“Traveling shouldn’t be this dangerous,” I remembered Vyala saying to me that night as we watched the swollen moon rise over the great tree that marked Laverre City’s gym. It had been serene and majestic – a far cry from the horror that had taken place hours earlier – with Volbeats fluttering around the branches, visible only as soft balls of light from out distance away. No doubt they were attracted by the sweet scents of the Spritzees that liked to nest in the tree, or so I had been told.
I turned to look at her. The moonlight had stripped her fur of its rusty color and left it gray and indistinct. “I know…” I murmured, feeling my chest tightening at the memory of what happened back at the pokeball factory. It had been close, so very close. “This is one time though. I mean usually we get here after the organizations have their fun trying to destroy the world.”
Vyala glared, not appreciating my sad attempt at humor. Not that I could blame her, but while she dwelled on the memory I wanted to forget...
I remembered first coming to Kalos. Beautiful, pristine, sparkling Kalos with its ancient towns and ever-polite people and a history that was just as much a part of its identity as the rocks and air. The boat had anchored itself at our last stop: Cyllage City. All of the other travelling trainers were just as eager as I was and some of them immediately ran off to the gym to try and win their first Kalos badge.
I sat on the beach with Vyala and fished until I had caught a Dragalge, which I had seen swimming near the boat ever since we sailed close to the shoreline. It was my first pokemon from Kalos and my first taste of the new land that I was in.
~ ~ ~
I remembered the first time I saw Lumiose City, a crown with sat in the middle of the region with a perfectly polished jewel rising from its core. It was a blend of new and old, simultaneously modern and ancient. I remembered getting lost for the first time and experiencing the sounds and smells of the streets, of climbing to the top of Prism Tower to see the land below, of riding a Gogoat and seeing Professor Sycamore’s lab in front of me.
I remembered first meeting Moreg.
“Fennekin, I see,” Sycamore remarked as I hugged the little fox and scratched his ears playfully. “I thought so. You looked like the type of trainer who would love him.” He looked at Vyala as he said that.
I remembered cycling down the coast of Kalos, tasting the salt in the wind and listening to the cries of trainers as they had their battles in the water. I remembered meeting Team Flare for the first time soon after, they were so bright and loud and utterly despicable. The face of the first grunt I beat is fresh in my mind, along with Sycamore’s students as they came upon the scene. None of them had expected my pokemon to be that powerful.
Team Flare swore its vengeance on me that day, and I had laughed. I remembered going on my way, beating the gym soon after and adding a new badge to my rapidly growing collection.
I had been so foolish.
~ ~ ~
“How is she?”
“She doesn’t seem to be seriously injured, which is nothing short of a miracle considering how far she fell. There are some broken ribs here and a number of small lacerations; the poison is being filtered out as we speak. The hypothermia is by far the worst danger here.”
I heard a heartbroken keen.
I remembered the pokeball factory, fighting Team Flare on the crosswalks, our pokemon unable to maneuver in the cramped spaces. The grunts were yelling and I was winning, only minutes away from storming into the administrator’s office and rescuing him. I remember tasting victory before everything suddenly went to hell.
It took the form of a giant fireball that crashed down between our pokemon and spewed fire in every direction. I had to throw myself to the ground with Moreg to avoid being hit and Vyala just absorbed the fire, unfazed by the attack. Except the attack kept going, pressing on and on into the metal crosswalk until it suddenly melted, sending us all falling to the ground. I saw our attacker, the Houndoom, jump down with a Magnetric following it shortly after. I remembered seeing the Admin above our heads, laughing as she ordered her Houndoom to blast us all, and then the heat, the overwhelming heat from the Fire Blast scorching my skin and Vyala retaliating with her own. The Magnetric shot lightning at us and soon Moreg was trying to hold his own against the much stronger pokemon.
“Kill them,” I remembered the admin saying coldly, her words twisting my heart almost painfully.
I remembered the fire and the lightning, blasting out in all directions and then taking aim at us. At me. A wall of the two most destructive forces on earth heading right for us. Then I remembered the light, the bright flash of light in front of me and the pink aura surrounding it.
Then the fire and lighting stopped, held in place by a powerful Psychic.
“If Moreg hadn’t evolved in time… I don’t even dare to think of what might have happened.” Vyala shuddered, her paws clawing at the grass in frustration.
I felt my own anxiety sitting in my chest like a little clawed creature, digging into my lungs, but I tried to pretend I was alright. “Well it was a good thing that he did,” I said, trying to smile and make it look convincing. “I mean they stood no chance after that.”
I remembered the way Vyala looked at me after I said that, her eyes unreadable. I felt her stare through me rather than at me and she didn’t speak for a long time.
I remembered weeks later, after another mishap that almost ended in disaster, she looked at me with heartbroken eyes and said those four words that will forever be seared into my heart.
“I need to evolve.”
~ ~ ~
I remembered even later, standing in the bowels of Team Flare’s base and looking up at the giant cocoon in front of me as it pulsed sickly. All of the tubes attached to it pulsed as well, radiating something that was so dark and unsettling that I wanted to turn back and run the moment I stepped into the room. It wasn’t necessarily evil, just dark. It sickened me to my soul and Vyala growled at the prison, her fur standing up. I couldn’t tell whether Yveltal – that was its name, right? – was awake or not, and I wasn’t very interested to find out.
I remembered Team Flare coming to stop us, and us fighting them back. The chamber rocked from our battles and everyone had forgotten about the cocoon…that is until the cocoon started glowing. We all looked to it in amazement, realizing too late that it had been feeding off of the energy from our attacks, just as it burst to reveal Yveltal itself. It looked like it was sleeping, until it unfurled its body from its thousand year slumber.
Then it threw back its head and roared.
I will remember the sound in my nightmares. A terrible scream that split the air asunder and shook the floor beneath us, a sound so filled with hate and fury that I felt my legs give out under me in fear. The admins turned and fled while Serena and Calem came running in. I remembered how Yveltal snapped open its body to its full Y shape, dark energy blasting from it and throwing us all across the room and tearing out the tubes and wires that had been draining its energy. The floor trembled again as it landed, its enormous claws making the metal shriek as they gouged it open, and stared at us with cold, empty eyes.
Then it screamed again and I screamed with it, covering my ears from the awful noise that spoke of utter annihilation for…everything. I could feel the rage in the scream and the desire to destroy, to smite the world with its power. It was like a hurricane given sentience.
It glowed, its body sucking in the energy around it and then it took flight, its awful claws stretched out as if it wanted to snatch us all up and tear us apart. Darkness engulfed the room as even the lights were absorbed by the legendary’s insatiable hunger for energy and Yveltal seemed to be overflowing with it, a purplish aura seeping from its body. It flew high up in the chamber and shrieked one last time, cracking the room from ceiling to floor and announcing to the entire world its hate and anger.
“What’s happening?!”
“She is probably very disoriented right now…we’ll just increase the dosage here and she should be alright. Don’t worry, she’ll wake up in some hours.”
I remembered Yveltal screaming its horrible scream…Calem and Serena rushing forward to try and fight it and it swatted their pokemon away like toys. The Destruction Pokemon looked up, uninterested in us, and I remember how it shot darkness from its wings and tore the ceiling open, raining chunks of wiring and metal on top of us. Then it gathered energy in its core and blasted it out, ripping through all the floors of Team Flare’s base as if they were made of paper and not metal and concrete. I heard more screams – humans and pokemon alike – and warnings blaring throughout the base. The lights were flickering on and off and I could hear the sound of things collapsing around us. Yveltal simply flew out of the tunnel it created, except it was just slightly too small and it had to claw and batter its way through the passage, tearing apart the base even more.
I remembered Vyala running back to me as the last pointed tips of Yveltal’s tail disappeared. “We need to catch it!” she yelled, pawing at me.
I remembered in flashes. Climbing onto Skydive’s back, the wind tearing at us as we flew straight up in pursuit of Yveltal with Serena and Calem right behind us. The sky that had been bright blue moments before was now turning black from Yveltal’s dark aura, lightning crackling along the bellies of the clouds and rain pelting down within seconds. I remembered my Aerodactyl’s own cry, so weak in comparison to the world-shattering bellow of Yveltal, but strong enough to make the legendary turn.
I remembered holding on tightly as Skydive launched himself at Yveltal and they locked together in a tangle of claws, snapping at each other and tumbling through the sky while Vyala and I gripped his back. We tumbled, pelted by the rain and wind and falling slowly down to the earth. I remembered how Yveltal began to thrash and shriek as came closer to the ground and how Skydive held on, ready to suicide in order to bring the legendary down. Then we were thrown back, Serena and Calem crashing between us with their own pokemon and forcing us apart. The rain had made Skydive’s back slick and my fingers tried to keep their grip, but it was no use and Skydive disappeared from under me.
My most vivid memory was of falling. The rain stung my skin and the freezing wind cut straight through my clothes, and in the flash of lightning overhead I saw them all clearly, farther away than I thought they would be. Yveltal facing the smaller Talonflame and Altaria, roaring its challenge, and Skydive above and to my right nearly twenty feet away. Vyala was standing up on his back, her head whipping around as she searched the air. Then everything was dark again and became indistinct gray shapes in the sky.
I see her! Vyala’s mental scream blasted inside my head. Skydive, there! GO!
The screams of the battling pokemon drowned out everything, the world seemed to be filled with it, the fighting and the cries and the energy that was lighting the sky as far as the eye could see. First they were above, then they were below, then above and below and above and they made a sickening pinwheel of color that spun across my vision and made me sick. I fell and fell, eventually I had to scream to release the fear that was building up in my chest and in response I heard Vyala screaming back: Are you a flier or not?! Faster!
That moment seemed to be suspended forever, it stretched on for years and decades and the world froze in place. I’m going to die, I remembered thinking in one second of pure terror. It was a simple and unavoidable fact, as if saying the sun would rise tomorrow and that water is wet. I was going to die.
“Why?” I remembered asking, my heart tightening. It wasn’t anything to be sad or afraid of, but Vyala had never shown any desire to evolve and I had never cared about whether she evolved or not. What happened? Why had she changed so suddenly?
Vyala was still staring at me and I saw a grief too deep for words in there. I had never seen her so torn up over… well, anything, not this badly. She was looking at me like she was waiting for me to fall down dead right in front of her. “I need to be able to protect you,” she said. “And, so far, I’ve always been able to do that. I never needed to become more powerful because whatever we faced we could always handle on our own, together…but not anymore. Back at the pokeball factory I couldn’t do anything to stop Team Flare from attacking. At the gym, I was too small and slow to reach you in enough time. If Moreg hadn’t been around in both of those instances we would be dead.” I remembered how she spoke those words, scared and sad and above all else, bitter.
Each and every one of those words hit me like a fist and tears welled up in my eyes. Vyala, my best friend, my closest friend who had been by my side for as long as I could remember… she was never unsure of herself or her abilities, that just wasn’t her. I sat up and looked at her all the while. “Vyala,” I whispered, trying not to choke on my words, “you shouldn’t be jealous of Moreg or anything like that. He is just—“
“I am not jealous!” she barked at me, her tails fluffing up. There was something raw in her voice that was both anger and something else that I couldn’t name. “I know Moreg should protect you. All pokemon should protect their trainer. But I should be there first. The first thing I promised you and your family, our family, before we started our journey all those years ago, was that I would protect you. I should be the first and only line of defense that you need. What if Moreg had been in his pokeball at the time? What if you couldn’t send out another one of the team? I need to be stronger and faster and bigger…” Her eyes grew distant, but only for a moment, and she added in a soft voice: “I still won’t be able to protect you from everything, but from more things than I can now.”
For a few long minutes we were silent. I had no idea what to say to her, and what could I say? She was both right and wrong and at the same time I knew that no matter what I said I couldn’t convince her to change her mind. It was her decision to make, not mine.
But it felt wrong almost… she once told me that she had no desire to evolve ears ago. Years and years. Time changes people, a voice somewhere deep in me said, and I knew it was right. I knew I was not the same person I was years ago and neither was Vyala. We had both grown up and had been tempered by the world, for better or for worse depending on who you were asking. I nodded a little and reached for my bag nearby. “Are you sure about this?” I asked, looking back up at her.
She was surprised. “I thought you would put up an argument,” she said.
I shrugged, a rueful smile on my face. “I would like to, but I know you’re too stubborn to argue with. Besides, it’s not my place to tell you what you can and can’t do.” The stones I had in one pocket clinked together as I dug through them and eventually found the fire stone. It was warm to the touch as if it had been sitting in the sun all day and nestled perfectly in the palm of my hand. It was even glowing, just like a coal, from a small red sliver of light in its center. I held it out to Vyala, its golden-red light bathing her fur and making it look like it was on fire. “Still sure?” I asked again, feeling my smile turn a little sick.
She nodded. “I’ve thought about this longer than you can imagine,” she replied and put her paw against the stone.
I remembered both her and the stone turning a blinding white.
Everything snapped back into its normal time and I was falling again and I was being deafened by the fighting pokemon and the thunder. No, I thought and I remembered how my fear suddenly dissolved and was replaced by confidence. I was not going to die, Skydive was going to catch me and I would be just fine. I could always rely on Skydive for anything.
Just then my necklace started glowing… or rather, the stone inside the silver wiring that I had fashioned into a necklace started glowing. Above me I saw a similar pinprick of light, except this one grew brighter and brighter until I had to close my eyes from it. The black of my eyelids flashed red and an explosion boomed above me, something that had not been thunder or an attack, then I heard a shrill, primal scream that raked my ears and I covered them, half expecting blood to be pouring out of them. That had not been Yveltal’s scream, I knew that much.
I opened my eyes again to see Skydive above me, except it wasn’t Skydive, he had changed into something else. Something terrible. I barely had time to glimpse him, though, because a moment later his claws were around me, snatching me out of the air almost painfully. I remembered clinging to one of his claws while Vyala barked at me, her voice lost in the rain and wind. Skydive flapped his wings frantically, pulling out of his dive and over all of the chaos above us I could hear the crash of waves below.
I knew I had been falling for an awful long time but I didn’t realize we were that close to the ocean.
There was a noise nearby, something that sounded like sucking…or air whooshing down a tunnel except a hundred times louder. I felt rather than saw Skydive’s head turn and he jerked around so hard that I was smacked against his feet; it was a good thing that he did because a red and black beam of energy flew right past us and hit the ocean, sending a huge spray of water into the air. I looked and saw Yveltal diving right at us with Serena and Calem close enough behind it to attack its tail claws, but it was ignoring them. Skydive roared his challenge, his cry much sharper and more resonating than it usually was, and he shot forward.
Chibi! Vyala was shouting in my head again. Your pokeballs, we need Shingala!
Of course! It hit me like a slap, I had completely forgotten about all of my other pokemon. I dug frantically in my pocket and scooped them all up in my hand, unsure of which one was the right ball. Frantically peering at them in the dim light, I tried to see the patterns when Yveltal slammed into us, its huge claws gripping deep into Skydive’s body. I remembered how we tumbled in the air and how I felt the pokeballs slipping out of my hands. I tried to hold onto them but they were too wet and slid right between my fingers, into the empty air. Suddenly the darkness had been lit up by Vyala spitting out a massive Flamethrower that bathed Yveltal in curling tongues of fire. The bird shrieked and let go of Skydive and in the sudden light I could see all of my pokeballs in the air, falling just an arm’s length away. I remembered seeing Shingala’s net ball, so close and yet so far away, and I remembered reaching for it. It was so, so far… my fingertips barely touched it and I pushed myself forward to grab it; my fingers closed around it tightly until I realized that I was sliding right out of Skydive’s grip that had been loosened in the brief fight with Yveltal.
Vyala screamed my name as I fell again, but this time I was not afraid. The ocean was right below me and I enlarged Shingala’s ball before throwing it. I hit the water and the cold jolted into my body almost like a shock, instantly I was frozen down to my bones and somehow I had the sense to kick out and try to swim for the surface. I heard a huge splash somewhere to my left and knew it had to be Shingala, seconds later her confused cry confirmed it. I opened my mouth to call her and water rushed in the moment I did. I vividly remember the taste of salt and how my throat closed as I choked on it. I remembered how my lungs burned, how I desperately tried to cough it back up and the how the water swallowed me again as I stopped swimming. Again I tried to swim and barely made it to the surface, the cold draining the energy from my body and soon it became an effort just to move. Above me I could hear crackling and angry roars as the four beasts fought each other, all punctuated by the rain and thunder. Everything became blurred again as snatches came back to me.
I remembered trying to swim, looking for my Lapras but I was blind in the darkness. I remembered the waves pushing me back under and tossing me around like a doll until my lungs were on fire and I felt like screaming. I remembered breaking the surface over and over until I really was on fire, my legs seared with this unimaginable pain as if someone was holding red hot pokers against my skin and I had to scream, I couldn’t help it. I kicked out and I was horrified that my legs hit something fleshy and the pain increased, like knives slowly slicing my skin open and I kept screaming until I gagged on salt water again. The pain wrapped itself higher, on my thighs and the fire turned all the noise into a high pitched ringing that drowned out everything while my vision started to go black. I remembered the cry of rage that jerked me away from the darkness just as I was jerked back underwater. There was something huge nearby and I got the sense that it was fighting something else when the fire vanished. It was still there and my legs hurt like hell but it was not this all-encompassing pain that drove all sane thoughts from my head.
Somehow I made it to the surface, but for one last time. I remembered trying to swim but my legs refused to move and I felt sluggish all over… sick, actually. I remembered the adrenaline slowly draining out of my body to be replaced by fear as I sunk for the last time into the deep. I tried to swim with my arms to no avail and kicking out my legs sent the fire racing along my skin again. It was cold, so very cold down here…
I remembered the gentle bump of a solid surface beneath me, and then I was lying across something. The water fell away completely and I could finally breathe without to worrying about keeping myself afloat. It took me a few long moments to realize the thing I was laying on was actually a shell and that Shingala’s face was only a foot from mine, her breath blowing into my hair. I remembered reaching out and rubbing her snout while some distant part of me was alarmed at how much energy it took. “Thanks Shingala,” I whispered to her. “You were great.” I heard her make some sort of alarmed noise but it seemed to be coming from very far away and I finally felt the darkness overtake me.
“It’s a good thing—well, not good but very fortunate—that she was attacked by a Tentacruel rather than a Dragalge. Their poison is known to eat through the hulls of ships so she was very lucky that she didn’t run into one of those.”
“Will she be alright, though?”
“It’s a bit too early to say now but I’m confident she will be. You were all very smart to bring her here as soon as possible so the poison could not do lasting damage. Blissey just needs to come in every hour for another Heal Bell treatment and I’m sure within a few days she will be good as new.”
The voices were strange and echoing as if I heard them from a long way off… as if I was in some sort of tunnel. I recognized them yet I didn’t. It did not matter though, I was resting against something very warm and very soft and I snuggled into it, letting the voices drift away in the distance until they were a dull white noise, like the sound of the sea.
I remembered the sound of the sea waking me up. It took me a long while to claw my way back to consciousness since I kept falling back down, but the insistent pounding of the waves brought me back every time. Sand was digging into one side of my face, a sharp contrast to the soft warmth that was everywhere else. I remembered thinking to myself that I should actually be freezing because I had just been in the water and that was what made my eyes snap open in alarm. My face was buried in a mound of cream colored fur that was so thick it was nearly suffocating. I turned my head weakly, looking up towards the sky to see that it was no longer raining, although the dark clouds remained.
Something nuzzled my face and I turned to see Vyala staring at me, the scarlet depths of her eyes more worried than I had ever seen them before. She whimpered softly and licked my face and I remembered how I realized that she was actually curled around me, all nine of her tails draping across my body to form the softest and warmest blanket I had ever had. A similar whimper came from above and I saw Shingala peer down at me from the edge of my vision.
I remembered a voice calling my name from far away. My real name. My legs started to burn again, as if suddenly remembering that they were supposed to be hurting, and I couldn’t stop the moan from escaping my throat nor the shiver that wracked my body. It was a slow, pulsing ache that was travelling everywhere, already curling up my chest and face, another fire that slowly peeled off my skin from underneath. I whimpered and fell forward, gratefully letting the darkness take me away to a place that was free of pain, free of everything. I vaguely remember hearing Vyala’s bark of alarm before I knew nothing else.
There were times when I heard things from somewhere else, an outside place that wasn’t my perfect darkness. But when those things came so did the pain, as if there were wasps stinging me everywhere. It was the pain from earlier and I never paid attention to the voices for long, sinking back into the darkness of my memories and dreams. Until eventually, after what must have been a long time but I honestly have no idea, the music came to me. It was an airy silver-blue sound that fluttered into existence, winding around me in the darkness. It didn’t drive the black depths away but turned it, gave it rhythm and movement, and I felt myself turning with it. The music flowed over me and wherever it went it left a cool balm until there was nothing that hurt, the streaks of red fire-pain had been soothed and now I was drifting aimlessly, being led by the music. It pulsed with each beat, flying through me and into me, rebuilding and revitalizing, gently pulling me up and up. I went along with it and even broke away and pushed myself up. I was feeling alert now, awake, and then I realized that the darkness was not soft at all and that I was laying against something soft. The darkness was really just my closed eyes and the music gently beckoned for me to open them.
When I opened my eyes I was struck by the feeling of déjà vu as a wall of creamy fur obscured all of my vision. This time, however, my head was clear and there was no pain at all. I still sat up as carefully as I could as the last note of the music ended; it was coming from a Blissey that was standing in the corner of the room, and she made a happy chirping noise when it saw that I was awake. She rushed over quickly and patted my arm, which I noticed had a needle in it that was attached to an IV. Blissey made a few more happy noises and then hurried out of the room, to get the nurse probably.
I felt Vyala pressing against my side and I laid back down, looking up at her. “How long was I out?” I asked.
“Just two days,” she said softly, pressing closer to me. “You faded in and out and whenever you were waking up you started whining and moving around. The nurses didn’t want you to disconnect the needle by accident so they kept sedating you while Blissey did her thing.” I felt her sigh and she laid her head on my chest, looking at me in concern. “That was very…close.” She spoke her words haltingly, her tails swishing a little.
I reached out and ran my fingers through the crest of fur on her head. “I know…” I murmured, letting my hand rest in the silky softness for a moment. “It was bad.”
Vyala snorted. “More than ‘bad,’ I would say,” she said dryly.
I flicked her ear. “So it was a Tentacruel that attacked me? I think I heard someone saying something like that.”
“Mhmm. It was probably disturbed by the storm and you happened to get in its way. Shingala fought it off and then carried you back to shore.”
I was going to ask more when Nurse Joy came in with Blissey behind her, and I could hear Serena and Calem behind them. There were a lot of people in the hall, if the number of voices was anything to go by, but Nurse Joy shooed them away and told them that they would not be coming in until she said so. She shut the door and then came to the side of the bed. “How are you feeling?” she asked me.
“A lot better, thanks to your Blissey,” I said truthfully, smiling at the happy pink pokemon, who smiled back.
“Ahh good, she sang the rest of the poison out of you with this last session and you should be healthy, now.” Joy examined her clipboard and then the IV bag. “I would take this out but you haven’t had solid food for two days, so we’ll bring you something to eat and wait until tomorrow, alright?”
I nodded and she went back to the door and opened it, telling the people in the hall sternly that they could visit after I had eaten something and they had better keep the noise to a minimum or else. The “food,” if it could even be classified as that, was nothing more than a simple broth, although what I had learned from my time in Kalos is that no matter what the people cooked here they could make it taste amazing. “What happened to Yveltal, though?” I asked Vyala in the one moment I paused in my eating. I didn’t want to drink the stuff too fast only for it to come back up later. “Did you guys beat it?”
She kneaded the bed a little, looking uneasy. “Well…when Skydive turned into whatever he did--Serena said he mega evolved--the fight certainly became a lot easier, but we didn’t drive him off. Another being showed up.” She saw my confused look and went on. “I can’t say what it was because it stood on the shore, but I know it was glowing with all the colors of the rainbow and it seemed very bright. It had some sort of horns or antlers, and it called out to Yveltal. When it heard the other pokemon it ignored us completely and flew to the shore and then the two of them started fighting. They chased each other all across the shore and went further inland until they were gone. We would have followed but you were hurt very badly and we went back.”
For some reason the story unsettled me and I had no idea why. “Did anyone else see them?”
“No,” Vyala said. “There hasn’t been a trace of either two pokemon since then. It seems wherever the ancient ones rested before Lysandre disturbed their peace, they returned there.”
“Let’s hope they stay there,” I said, sipping the last dregs of broth from the bowl. “I wouldn’t want anything else to muck up our stay here.”
Vyala barked out a harsh laugh. “As if anything else could,” she said bitterly. “Tainted memories will always remain here.”
I petted her again. “Oh don’t be like that,” I told her. “Just a few bumps in the road.” She gave me The Look and I had to laugh while I pressed the button for the nurse to come back. Now I was ready to be bombarded by visitors.
I turned to look at her. The moonlight had stripped her fur of its rusty color and left it gray and indistinct. “I know…” I murmured, feeling my chest tightening at the memory of what happened back at the pokeball factory. It had been close, so very close. “This is one time though. I mean usually we get here after the organizations have their fun trying to destroy the world.”
Vyala glared, not appreciating my sad attempt at humor. Not that I could blame her, but while she dwelled on the memory I wanted to forget...
~ ~ ~
I remembered first coming to Kalos. Beautiful, pristine, sparkling Kalos with its ancient towns and ever-polite people and a history that was just as much a part of its identity as the rocks and air. The boat had anchored itself at our last stop: Cyllage City. All of the other travelling trainers were just as eager as I was and some of them immediately ran off to the gym to try and win their first Kalos badge.
I sat on the beach with Vyala and fished until I had caught a Dragalge, which I had seen swimming near the boat ever since we sailed close to the shoreline. It was my first pokemon from Kalos and my first taste of the new land that I was in.
~ ~ ~
I remembered first meeting Moreg.
“Fennekin, I see,” Sycamore remarked as I hugged the little fox and scratched his ears playfully. “I thought so. You looked like the type of trainer who would love him.” He looked at Vyala as he said that.
~ ~ ~
I remembered cycling down the coast of Kalos, tasting the salt in the wind and listening to the cries of trainers as they had their battles in the water. I remembered meeting Team Flare for the first time soon after, they were so bright and loud and utterly despicable. The face of the first grunt I beat is fresh in my mind, along with Sycamore’s students as they came upon the scene. None of them had expected my pokemon to be that powerful.
Team Flare swore its vengeance on me that day, and I had laughed. I remembered going on my way, beating the gym soon after and adding a new badge to my rapidly growing collection.
I had been so foolish.
~ ~ ~
“How is she?”
“She doesn’t seem to be seriously injured, which is nothing short of a miracle considering how far she fell. There are some broken ribs here and a number of small lacerations; the poison is being filtered out as we speak. The hypothermia is by far the worst danger here.”
I heard a heartbroken keen.
~ ~ ~
I remembered the pokeball factory, fighting Team Flare on the crosswalks, our pokemon unable to maneuver in the cramped spaces. The grunts were yelling and I was winning, only minutes away from storming into the administrator’s office and rescuing him. I remember tasting victory before everything suddenly went to hell.
It took the form of a giant fireball that crashed down between our pokemon and spewed fire in every direction. I had to throw myself to the ground with Moreg to avoid being hit and Vyala just absorbed the fire, unfazed by the attack. Except the attack kept going, pressing on and on into the metal crosswalk until it suddenly melted, sending us all falling to the ground. I saw our attacker, the Houndoom, jump down with a Magnetric following it shortly after. I remembered seeing the Admin above our heads, laughing as she ordered her Houndoom to blast us all, and then the heat, the overwhelming heat from the Fire Blast scorching my skin and Vyala retaliating with her own. The Magnetric shot lightning at us and soon Moreg was trying to hold his own against the much stronger pokemon.
“Kill them,” I remembered the admin saying coldly, her words twisting my heart almost painfully.
I remembered the fire and the lightning, blasting out in all directions and then taking aim at us. At me. A wall of the two most destructive forces on earth heading right for us. Then I remembered the light, the bright flash of light in front of me and the pink aura surrounding it.
Then the fire and lighting stopped, held in place by a powerful Psychic.
~ ~ ~
“If Moreg hadn’t evolved in time… I don’t even dare to think of what might have happened.” Vyala shuddered, her paws clawing at the grass in frustration.
I felt my own anxiety sitting in my chest like a little clawed creature, digging into my lungs, but I tried to pretend I was alright. “Well it was a good thing that he did,” I said, trying to smile and make it look convincing. “I mean they stood no chance after that.”
I remembered the way Vyala looked at me after I said that, her eyes unreadable. I felt her stare through me rather than at me and she didn’t speak for a long time.
~ ~ ~
I remembered weeks later, after another mishap that almost ended in disaster, she looked at me with heartbroken eyes and said those four words that will forever be seared into my heart.
“I need to evolve.”
~ ~ ~
I remembered even later, standing in the bowels of Team Flare’s base and looking up at the giant cocoon in front of me as it pulsed sickly. All of the tubes attached to it pulsed as well, radiating something that was so dark and unsettling that I wanted to turn back and run the moment I stepped into the room. It wasn’t necessarily evil, just dark. It sickened me to my soul and Vyala growled at the prison, her fur standing up. I couldn’t tell whether Yveltal – that was its name, right? – was awake or not, and I wasn’t very interested to find out.
I remembered Team Flare coming to stop us, and us fighting them back. The chamber rocked from our battles and everyone had forgotten about the cocoon…that is until the cocoon started glowing. We all looked to it in amazement, realizing too late that it had been feeding off of the energy from our attacks, just as it burst to reveal Yveltal itself. It looked like it was sleeping, until it unfurled its body from its thousand year slumber.
Then it threw back its head and roared.
I will remember the sound in my nightmares. A terrible scream that split the air asunder and shook the floor beneath us, a sound so filled with hate and fury that I felt my legs give out under me in fear. The admins turned and fled while Serena and Calem came running in. I remembered how Yveltal snapped open its body to its full Y shape, dark energy blasting from it and throwing us all across the room and tearing out the tubes and wires that had been draining its energy. The floor trembled again as it landed, its enormous claws making the metal shriek as they gouged it open, and stared at us with cold, empty eyes.
Then it screamed again and I screamed with it, covering my ears from the awful noise that spoke of utter annihilation for…everything. I could feel the rage in the scream and the desire to destroy, to smite the world with its power. It was like a hurricane given sentience.
It glowed, its body sucking in the energy around it and then it took flight, its awful claws stretched out as if it wanted to snatch us all up and tear us apart. Darkness engulfed the room as even the lights were absorbed by the legendary’s insatiable hunger for energy and Yveltal seemed to be overflowing with it, a purplish aura seeping from its body. It flew high up in the chamber and shrieked one last time, cracking the room from ceiling to floor and announcing to the entire world its hate and anger.
~ ~ ~
“What’s happening?!”
“She is probably very disoriented right now…we’ll just increase the dosage here and she should be alright. Don’t worry, she’ll wake up in some hours.”
~ ~ ~
I remembered Yveltal screaming its horrible scream…Calem and Serena rushing forward to try and fight it and it swatted their pokemon away like toys. The Destruction Pokemon looked up, uninterested in us, and I remember how it shot darkness from its wings and tore the ceiling open, raining chunks of wiring and metal on top of us. Then it gathered energy in its core and blasted it out, ripping through all the floors of Team Flare’s base as if they were made of paper and not metal and concrete. I heard more screams – humans and pokemon alike – and warnings blaring throughout the base. The lights were flickering on and off and I could hear the sound of things collapsing around us. Yveltal simply flew out of the tunnel it created, except it was just slightly too small and it had to claw and batter its way through the passage, tearing apart the base even more.
I remembered Vyala running back to me as the last pointed tips of Yveltal’s tail disappeared. “We need to catch it!” she yelled, pawing at me.
I remembered in flashes. Climbing onto Skydive’s back, the wind tearing at us as we flew straight up in pursuit of Yveltal with Serena and Calem right behind us. The sky that had been bright blue moments before was now turning black from Yveltal’s dark aura, lightning crackling along the bellies of the clouds and rain pelting down within seconds. I remembered my Aerodactyl’s own cry, so weak in comparison to the world-shattering bellow of Yveltal, but strong enough to make the legendary turn.
I remembered holding on tightly as Skydive launched himself at Yveltal and they locked together in a tangle of claws, snapping at each other and tumbling through the sky while Vyala and I gripped his back. We tumbled, pelted by the rain and wind and falling slowly down to the earth. I remembered how Yveltal began to thrash and shriek as came closer to the ground and how Skydive held on, ready to suicide in order to bring the legendary down. Then we were thrown back, Serena and Calem crashing between us with their own pokemon and forcing us apart. The rain had made Skydive’s back slick and my fingers tried to keep their grip, but it was no use and Skydive disappeared from under me.
My most vivid memory was of falling. The rain stung my skin and the freezing wind cut straight through my clothes, and in the flash of lightning overhead I saw them all clearly, farther away than I thought they would be. Yveltal facing the smaller Talonflame and Altaria, roaring its challenge, and Skydive above and to my right nearly twenty feet away. Vyala was standing up on his back, her head whipping around as she searched the air. Then everything was dark again and became indistinct gray shapes in the sky.
I see her! Vyala’s mental scream blasted inside my head. Skydive, there! GO!
The screams of the battling pokemon drowned out everything, the world seemed to be filled with it, the fighting and the cries and the energy that was lighting the sky as far as the eye could see. First they were above, then they were below, then above and below and above and they made a sickening pinwheel of color that spun across my vision and made me sick. I fell and fell, eventually I had to scream to release the fear that was building up in my chest and in response I heard Vyala screaming back: Are you a flier or not?! Faster!
That moment seemed to be suspended forever, it stretched on for years and decades and the world froze in place. I’m going to die, I remembered thinking in one second of pure terror. It was a simple and unavoidable fact, as if saying the sun would rise tomorrow and that water is wet. I was going to die.
~ ~ ~
“Why?” I remembered asking, my heart tightening. It wasn’t anything to be sad or afraid of, but Vyala had never shown any desire to evolve and I had never cared about whether she evolved or not. What happened? Why had she changed so suddenly?
Vyala was still staring at me and I saw a grief too deep for words in there. I had never seen her so torn up over… well, anything, not this badly. She was looking at me like she was waiting for me to fall down dead right in front of her. “I need to be able to protect you,” she said. “And, so far, I’ve always been able to do that. I never needed to become more powerful because whatever we faced we could always handle on our own, together…but not anymore. Back at the pokeball factory I couldn’t do anything to stop Team Flare from attacking. At the gym, I was too small and slow to reach you in enough time. If Moreg hadn’t been around in both of those instances we would be dead.” I remembered how she spoke those words, scared and sad and above all else, bitter.
Each and every one of those words hit me like a fist and tears welled up in my eyes. Vyala, my best friend, my closest friend who had been by my side for as long as I could remember… she was never unsure of herself or her abilities, that just wasn’t her. I sat up and looked at her all the while. “Vyala,” I whispered, trying not to choke on my words, “you shouldn’t be jealous of Moreg or anything like that. He is just—“
“I am not jealous!” she barked at me, her tails fluffing up. There was something raw in her voice that was both anger and something else that I couldn’t name. “I know Moreg should protect you. All pokemon should protect their trainer. But I should be there first. The first thing I promised you and your family, our family, before we started our journey all those years ago, was that I would protect you. I should be the first and only line of defense that you need. What if Moreg had been in his pokeball at the time? What if you couldn’t send out another one of the team? I need to be stronger and faster and bigger…” Her eyes grew distant, but only for a moment, and she added in a soft voice: “I still won’t be able to protect you from everything, but from more things than I can now.”
For a few long minutes we were silent. I had no idea what to say to her, and what could I say? She was both right and wrong and at the same time I knew that no matter what I said I couldn’t convince her to change her mind. It was her decision to make, not mine.
But it felt wrong almost… she once told me that she had no desire to evolve ears ago. Years and years. Time changes people, a voice somewhere deep in me said, and I knew it was right. I knew I was not the same person I was years ago and neither was Vyala. We had both grown up and had been tempered by the world, for better or for worse depending on who you were asking. I nodded a little and reached for my bag nearby. “Are you sure about this?” I asked, looking back up at her.
She was surprised. “I thought you would put up an argument,” she said.
I shrugged, a rueful smile on my face. “I would like to, but I know you’re too stubborn to argue with. Besides, it’s not my place to tell you what you can and can’t do.” The stones I had in one pocket clinked together as I dug through them and eventually found the fire stone. It was warm to the touch as if it had been sitting in the sun all day and nestled perfectly in the palm of my hand. It was even glowing, just like a coal, from a small red sliver of light in its center. I held it out to Vyala, its golden-red light bathing her fur and making it look like it was on fire. “Still sure?” I asked again, feeling my smile turn a little sick.
She nodded. “I’ve thought about this longer than you can imagine,” she replied and put her paw against the stone.
I remembered both her and the stone turning a blinding white.
~ ~ ~
Everything snapped back into its normal time and I was falling again and I was being deafened by the fighting pokemon and the thunder. No, I thought and I remembered how my fear suddenly dissolved and was replaced by confidence. I was not going to die, Skydive was going to catch me and I would be just fine. I could always rely on Skydive for anything.
Just then my necklace started glowing… or rather, the stone inside the silver wiring that I had fashioned into a necklace started glowing. Above me I saw a similar pinprick of light, except this one grew brighter and brighter until I had to close my eyes from it. The black of my eyelids flashed red and an explosion boomed above me, something that had not been thunder or an attack, then I heard a shrill, primal scream that raked my ears and I covered them, half expecting blood to be pouring out of them. That had not been Yveltal’s scream, I knew that much.
I opened my eyes again to see Skydive above me, except it wasn’t Skydive, he had changed into something else. Something terrible. I barely had time to glimpse him, though, because a moment later his claws were around me, snatching me out of the air almost painfully. I remembered clinging to one of his claws while Vyala barked at me, her voice lost in the rain and wind. Skydive flapped his wings frantically, pulling out of his dive and over all of the chaos above us I could hear the crash of waves below.
I knew I had been falling for an awful long time but I didn’t realize we were that close to the ocean.
There was a noise nearby, something that sounded like sucking…or air whooshing down a tunnel except a hundred times louder. I felt rather than saw Skydive’s head turn and he jerked around so hard that I was smacked against his feet; it was a good thing that he did because a red and black beam of energy flew right past us and hit the ocean, sending a huge spray of water into the air. I looked and saw Yveltal diving right at us with Serena and Calem close enough behind it to attack its tail claws, but it was ignoring them. Skydive roared his challenge, his cry much sharper and more resonating than it usually was, and he shot forward.
Chibi! Vyala was shouting in my head again. Your pokeballs, we need Shingala!
Of course! It hit me like a slap, I had completely forgotten about all of my other pokemon. I dug frantically in my pocket and scooped them all up in my hand, unsure of which one was the right ball. Frantically peering at them in the dim light, I tried to see the patterns when Yveltal slammed into us, its huge claws gripping deep into Skydive’s body. I remembered how we tumbled in the air and how I felt the pokeballs slipping out of my hands. I tried to hold onto them but they were too wet and slid right between my fingers, into the empty air. Suddenly the darkness had been lit up by Vyala spitting out a massive Flamethrower that bathed Yveltal in curling tongues of fire. The bird shrieked and let go of Skydive and in the sudden light I could see all of my pokeballs in the air, falling just an arm’s length away. I remembered seeing Shingala’s net ball, so close and yet so far away, and I remembered reaching for it. It was so, so far… my fingertips barely touched it and I pushed myself forward to grab it; my fingers closed around it tightly until I realized that I was sliding right out of Skydive’s grip that had been loosened in the brief fight with Yveltal.
Vyala screamed my name as I fell again, but this time I was not afraid. The ocean was right below me and I enlarged Shingala’s ball before throwing it. I hit the water and the cold jolted into my body almost like a shock, instantly I was frozen down to my bones and somehow I had the sense to kick out and try to swim for the surface. I heard a huge splash somewhere to my left and knew it had to be Shingala, seconds later her confused cry confirmed it. I opened my mouth to call her and water rushed in the moment I did. I vividly remember the taste of salt and how my throat closed as I choked on it. I remembered how my lungs burned, how I desperately tried to cough it back up and the how the water swallowed me again as I stopped swimming. Again I tried to swim and barely made it to the surface, the cold draining the energy from my body and soon it became an effort just to move. Above me I could hear crackling and angry roars as the four beasts fought each other, all punctuated by the rain and thunder. Everything became blurred again as snatches came back to me.
I remembered trying to swim, looking for my Lapras but I was blind in the darkness. I remembered the waves pushing me back under and tossing me around like a doll until my lungs were on fire and I felt like screaming. I remembered breaking the surface over and over until I really was on fire, my legs seared with this unimaginable pain as if someone was holding red hot pokers against my skin and I had to scream, I couldn’t help it. I kicked out and I was horrified that my legs hit something fleshy and the pain increased, like knives slowly slicing my skin open and I kept screaming until I gagged on salt water again. The pain wrapped itself higher, on my thighs and the fire turned all the noise into a high pitched ringing that drowned out everything while my vision started to go black. I remembered the cry of rage that jerked me away from the darkness just as I was jerked back underwater. There was something huge nearby and I got the sense that it was fighting something else when the fire vanished. It was still there and my legs hurt like hell but it was not this all-encompassing pain that drove all sane thoughts from my head.
Somehow I made it to the surface, but for one last time. I remembered trying to swim but my legs refused to move and I felt sluggish all over… sick, actually. I remembered the adrenaline slowly draining out of my body to be replaced by fear as I sunk for the last time into the deep. I tried to swim with my arms to no avail and kicking out my legs sent the fire racing along my skin again. It was cold, so very cold down here…
I remembered the gentle bump of a solid surface beneath me, and then I was lying across something. The water fell away completely and I could finally breathe without to worrying about keeping myself afloat. It took me a few long moments to realize the thing I was laying on was actually a shell and that Shingala’s face was only a foot from mine, her breath blowing into my hair. I remembered reaching out and rubbing her snout while some distant part of me was alarmed at how much energy it took. “Thanks Shingala,” I whispered to her. “You were great.” I heard her make some sort of alarmed noise but it seemed to be coming from very far away and I finally felt the darkness overtake me.
~ ~ ~
“It’s a good thing—well, not good but very fortunate—that she was attacked by a Tentacruel rather than a Dragalge. Their poison is known to eat through the hulls of ships so she was very lucky that she didn’t run into one of those.”
“Will she be alright, though?”
“It’s a bit too early to say now but I’m confident she will be. You were all very smart to bring her here as soon as possible so the poison could not do lasting damage. Blissey just needs to come in every hour for another Heal Bell treatment and I’m sure within a few days she will be good as new.”
The voices were strange and echoing as if I heard them from a long way off… as if I was in some sort of tunnel. I recognized them yet I didn’t. It did not matter though, I was resting against something very warm and very soft and I snuggled into it, letting the voices drift away in the distance until they were a dull white noise, like the sound of the sea.
~ ~ ~
I remembered the sound of the sea waking me up. It took me a long while to claw my way back to consciousness since I kept falling back down, but the insistent pounding of the waves brought me back every time. Sand was digging into one side of my face, a sharp contrast to the soft warmth that was everywhere else. I remembered thinking to myself that I should actually be freezing because I had just been in the water and that was what made my eyes snap open in alarm. My face was buried in a mound of cream colored fur that was so thick it was nearly suffocating. I turned my head weakly, looking up towards the sky to see that it was no longer raining, although the dark clouds remained.
Something nuzzled my face and I turned to see Vyala staring at me, the scarlet depths of her eyes more worried than I had ever seen them before. She whimpered softly and licked my face and I remembered how I realized that she was actually curled around me, all nine of her tails draping across my body to form the softest and warmest blanket I had ever had. A similar whimper came from above and I saw Shingala peer down at me from the edge of my vision.
I remembered a voice calling my name from far away. My real name. My legs started to burn again, as if suddenly remembering that they were supposed to be hurting, and I couldn’t stop the moan from escaping my throat nor the shiver that wracked my body. It was a slow, pulsing ache that was travelling everywhere, already curling up my chest and face, another fire that slowly peeled off my skin from underneath. I whimpered and fell forward, gratefully letting the darkness take me away to a place that was free of pain, free of everything. I vaguely remember hearing Vyala’s bark of alarm before I knew nothing else.
~ ~ ~
There were times when I heard things from somewhere else, an outside place that wasn’t my perfect darkness. But when those things came so did the pain, as if there were wasps stinging me everywhere. It was the pain from earlier and I never paid attention to the voices for long, sinking back into the darkness of my memories and dreams. Until eventually, after what must have been a long time but I honestly have no idea, the music came to me. It was an airy silver-blue sound that fluttered into existence, winding around me in the darkness. It didn’t drive the black depths away but turned it, gave it rhythm and movement, and I felt myself turning with it. The music flowed over me and wherever it went it left a cool balm until there was nothing that hurt, the streaks of red fire-pain had been soothed and now I was drifting aimlessly, being led by the music. It pulsed with each beat, flying through me and into me, rebuilding and revitalizing, gently pulling me up and up. I went along with it and even broke away and pushed myself up. I was feeling alert now, awake, and then I realized that the darkness was not soft at all and that I was laying against something soft. The darkness was really just my closed eyes and the music gently beckoned for me to open them.
~ ~ ~
When I opened my eyes I was struck by the feeling of déjà vu as a wall of creamy fur obscured all of my vision. This time, however, my head was clear and there was no pain at all. I still sat up as carefully as I could as the last note of the music ended; it was coming from a Blissey that was standing in the corner of the room, and she made a happy chirping noise when it saw that I was awake. She rushed over quickly and patted my arm, which I noticed had a needle in it that was attached to an IV. Blissey made a few more happy noises and then hurried out of the room, to get the nurse probably.
I felt Vyala pressing against my side and I laid back down, looking up at her. “How long was I out?” I asked.
“Just two days,” she said softly, pressing closer to me. “You faded in and out and whenever you were waking up you started whining and moving around. The nurses didn’t want you to disconnect the needle by accident so they kept sedating you while Blissey did her thing.” I felt her sigh and she laid her head on my chest, looking at me in concern. “That was very…close.” She spoke her words haltingly, her tails swishing a little.
I reached out and ran my fingers through the crest of fur on her head. “I know…” I murmured, letting my hand rest in the silky softness for a moment. “It was bad.”
Vyala snorted. “More than ‘bad,’ I would say,” she said dryly.
I flicked her ear. “So it was a Tentacruel that attacked me? I think I heard someone saying something like that.”
“Mhmm. It was probably disturbed by the storm and you happened to get in its way. Shingala fought it off and then carried you back to shore.”
I was going to ask more when Nurse Joy came in with Blissey behind her, and I could hear Serena and Calem behind them. There were a lot of people in the hall, if the number of voices was anything to go by, but Nurse Joy shooed them away and told them that they would not be coming in until she said so. She shut the door and then came to the side of the bed. “How are you feeling?” she asked me.
“A lot better, thanks to your Blissey,” I said truthfully, smiling at the happy pink pokemon, who smiled back.
“Ahh good, she sang the rest of the poison out of you with this last session and you should be healthy, now.” Joy examined her clipboard and then the IV bag. “I would take this out but you haven’t had solid food for two days, so we’ll bring you something to eat and wait until tomorrow, alright?”
I nodded and she went back to the door and opened it, telling the people in the hall sternly that they could visit after I had eaten something and they had better keep the noise to a minimum or else. The “food,” if it could even be classified as that, was nothing more than a simple broth, although what I had learned from my time in Kalos is that no matter what the people cooked here they could make it taste amazing. “What happened to Yveltal, though?” I asked Vyala in the one moment I paused in my eating. I didn’t want to drink the stuff too fast only for it to come back up later. “Did you guys beat it?”
She kneaded the bed a little, looking uneasy. “Well…when Skydive turned into whatever he did--Serena said he mega evolved--the fight certainly became a lot easier, but we didn’t drive him off. Another being showed up.” She saw my confused look and went on. “I can’t say what it was because it stood on the shore, but I know it was glowing with all the colors of the rainbow and it seemed very bright. It had some sort of horns or antlers, and it called out to Yveltal. When it heard the other pokemon it ignored us completely and flew to the shore and then the two of them started fighting. They chased each other all across the shore and went further inland until they were gone. We would have followed but you were hurt very badly and we went back.”
For some reason the story unsettled me and I had no idea why. “Did anyone else see them?”
“No,” Vyala said. “There hasn’t been a trace of either two pokemon since then. It seems wherever the ancient ones rested before Lysandre disturbed their peace, they returned there.”
“Let’s hope they stay there,” I said, sipping the last dregs of broth from the bowl. “I wouldn’t want anything else to muck up our stay here.”
Vyala barked out a harsh laugh. “As if anything else could,” she said bitterly. “Tainted memories will always remain here.”
I petted her again. “Oh don’t be like that,” I told her. “Just a few bumps in the road.” She gave me The Look and I had to laugh while I pressed the button for the nurse to come back. Now I was ready to be bombarded by visitors.
