The shrubbery scratched at Sun's exposed ankles as he took off into the depths of the undergrowth, the Normalium Z clutched in his quivering fist. In the pocket of his capri shorts, its complement the broken bracelet bit into his lower thigh, almost itchy and nagging.
This couldn't be happening.
This couldn't be happening.
But - he'd anticipated this, hadn't he? The Tapu had wanted him this whole time, wanted him gone... for Nebby's malevolence, for Lillie's naivete, and, most pertinently, for his own cowardice and his insatiable longing for all the world had forbidden him.
Mud streaked up and down his calves and crusted the soles of his sneakers, but his pervasive sense of uncleanliness didn't stem from the filth of his surroundings; it was the CAVERN's darkness clinging to him, pouring into him, stealing his breath and corroding his sense of Sun.
Thick rat tails like wires coiling around his ankles, chapped and scaly... he halted, shivering at the intrusive memory, and risked a glance back over his shoulder. Any attempt at forming an actionable plan would tire him out too much further to allow him to follow through; and, in any case, he could only cobble together a half-coherent thought: surely, he reassured himself, surely, surely if the Tapu wanted him dead he would be dead. It was lightning incarnate, and struck with all lightning's precision and all its lethality. Sun could venture anywhere he wanted and it would never lay a claw on him. It would only ever take and take from those who deserved it less.
He didn't think of Ilima - didn't need Ilima's hollow validation. More than anything he wanted his mother; or, if he truly could not be with her in this life, the surrogates who had risen to fill her place. He wouldn't dare turn his thoughts to Hau or Astelia, or the others, who couldn't even be bothered to arrive on time... screw them all. None of them could help him.
They couldn't raise the dead.
Ironic as it might seem to some, what would at last entice Sun out of the professors' laboratory would be in fact the very same preoccupation with death that had sparked his reclusion in the first place. In spite of the professors' perseverant pleading, he had spent most of his time since stumbling upon those talon-marks holed up in his loft, too terrified - and too stubborn - to even come down for mealtimes or use the bathroom. He went his whole first day without a single bite of food, and plotted to urinate in an empty water bottle until the physical and mental toll this took led him to conclude it might be worth it to temper the histrionics.
Because, by that point, he'd envisioned it a hundred thousand times. Every possible scenario. Every possible location, every possible audience. In his dreams the Tapu came to split him open and no pain came with it. No blood. Just emptiness.
A welcome emptiness.
So perhaps what should have scared him was how quickly he forgot the talon-marks in favor of lighter, sweeter things like Ilima's trial, and came down to eat dinner with the professors, who found themselves delighted at the prospect of one fewer worry to keep on their minds.
The prospect. As long as the Tapu had not explicitly moved to reconcile with Hala, the issue remained unresolved.
So for the first time in five days Sun stepped outside, breathed in the salty air, and lived. Whorls of nimbus laced the sky, reflecting off the mirror ocean. A Wingull circled above for a heartbeat or two before swooping down to land a few yards away from him, frightening away a few Cutiefly - oh, they'd returned, hadn't they? he allowed himself to feel a flicker of joy at the thought of nature healing - and hopped over on its bright orange talons, eyes vacant.
When she’d been well enough to walk, his mother would take him on day trips to Melemele's designated natural protection areas, and she'd point out all the intricacies in Alola's flora, the Tapu's craftsmanship... see here, the petals, the damned petals of a moribund species the Tapu had created with all its love but did not adore enough to save from the tyranny of its beloved humanity. In Alola, endangered species were a dime a dozen.
"Scram, Wingull," he heard himself say. It obeyed without violence, and its fading wing-flaps melted into the hush of waves beating the sand and the breeze tickling the long dry lovegrasses. Pride swelled in him for a moment, and then receded to regret.
He cast his gaze to the sandy clouds, wondering what, if anything, the future could ever have in store for him. Whatever it was, he hoped it involved a change in scenery.
dear sun (my blessed prince of darkness)
you have no need to worry, none at all
the difficult girl shall resolve herself soon. you have pleased me with your spurning of the Litten... you know as well as I all that glitters is not gold. if you let your guard down: maybe, then, you could dream of being 'adequate'...?
the first killing was not as taxing as I had feared. I shall commit another within the week.
love
ishmael <3
A nest of Spearow eggs crowned the rocky outcropping, and Fearow circled high above, surveying their futures. Their shadows hung low, occasionally coming together and apart with those of the others far below.
The way the birds' wings moved, limp and billowing in the wind instead of forcing the wind to their own will, like the limbs of a fabric puppet, had always fascinated Sun: it seemed so effortless. His mother, who he now felt certain had been either a monk or a psychic in a past life, would have taken this as evidence of the Tapu's glory as well. See? The Tapu was a fractal. You could zoom in or zoom out, but all there would ever be was the shape of it.
Sure, there were a thousand fractal-protrusions, Tapu-protrusions, on the way to Verdant Cavern - and, of course, the Cavern itself. He had taken to capitalizing it both in his mental monologue and in his writing: the bold-letter CAVERN, the place where-you-cannot-go where-fates-are-decided. He'd never been inside before. Few had. Challengers only.
So he had wandered there all on his lonesome. Stalked through the tall grass, hands in his pockets, eyes focused solely on the square of land directly in front of him. Well, except for the Fearow - one cracked the air with its shrill caw, and he looked up absently to see a trio of eggs teetering into the oatmeal sky - before disappearing into the awaiting gullet of VERDANT CAVERN.
"Alola, Sun! Been a while since I saw you..."
Alola, Hau. Hau's it been going this week?
"Aue, c'mon. You can do better than that."
Oh, I can, can I?
"You're right. I know you can't."
"Oh, Alola, Sun! Do you still draw pictures of dead people?"
Alola, Astelia. Not dead people. Dying people. Tortured people.
[Because surely going along with it would make it hurt less.]
"Oh, I didn't know you were into drawing self-portraits.... AHAHAHAHAHAH."
[He did not know how to respond to this.]
"What? I mean, haven't you looked in a mirror lately? You look half-dead already."
[Sun put a hand through his unkempt bangs, pondering this, and shivered in spite of the stale dry air of the CAVERN.]
"Hey, that reminds me - if one of us got sick or something and couldn't come, d'ya think Ilima would let us take it later?"
"The trial? He never said anything about it..."
I think he would have said something if he really meant not to allow us to. But maybe I'm overestimating him. I seem to be doing that a lot these days.
"Oh, really? Tell us all about it!"
Well, I thought...
[To his great misfortune, Sun had not picked up on the little barbed-wire rhetorical device Astelia had employed:
sarcasm.]
[Fortunately, he could always rely on his true friend Hau to cover his back.]
"So where is Ilima, anyway? It's almost time, and he's not here yet."
"Yeah, you’d think he'd give a hoot about being PUNCTUAL when he was so ADAMANT about it before."
[It had become in vogue for rising-seventh-graders such as Astelia to showcase their singular year of middle school education with their big middle school vocab words. Which was really only one degree extricated from gargantuan high school SAT collections of phonemes like antipathy or autonomous or antidisestablishmentarianism. The as-yet-ignorant boys cursed her under their breaths.]
"Hmm? Why are you looking at me like that?"
No reason.
"Right. But, okay, what I mean is: what if he doesn't come at all?"
"Then we'll just have to go home, I guess."
Maybe he's testing us. Like back at the preliminary.
"Aue, come on! Hasn't he tested us enough already?"
"Maybe it's because his trial's all bullcrap."
[Astelia moved back, stretching her arms out towards the dome-like CAVERN around them. Certain she had their undivided attention - keeping their eyes on her, and not the burly vermin creeping out from the shadows - she launched into her tirade:]
"He doesn't want to admit he's not prepared! He's ashamed of himself. I mean, look at this place? There's nothing here. Nothing good... it's all RAWKS. Rocks, and stones, and weeds, and hidey-holes. What kind of trial could he even ever - oh, shi
A simple adjective one might use to describe the residents of the City of Night would be shameless.
Shame was a luxury reserved for life-forms positioned higher up in the grand tapestry of the natural world. The Rattata who foraged through the indifferent jungles during spring and summer and autumn and sometimes, when the going got real tough, the lukewarm Alolan winters, had no space in their hearts for shame (or for envy or pride or wrath or slothfulness or BROKENNESS)... to feel ashamed required one to stop and think and feel. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the City there was no time for thinking - the microsecond it took to form a thought was a microsecond better spent elsewhere. You couldn't understand it unless you were mired in it - the swamp of despair - call it losing your identity, but -
the children.
The children, only now having come to, found themselves on their backsides inside the City's all-too-beating Heart, unknowing, uncomprehending of what now faced them. The Raticate, having found the children's pockets bare of anything they deemed worth gnawing on, had scattered and slunk off into the backwoods. Canopies as high as skyscrapers tented the night around them, encasing them, ensnaring them. They did not view it with wonder or in terror - maybe they weren't viewing it at all - they saw through human eyes - not the - not the ratta ratta tatta tatta chatta the citizens purveyed - not a shadow of it. All they did was stare.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Ilima would arrive at VERDANT CAVERN at 6:04 PM, running a sliver late on account of an appointment with his therapist, who had little respect for him, his time, or his myriad of stressors; but infinite respect for the money in his wallet. He would peek his head into the CAVERN and, upon finding no one inside, would tap his foot and stuff his hands in his pockets. He would produce his clipboard from the messenger bag at his hip and run his finger over his attendance sheet: Fitzgerald, Paulo; Freberg Alaka'i, Sun; Kazakami, Mizuki; Leokū, Hau; Makala, Astelia. He would recall each face, recall what about each had intrigued him enough to give them a chance at success; and a wave of self-revulsion would overcome him, prompting him to stare at his loafers.
Few were worthy. Fewer succeeded. Perhaps he was not as skilled at sifting through his talent as he had once believed.
Paulo would finally leave the bush he'd been hiding in at 6:08 PM, having to wait several minutes to feel safe walking the naked path to the CAVERN. He'd spotted the Fearow out this evening, and in Delmarva one wasn't meant to show one's face around where the Fearow flew free. Twenty-five children died on average each year in the Southern Province as a direct result of an encounter with one. Ugly, nasty bastards they were... Rattata with wings.
This morning, he'd skipped his usual coffee. It wasn't healthy for ones as young as him, anyway, and he never had been able to overcome its bitterness, but the headache and light nausea brewing in him would lead him to regret this decision a thousand times over. And that wasn't his only issue: during one of his training sessions with Rockruff, a rock had struck him just above the eye, and his eyelid had swelled to the point he could only open it halfway. At the sight of it, Ilima's mouth would open, then close - a snippet of noise would escape him. Reconsidered.
Mizuki would arrive at 6:48 PM, settle between the other two, and not meet eyes with either one. No conversation, either. Each one would wait, cursing themselves for being foolish enough to ever desire the position of trial caption, or for being foolish enough to ever come to Alola, or foolish enough to befriend two boys who were foolish enough to be one, one and a half, two hours late to one of the most important events of their lives.
And then, of course, there was a third party involved: one unknown to either of the other two. A merry band of three, with only the indistinct rumor of a glistening power crystal near the center of the City propelling them forward.
Their names - or, rather, the names their travails in life had earned them - were A, B, and Plumeria.
When the three lost children at last found their voices, the first thing out of Hau's mouth was, "we're in Narnia."
Astelia glared at him, prepared to lecture him as to all the ways their situation was obviously incomparable to Narnia - no snow, no lamppost, too much too many goings on going on - the atmosphere was all wrong. She couldn't think of snow with the sweat clouding at her armpits... damn it, had Mom really been right all along? would she really start having to use deodorant one of these days? - and how could she ever think of lampposts when she couldn't make out what was five feet in front of her?
"The Tapu built all of this," Sun whispered. "It must have. No way the Rattata could have done it themselves."
"You and your Tapu," said Hau, the grandson of the human avatar of the Tapu's will.
"You and your Narnia," said Astelia, although in the midst of her agitation the conversation had moved quite a ways away from Narnia.
Sun put a cautious foot forward, only to come a half-inch away from stepping on a Rattata's tail and crushing all of its tail-bones into a fine powder. The urge to apologize came to him, but by the time he found the words, the one he'd wronged had skittered out of his line of vision. He jumped as Astelia laid her hand on his shoulder, positioning him towards her. As she dwarfed him in stature, she had bowed herself over to a position where their eyes could reasonably meet.
"We need protection," she said.
As Trainers first and foremost, the three shared a collective shame their first instinct had been to gape and not to summon their Pokémon to defend against the potential opponents scrambling every which way. Perhaps it was the Rattata had lured them into a false sense of security - although how valid was any sense of security? How much would Hau or Astelia have paid to sell out Sun, the one-in-three mea hakihaki o na hoku, if they knew? - or perhaps it was that to destroy this fugue-state of wonder would be a tragedy indeed. Like to tear up the skin that forms atop warmed milk: it needed to go, but was too precious, too ephemeral, not to appreciate in its short existence.
Sun plucked a dead leaf from his hair and held it in his hand, focusing on channeling himself into it. There, no reason now to fear a lack of control. Self-defense, this was. A pre-emptive measure.
So Harmony, Lālā, and a third came swiftly out. He squinted through the dark at Astelia's: some sort of reptilian helmeted with a crest of unsightly gray lumps. It hobbled around on its cloven feet to face the Trainers, revealing its crooked fangs protruded out of its closed mouth on account of its terrific underbite.
A Dragon-Type. Now, what sort of lengths had Astelia gone to to snag herself one of those? He could make out her scrutinizing them through the dark: 'you can LOOK all you please, but don't you dare lay your unworthy fingers all over my trophy'.
Well. Sun never.
Across the veil of the hanging gardens, Plumeria caught a morose little wail: a Bagon. A Bagon amongst Rattata, eh? Pockets of the species resided close to the area, around the cliffs of Kala'e Bay, but she thought it unlikely one would venture so far inland. She'd certainly never heard of one doing so. The much more plausible explanation was, unfortunately, the worst-case scenario:
they were not alone.
She ushered A and B up from their position atop the tufts of dead leaves Rattatas used for comfort, stuffing golf-ball-sized Aguav Berries into their greedy mouths, and beckoned them to her side. They muttered curses at her, as they always did, but their insults were neither barbed nor creative enough to ruffle her feathers.
Of course, Plumeria would never do a grunt's job herself. (Grunt, she thought, and smiled fondly - whatever term Guzma had cooked up had provided her much pleasure over the years... something lifted from a mafia movie. The Germanic harshness of it delighted her... how like a curse it felt between her teeth. GRUNT.) The whole purpose of her grunts was to deal with petty annoyances like local kids sticking their noses in places where they did not belong. So she'd send one of them off deep into the tunnel, and preoccupy herself with the search for the crystal.
That was the ideal. But grunts, in spite of all their purported usefulness, were also needy, babyish things. The vast majority of them craved less of a big sister and more of a mommy; from what they'd shown her so far, A and B were no exception. Any aspirations she might have at distorting this into a solo mission would surely and swiftly be turned back on her head.
She steeled herself. No time for pathetic hijinks, real or imagined. Time to beat down some numbskulls.
The kids didn't know how the Rattata would react to an attack, and they weren't sure they could handle such a dense stream of them if they did decide to put up a fight, so their nerves took hold, causing them to blather on amongst themselves. After all, the damnable Rattata were chattering enough as it was. The closest analogue Sun had to the way the Pokémon's noise rose, convected, and practically assaulted them would be the lunchroom at school: hundreds of kids, all in their own little conversations, their own noise, noise, noise. But at least he could pull threads from those, cobble together meaning from it - it was human speech, after all. No such sense could be made of the Rattata's vocalizations. His ears bled.
"I want out of here," he said. "I want to go."
Hau cast him a sideways look. "Wouldn't it be a good idea to wait for Ilima to come and get us? What if you get lost out there?"
"He's not coming," Sun said, and never in his life had he been so certain of anything. He bent down and swept Harmony into a snug embrace, eliciting a sharp rasp from the Popplio.
The other two soaked in the assertion: Ilima WASN'T COMING. Ilima had ABANDONED THEM. Neither wanted to believe it, no matter how irrational or rational a thought they knew it to be.
Astelia crossed her arms. "Well, where do you plan to go, then?"
"Not here," Sun said.
A bloated silence.
"Um, I mean..." he gulped. "Look, I'll find a way out. I don't mean to leave you guys in the dust - " THE WAY ILIMA AND ALL OTHER BENEVOLENT PARTIES IN THE UNIVERSE HAVE - "but I just know I can't stay here. Good luck to you."
On the other side of the intersection, the inky uncertainty sang to him. Several desperate bounds across the stream of Rattata took him to its edge. Behind him a peal of shrieks sounded out, scattered chortles, even scoffing - and then, as he ducked under a veil of hanging vines: nothing.
dear sun (my little lost way-upon)
you need to sleep, but you cannot stop thinking about her. the damned thoughts won't leave you be! the televisions, the cabinet under the TV -
don't you remember how you used to misspell it 'cabinent'? doesn't it make your cheeks go flush? don't you remember this very moment how your fingers have mis-touched it - the damned keys, they won't work with you, my listless lost way-upon -
every false 'n' is a notch, ja? you approach infinity - will never touch. you can never reach perfection, or even its counterfeit. listen to Tenshiro; he knows very much about what you will never touch. listen closely.
love
ishmael <3
At 8:30 PM, the silence was broken.
"Did you know there are Rattata that eat human flesh?"
Mizuki didn't know what prompted her to say it. In fact, she didn't comprehend she had been the one to say it at all until she looked around, wondering when Ilima's voice had gotten so girly, and was met with the other two's impassive stares.
Still, some eigengrau in her goaded her to continue:
"Did you know there are Rattata with fur red as blood? Did you know they have to gnaw and gnaw and gnaw or else their buckteeth will get all overgrown? Did you know some of them starve to death because they give all their food to the Raticate and the Raticate never so much as thank them? Or even acknowledge their existence at all. Did you know that?"
Neither responded. Paulo broke into a yawn.
"Just trying to break the ice," she said, brandishing her emergency 'I DEFINITELY DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU THINK' grin.
"Icebreaker questions are, like, 'what month were you born in,'" Paulo said snidely. "Not, 'are you aware of these horrific facts'."
"September," Mizuki said, having heard only that portion.
"Stupid," Paulo said. "I don't care. Nobody cares. We're here to do a job, so don't make it more painful than it already is, okay?" He hunched over, putting his open palms on either side of his head. "Can - you - do - that - for - me? Do - you - un-der-stand?"
Mizuki turned to Ilima with hope in her eyes, but, instead of throwing her a bone, he looked away, seeming disaffected. With this - and her mind already made up - she resolved:
Paulo is an evil person. Ilima is an evil person.
A 'normal' person at least had their ignorance of the Truth to explain, if not excuse, their evil. Ilima had no such defense, and, all of a sudden, Mizuki found she didn't want either of the boys near her body anymore. If she concentrated, she could feel the spikes burst from their auras like twisted thorns on rose bushes: ready to lacerate her and split her open and spill all her good into the dust; they'd inject her with all of whatever made them evil and corrupt her - they themselves were the cancer, they -
she'd socked Paulo in the jaw.
He stumbled backwards, his hand flying up too late to cover himself; the thickening line of his mouth twisting into a grimace. Ilima put his hand out, moved towards him. Towards her. His lips opened, but
but
... mi
zu
ki ...
"I'm going to take him to the Pokémon Center near here, for..."
his tooth? She hadn't imagined she could have the strength...
When Paulo opened his mouth again, she saw its truth. The top half of his left front tooth had been split clean off, and he had spit out the felled portion and now cradled it in his palm. Ew, the edges were all jagged and uneven - it looked almost powdery, like a chunk broken off a breath mint.
"Mizuki," Ilima said. "Go home."
Incredulous, she shook her head.
"Go home, and maybe your father won't hear about this in the morning."
Father? She prepared to contend she had no father; only an enemy. But she betrayed herself and nodded through her forming tears, and offered the two of them a slight curtsey like an apologetic peasant; before bounding off past the signpost until she was certain she had left their view.
But she wouldn't leave for now, not really. What, was she going to return home to face her family? 'How did your trial go, Mizuki? You're reflecting so well on all the rest of us, aren't you, Mizuki? We know you have the potential to be so, so good. Almost as good as your nonexistent brother. So smart, so servile...'
It didn't hurt. Not for real. But the hike to the Cavern had sapped her energy, and her stomach flipped at the idea of hearing it now.
With her heart wobbly in her chest, she ducked into a ring of rocks protruding from a side pocket off the well-worn part of the trail, and squeezed herself between them. Just needed a breath. Just a breath. She thought about taking out Frostfire for comfort - but, ah, he wouldn't fit in this tight space.
The silhouettes passed her by. Heads bowed, as if marching in a funeral procession. Paulo still cradling his loss in his hand.
Just a chipped tooth. They'd glue it back on, or give him a fake one. Nothing to worry about.
Right, because she couldn't recall what worry felt like. Her mind and her body no longer operated at the same speed or towards the same goal. Punching Paulo? Perhaps she truly had desired to harm him - and, if she self-reflected, she would come to understand she very much had - but the act hadn't been premeditated. Homing in on one specific thought for so long, when there were so many of them in her mind clamoring for her attention, was
Ilima hadn't had his bag with him when he'd left.
She snapped her head to peek over the rocks, settling herself into a squatting position. Back there, propped up innocently against one of the legs of the signpost, was his messenger bag.
Maybe he'd left it there intentionally, and planned to come back for it. If the others came, they'd see it and know he'd been there.
But Ilima wasn't stupid. His was a rich family. That bag was probably worth more than Mizuki's whole college fund. It must have slipped his mind.
Of course, she could take it back home to keep it safe. Possess all of whatever varieties of secrets Ilima guarded so close to his side - in this case, in the most literal sense.
She slung the bag across her chest, adjusting the strap to her shorter stature to dangle just below her hip, and found herself surprised by its lack of heft. Either Ilima didn't have many secrets, or they were light ones. Curiosity got the best of her: grocery receipts, loose change, and a sealed pack of some variety of insomnia medication.
How mundane. Surely there had to be some blackmail material in here.
She cast one last look over her shoulder, relieved to see the path as still and serene as before, free of anyone who might have sought vengeance against her; and then, peered one last time into the pitch-black gullet of the Cavern, the one she understood she would never return to.
(In fact - and it had yet to lose all its sting - there were a great many places she knew she would never return to, or visit at all. 'Ale K-8 School, for one.)
(Akala Island, for another.)
(But, in the end, who cared? An evil person had crossed Good, and had come to know the whole of Good's fury. Wasn't the first time.)
(Wouldn't be the last.)