Fifteen


Chapter Fifteen: Hidden Blade

"We're back," Lillian muttered. "It looks like we found whatever Arceus wanted us to find."

She glanced at the two people across her. Avis looked at her with an impassive frown as usual, gaze not quite meeting her eyes, and the solemn expression on Yan's face looked like it was going to crumble into tears any minute.

A booming voice caused them to jerk back to their senses, and she looked up to see Dialga studying them with his ruby eyes, a metallic sound accompanying his tone as he spoke. "Child. I assume you know the reason now?"

There was a pause—it seemed that her friend wasn't intent on listening to the deity's speech—and she circled behind Avis to give the girl a tap on her shoulder.

She could feel a tense shudder beneath the fabric of her dress as Yan jerked her head up at a pace that was almost too sharp.

"It's because I used to be that Litwick, isn't it?" she asked, her voice small and fearful of the confirmation to come. "Because I used to be a ghost-type Pokemon myself?"

The beast gave her a pitying stare in response, taking a step forward and causing a cloud of dust to rise up from underneath his massive foot. "That is correct," he answered, "and it is rare for such a Pokemon to be reincarnated into a human. There, are, however, always exceptions to a rule."

"And what happened after Regis died?" Yan tried to ask, her tone a little too desperate for someone who didn't know the man at all. "I mean...you know what I'm talking about, right? I know it's not your place to tell me, but..."

"You're right. I have the right not to tell you anything more," Dialga uttered. "But I feel sorry for you. As a Litwick, you lived out the rest of your life in depression and died a peaceful death—and your past life is why these feelings you can't comprehend have arisen."

Lillian's gaze settled on Yan's miserable expression, not knowing what she and Dialga had meant, but she supposed that everyone, in some ways, had masks that weren't meant to be found out.

"Thank you," the girl breathed in response, her words trembling and almost whisked away in the gentle breeze that ruffled her hair.

Nodding just once to acknowledge her gratitude, the Legendary started to shimmer in an aura of blue light that made even his stern face appear ethereal. "I wish you good luck in whatever Arceus has sought of you," he stated. "Let's hope that there is no need for us to meet again."

He was gone with his conclusion, exit nowhere as grand as his initial entrance, and the—now empty—space before them left no clue that anyone had even stood there in the first place.

She clapped her hands once to get her friends' attention, some instinct in her telling her to take the lead, and the two teenagers turned to stare at her with unreadable expressions. "What are you going to do now, then?"

There was a few seconds of silence after that, and she started to think that she'd made the wrong decision.

Yan's answer sent a small wave of relief flooding through her pulsing heart. The younger girl managed a small smile, and something in it seemed like a moment of genuine gratitude, much unlike the fleeting shakiness of her face. "I think I want to take a break for all of this. I'm going back to my herb shop."

"And what about you?" She watched as Avis' face cycled through a range of expressions as she spoke. "You've been going along with whatever I do a lot. It's nice that you care enough to do so, but you can't neglect your duties as a knight."

"I don't c—" He was about to retort with a snappy remark, but one glance at Yan made him catch himself in time. "I'll go back to Kalos' headquarters for now and continue with my regular work. The leave I applied for expires today."

She didn't quite manage a smile—there was only the occasion of new information to celebrate, after all—but she did reply with a brisk nod. "I'll continue investigating on my own, then. With the new information we have, I think I can continue by myself for now."

Yan blinked. "Is it alright if I leave, then?"

She didn't have time to answer with a hasty nod before the girl turned to leave.

The blank facade on Avis' face peeled away to reveal a testy frown, and he tugged at his brother's cape so that the garment sat snugly around his shoulders. "Don't do anything stupid and you'll be fine. You're a smart person, but you're arrogant."

"Was that a compliment or was it concern?" she teased, a smirk sliding onto her face. "Either way, I'm impressed, but I told you that my plans never fail. I've never once gone wrong."

He let out a sigh in response, shaking his head and stepping away from her. "That's exactly why."

His cape fluttered in the breeze as he spun on his heel to walk back to Kalos' headquarters, the action oddly reminiscent of the little spark Aiden seemed to have with him, and it took her a few seconds for her to realise that it was just an artificial practice that had stuck as a habit.

Nevertheless, she left the shrine and headed towards the long-abandoned path where they had come from, keen on getting to her destination before it was too late.

§

It was evening when she reached.

The sky had been taken over by a thick blanket of dusky blue, and the trees around her blocked out most of the waning moonlight above her. She squinted to make out her surroundings; whether the dusty soil under her feet was the right kind and whether she was walking in the right direction.

Her questions were answered by a voice behind her, low and quiet and lacking the bloodlust she was used to. "You were stupid enough to come."

Some survival instinct in her kicked in, telling her to use the knife she kept in her dress, but she steadied herself and turned around to see the black-haired boy staring at her with narrowed eyes.

"I'm sure Father would be pleased, wouldn't he?" she muttered, yanking off the hood that she'd been wearing for the past few days and letting her hair come loose. "Another one of his children is returning after the other one left."

His nose scrunched up in disgust. "You still address him by that?"

"I'm aware you had to endure things far worse than I did," she sighed, and her response was simple. "After all, I left the family when things were starting to get torn apart. You had to stay with him through his worst moments, didn't you?"

Leone scowled, kicking up dirt from the toe of his boot as he turned away from his sister. "That doesn't matter now. All that matters is that he's still a monster—he turned me into one, and he'll never change. Aren't you mad over that?"

"We just have very different views," she reasoned. "I disliked him, but I don't hate him as much as you do. Anyway, shouldn't you be off doing your mercenary duties now? Your contract with him expires soon."

"You're so selfish, you know?" he growled. "You think you can just leave me with him and call yourself my sister?"

She shrugged. "Being selfish is how you survive in this world. I'm sure you've learnt that by now, haven't you?"

There was nothing but silence from the younger boy, and the two of them stood in the dark quiet for a few long moments before he finally took a harried breath, grasping for Lillian's shoulder with a hand and letting words spill out into the night.

"Far more than you have," he whispered. "I'm just cursed with bad luck. Everyone that I ever cared for left me. And even after that, I still had one more person who still bothered remembering who I was, and I screwed it up."

It was too dark to see if there were tears in his golden eyes.

"Are you talking about the guy who used to look after you?" She tilted her head as she spoke. "I remember you telling me once when we last met up. I thought you said he left you for money."

Something caught in Leone's throat, and his hold around the older girl tightened. "It doesn't matter now. If he hadn't left, both of us would have died anyway, and with that mindset of his, he would have seen one death as less significant as compared to two."

She could do nothing but listen as he continued—it was the first time he'd talked so much about something that wasn't filled with hatred. "I hated him until today, y'know? I tortured the person who spent three years looking after my sorry ass when all he saw in me was a resemblance to himself."

"What made you change your mind?" she breathed. Her heart skipped a beat at the word torture; something about it made her uneasy, and she made sure to note if for later.

"The fact that I made him go insane," he muttered, his voice no longer weak. "He told me he was proud of how far I'd come, and I was the one that almost killed him."

Her lips curled into a small frown, and she pried her brother's stiff hand off her shoulder before taking a few steps back. "Let's talk about something else, then. You knew I was coming, so before you go off, escort me to the Hoenn base or something."

"What are you planning?" he asked, eyes narrowing and voice low, but it was clear that he knew something about her situation. 

Despite the situation, a small smile flickered in the little moonlight that surrounded them. "Nothing much."

§

Her mind was a mess, and she couldn't quite find any other words to describe it.

Yan gripped her Skiddo's horns with more force than needed, causing the creature to falter for a moment and pause to look back at her—and she shook her head, forcing herself to loosen her hold around her poor Pokemon.

It had been just a week since they'd met, but it felt strange without Aiden following behind her. He'd left to check on his brother for a while, and event though there was no way anything could happen to him, it made her heart twist.

She'd been plagued by it for such a long time now—and she was sure that she was over-exaggerating things, but it was true. She'd been pestered by unexplainable feelings that shot straight past love or infatuation, really, and they bordered more on a deep bond and an urge to protect the boy.

His personality made things worse. She would have been better off if he was as cold as Avis, but he was one of the only people she knew who had a genuinely kind heart.

It was then that she realised that she hated her past life. That she hated her previous self for ever dying in the first place, that she hated Regis for being the one to die the second time round, that she hated the fact that all this was because she was a ghost-type Pokemon—

She never knew that a meek girl like her could ever harbour so much hatred.

Yan felt different. She'd felt the changes over the past two weeks; the uttering of harsh words to someone who used to be her best friend and the number of tears shed in the basement, and she was terrified of who she was becoming.

She wanted her old life back. It was true that she wasn't the happiest person then—she'd wanted so much for someone to understand her, but it was peaceful and she wasn't sure if that was a word she could associate her recent experiences with.

The only thing she knew was that she wanted to protect the person who never mocked her for being a freak.

Even though she had never dared to look at the cave even once, she'd felt powerless. She never wanted to feel the nausea in her stomach again; she never wanted Aiden to get hurt once more.

Past the layers of kindness she deluded herself with, she acknowledged that what she'd told herself wasn't the truth—because in the end, the only want that she didn't want to hurt any further was herself.

Her musings were interrupted by a noise outside her shop, and her back straightened at the sound. It was almost midnight, and it was unusual that a customer would wait in such an obscure place for her. Besides, she was sure that she'd made sure to close the shop.

"Hello?" she ventured, dismounting her Pokemon and telling the goat to go inside her Pokeball. "Are you here to get something? I'm sorry, but our shop is—"

She was cut off by the figure emerging from the shadows that they had been cloaking, and her eyes widened in surprise when she realised that she recognised the man staring her down with an expression of equal surprise.

"Fabio?" she asked, her grip tightening around Skiddo's Pokeball. It felt a little like deja vu; he'd appeared at her shop not too long ago, after all, but this meeting felt far too different from their earlier reunion. "You never reported back to Lillian. Why are you here?"

Yan was answered by silence, and her breath caught in her throat as she realised that something seemed different about the older boy. He looked more beaten up than usual, with new bruises and cuts scarring his pale skin, and he hadn't bothered to tie up his hair for once, but it was the wild look in his eyes that shook her the most.

After all, if they'd lived in a time where they could lead a peaceful life, she was sure that Fabio would have been the most successful out of their oddball group.

Trying to look past how different his panicked look was from the usual clarity in his green eyes, she tried to speak again. "It's not like I care about you now, but are you alr—"

The blind stab to her eyes stopped her from speaking.

§

hO its been a longer time than usual guys I'm sorry

who's excited for the second half of this book becAUSE I AM why am I so high at 10pm

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