - and worse, the humiliation - on his face. He tried to hide it, but he did not have the energy or focus to wipe his expression clear every time it happened. That, and Tesla was a mother. She had a sixth sense for figuring such things out.

Every young man had their ego and their pride, and she was certain his had taken a beating. She wanted nothing more than to dote on him and help him with everything that he could not do on his own, but she also knew that doing so would hurt him far more than letting him struggle on his own.

How was it that someone with such close friends possessed a knee-jerk reaction of doing everything on his own? It was not right. It was not healthy.

"I know I should offer to help him," Amber confided one evening when she and Tesla both watched Will trying to tie his shoelaces with his right hand and his teeth. "But this shit is too funny."

"Hmmm," Tesla mumbled, hiding her smile behind her palm. She'd bought Will a pair of slip-on shoes during the very first day of his stay. He could have just slipped those on and continued on.

"Wanna take a bet? I say it'll take him half an hour before he throws his shoes down the hall."

Tesla snorted. "Amber…that's horrible…fifteen minutes, then he'll walk off regardless of the knot."

"Hah! You're on!"

The poor boy then proceeded to, over the course of ten minutes, tie so many different wrong knots that he couldn't prie them loose anymore. With his shoelaces turned into an anarchist's idea of a skein, Will did indeed walk off.

"Oh come one!" Amber scoffed. "How did you - ?"

"Call it a mother's intuition, sweetie," Tesla merely smiled at her girl.

Then, Will began walking down the stairs.

Tesla and Amber started shouting at the exact same time

"Will, ya freaking lunatic!"

"Honey, stop, that's a bad idea!"

Both of them sprang to their feet to keep their boy from stubbornly falling down the stairs.

It was the strangest thing. Before Team Xen started laying siege to Terajuma, Tesla had felt like she had been steadily losing her little girl, the only piece of family she had left in her life. And now, with the arrival of Will, Melia, Veronica and the others, she suddenly had two children to shower with affection and love. And…both of them longed for her affection, too.

When the dust settled on Terajuma Island, she was one of the few lucky ones to have gained instead of having lost. It could have been the other way around, It would have been the other way around, had it not been for them. Will, Melia and Veronica had enriched her life in a way she couldn't put into words, and she would be eternally grateful to them.

Yes. Sometimes, the future looked uncertain. Amber cried at night. She would still get irrationally angry at times. She would have little moments of panic, sometimes seemingly unrelated to knives. Nevertheless, Tesla was there for her girl. Will was there for his friend and - though Tesla had not dared to say it out loud - his sister. Adoptive, and the process was far from official, but still. They were a family.

It wasn't easy. Will had nightmares. He would lose himself in long moments of dissociative silence during the day. When he tried to answer personal and sometimes even simple questions, he lost track of his words and sentences and that struggle, above all else, frustrated him the most.

It wasn't easy. It was far from easy.

Valor Mountain had left all of them with scars. It had left all of them bleeding, some on the outside, others on the inside, a few of them both.

But they would manage. As a family should.

They would walk that road together.

~~~~~~~(IX)~~~~~~~

---

September 21th

4 days before the funeral

That morning, Will woke up before the others did. He double-checked his journal, confirmed that today was the day, and quietly got dressed. He snuck downstairs without making a sound, pulled out the post-it note and pencil he'd stashed just for this occasion and wrote down a quick note.

"Out for today. Be back in time for dinner."

Satisfied, he stuck it to the fridge. There. Enough for Tesla to know that he would be safe. Enough for Amber to know that he hadn't abandoned her.

He had rested enough. Others needed him more, now.

April hadn't lied when she told him that the Hidden Library was closer than he'd thought. The man who had put up the Help Request insisted that it had to be one of three locations: Chrisola Hotel, Doctor Jenkel's Lab or Gearen Park.

But Karen the Garufan sorceress had insisted otherwise. So, instead of descending into the ancient Garufan library with a kind and harmless old man, he did so with an insane psychopath who was as likely to snap and murder him as she was to gift him a flower.

Fun times.

The most important thing, however, was that they both needed something from each other.

"Oh, a girl, a warrior, laid low by an evil curse!" Karen exclaimed when Will told her what had befallen Aelita. She did a little pirouette. "How truly wicked. Yes, yes, I can fix nap-time. If you find me my cherished treasure, I will light the way."

"Promise me?" Will asked. "Can you promise me that?"

"Yes!" Karen smiled. "Little Dove I promise! Cross my heart, hope to die…stick a needle in my eye!"

He was about to ask if that was really how that saying went when Karen suddenly stopped. "Little Dove, they tried to take your peepers!" She cried out when they weren't even halfway down the stairs yet. Her pale fingers reached for his face, wrapping around his chin and pulling his head towards her. "Those poor peepers. Oh, ah, but your light is still there. A shame, a shame! Your face would have been merrier marred with only one light."

Nightmares about Nim crashed down on him hard and he jerked his head away from the madwoman before she decided that he still had one eye too many or something. He checked his breath, turned his terror at her outburst into something stony and steel-faced and tried to carry on. "It's fine," he said. "Come on. Ladies first."

"Oh, the gentlemanlyness! You would make the most pretty servant of all!" Karen said, fluttering her long lashes at him and putting her hands together in this gesture of girly adoration.

"Uh - "

"We needs only must hide those ugly scars beneath a thick layer of make-up, but not to worry!"

There it was.

"No thanks," Will said, hoping that another misfiring neuron would soon take Karen into a different direction altogether.

Luckily, that direction was the actual entrance to the library. A massive set of stone doors with a different glyph inscribed upon its center.

"Can you believe it? We're actually here!" Karen said. "We've found the Hidden Library! Momma would've been proud of me. Oh how I miss her…well, let's open this place up shall we?"

Karen didn't wait for his response and uttered a phrase of, presumably, Garufan gibberish. It wasn't the type of entrance Will preferred but he couldn't deny its effectiveness. He followed Karen into the library proper and a part of him started clamoring about the sheer stupidity of entering any underground ruin with this psychopath, let alone an active Garufan ruin.

He let it clamor. This was his last idea of getting Aelita the help she needed.

Karen babbled away as she led them deeper and deeper into the structure, passing by row after row of stone bookshelves and tables and stools. They found the last chamber of the library far sooner than Will would have expected; Karen happily skipped towards the large mural at the far end of the room, but Will paused just a few meters behind her.

She stood right in the "Eye of the Storm" glyph.

Will braced himself for the inevitable chaos that was about to break loose…

…but nothing happened.

Of course it didn't. Why was the world under any obligation to make sense to him?

"After all this time…I've finally found what I've been looking for!" The woman exclaimed. "It's mine, it's finally mine!" She picked up some sort of bracelet, gunmetal grey with a singular gemstone attached on its top. She saw Will frowning at the piece of jewelry and a grin split her face. "Oh, what's wrong? Are you mad that I got the Mega Ring and not you?"

Will wasn't sure what the ring was about, but that wasn't what he'd come here for. "Look – "

Karen started pretend-crying, rubbing her eyes as she let out mocking, fake sobs. "Oh boo hoo, Will is such a crybaby! Wah! Wah! Cry tears of blood, wah! I can't contain these childish tendencies!" She dropped the manic act a heartbeat later, suddenly all business again. "You know, I used to cry an awful lot, but then Momma and Papa died horribly. After that I just started laughing. Laughing really hard."

He could see that, yes. To each their own.

"Oh!" Karen gasped as if coming to a sudden realization. "Is that it, Will? Do you want to make me laugh too?" Another bout of manic laughter. "I like you, Will. You're so funny! My parents were funny, too. Here, catch."

Out of nowhere she flung an old, tattered journal at his head. Will caught it with his right hand and flicked it open. It looked to be a dictionary of sorts, with all kinds of lines and symbols of disturbing gibberish on the left and English on the right.

He shot her a questioning look.

"With this book you'll be able to translate Garufan writing," Karen explained. "It's instilled with Garufan magic as well, so there's no learning process." Looking stern all of a sudden, she shook a disapproving finger at him. "Don't just hand that book around like it's nothing! You'll give away precious secrets to the common people." She sighed. "Well, I got what I came here for, so I'm leaving."

"Wait," Will said.

She raised her brow. "Does the Little Dove wish for more? Is this not enough reward?"

"I want you to keep your end of our agreement," Will said through clenched teeth. "My friend. The Garufan curse. Can you help me?"

"Oh, oh!" She breathed, hopping up and down like a child. "I can. Yes, I know what ails her. I know!" She plucked a journal of her own out of her pocket, snatched a pencil that looked to be irresponsibly sharp from a different pocket and started writing. When she was done, she tore the page out of her journal, looked at it with a skeptical look, then added some more writing.

Finally she passed him the note. Will took it gratefully, turning to one of the lights to look at it, already thinking of a way to preserve this and bring it back to the Eldest and…and…

It was a hand-drawn picture of a boxy house and a smiling sun. She'd encircled the sun.

"The best cure for sleepiness is a smile!" Karen exclaimed, her eyes large and her grin impossibly wide. She started laughing and laughing, bright, irrepressible, but genuine laughter. Roaring, fell and sharp,

"Hah...hah…" The sound felt alien to him. It felt all wrong. Cold and biting and skewed. It was just so stupid. So goddamn hopeless. What else had he expected? "Hahah…hah…" He stood in the middle of a lost Garufan library with a witch who knew magic and he could only see out of one eye, use only his one hand and she'd drawn him a picture, a funny picture.

Karen laughed and Will joined her. Harsh, shaky laughter erupted from his lungs as he crumpled her note. It was so funny that it sickened his soul.

What had he expected?

The broken laughter that punched out of the madwoman was so inviting, so ridiculous. It was the purest expression of her shattered psyche and damn if it didn't sound genuine. The noise of their combined laughter echoed in the hidden library, lingering for what felt like hours.

Karen left.

Snapshots of Geara's blood on his hands and the sight of his nails tearing against the burning rocks seared themselves into his mind. He wasn't sure when the laughter had turned to crying. When he hurled the ancient book through the air and slumped down against one of the many bookshelves, he felt something wet staining his tears.

"God I hope that's blood…" Will said to himself. It wasn't. "Stupid thing to hope to hope for…"

He was done. Absolutely done. No more plans, no more ideas, no more anything. He'd lost Nim. He'd lost a part of himself. Now, he felt like he was one step closer to losing Aelita too.

His thoughts fell around his head when he pushed himself back to his feet. He wanted to crawl into his bed, pull the blankets over his head and start forgetting.

A dangerous line of thinking. He still had miles to go, and he needed to keep himself together when he walked them. He had to…he just needed to…to…

…What was it he really needed at this point? All the strength in the world hadn't stopped Geara from murdering Nim and Jenner. Beating all of Xen's people in combat hadn't mattered.

"Becoming stronger" felt like such an empty, hollow notion at this point. That wasn't what he needed. That wasn't what Melia or Venam or any of his other friends and family needed from him. They needed him to be strong, yes, but in a different way. He had to keep it together even when he felt that was impossible.

He needed to be resilient.

At the moment, that meant not going to pieces as he returned to Teila Resort. He was fairly sure that was a greater accomplishment than whatever else he'd managed that week.

~~~~~~~(X)~~~~~~~

---

Amber looked up when she heard someone barge inside, quickly swiping her ice-cream off the table in a knee-jerk reaction. It wasn't her mom, though.

"Look who's back," Amber said, putting the bowl of ice cream back on the table again. "And?"

"And what?" Will said somewhat tersely. He swung his backpack over his shoulders and placed it down on the nearest table.

Amber rolled her eyes. "Your errand. Whatever it was you were doing. How'd it go?"

"It was a bust," he snapped.

"Huh." She took another bite of her ice cream, watching Will wander to the left, searching for something that wasn't there, then turn back to the right again. Pacing, she realized. He was pacing around the living room. "Want some ice cream?"

"No, thank you," he muttered, and resumed pacing.

Amber continued eating in silence, watching Will walk circles around the room. It didn't even look funny. It just looked sad. "Are you doing okay? You look upset."

"It's just…" he raised his hands to his head, ran them through his fuzzy hair and then sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. "I feel like I should be doing more."

"Like what?"

He leaned his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands. "It's a long story," he mumbled.

"Wanna tell it?"

"...no," he sighed, sounding weary to the freaking bone. "Don't think I can."

"Okay."

He shot her a quizzing look. "Just like that?"

"Yeah? People don't ask shit if they don't wanna give you a choice. That's called ordering shit."

"Hm."

Amber took another bite and then licked the spoon. Mom would eventually figure out that the ice cream was gone, but…eh. "So…what do you want?"

He remained silent for so long that Amber thought he'd slipped into another one of those moments again. But then, after more than a minute of silence, he said, "I want to visit my friends. I want to make sure they're alright. I want…" He looked up at the door. "I have a friend who got really hurt. I wanted to visit, but I couldn't, because we had to get the damned Earth Heart before them, and then the Ocean Relic, and then…all of this."

Amber, who had no idea what he was talking about, simply nodded along. "Was that on Terajuma?"

He nodded.

"Where is this friend at?"

"Kakori Village…the ranger HQ."

"Okay." Amber wiped her mouth on her sleeve. "Let's go."

He looked at her incredulously. "What?"

"I'm bored outta my mind here, and you need to visit this guy. Do you mind if I tag along? Uh, again? Like, the last time went really fucking bad, but…uh…"

"Yeah, sure, no problem," he said, still looking at her like he was surprised she'd even offered it. "Pidgeot can carry two people, easy."

Amber's thoughts crashed to a halt. "Hold the fucking phone. Have you been flying on your Pokemon?"

Slowly, she saw something like fear creep into his eyes. Good! Mom had told his ass not to do anything dangerous! "Uh - "

"Will, you freaking idiot," Amber hissed, furious. "You have a hole in your face and your chest! You're not meant to be doing anything strenuous, let alone soar through the air like a leaky fucking air balloon!"

"I'm fine," Will said, lifting his chin defiantly.

Amber slammed her hands down on the table and shoved herself to her feet, taking a sadistic delight in the way her idiot flinched back. Was this what Veronica and Melia had been dealing with? Was this how they'd spent their days, keeping this moron from doing dumb shit? If so, man, she felt sorry for them. "We're taking mom's yacht," she declared.

Will started arguing.

Amber shut that shit down right at the source.

Ten seconds later, they headed to the yacht.

And they hauled ass to Kakori Village. Amber may have broken a few speed limitations and other regulations, but hey, if there was nobody around to enforce stupid laws, and there weren't any victims, did that really count as breaking a law? She didn't think so.

She deftly parked the craft at the nearest pier, tied it down together with Will and then hopped onto dry land.

Kakori Village was a freaking mess; buildings had been wrecked everywhere she looked, someone had taken a giant butcher knife to the road and other sections of infrastructure and what looked suspiciously like blood coated several little corners of houses. The local vegetation was a mess, too, like someone had downed five bottles of Teilian Rum and then gone on a rampage with a weedwacker.

Since when was this place so quiet? Was this all because of Team Xen?"Where are we heading?" She asked as she followed him deeper into the village. .

"The ranger HQ," he replied. "They're taking care of him there."

"Uh. Wouldn't a hospital be better?" Amber asked.

"The Pokecenter couldn't do anything more for him. His wounds were…too much, too deep. I uh…they…said her attacks left him crippled."

The Pokecenter? Okay. so they were talking about a Pokemon, then. That might have been good to know before she fucked things up again. His wounds? Didn't sound like a normal Pokemon battle. Who was this "her" he mentioned?

If Will bowed his head any lower it would fall off. "They're not sure if he'll ever walk normally again, let alone fight," he said, and his voice nearly cracked at the end there.

That was just fucking horrible. Pokemon were durable. Like, more durable than they had any right to be. Badly injuring one took a really big amount of force or firepower. Crippling one? For life? Amber hadn't even known that was possible before hearing this. "Ah, fuck, I'm…I'm really sorry to hear that, how did that happen?"

"Angie impaled him through the chest with multiple ice spears. Cut right into his spinal cord."

A horrible shiver ran down her spine. She'd only ever heard about Angie, and how she was supposed to be some sort of outsider who just dropped out of the sky and took over Kristiline Town. Apparently, this Angie person was also a freaking monster. Ice spears? What the fuck!

She recalled the scarring across Nidoking's body.

Kristinline Town, he'd told her.

The snowstorm surrounding that place was gone now. She'd imagined Will and his friends walking in there, raising hell, blowing shit up and then leaving with the Relic. She…hadn't imagined the costs.

He said Angie did that. Not her Pokemon, but her. How was that even possible?

Will stayed quiet as he led her towards the Ranger HQ. Once there, once inside, the local rangers greeted him with a reverence and respect they usually reserved for their veteran buddies.

One of them, a tanned woman named Alex, walked up to him and greeted him jovially. She shook his hand, clasped his shoulder and asked him how he was doing.

Fine, he lied to her, because Amber knew for a fact that he wasn't fine at all.

"I really want to see him," he told Alex. "Can you…?"

"Of course!" She replied instantly. She spotted Amber standing there. "Miss von Brandt? Are you two here together?"

"Uh, yeah," Amber said awkwardly. She felt like an outsider, someone who had intruded into an inner circle where she really didn't belong. "Just…you know, keeping an eye on him."

She regretted those words the instant they left her mouth. Like, what the fuck was wrong with her, why did she say it like that, why did she phrase it so stupidly, she already wasn't welcome on this stupid island she was just digging herself deeper and deeper and -

And fuck she wanted nothing more than to just cringe her way to a heart attack and die on the spot.

"Amber's keeping me company and…out of trouble," Will said. It didn't look like he realized what she'd just said.

Alex didn't look like she realized either. She actually looked relieved when she heard Will say that. "Ah, great idea. One ranger is no ranger at all, we always say. Come on, he's down here…"

Amber kept her startled disbelief to herself. She followed Will and Alex down towards Crawli's Gym area, where he normally tested the ranger initiates with Holly's help. Instead of a bunch of wannabe-rangers, however, the grassy caves immediately surrounding the elevator down there were layered with boxes, supply crates, manifest lists and haggard-looking rangers arguing quietly amongst themselves.

Alex nodded at her peers as she led Will and Amber towards the back area, that underground cliffside where Crawli usually battled. It too looked different than she remembered, though it had been a while since she last visited.

Trees littered the area with well-kept patches of grass and flowers. A meadow opened out to their left, while the treeline circled around to their right. Bug-type Pokemon fluttered around the place, though Amber spotted quite a few Water-type Pokemon playing around fountains and small ponds and the like.

There, lying on a large, fuzzy blanket under the cover of a particularly thick tree, lay the lean, black shape of a Pokemon. It was curled up on itself like a ball, a long, skinny tail that ended in a black spade poking out from the left. Amber spotted a pair of long, gray horns curling out from its neck, raking sharply towards its back. White bands of bone circled around its ankles, as well as around its back at regular intervals. Amber spotted several thick, ropey scars underneath its fur.

She also saw that it hadn't pulled its hind legs against itself. They lay somewhat limp on the blanket.

"A Houndoom," she breathed. It was a beautiful Pokemon, though it had a bad rep. It breathed toxic flames and its howls triggered some sort of primal, animalistic response in humans and Pokemon alike. People used to fear them as the heralds of the grim reaper. Bullshit, of course.

Houndoom craned its neck around when it heard her voice. It glanced over its shoulder, showing a long, orange snout and prideful red eyes.

"Hey boy," Will quietly said.

Upon hearing the voice of his trainer, Houndoom instantly tried to shove himself back to his feet. Amber saw that its hind legs didn't seem to move along at all. The sight tore at her heart. It was an awful feeling.

"No, don't do that, you'll hurt yourself!" Will said, oblivious to the irony as he ran towards his friend. "I know, I know, but you have to take it easy!"

Houndoom had pulled himself up to his full length, but his hind legs only barely moved along with him. He managed to pull one of them underneath his body, but it trembled like crazy and looked like it would buckle under a stiff breeze and the other was just…motionless. Like he didn't have any control over the limb at all.

That shit was almost too horrible to watch, and seeing Will wrap his arms around the poor thing and bury his face in his neck made her eyes feel all itchy and hot. It wasn't fair. Will had only become a trainer like, what, a few months ago? So they were both at the freaking start of their careers and already, they'd gone through so much shit that it had left their bodies broken.

Two battle-scarred warriors, one of them barely legal.

Fuck it just wasn't fair.

Houndoom ran a big, pink tongue across Will's face, lapping at invisible traces of blood or salt or something. Will grimaced and chuckled, caressing Houndoom's furry head with his hands as he gently guided him down onto the blankets again.

"I'm sorry I took so long," Will muttered. "I wanted to, but I couldn't."

Houndoom snorted a little puff of smoke and wagged his tail like he was a freshly-born Houndour.

Amber sat down somewhere a little bit behind Will, making sure not to make any direct eye contact with Houndoom as to not challenge his leadership role. The last thing she wanted was to insult him or something.

"This is Amber. We got her back, too," Will said. "She's keeping an eye on me now."

Houndoom glanced at him with something like "are you freaking kidding me" in his eyes and Amber sowre that Houndoom knew exactly how stupid that remark sounded.

"Yeah, of course she's one of us," Will said, completely misreading Houndoom's expression. "Part of the pack."

Houndoom didn't exactly roll his eyes, but it was close, and Amber felt a surprising sense of kinship with this majestic Fire-type.

"Can I…?" She quietly asked, offering her hand to Houndoom and meeting his gaze for a second before calmly looking away again.

Houndoom glared and exhaled a plume of purple fire and Amber immediately pulled her hand back. The message was clear: Don't fuck with me, you will die screaming,

A second later, he heaved a deep sigh and then promptly plopped his head down on the ground a mere inch away from Amber's lap. Now pet my face or you will die screaming.

Amber obliged. Houndoom's face was soft and fuzzy and warm. She could easily imagine this majestic Pokemon keeping all of Will's friends alive from Angie's cold and her ice, while Will quietly explained how they had managed to defeat her.

His story wasn't meant for her, but for Houndoom, as apparently the Pokemon had gotten…hurt before they could all beat the crazy ice-witch. Will spoke in short, concise sentences, visibly struggling to get some parts out. He kept things vague, talking about a Garufan sanctuary, an Earth Heart, the Ocean Relic and something about three phases? Amber didn't know. She tried not to listen, to give the boys some privacy together.

Still, she caught snippets of his tale. Something about a Ralts evolving, fighting a fucking Groudon in that underground sanctuary, planning an attack on Valor Mountain and finally…nothing about Nim. Nothing about Jenner, either.

Amber wasn't sure what to think about that. Not all Pokemon were equally as intelligent. The Houndoom species was notably intelligent and shrewd, but they didn't operate on the human level of intelligence. Still, almost all Pokemon seemed to have an instinctive grasp on human emotions. Some better than others, sure, but if a trainer and their Pokemon got along even decently, they'd develop something of a "feel" for each other.

Something told Amber that Houndoom was well aware that all was not well in the world. He kept flicking his eyes to Will as Amber caressed his head and his neck.

That got her thinking; if there were things Will kept from his own trusted Pokemon, what was he keeping back from her? From mom, Melia and even Venam? Was this simply because he didn't want to burden Houndoom even more?

She hoped that was his reasoning.

They stayed like that for an hour, just sitting there, chilling with Houndoom. They fed him snacks, exchanged little stories, brushed his fur and just…chilled.

But it couldn't last forever. Eventually - and Amber felt really fucking bad about it - they had to leave the wounded warrior behind.

"I'll come back for you," Will promised. "I'm not abandoning you. I'm not replacing you. The fight continues…and you have to recover. You've deserved that much."

Houndoom ran his hot, pink tongue across Will's face. A fitting parting gesture.

"I didn't know you lost a Pokemon like that," Amber said on their way back out. "This happened after Team Xen…after Aquamarine Cave, right?"

Will nodded.

"So you had to deal with this Angie woman, before you could even start dealing with Valor Mountain?"

Another nod.

Amber imagined having to fight Team Xen with the life of her mother in the line, knowing that a completely unrelated enemy had fucking crippled her Toxtricity. Or any of her Pokemon.

She couldn't imagine the pain. The uncertainty. The stress. This was the kind of shit that turned people gray early.

What could she even say to that? Everything she learned about Will just made her feel angrier at the world. Made her feel shittier about herself.

At least it was over now. They'd a crushing blow to Team Xen and wrecked their shit. It was over. People could start actually living their lives now.

"What's the plan now?" Amber once they'd made it out of the Gym again.

"I want to see Melia," Will firmly said, and it didn't even surprise Amber at this point. "I just lost a friend. She lost her father. I need to make sure she's doing okay."

What the fuck was "I just lost a friend" supposed to mean? Just? Just? Did this guy even hear himself when he talked? Suffering was suffering. Shit sucked. Just because one person lost someone they knew for a much longer time didn't mean your own suffering was somehow less significant. Like…fuck.

Amber refrained from laying him out, because she could restrain herself. She could be patient. "Okay. She's in Kakori Village, right? Where?"

"Crawli's guest house. I'll show you…"

The guest house was one of the larger buildings at the edge of the sea. Amber knew it well. They'd actually docked just a few hundred meters away from the house, funnily enough. That meant they could visit more often, even at somewhat awkward times of the day should that be necessary.

Of course, life wasn't done chewing her out just yet. On their way to the guest house they ran into Veronica of all people and Amber already felt her mood sour.

"Hey!" Veronica went, waving at them from a distance. "Hey guys. What's up? How you doing?"

Amber crossed her arms and looked away, feeling too emotional to even bother putting up a nice front at the moment. That being said, she kept a close eye on the purple-haired enigma over there, studying her face as she talked to Will.

"I'm…still recovering, I guess," he said. "It's slow."

"Yeah, no kidding. Recovering from stab and slash wounds usually is."

"I-I know," Will stammered. "I…I wanted to visit Melia. I would have come earlier, but - "

"But you were recovering from stab and slash wounds," Veronica said again. "People don't usually travel islands for a while if that happens to them. I didn't even think you'd be up and walking around again. Or did you get another bedtime visit from Tapu Lele?"

Amber frowned. The island deity? When did that happen? Lele was a cruel, vindictive bitch. Why'd she bother visiting Will at night?

"I wish," Will said, softly shaking his head. "Is she still at the house?"

"Yeah. You know, I think she'd really like it if you dropped by and showed her you're already kicking. I'll go and tell - "

"Actually," Amber said, taking a big gamble in speaking up at that moment. "Ver - Venam, I got something I want to discuss with you as well."

Her expression fell. "Uh…"

Amber rolled her eyes. "It's about something I'm planning. I want your two cents on it."

"Eh." She shrugged. "Don't see why not. It's been that sort of week."

Amber decided to ignore that jab. The two of them waited until Will had walked out of hearing range. Then…Amber decided to risk it. '"Look…I'm gonna plan a big-ass party and you're the only one of all these morons who knows what a party is," she said, pulling those words out of a crevice so deep she hadn't even known of its existence.

Venam cocked a skeptical eyebrow. "Terajuma is having an island-wide remembrance event for all the fallen and you're going to throw a party?"

"Yes I fucking am," Amber growled, and the fierceness in her voice surprised even her. "Because it's been nothing but terror and fighting and feeling like shit for the past days. We need a break. All of us do. Get wasted, or fucked up, don't know, don't care. Ranger tradition. We all need to un-fucking-wind. Clear our heads and shit."

"That…doesn't even sound as stupid as I thought," Venam said. She nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah…yeah, fuck it, why not. Let the entire goddamn island know we're still alive and kicking."

It wasn't often that Veronica and her were on the same wavelength. That just showed how little these fools knew about living the good life. "Fuck yes. It'll be Club STFU. I wanted to plan it on the same evening as the final remembrance in Kakori Village."

Veronica whistled. "Club STFU huh? That's a high-end joint."

"I know," Amber growled. She practically ran the place.

"Who do you wanna invite along, then?"

"Do I look like I give a shit?" Amber snapped. "Everyone and anyone. You find your pals, they're invited. All the rangers you know? They're invited. You find a hobo on the streets? Fuck it. They're invited. If they have a pulse and they can dance, they're in."

"Have you seen Will dance?" Venam said. "He's a catastrophe. He fucked up my gym challenge like eight times before I had to pity him through. Kicked my ass in the fight, though."

Amber knew it was a joke, but she didn't care. She was fired up and her blood was burning. "Look at me giving a fuck! Will's my VIP. So are you and Melia," she quickly added when Venam gave her a very shit-eating grin, just to keep her from getting any stupid ideas. "It was you guys who unfucked the island when Team Xen came to wreck shop."

Venam snorted. "VIP access at STFU's…never thought I'd see the day. Fine. I'll bite. What's the plan?"

Amber told her.

Venam's eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets. "You're shitting me," she breathed. "And you want me to perform?"

"Why? Afraid you're gonna suck?" Amber challenged her.

"As if! These losers need to see some real fucking music after all the drivel you've been serving them."

The jab, Amber felt, was light-hearted enough to let slip. "We'll see. You game?"

"Hell yeah! Let's get fucked up. I'll spread the word. What about you? Gonna make preparations now?"

Amber shot a look back at the guest house. "Not yet."

Following her gaze, Venam said, "You went along with him just for that?"

With a frustrated groan, Amber rolled her eyes. She could have told Venam to fuck off, citing that it was none of her business, but that would be needlessly crass. "Course not. What he talks to her about is his concern. It's been ages since I had someone cool to hang out with, and…" She let her voice trail off.

Venam might have even picked up on the unspoken words for once in her life. "Huh…I guess. Yeah, I suppose Will is kinda cool. You know, in this dorky, clueless way…" she remained quiet for a moment, hesitated, then promptly said, "You better teach that guy how to party, Amber or I will kick your ass."

Amber cocked an eyebrow at her. "Oh, I will. But you losers have been hanging out for months together. How come you didn't - "

The sudden emotion in Venam's voice caught her completely off-guard. "No, I'm serious. He has no memo - er, fuck, look, whenever shit hits the fan and everything gets real he locks in and he turns as cold as ice and nothing can touch him. It's the coolest shit, if a little scary. He just goes, you know? But he's been through the wringer so badly that the moment everything's over he's just a helpless fucking goober and I think that's really unfair."

"Where'd this shit come from?" Amber asked, surprised at the sudden outburst. Nevertheless, Venam's description was right on the money as far as she knew the guy. He'd given so much that a part of him simply hadn't come back yet.

"Did he tell you about his Houndoom?" Venam asked.

"...yeah. We visited before coming down here," Amber said. Slowly, things started making sense.

"Did he tell you what happened?"

With a casual shrug, Amber replied, "Crazy-ass ice-bitch in Kristiline Town guarding the Ocean Relic? Yeah."

"Did he tell you everything that happened?" Venam insisted.

Amber's brow furrowed. That right there just confirmed to her that he really hadn't. "I guess not? In case you haven't noticed, Will took some hits saving our stupid asses. Let a guy have some secrets."

Uttering a groan, Venam turned away and tugged at her hair in frustration. "Yeah, that's what I meant! That's what he does. He gets fucked up, he doesn't know how to chill or unwind, then he gets fucked up and fucked over again until - " She took a breath. "Look. You're hanging out. I haven't been able to help. Maybe you can."

Hearing those words coming out of Venam's mouth was…odd. A blatant admittance that she'd screwed the pooch and that someone else could do things better? The world would have come to an end before the Veronica Vasile she knew would say something like that. Apparently, the rules had changed.

She remembered something Will had said that had seemed so stupid back then. Now, that too started to make sense. "Yeah? Well…we're gonna continue to hang out, yeah. But you're not fucking shoving your responsibilities onto me."

Venam's temper flared. She visibly bristled and took a furious step closer, snarling, "What did you just say?"

Amber wasn't intimidated. "I don't know what kinda drama happened between you two, but when I told Will you visited a few days ago, he didn't believe me."

Boom. Took the wind right out of Venam's wings. "What?" The girl muttered .

"Yeah. He looked all kinds of surprised that you dropped by. It's like he thinks you wouldn't care or some dumb shit like that."

"I didn't - " Venam cut herself off, something like a lightbulb going off inside of her mind. "Uh. Oh. Well, shit. Yeah, we had an argument because he - but I never meant to - fuck it."

Amber agreed. It was a bit of a bluff, yeah, but she wasn't stupid. It wasn't just some physical injuries that had screwed with Will's head so much. Something had happened, and both Melia and Venam were involved, or at least present.

"You know what, I think I'm gonna have a chat before you guys leave," Venam said, turning back to the guest house in a hurry. "But what I said still goes! Don't fuck up the party!"

Amber wanted to yell at Venam not to fuck up any more friendships, but she kept that bit of nastiness to herself, too. It wouldn't be useful and it wasn't fair, either way.

Instead, she picked a nearby bench, sat down, and started planning an awesome fucking party.

Screw you, Team Xen. And screw you, Geara. We're still kicking.

~~~~~~~(XI)~~~~~~~

---

Melia sat in her old spot at the table, with her back to the corner. She lay with her head on her arms, her golden hair falling around her like a curtain. She looked like the smallest bundle of misery he'd ever seen and he just couldn't take it.

"Hey," he said, carefully pulling back one of the chairs opposite of her, taking care to give her the space she needed. "I'm…not going to give any…words of encouragement or…try things to make you feel better because I know nothing will, right now. I just...want you to know that…if you need me…I'll be there."

Melia pulled her head from her arms and the look she gave him was so wounded, so agonized, that it made his heart bleed. "I know you're angry at me."

Angry? Why would he ever – "Melia, no, that's not – "

"You should be angry with me. It's just been one loss after another. Setback after setback...nothing would have happened if you'd just…if I'd just gone with them willingly in the forest that day – "

Horrified, Will leapt to his feet. The chair fell, but he barely heard it. "Melia, that's not true!"

She looked at him with those silver eyes of hers, tears rolling down her cheeks as she did. "Everyone keeps losing people because they're trying to protect me…and – "

He couldn't do this, couldn't let her simmer in those horrible thoughts anymore. He walked around the table and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her delicately against himself. "Melia, stop," he bade her. "We want to protect you because you're worth protecting. Because we – because we care about you."

She didn't move a muscle. "Without me, you would have had a normal life. If you had never fought them in the forest – "

"Then they would still have my mother, and I would still have gone after them," Will interrupted her. "Without you, I would have ended up doing something rash or…or…" he had to swallow hard around the lump that was forming in his throat. "They hurt us. They hurt us, Melia, but I don't regret staying with you. You were there for me when I needed it and I want to be there for you when you need me." He hesitated, then added, without really being able to get the quivers out of his voice, "I-If you still…I won't leave you, unless t-that's what you want."

"I don't want you to leave," she whispered hoarsely. "I just…can't lose anyone else. I just…I can't lose anyone else – "

Will tightened his hold on the poor girl, cradling her against him as best he could without accidentally breaking any stitches. "Well, shit Mel. Neither can I. Guess I'd better start pulling myself back together."

Slowly, he felt her lean her head against his chest. She felt so soft. So warm. "…please tell me you didn't lose your eye," she said, still sounding like she was biting back her sobs.

"…I dunno," he said. "Verdict's still in the air."

That earned him a wounded little moan.

"Depth perception is overrated anyway," he quipped, if only to try and raise Melia out of her misery.

His quip earned him something that could have been a snort, but also a wet sob.

"I…" he wanted to tell her how grateful he was that she'd stopped him when he had lost himself, when he was about to do something he could never take back, but he couldn't. He just couldn't get the words out. "…I think you should take your time. And…should you need me…"

"I will," she whispered. Her hand found his on the table. He gripped back without thinking, focusing on their intertwined fingers. "Thank you."

The silence that fell between them was as light as it had ever been. When Will disentangled his hand from hers and stood, it didn't feel like goodbye. It felt like a promise. They'd both lost a part of themselves. They'd pick themselves up again and they wouldn't do so alone.

"See you soon," he promised.

"Don't be a stranger."

Will smiled. The click of the door closing behind him was as soft as a whisper.

Back outside, it looked like he wasn't done just yet.

Venam was leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest as she casually rested her weight on one leg. She looked cool in a way only people like her and Amber could. The picture of confidence and embodiment of "watch me not give a fuck".

"Hey," she said, and Will repeated her tone inside of his head three times before he realized it missed the sharp edge he'd expected. "Got a minute?"

"...yeah, sure," he replied quietly.

Venam gestured with her head and he wordlessly joined her on a walk towards the exit in the south. "It's been a few days. How are you holding up? And I mean really holding, none of that tough-guy I'm fine shit."

He wondered if this was a trick question. If he told her the truth, she might write him off as…some sort of damaged…lunatic. If he tried lying then, well, he'd be lying to someone he still considered a close friend. And he didn't want that, either. "I…have some good moments," he admitted.

She shot him a look. "That…kinda suggests there are more bad moments."

He shrugged, because what was he supposed to tell her? "I'm tired. I'm hurt." I died and I keep losing my mind at night. "Nim's gone…and I think I hurt a lot of people."

"Yeah, about that…" Venam sighed. She gestured at a wooden bench and they sat down together. "I'm not saying he didn't deserve it – the cocksucker probably deserved worse – but that shit wasn't you. It went way, way beyond that. It's like you lost your mind, there. That was scary as fuck."

It was. Not just to her. What he felt…it was like weeks and weeks of loss and agony and anger and helplessness had come crashing down all at once. Those they'd lost…the pain he'd sustained, the absolute terror and excruciating confusion of falling into that fire combined with the guilt-ridden, broken phantoms he'd encountered in that little dream with Crescent…

It had been too much.

"I didn't want that to happen," he whispered.

She said that he'd lost his mind. Was she right? Was that what had happened when he felt something tear in his head? Was that part of dying, as Crescent said he had? Was a part of him broken now as a result? If so, how far beyond repair was he?

"But it did happen!" Venam insisted. "Why?"

"I wanted to kill him." Venam jerked back at that, and Will shook his head, disgusted. "I was so angry and…so scared, Venam. I…" he wrapped his arms around himself, feeling cold and sick. "Everything fell apart so fast, one thing after another, and then I fell into…and…and I…my hands, they…I…it hurt." He sucked in a breath, struggling to keep a grip on his words. He wasn't explaining himself right, wasn't using the right phrases. "I wanted to hurt him, too. But…but I needed him not to be alive anymore, because there were more people he would hurt. Somehow...those two reasons…became the same."

"So that was what was going through your head," Venam sighed.

"I never want to feel like that again," he muttered. "I didn't want this to…to happen I…I didn't…I…I fucked up and now Nim is gone as well…"

"Well, fuck," Venam spat. "You beat his ass and somehow he's the winner? That shit ain't right. Come on, let's get you up…"

She got one arm around his waist, the other across his shoulders. She heaved him back to his feet. Will stared at her, unable to follow along with her thoughts. Wasn't she supposed to hate him now? Wasn't she supposed to leave?

"Guess I'll have to keep an eye on you as well, give you a lashing if you lose your shit again…you look like a mess." She looked him over and then heaved an explosive sigh. "Look, I know that you're not like that Crescent girl, alright? Fuck, I didn't…I didn't want to guilt trip you or some shit. You're already fucked up enough as it is."

Her words should have insulted him. That he recognized them as the truth was a testament to how fucked up he felt.

"You saved our lives, and I can't let people say that Venam Vasile is an ungrateful bitch, so I'll settle for this instead."

Then, he wasn't sure what happened, but Venam suddenly moved in and she got her arms around him and she hugged him. The unexpected shock of it froze him in place. "W-What…what are you…" he stammered out.

"What's it look like?" She said. "I'm hugging my friend because I almost lost him, but I got him back. I don't usually hug boys so don't - "

"Your…friend…?"

Venam pulled her head away, shooting a questioning look. "Uh, yeah?" She said, sounding so much like Amber that it only further muddled the waters. "Unless you decided that we're not friends anymore?" She scoffed. "Is that it? Did Amber fucking - "

Will didn't let her finish. He let his own arms come up and wrap around Venam's waist. "No," he said. "No, she didn't."

Something thrummed within his chest, right underneath the scars. It felt like misery, but it was on its way out, like a splinter that had been festering too long finally laid bare. He had to fight to keep the emotion from spilling over his face, too.

She snorted. "Yeah. Good. That's what I thought," she said, and the casual cockiness in her voice chased away all the fear in his head.

Venam didn't hate him. Venam still wanted to be his friend.

Maybe he wasn't beyond repair after all.

~~~~~~~(XII)~~~~~~~

---

September 25th

Kakori Village

It was time.

Venam came by to pick her up in the afternoon. She smiled reassuringly, but her entire demeanor was different. More subdued. Quieter. "Hey. You ready?"

Melia nodded. "Yeah. I guess. Will?"

"Waiting outside. All of us are ready."

With a weary sigh, Melia got to her feet. "Okay."

The weather wasn't any different from usual. Melia wasn't sure why she'd expected it to be. Nothing had changed. Life went on. Terajuma Island would move on. All of them could choose to stay behind…or they could move on as well.

Will sat on one of the wooden benches a few meters away from the guest house. He looked up at her as she closed the door behind her, a singular emerald orb searching her face for something. "Hey," he softly said.

"Hey," Melia said back.

Will looked better. It wasn't anything overt, but the way he carried himself now seemed calmer to her. More adjusted. The only sign of his horrible injuries were the bandages that went around his eye, and the ones wrapped around his left hand. Other than that, when he got to his feet and approached them, he looked like the old Will again.

Solid. Dependable.

Whole.

He said nothing. He just looked at her, his expression sad but also reassuring somehow. Melia had her arms around his neck without even realizing that it was something she needed. It was only the smallest part of her that told her to be cautious of where she applied pressure as she pressed her cheek onto his shoulder and fought against the sobs and the pain that welled up inside of her. Will hugged her as well, his arms pressing firmly into her back.

"Come on you guys," Venam said. "It's…set to start half an hour from now."

"Okay," Melia said quietly.

They headed out. It wasn't a funeral - not really. No bodies to say goodbye to. That was why everybody called it a memorial, accentuating their status as fallen warriors instead of murdered family and friends. Melia didn't know how to feel about that. There was a lot she didn't know at the moment.

Crawli and some of the other rangers had gathered in the center of the village. Melia spotted many familiar faces. Captain Holly, Rorim B, the head researcher from the Weather Institute, Sam and Alex as well as several other rangers she didn't know by name, but recognized nonetheless. She saw Tesla and Amber, as well as two green-haired individuals she didn't recognize, one man and one woman. A third man she did recognize, but only from the cover of a magazine, not because she'd actually met him in person. Talon, the Flying-type leader. He was a celebrity in Grand Dream City. What was he doing here?

"Melia, honey," Tesla said, her eyes flashed with sympathy as she reached out and simply hugged her. A gasp escaped her lips as the woman suddenly embraced her, but…it didn't feel bad. It felt quite good, in fact. It had been so long since anyone remotely motherly or even fatherly had held her in their arms. "I'm so, so sorry."

"He was your friend too," Melia muttered back.

"But he was your father," Tesla said firmly. "The pain of losing your parents is a rare, vicious kind of pain."

"...yeah…" Melia said. It was.

The people around them exchanged words. Swapped condolences. Will shook the green-haired dude's hand. Talon took him by the shoulder and clamped it heartily, like they were old buddies or something. The green-haired woman kept her distance.

Crawli and Holly stood on the large podium that dominated the clearing. Because…because there hadn't been any bodies to bury or say goodbye to, they had put down two large portraits of Nim and Jenner there. How they managed to get those, Melia didn't know, and she didn't care.

The rangers waited patiently for the little conversations to die down. The major memorial events had already taken place. This one…this was one was for Nim and Jenner. It was small, but it was personal. When she looked around, Melia saw that they were being watched from…every direction. People stood in their windows and outside their doors. Rangers stood in the treeline, or sat on rooftops. Far away enough to let them have their privacy, but close enough to…close enough to keep an eye out, Melia realized.

Kakori Village grieved with them.

"Although we were able to fend off Team Xen, we lost many souls in the process," Crawli said, his expression resolute and solemn as he addressed the gathered crowd. "We lost fathers. Mothers. Sons. Daughters. This conflict saw entire families torn apart. In the midst of that storm, at the summit of the mountain, two more lives were lost to us. They weren't rangers. They were regular people caught in the conflict. Regular people who showed a truly astounding amount of determination, willpower and strength. Professor Jenner of East Gearen City. And Nim, a soul yearning for a home and for friends. Because of their actions, their loved ones managed to rout the enemy. Through their actions, we were able to defeat the enemy at the height of their power. And through their actions, we all may live, to see a brighter tomorrow."

Melia felt someone place a warm hand on her shoulder. She looked behind her to see that it was Tesla. She placed her hand atop the older woman's hand, silently squeezing her fingers in gratitude.

When he finished, Crawli bowed his head and took a step back, allowing Holly to take over.

"Even if they have passed, their memories will live on," Holly took over. "Their names will be etched onto the Ranger Hall of Fame. Every moment of happiness from this day forward will be regarded as a gift from them. Now, we let their souls pass to the next stage of life. Rest in peace."

Melia struggled against the tears. She tore her gaze from her father's portrait. One by one, the gathered friends and family members walked onto the podium to say their last goodbyes to those they had lost. Will, too, headed up. He lingered by Nim's portrait far longer than anyone else. Tesla calmly walked up the steps, took the time she needed for Jenner, then very gently placed her arm around Will's neck and began guiding him away. For a moment, it looked like Will would struggle, but he didn't. He calmly turned away from Nim's portrait of his own volition, though he did lean into Tesla's body somewhat as they both walked down the steps again.

"Hey, you doin' okay?" Venam asked.

"...as good as I can be, I guess," Melia sighed. "But overall, no, not really."

Then, Amber spoke up. "It may not be the most appropriate time to ask, but…I'm having a party at my Gym in a few hours. A final fuck you to the enemies we defeated, and a way for everybody to unwind and start putting this horrible war behind us. You guys should swing by!"

"Hell yeah!" Venam said. "A fuck you party?! Let's gooo!"

"Thanks for the offer, but I have to go clean up the mess my dad left down in Aquamarine Cave," Melia replied. "That's what I decided to do, anyway. It's only right."

"Hey, let me come with you!" Venam offered.

"No, no…I don't want you guys to miss out on having some fun," Melia said. She mustered a smile. "I'll be okay, really!"

Without waiting for their response, Melia broke away and headed off. She couldn't bear staying there for any longer than was needed. Too many ghosts, too many emotions. She needed one more moment for herself, to honor and remember her father her own way.

After that…well, she would see what the future would bring.

~~~~~~~(XIII)~~~~~~~

---

"Well, I tried," Amber said with a sad little shrug. "You guys are coming right?"

"Hell yeah!" Venam said, and she nudged Will.

"Yeah, of course," he said. They all needed something to help distance themselves from the past week. Even if he hadn't wanted to, he would still have come. He felt like refusing to visit Amber's party would be a like a slap in her face. No way he could do that to her.

Amber snorted. "Will, I usually end my parties with a battle. If you want a chance at my Badge, this is the time! Prime time!"

A Gym Battle. A casual, normal Gym Battle…last time he managed that had been before Angie. Before Teila Resort.

…a chance to fight with his Pokemon fur fun instead of to the death sounded like just the thing they needed to get their minds in order as well. "You're on," he said.

"Let's go back home then, Amber," Tesla said. "We have a lot of things we still need to prepare for tonight."

"Yeah, you're right. See you two losers later!"

Will smiled.

"Amber!" Tesla said, horrified.

"What?" Amber retorted without a shred of remorse. "Losers is a term of endearment! Seriously…"

After that, everybody went their own to prepare themselves for the evening. Venam and Will headed back to Teila Resort together. She carried her guitar case along, which could only mean one thing and he was all for it.

Nevertheless, while everybody slowly headed to Club STFU, Will took a moment to put things back together for himself. He sat down near the entrance of the resort lobby, parts of which were still under construction since the last time he'd…ah, visited the place.

He pulled his journal out of his backpack, took his thoughts apart, then put them back together. He put his pen to the paper and started writing.

"Team Xen utterly defeated. Two Admins down, hordes of their grunts gone. It wasn't worth losing Nim, or Aelita or the Professor to do it. Where do I go from here? I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. We just have to find the strength to move on. We have to embrace resilience."

Will stared at his words. It felt like his thoughts had fallen into their proper place. He felt…calmer, somehow, now that his thoughts were back where they belonged. Somewhat.

He got up, gently placed his journal back where it belonged as well, then headed inside of the atrium. He expected thrumming music and large bowls of fire. He expected dancers and Rorim throwing his hips around and enormous bass setups. What he didn't expect was seeing Crescent lounged languidly in one of the sofas, with that ever-present Gothitelle seated right next to her. Crescent's red gaze was already fixed on him when he spotted her. "Will. I've been waiting for you. Why don't you join me for just a moment?"

Something told him that Crescent wasn't here for Amber's party. Will hesitantly stepped towards her. Crescent gestured towards a cushion opposite of her, and he slowly eased himself onto it. He stared at her.

She stared back at him. "I've spoken to some of the others - Venam and Melia. I was hoping I'd catch all of you to spare myself explaining myself ad nauseam. Your "friends" - the ones on that machine? I've sent them on a task to bring Aelita to a spiritual healer I know of on Route Nine."

Will felt himself crumple in relief. It spilled over him and for a moment, he didn't know what to say, what to think - but evidently Crescent did.

"So you needn't worry about her or any of their well-being in the future," she continued. Her ruby eyes smoldered as she continued to stare at him. "But truth be told, I have no concern about any of that. Do you have any idea how much trouble you got yourself in?"

Again, Will found himself withering beneath the force of her glare. There was a pressure, an intensity to Crescent's gaze that he found very difficult to withstand. He flicked his own gaze down to the table between them. "I'm starting to," he muttered.

Crescent leaned back in her seat, something like approval flickering over her stony features. "At least you're aware of your actions. That's a start." She let her words linger for a few seconds. "How is your eye?"

"They say if I'm very lucky, I won't lose its functionality," he quietly said.

"Lucky," Crescent repeated, rolling the word around her tongue like it was a foreign concept. "Well…in that case, I would write it off as lost. Luck has never been on our side before."

He couldn't disagree with her on that. "What happened on Valor Summit?" He asked. "What was that?"

"You died," Crescent said, somehow making it sound accusing. "You DIED on that mountain top. Putting yourself back together won't be so easy next time."

Feeling bitter and angry, Will spread his arms out in a wild gesture and said, "Because everything else has been so easy before, right?"

"That is because you keep associating with these people," Crescent practically spat that last word. "They will only bring you misfortune, don't you understand?"

"These people are the only reason I'm still me," Will shot back. "Or did you picture me wandering around Aevium alone? Is that what you wanted for me?"

"If that means you stay out of trouble, then yes," Crescent bluntly said. "They are the reason you died on that summit. They are the reason you keep suffering."

"It wasn't Melia who pushed me in," Will growled.

"It wasn't Venam who pulled you out either," She countered. "Furthermore, it was Melia who drove you to throw caution to the wind. It always seems to be Melia who is involved whenever you are at your most foolish. Every time I have to interfere, you are with her. Why is that, I wonder?"

Will didn't like what Crescent insinuated at all. "Because she was there for me when I needed…when I just needed a friend. When I needed anyone decent at all."

"Some friend," Crescent scoffed. "Look at you now. I - "

"It could have been you, instead, if you'd been around," Will said. "I think a lot of this would have gone differently if you and I had hung out from the beginning. We could be friends. I think we could have been great friends."

Crescent stood up so abruptly that even Gothitelle seemed surprised. Crescent glared down at him with an intensity in her gaze that made him wonder if his words had hurt her somehow. She took a breath. Then another. "I won't always be there to get you out of trouble, Will," she said, as if reiterating something she'd memorized. "Even with the power I have, I am only human. I can't perform miracles."

"So stick around," Will said, standing up as well. "Stay with us."

"...it's time for me to depart," she said slowly, distantly. "I have work to do. I hope my words reached you in some way."

Depart she did. Without even giving Will a chance to say anything else, she had Gothitelle teleport the both of them away, leaving him to put her cryptic words together in a way that made any kind of sense.

He felt, with absolute clarity, that him telling her that she could have been a friend from the beginning had set her off in a big way. Something about that possibility was…well, it was a bit of a sore spot, evidently.

"One of these days," Will swore. He would…he didn't know, invite her to have a drink and then line the building with anti-teleportation bricks, if those things even existed. It sounded like just the kind of thing for Team Xen to develop.

He had so many questions bouncing around his head and Crescent had the answers, he knew she had the answers.

Screw it. Yes he'd died. Yes Crescent had helped him along, somehow. But this time, this one time, they could have made it without her. They had broken Team Xen atop Valor Mountain. They had beaten them. Without her. Today, he wasn't going to let his enigmatic friend distract him from what truly mattered.

And that was showing Amber what it truly meant to boogie.

Will headed into the club…

…and walked straight out again. He shot a look at the nearby sign.

Teila Gym Leader: Amber.

Win rate: 63.9%

He could have sworn he'd just walked into Team Xen's Carotos base again. Club STFU was all black carpets and black walls lined with red stripes. Will walked through a long hallway flanked by a long, rectangular pond with floating candles, waterlilies and larger, blooming flowers he didn't recognize. The hallway emptied out into a large nightclub, the one he'd come to associate with bouncers and high-profile celebrities and people who were generally far cooler than he was. it was larger than Venam's club had been, looking more…professional, for lack of a better word.

Seated at the heavy oak bar was Kreiss of all people. Will hadn't seen the guy since they started their assault on Team Xen; what had he been up to?

With the music pounding on the background, Will sat down on the stool next to the cool guy. The bartender gave him an upwards nod.

Will ordered a soda. He wasn't sure what the drinking age in Aevium was anyway.

"Goodness, what a bloody racket," Kreiss said. "Is this what teens listen to these days?"

"I guess," Will said. The bartender put down a bottle in front of him and he nodded in thanks.

"I suppose I cannot complain too much though," Kreiss sighed. "There's good reason for a celebration. You have done well, my boy. You have done very well. Although, you did pay a hefty price."

"Most of us did," Will replied.

Kreiss nodded sagely. "Indeed. Do you know what your future holds from this point on?"

"A party," Will said.

The older man chuckled. "Ah, but I do not intend to stick around for long myself. I plan on returning to Neverwinter soon. Martin was absolutely beside himself with worry when I called him earlier."

"Martin is…?"

"My partner. It comes as no surprise, considering how long I've been gone for." Kreiss gripped a glass filled with a hazy, brown liquid and offered it to him. "Though, one drink to celebrate a well-earned victory over Team Xen cannot hurt. Cheers to our victory, Will!"

"Cheers," Will smiled. They clinked their glasses together.

Slowly, people started trickling in. Will spotted a few people at the dance floor already, rocking out to the background music. He thought he recognized some of them, but he couldn't be sure.

Around the corner of the bar, just a few stools away, sat Captain Augustus. Will was surprised to see the man, but then again, this was Amber's party. Tesla and her probably knew everyone on the island. Seeing a man like Augustus here really shouldn't have surprised him.

"Captain," Will greeted him.

"Ah, if it isn't Will! Yes, I heard there was a pretty great party going on in here." He gazed out at the dance floor, watching several obvious partners swaying to the music together. "Back in my day, I used to be quite the charmer! I could give you some pointers, if you so require?"

Will smiled. "Thanks. Maybe later."

Augustus raised his glass to him. "Any time, my boy."

On the far left side of the club, on the other side of the dance floor and past a pair of truly massive subwoofers, Will spotted a bowling alley. When he went to check it out, he spotted Reina in the corner, cheerfully flinging a ball across the lane. "Reina?"

She looked up just as the ball left her fingers and it barreled across the wooden surface, slamming into the white pins on the other end and throwing all but one of them to the ground. "Ayyy, Will! This party's looking pretty cool so far! Hey, I just wanted to thank you for saving my ass from that cell in Valor Mountain! I could've gotten out eventually, I'm sure, but that's just sooooo boring you know? Soo um, yeah! I'm going to continue searching for Ren, but first I gotta party at this bomb ass club! I already won a few rounds at bowling, i'm just that gooood!"

"I guess you are," he replied. "I…hope you find Ren. I can imagine you two have a lot to talk about."

"Yeaaah…but that's not important right now. Where's your date at?"

Will blinked a couple of times. "Uh - "

"You know!" Reina cheerfully said. "It's a party, there's booze, there's a dance floor and comfy seats! Perfect time to get your romantic act on!"

"I don't have a date," Will said, somewhat sheepishly.

Reina gasped in horror. "Then you get your ass out there and start flirting with one of these gals out there! The nights here can get preeeetty cold if you catch my drift - "

"I do, I do," Will quickly said. "You know what? I'll check out the rest of the club, see if I can't find…some familiar faces."

"Yeah! You do that! Imma hang out here, I'm on a streak!" Reina exclaimed.

In a weird sort of way, Reina was right too. This seemed like the prime opportunity for some couples to just have fun together. If he had been a couple, he would have been dancing by now. Since he wasn't a couple, however, he would simply hang out for a while, see who else Amber had invited.

Slowly, it began to dawn on him that Amber had invited pretty much everybody, rangers and civilians alike. Somehow - somehow - even Karen had decided to show up.

"Oh look! It's little dove. How are you little dove? little dove, little dove ~..." Karen cooed. "You know, I'm not usually the partying type. They haunt me. I threw a party once. Then everyone disappeared before the night was done."

Dumbstruck, Will could only stare at the woman.

"Indeed," she said, slowly bobbing her head to the music. "I truly loved that party. People talk, though. They talk a lot. More than they should!" Karen's voice steadily rose in volume and pitch with every word she uttered, to the point where she was almost screaming by the time she finished. "When parties are done, people leave. People leave when parties are done! DONE ARE PARTIES. PARTIES ARE DONE." She waved at her face, tears rolling down her cheeks as she began fidgeting with a handkerchief. It had stains of blood on it. "Oh, I'm getting so emotional now! I'm going to cry on my dress! Not my dress! Not my dress! I'm going to stop talking now."

She did. Luckily, not a few meters away from the crazy lady, Rorim B had conquered the dance floor and he was dancing the day away.

"Darling…when I heard there was a party - AIYYY! I had to show up!" Rorim finished a septuple pirouette and struck a pose. All around him people started applauding. "Ah, that is so much better! Darling, come, come! Let me hit you up with a drink!"

Rorim started practically dragging him to the bar. Will knew when to resist and when resistance would be futile. He allowed the dancing man to "escort" him to the bar. The dance floor was a bit too crowded for his liking anyway.

"Parties such as these aren't left by walking darling. Come, make like your fellow troopers and order a stiff one!"

"I, wait what?"

Rorim held up a finger at the bartender. "Rosy, I'll have a Venusaur Vine Whip, please! Will, my dear little warrior, what will it be?"

"Amber and I are going to - "

"Oh! Amber! She is such a doll. A fiery one, for sure! Make that two - "

"Wait, wait," Will interrupted Rorim. "Gym Battle. We're having a gym battle. No alcohol until that's settled."

Rorim gasped dramatically. "You are seriously declining the ancient Terajumian tradition of the Drunk Gym Match?"

"We're not fighting with Eevees and Torchics anymore Rorim," Will said, not even bothering to hide his laughter. "If Amber and I get drunk before we fight, we'll blow the entire resort up."

He blinked once and suddenly Rorim held an oversized cocktail in his hand. He chewed thoughtfully on the umbrella. "Darling, sometimes to have fun, ideas such as blowing up and exploding and bursting are almost mandatory!" He heaved a deep sigh. "But I understand, I understand. You are pacing yourself! Yes, do not let Rorim B dictate how you plan your evening. When your fighting date with Amber comes, I will be sure to watch! Perhaps I can even give you some…" the man winked. "Pointers."

With that last remark, Rorim danced away, cocktail and all, leaving behind one thoroughly confused Will.

"...I don't get it," he said after half a minute of serious reflecting.

"Hon', it might be time to get your head out of the game, and into the game, if you know what I'm sayin'," the bartender helpfully supplied. She'd put her back to one of the many fridges and had started cleaning an empty glass with a rag.

Where was Venam when he needed her to translate for him?

Finding his purple-haired club-attendant turned out to be a simple matter of looking up at the podium. There, standing on the stage with her guitar in hand, Venam was rocking out like she was back in her own club.

Will stared up at the sight and Venam caught him looking. She winked. "C'mon everyone, I want to hear you scream! Turn up the music!"

They did, and they did. Amidst the crowd of screaming partygoers, Will heard one other voice clearer than even all the others.

"This is the only time I'll let my Rangers slack off without punishment! They're going to be in a world of training after this party is done!"

Never change, Holly, he thought.

To his relief, he saw that even Tesla had dropped by for the party. She was dressed in a loose, almost casual white dress, tailored to the specific Terajuma culture. She looked gorgeous.

"Hello honey," she said, leaning against the counter with a drink in her hand. "How are you doing?"

"Getting my bearings," Will admitted. "I'm not an experienced club-goer."

Tesla laughed. "Well, you have had others concerns, yes," she agreed. "Don't worry about a thing. You are surrounded by friends."

Will gave her a weak smile. "I noticed."

"Speaking of…I saw a couple of Team Xen grunts hanging out in the lounge area. They're not in their uniforms, but some of our people recognized them nonetheless…" Tesla said. When she saw Will's expression her eyes widened and she quickly added, "Oh no, nothing like that! I spoke to them and it looks like they aren't here to cause any trouble. They looked really young, too. They said you knew them? Look, over there."

Tesla nodded in their general area. Will followed her gaze. Amidst the other guests in the lounge area he spotted a familiar young woman with orange hair and her dark-haired buddy.

"Yeah, I know them," Will replied.

"And?" Tesla said, her voice fierce and protective. "Do you want me to deal with them?"

Will felt his heart swell. "No, that's alright. They're…these two aren't bad people."

Tesla didn't seem entirely convinced. "If you're cool with them being here, that's fine. But some of the rangers here lost their friends in the fight. They won't take kindly to Team Xen members acting up, so…I'll have to toss them out before things can turn ugly in that case."

"I understand," Will said. He headed over to the bar, ordered three bottles of soda and then headed over to Eli and Sharon's spot. They saw him approach. Eli waved. Sharon looked like a child caught with her hand in the cookie-jar. Neither of them was wrong in their thinking.

"H-Hey," Sharon sputtered. "We're not here to cause trouble, Will. We just…wanted to have a small break before we headed back to HQ. So…" She took a deep breath. "I would appreciate it if you would just allow us to stay here for just a little - "

Wordlessly, Will handed them both a drink.

Sharon stared at his outstretched hand for a moment, before glancing up at him, her eyes questioning.

"Look…things got real muddled and confused on Valor Summit," Will said. "I'm tired, and you two have been cutting us slack every time we fought. I don't want to be enemies. Can't you just…cut ties with them? Stop this madness?"

Something about Sharon's expression turned mournful. "We can't," she quietly said, her voice thick with regret. "It's far too late for that."

Will sighed. He'd been expecting that. If defecting from Team Xen was that simple, they'd have done so already. "Alright. I'm not a signboard. Take your drink."

Sharon looked surprised at that, before quickly taking the bottle from his outstretched hand.

"Why would you be a signboard?" Eli asked, his eyes large and inquisitive.

"It's a saying, Eli," Sharon mumbled. She took his drink as well and then handed it to him. "Hey Will…thanks for…you know, Not hurting us."

Was this what he'd ended up with his actions? A point where people thanked him for not hurting them?

Fuck me, I'm gonna need Rorim to get me drunk after all, he wearily thought. "Thank you for not trying to kill any of us," he said.

"No welcomes!" Eli said as he held out his bottle to Sharon.

"He, uh, means you're welcome or…no problem," Sharon said, her face slowly growing red as she clicked her bottle against her partner's. "We spotted Venam on the stage. Where's uh…and please don't take this the wrong way, I'm not asking for coordinates or anything, but…where's Melia?"

"That's fine," Will said. "She's…taking care of some things."

"Yeah…we uh…we heard…about…you know…it would be really weird for us to offer her our condolences, but…well…I want you guys to know that we never wanted that to happen."

Will sighed. "I know," he said. "I…can't speak for the others, but…I can't blame you two for what happened. Not anymore."

"Not anymore?" Sharon said, raising an eyebrow at his comment.

Will sighed and leant back in his seat. "I left a lot of dead people in my wake," he said, the words suddenly spilling out of him. "I didn't fight to kill them, it wasn't my intention to kill them, but…"

"Yeah, we…caught a few of our ships going up in flames or…you know, down below the waves," Sharon said with a sigh. "That's the beauty of our mission. People have to die regardless," she spat. "It's like a war. If your side wants to win, people on the other side have to die. So…I guess I can't blame you for that. You didn't start this thing, after all."

"No," Will muttered. He took a few swigs of his own drink. "But neither did you."

"Will!" Eli suddenly chastised him. "This is a party!"

Sharon and him shot the guy a look. "Eh, yes?" She said.

"Why do sad? No more sad!" Eli continued. He pointed at Will's face. "You have pain enough already. Take the fun instead."

Either he was losing his mind, or Eli's advice actually made sense. Worse, those weren't mutually exclusive either.

"The man has a point," Sharon said. "Don't worry about us. We'll keep our heads down and…so don't worry about us."

"Yes! I will look after Sharon!" Eli proudly said.

Will nodded at the odd pair and then took his leave. Unfortunately, he took his leave along the left side of his two Xen buddies. Just as he did, another guest got up to get a refill of their drink, and suddenly Will found himself face-to-face with a familiar, very unpleasant face.

"Hey, you're that asshat from Sheridan!" The orange-haired, one-horned Texen snapped at him.

Will stopped and shot the guy a look. Why had Amber invited Texen of all people? How did she even know him? Through her job as a Gym Leader?

…Axis High. They were both students at Axis High. Still, why -

"So I heard Aelita's in a coma," Texen remarked. "I think that bitch deserves what she got. You were able to beat me last time, but next time I'll be the one who comes out on top. So you better watch your back," Texen hissed that part, pointing with two fingers at his eyes before pointing with his middle finger at Will's eye. Then, he smirked.

Will glanced down at his feet for a moment. He wouldn't humiliate Amber by assaulting someone at her own damn party. No way. He'd seen enough violence, felt enough anger to last him a lifetime. He was sick of it, and done with it.

That being said…

"See them?" Will said, jerking his head to Eli and Sharon sitting in the booth next to them.

"Hmm? The bitch with the orange hair and the punk next to her?"

"Yeah. Team Xen members."

"Uh - "

"See the woman at the bar? The redhead?"

"Tesla von Brandt, yeah," Texen said with a grin. "A real MILF that one."

"Also a member of the Elite Eight," Will continued. He glanced over his right shoulder. 'The pair in blue?"

"At the snooker table? What about them?"

"Veteran rangers, Alex and Sam. You know the owner of this club?"

Texen leant back in his seat. He didn't look that comfortable anymore. "That would be…Amber von Brandt, right? 'Course I know her. I know all the big-name celebs out here. Why, looking for her numb- "

"None of them would lift a finger to help you," Will continued, and he saw Texen's laid-back attitude slowly grow stiff and alert. He knew the look. "None of them would interfere."

Texen shot him a furious glare. "The fuck's that supposed to mean?"

"Yeah." Will calmly emptied his drink, then got back to his feet. "Why don't you think about that?"

He didn't spare the guy a single thought after that. Texen's issues were not his to handle. It was more of an assurance to himself. The guy had no clue. Fair enough. He was done dealing with people who didn't understand.

Why would he? This club was filled with people who did matter. Full of people he cared about.

Will made it halfway across the dance floor when he felt someone grab a hold of his good wrist. Startled, he whirled around, jerking his arm free and balling his hand into a fist -

"What the fuck are you doing?" Amber snapped at him. "Swapping sad stories with washed-up Xen grunts, letting that loser Texen rile you up?"

"I - wait, are you angry right now?"

"You bet your ass I am!" Again her hand snatched his wrist, and she began pulling him to the bar. "This is a party. We are here to un-fucking-wind and have fun, not to feel bad about shit that you're supposed to forget about for just this evening. Did nobody ever teach you how to party?"

"Not lately, no," Will fired back, a bit annoyed. "I haven't been partying much lately."

"It fucking shows. Here, let's start fixing that." She made eye-contact with the bartender, who gave her that same upwards nod as he'd with Rorim. "Evening! Do you have two Charizard Whiskey Wyrms for us, please?"

"Two Whiskey Wyrms coming up," the bartender said, shooting Will a satisfied, if pleasant smile. She started pulling bottles from their racks.

"I know shit isn't ideal…" Amber started, hopping onto one of the barstools. "And I know I'm not the best person to give you this advice. But you have to take the small opportunities to let go of your stress and have fun. It's like…mom once said that it's like healing your soul. If you don't have fun…if you don't take the opportunities to, like, be happy in life…then your soul gets worn down."

Will thought back to Keta. Keta, how he'd once been. Keta, after how his dealings with Team Xen had left him. A shadow of his former self. A shell of a man, without hope, without joy, without love.

The depths of despair.

"I…don't want that," he said. He shook his head. He said it again, with more strength. "I don't want that."

"Good!" Amber said. The bartender put down two big cocktail glasses of orange stuff filled with steaming ice shavings, pieces of fruit and an actual layer of flames resting atop the drink. Liquid flames rolled upwards, licking eagerly at the glass but finding no purchase.

Well, shit. That looked so cool! He was going to drink flames!

"Hope you like whiskey," Amber said, grinning wickedly. "If not, well, you will after enough shots of this." She held up her glass to him. "Here's to happiness after hard times, Will. Cheers!"

Being at rock bottom was a bit like being surrounded. Yeah, the position sucked, but there was a lot of freedom in movement. Only one way to go after this. And that was up. Things would be better. he had to keep up hope that they would. He had to believe that, or else, what was even the point?

"Cheers," he said, and the smile he gave Amber was genuine.

The cocktail burned in his throat when he swallowed a large mouthful, but it was the good kind of burning.

Amber too took a big swig of her drink. She grunted in satisfaction. "Nice. Hope you ate well beforehand - "

"Uh - "

" - otherwise this one's going straight to your head. So how're you enjoying my party?"

Will, guessing that the cocktail couldn't screw with his head more than the ranger stimulants did, decided he wasn't going to concern himself with that. "It looks badass," he said earnestly. "How'd you reach all these people?"

"The power of networking," Amber replied. "We know people, and those people know people too. Mom knows pretty much everybody important in Aevium."

For a while, they just sat there, laughing and talking. Will told her about how he first met Venam and Melia. He told her about his experiences struggling with Venam's gym challenge and how he was much better suited for Crawli's challenge instead.

Much to his surprise, Amber wasn't all that impressed when he told her how he'd aced the obstacle course. She was too busy laughing. In all fairness, he had just told her how Saki had fared on that course and yeah, he could imagine how that went inside of Amber's head.

He told her about the fun times they'd had on Terajuma. Meeting Crawli inside of that restaurant. Hanging out on the beach. Getting drugged by means of tea inside of an ancient ruin with Talon, whom Amber also knew.

"My mom always said, live, laugh, love," Amber said, fumbling with her ponytail. "We're all still alive, and we're laughing and shit. Which got me wondering…you uh…you were hanging out with all those chicks for a while. You like, fancy one of them?"

"As in…?" Will asked.

Amber rolled her eyes. "Duh. As in, do you have the hots for one of them?"

Will felt his face turn red. Instantly, he thought back to the time Valarie had taken Melia, Aelita, Saki and him swimming. That led him straight to imagining the way Melia had looked in that ceremonial dress back during Amber's very own Trial and -

But was that what Amber meant? Rather, was that the answer she was looking for, or was she just messing with him again?

"Hah, look at your face, you're blushing!" Amber teased him. "Well, spit it out then!"

"I got no clue what you're talking about," Will lied. He hurriedly brought his drink up to hide the redness on his face, taking a large gulp -

"You said it yourself, that this was a war against Team Xen, right? You know people fuck around in war all the time don't you?" She said with a truly evil grin.

Will nearly spat out his drink and started violently coughing. "Amber!" He choked out. "What the fuck!"

Goddamnit did Amber look smug. "You are so easy to rile up. Oh I'm going to have so much fun."

"I bet," Will growled. "Jokes on you. I'm not answering that."

"Fuck you are so gullible," Amber laughed. "That's all the answer I need."

…god damn he sucked at holding his own in casual conversations.

I'm just tired, he reasoned. He glowered at Amber for a moment before drinking the rest of his cocktail. Down the hatch it went.

Next time, he'd signal at Rorim B that he needed a wingman to help him out. Fight fire with fire. Something told him that the hotblooded Amber wouldn't stand a chance against the might of Rorim B's social skills.

"What do you think? Another drink, or do you want to throw down in front of a live audience?" Amber asked.

Will put down his glass with force. "Bring it."

"Oh, I'll fucking bring it alright," Amber said, her eyes practically burning with anticipation. "Let's see you back that up."

Abruptly, Amber jumped to her feet, downed the last of her own drink and made her way to the top of the club with large, purposeful strides. About half the crowd stopped what they were doing to watch her go, and when Will walked in after her, a whole lot of people started coming in after them.

Amber's Gym arena was a sizable backroom with a floor made of reinforced glass. An entire array of LED lights burned beneath their feet, encased in a sheet of thin glass that made the whole floor beneath the glass look like bubbling lava.

Will really didn't appreciate that, but he took solace in the fact that it was fake. So he took his position opposite of Amber and met her gaze.

"Damn, took you long enough to get your head in the game!" Amber yelled over the music. "It's pretty rockin', right? I think the outcome was pretty successful!"

Much of the crowd gathered inside of the Gym arena. Will caught a wash of purple hair as Venam walked by him, saying, "Kick her ass Will!"

Tesla took a position by her daughter's side. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked on like a mother who was about to watch her kid participate in a big competition. In a way, she was. Knowing Tesla, she'd be rooting for the both of them.

"And it's all thanks to you, Will!" Amber continued. "Now, let's keep the audience happy! That means giving them what they want! This battle has been pushed back far too much, and that's all on me. I apologize, but I'm not gonna let that hold me down! You better bring everything you got!"

She set her guitar aside - Tesla picked it up with one hand and deftly positioned it against one of the subwoofers - and then readied her Pokeball.

Will met her challenge in kind. Both of them sent their first Pokemon into the fray, and they let the fires of the match burn away what was left of their concerns, their fears, and their regrets.

~~~~~~~(XIV)~~~~~~~

---

Within the depths of the jungle, the raven-haired woman found herself surrounded by silence. "Hmph. Idiots," she spat. "As if I'd just let you die without finishing your duty."

A heartbeat later, the petrified body of Nim stood before her.

"I find it extra detestable that you let yourself get to this point, Nim," Crescent spoke. "Have you absolutely no control over your form?"

Moments later, Nim's petrified status shimmered and fell away. Flesh and blood once more, Nim fell to her knees, gasping and wheezing as the air suddenly filled her lungs again. "Ugh…what?" She stammered. "Where am I?"

"Turn around," Crescent's voice whipped out, hard and commanding.

"Huh?"

When Nim obeyed, Crescent grabbed her braids and swept a razor-sharp knife through them, slicing them off with one fell move.

"Wh-What?" Nim yelled, horrified. "My hair! What the heck! Why'd you cut my hair…!"

"Listen carefully, because I'm only going to go through this once," Crescent told the girl, her voice low and dangerous. "What's your name?"

"M-My name?" Nim muttered. "It's Nim…"

"Yes, I believe it did go something like that?" Crescent said condescendingly. "You're going to forget about that name from now on. Your name is no longer Nim. Your name needs to reflect who you truly are now. Forsaken, alone…" She tapped her bottom lip with her index finger, thinking it over. "Lorna…I think that's a good name for someone like you. The forsaken girl. The girl who is alone. And rightfully so. You've caused so much trouble due to your blatant incompetence. You don't deserve the right to live by the name you gave yourself. Because Nim died on top of Valor Mountain. Nim will stay dead."

Lorna stared at her in silence, her expression blank. Slowly, the rain that poured down from the sky began to soak through her clothes.

"Listen carefully," Crescent then said. "This is what I want you to do…"

She leaned towards Lorna and gave her her orders. The forsaken girl narrowed her eyes.

"Do you understand?" Crescent asked.

"...I understand," Lorna dully replied.

"I'm glad to hear that. Now get out of my sight."

WIth that, Crescent walked off.

Leaving the forsaken girl alone once more.

"My name…is Lorna…" she murmured to herself, staring off into the distance. "The girl who is alone." The droplets that rolled down her cheek could have been rainwater. Nobody was around to decide that for her, regardless. "Nice to meet you, Lorna…"

~~~~~~~(XV)~~~~~~~

---

AN: Cows go moo, dogs go bark, MD21 goes "man this chapter got out of hand". I genuinely thought I could wrap "Those we Lose" up in about 16,000 words or so. Hah. Shows what I know.

So yeah, this is our first chapter where the majority of the scenes are completely original. No game dialogue to hold my hand or anything. This is where my knowledge and understanding of the characters really got put to the test. I hope I didn't write them too out-of-character! :O

Anyway, that is Story Chapter 8 wrapped up! We are now officially halfway through the story and it only took me about half a million words. We're in for the long haul.

Writing these scenes outside of the game was a lot of fun. I think I'm going to keep expanding on the game's story like this, writing little moments and scenes sort of "in-between" the story's events. Truly expand on the source material not just in the action scenes, but also with the way our characters interact. Of course, since I'm planning on developing a romance later on in the story, this was bound to happen regardless.

As always, please let me know your thoughts if you enjoyed this chapter! Thank you all so much for sticking with me to this point and I will see you all with the next update!