Hi everyone, SK here.

So a lot of bad things have been happening (like seriously me, whyyy) (IDK ME, WHY DID YOU PLAN IT-)

Okay I'm not going to have an argument with myself but what I AM going to do is say that we're actually going to have a chapter without anything bad happening- so yay.  I hope you enjoy it!! :)

P.S. That chapter title feels accurate, school is very annoying especially during COVID it almost feels like a freaking jail... but let me start and I'll stop rambling now.

P.P.S. This week (the week I wrote it at least, for context today's the 20th of February) I seriously struggled with writing, so this chapter is going to be short.  I really tried but it got to the point where I was sitting at my laptop for hours with me thinking how stupid I was because I couldn't write even though I know exactly what to write, and it took me the same amount of time it takes to write a 6K word chapter to write this 3.5K one.  I'm really sorry because this chapter probably isn't that good... anyway, so much for not rambling.  Go read and pay no attention to me and my struggling. X-X (edit: ironic that this chapter comes out the week I decided hey, let's not write chapter 39 because writing chapter 38 burned you out way too much.)

!!! WARNINGS: Bad Language, Violence

Valerie

"Any suggestions for our plan?" I question Red as I look up at him.  My wings graze his neck a little because I'm sitting on his shoulder.  The ex-Champion can definitely hear me, but he's choosing to remain silent.

He's been doing that a lot.  I suppose that he's just grieving but... look at me and everything that's happened, I can still talk especially during crucial moments.

Everyone deals with grief differently though, I remind myself, feeling a slight bit guilty for making that comparison.  Still, he should know that he needs to help plan this especially when there's a giant risk that the rest of the humans will see me and go bonkers...

About a dozen-or-so police cars have surrounded the school.  My school- well, my old school now I guess- is at the bottom of a grassy slope, so Red and I standing on top of said slope is giving us an easy vantage point.  No students are leaving the school; the only movement we can see is the officers filing in and out of the building.  From here I can spot our clubroom's window (second floor, third to the right), and from what Leaf told me before the shot, it sounds like they're trapped in there.  

God-fucking-dammit.  

If I was faster, I could've-

I sigh.

It's strange.

I hardly feel anything anymore.

Red paces around while I hover in the air, and all I can think about is how I'm seeing people not as people, but as pawns in the chess game that is this life.  Lance is a king.  Verity and August are kings (oh please, I know that Ash must be dead by now because there hasn't been a Balance Ritual.  Verity wouldn't go down easily like that).  I'm a Queen.  Alara is also a Queen.  We're both Queens, and each side of the board only has one.

I know who I'm going to fight for.

Does she?

Leaf died.  My best friend died, and all I'm thinking about is how that is going to affect the future, all of our futures.  It wasn't my best friend's death.  It was just a single instance, a tiny blip in the grand scheme of everything.  What's important is continuing on for the hope that what's in store for us at a later point is better than what's going on now.

This must be how Heliux and Layra feel, my thoughts reflect back to me.  Fairies aren't people.  They're just blips, only there for a single instant and then they're gone.  

They're just blips.

People aren't people.

But some are.

Which people are people, which are blips?

Well... in the grand scheme of things, most of them don't even matter in the slightest.  They're simple pawns, they can be cut and no one will care.

It's the queens and the kings that should be eliminated, and their right-hand bishops, rooks, and knights.

I can see everything, I can see which moments are important, which aren't, and everything in between.  People aren't actual people anymore, they're just things I can use to pave the path of a better future for the greater good.

That's why Leaf's death is fine.  Yes I loved her and she died but it will benefit us all.  It's okay.  Right?  It's alright?  Because she was just a blip.  She wasn't real.  She wasn't a person, she was just a blip, a single tic of the second hand on the clock.  

Or was she?  Was she a person?  Was she not a blip?

But maybe she was a blip.  Maybe I'm in denial with myself over how not-important some people are.

"Red," I call out to him.  He doesn't answer, though he does turn his head to face me.  "I'm going to go in there and get them.  It'll be quick, and I need you to go hide."

His eyebrows shift upward to show his surprise.  "No backup?" he asks in a voice that is the audio equivalent of cracked porcelain put back together with a glue stick.  

My response is a firm no as I shake my head at him.  He's wanted as well.  "Go to my house, it should be abandoned now.  We'll join you soon, and then I'll bring all of you to the Colony."

CRUSHED C-

I put my hands over my ears, wincing in pain.  Not now, I will myself, and the vision stops.  I don't have time for that.  My focus is my friends, not some cryptic vision that I don't have time to interpret.

As for Red though, he again acknowledges my statement with a nod and not words.  He climbs the hill and disappears quickly after into the dying afternoon light.  In a few hours the sun will start setting and we need to be on our way by then.  This is mostly because my wings will make us stick out like a sore thumb in the middle of a forest full of human guards and cameras, but I just want to get them all out of here as soon as possible.  If I don't, then the future will be affected.

I wince.

"If I don't, then the future will be affected".

Not "if I don't, then they'll die".

Time truly is a curse. 

I huff, letting out a breath I didn't know I was holding.  If I was getting a vision that intense then it must've been about something important- and common sense dictates that it'd be about the fairies.  Might as well send them some help.

Alara explained it once to me during my training week.  Queens are brought into the fairy world by Mythical Pokemon, and each Queen has a special connection with said Pokemon- basically, we can summon them at will.

Closing my eyes, I perform the Element Summons, something that all fairies know how to do.  I open them and the glob with a wobbly-looking hour glass is sitting in front of me.  I hurl it up into the air, shouting "BEACON!".  I wince when the giant beam of white light forms and reaches up toward the sky because of how visible it is.  Luckily, a few seconds later, a tiny green fairy-winged Pokemon floats down toward me.  Celebi blinks its large blue eyes and telepathically asks me what's the matter.

I think the fairies might be in danger.  Go protect the Colony, I tell it.  Celebi is quick to obey and flies away a second later.  I smile; it really is dependable.  It saved me when I was on my deathbed and it will surely save the Colony as well.

Like I did with Red I watch Celebi fly toward the horizon, and once it's gone I fly down to the school's windows.  My wings carry across the array of second-floor windows until I reach the one that lets me see into the room that's currently housing my friends.  Amazingly they've managed to put a barricade of bookshelves and desks in front of the door and it's been holding... for now.

I go to shatter the window, then pause.

This is the first time I'm going to see all of them since I died.

Since Leaf died.

Since I became a fairy.

More of these thoughts begin to fill my mind... and that's when I lock eyes with Rosa.  

I gulp.  Shit.  Well, I guess there's no time like the present, I think sarcastically, and using a spell I phase through the window.  Again using my magic I turn myself human-sized.

"Guys, we need to get- guys?"  They all just stopped moving and they're just staring at me.  The only sound is the still-constant pounding on the classroom door and the cheap wall clock slowly ticking away.  Seven simultaneously shocked and terrified faces turn to face me, and I freeze as well.  This feels odd.  

"Valerie, is that really-" I cut Brendan's question off.

"Yes, it's me, and I need to get you guys out of here as quickly as possible."  The white portal magic is already forming in my right hand, and I wave it in an oval shape to form the quick route to my house.  The pounding is getting louder, the barricade is beginning to break.  They need to leave before something messes up.

Should I have brought Red?  I think with a sudden stab of anxiety, but then push the thought away as quickly as it came.  No, I've learned how to handle myself.  He would slow things down.

My friends' eyes are still locked onto me when I turn back toward them.  "Come out with your hands up, or we'll be forced to shoot!" booms a gruff voice from the other side of the door.  

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?" I practically screech at the seven of them, and they get the message pretty quickly.  One by one they file through the portal, until it's just me.  I'm about to go through and close it myself when the barricade breaks, the wall of stuff falling down to the floor with a loud bang!.  Four officers run into the room, guns loaded.

Oh, I've dealt with guns before.  

"Freeze, Fairy!" the one closest to the door shouts.  The portal is about a step behind me but I can't risk them shooting at me.  My body isn't indestructible yet.  

"And what are you going to do?" I ask with a smirk, already forming a plan in my mind.  When I learned how to use magic, I learned how to use magic.  I know how to use Golden Stardust Chains, I know how to form knives that can kill just spirits, I know how to whip up a batch of false memories on the fly.

I know.

"Don't push your limits," warns one of the police women.  Her hard-set gaze is locked onto me, as is her handgun.  "Step away from the white thing this instant."

It's hard, but I resist the urge to laugh when she says "white thing".  Would you like to die?  I project the question into all of their heads.  Because no one gets away with threatening and scaring my friends.  Do you hear me?  No one, and I'm not a fairy you want to mess with.

It's... certainly a strange sensation watching grown adults begin to quiver in fear at the sight of someone much, much younger than them.  With a flick of my wrist the golden chains formed from raw space power come flying up from the floor below, wrapping themselves around the wrists of the officers.  They begin to struggle, trying to reach for their guns, but before they can I form what I like to call a Spirit Blade.  Layra maybe calls them different, I don't know.  If she even uses them... although knowing her, she most likely has many times.

"End the lives of these four," I whisper to it and promptly toss the blade outward.  Like a homing missile, it slices through the air and through all of their throats.  However, there's no blood, because spirits do not bleed.  They are actually quite fragile.  One hit is all it takes to kill one.  Their bodies are still there, all intact, but without a person inside, they're just husks.  

The future didn't care about these four, they were all living mediocre lives anyway.  Their deaths don't matter in the grand scheme of things, and with August and Verity's incoming war, it doesn't matter how many humans I kill.  

I've accepted it.  I've accepted that sometimes, there's nothing I can do to change things.  

I've accepted that my life can go to shit, I've accepted that others' lives can go to shit too.

I've accepted that this war is happening.

They don't want to listen to me.

They're just blips!  They... blips, blips can't care, they're blips.

They're just blips.  That's why they sent me away, blips can't think, can they?

Or are they real people?

Who are the blips, who are the real people?  Does it change?  Stay the same?

Does it matter?

Does anything matter?

Does everything matter?

Does this war matter?

The war.. the war.  The war is happening.

If I'm going back, I might as well help them to end it quickly to help save lives... meaningless, meaningless lives... blips.  I'm saving blips.

For the fairies, of course.

And for my friends.

It's now that I take that step backward into the portal, and as more officers enter the room to find their colleagues half dead, the portal closes.  I heave a sigh and turn around to see the seven faces from earlier joined by Red in my old family room.  It's just like how I remembered it, it's still trashed from that party.  The only thing that isn't smashed in here is the TV- even the couch is torn up.

Fast as a flash, my mindset changes.  "Just hug me already," I say in a flat voice, an almost-forced laugh coming from me when I'm tackled by all of them except Red.  He can grieve all he wants, but I'm going to relish my friends' company.

"I missed you guys so much," I tell them earnestly, because let's face it, it's true.  They're the reason I wanted to go back in the first place, that time when I foolishly thought I'd get an extra two years of human life.

"How about you don't go fucking die," Kris suggests in her usual standoffish tone, "because having Leaf tell us you were alive was definitely some strange shit to go through."

"Wait-" Brendan cuts himself off and the group pulls apart to look at him.  "Where is Leaf?  And Calem too!  Where is he?"

Shit.  "She died," I say plainly.  

"She- she what?"

"She died," I repeat, wondering if they didn't hear me.

"Please tell me you're joking."  Hilda's desperation is a little bit sad, but I shake my head to signify no, I wasn't joking, Leaf is actually gone.

The sound of Rosa's hiccupping sobs fill the room, and Nate gives her a tentative reassuring shoulder pat.  They're all in shock, or they're in denial, or both.  

"How could you say that so casually?" Hilbert questions me, sounding a bit resentful.  "Leaf was like your sister.  How are you okay because of this!?"  I gaze at Red to see if has any visual response to Hilbert's outburst, but he's just standing in the same stoic pose as before.

"Because her-" I can't just say that "her death isn't a bad thing because it doesn't really affect the future that much, it only affects us".  "Because I've gone through a lot in the past couple weeks," I lament to my friend instead, "and Leaf passing away just seems like more of that same old crap that keeps getting thrown on me." 

No one says anything, so I take the opportunity to speak up.  "There's lots I need to tell you about- actually, hang on."  I grab the remote and pray that the electricity in this house still works.  My thumb presses the power button and the television screen comes to life.  Using the remote I direct the TV to channel 24, the home to the only news station I know: PC24.  "There, some background noise," I tell them, hoping it'll help to make things feel a bit more normal for us all.

"I have lots of things to tell you guys, and then I'm going to bring you all to the fairies."

"Why?" asks Brendan, sounding dead.  They're not in the right mindset to listen, but I need to get this information out to them.  We won't get another chance.

"For your safety.  There's going to be a war."

"A wa-"

"Just shut up," Ethan says in a tired voice, interrupting Brendan.  "Let her talk."  They all look sullen, I guess it's because our best friend just died.

"So basically what happened with the fairies is that they went to sign a peace contract because of the spell I caused- that's why you guys are spared from its power.  Everyone went mad and they wanted to go to war with the fairies, so they met at Indigo Plateau to sign it.  Serena, one of their Leaders, got assassinated, and the fairy Colony was thrown into chaos.  The Colony has two Leaders and a Queen above them, which is going to be me very shortly-" they gape at me for this- "and due to something called the imbalance, either the other Leader or his daughter had to die.  Because the world hasn't ended I can assume that one of them did, probably the old Leader because Verity, his daughter, isn't one to go down without a fight... or go down at all for that matter.

"So now August, he's my boyfriend-" again, more gaping, and more doubtful thoughts from me because is he still my boyfriend?- "and Verity are the Leaders and the fairies want to go to war against the humans.  But," I add, pacing around the room while the television plays in the background, "Red's position as Champion got stripped away, and Leaf got shot by someone with red hair-"

"Lance," Red whispers, and we all turn to look at him.  When he notices, he explains further.  "Lance.  He must've been the one that killed Serena, and k-killed..." he buries his head in his hands again.

Lance.

I'll be sure to recognize that name and face the next time I see him. 

He'll be getting a world of pain for hurting two people who I love.

Just a few weeks ago you used to be a normal happy seventeen-year-old who was excited to start her life.  Now you're obsessed with the future and which people need to suffer or be protected in order to reach it.  Now you're thinking about killing people.

What happened to you?

What happened to me?

Becoming a fairy happened.

Gaining Time powers happened.

"You mean an Elite Four member killed an innocent minor?  Why would he do that?" Rosa sniffles.  "It doesn't make sense.  I want her back.  I want Calem back.  I want us back."

Rosa... poor Rosa.  She can't see that there is absolutely no way to return to the past... and that's coming from the Time fairy herself.

Oh, but it does make sense, objects an inner part of my consciousness.  I know exactly who told him to do both shootings.

I'm onto you, Alara.

Hilbert doesn't say anything, just simply points at the television screen.  Confused as to why he'd do that, I turn my attention there.

The news has changed from its normal broadcast to a livestream of some sort.  Lance's stupid face is in front of the camera.  "I know all of you want to see the fairies finally be destroyed," he's saying as I tune in.  "Which is why we've been putting extra surveillance on this forest.  Celebi sure as hell is a good guide."

My stomach drops.

Celebi.

I sent Celebi.

"No," I whisper, but deep down I know it's too late.

That's what the vision earlier must've been trying to tell me, and I was a fool and didn't listen.

Crushed C-

Crushed Colony.  

The Colony is going to be- no, no no no!

This is all my fault!

The future-

I stop my thoughts.  As much as I realize that the future is more important than the fairies' lives, I don't like being reminded of my own inhumanity.

Lance and what appears to be a dozen others rifle through the bushes as they try and follow Celebi down the Route.  My mind begins to think of a thousand possibilities.  Can I go follow them?  Should I go follow them?  Is the Colony supposed to be found?  What if it isn't?

"Valerie, what's going on?" Hilda asks, her voice sounding a bit frightened.

I turn back to her.  "I sent Celebi to guard the fairies, but now they're following it into the fairies' home.  I have to go save them."  Heliux was right, I read his thoughts on the way when we said goodbye.  He knew that, deep down, I still care about them all.

"Well well well."  Lance's cold, booming voice cuts through my thoughts.  I glance at the screen and-

I'm horrified.

It's the Colony.

The Colony and about a hundred terrified fairies are being broadcasted onto television.

Both August and Verity are frozen in place, and I can't even see Layra there- was she captured already?  No.  She can't be.  It's actually Heliux that steps up, not either one of the Leaders.  "Leave."  His voice is clear and very intimidating (in his usual Heliux-fashion), but to creatures that are a hundred times bigger, that intimidation has little to no effect.

"Make us," Lance says and, although I can't see it from our camera angle, I have a feeling he's smirking.  "Capture them, destroy it!  Destroy it all!"

Instantly Celebi flies up and Lance's camera flickers and cuts out.  While I can only take this to be a good sign, it just switches to another camera lens, this one being the person who- my eyes widen.

"AUGUST!" I scream, running up to the screen and pressing my hands against it.  I fall to my knees in front of the screen, in front of this somehow true nightmare.  He trembles in fear as he's roughly picked up by grabby human hands, and my heart pounds as he's placed in a cage.  August in a cage.  How dare they.

My rage boils as I see what they're doing to that magical place.  They're destroying it, wrecking it, capturing innocent fairies who were just keeping the world running.

Pain radiates from my fingers as I curl my hands into tight fist, my nails wanting to tear apart my skin.  I grit my teeth and stare at the scene in anger.

How.

Dare.

They.

Somehow, despite everything, I still love August.  Or I care about him enough to hate, hate, what just happened.

He got taken away from me.

Captured as if he were a lowly Rattata.

They'll pay.

All of them.

"They'll pay," I whisper through gritted teeth.  Heat radiates from my hands and when I turn to look, they're alight with golden fairy magic.  

"Valerie-" I hear someone say, but I ignore them.  The humans are out there, destroying my home.  Destroying the people I love.  Finally, finally, I agree with August and Verity.  Screw humans.  Screw them all.  They all deserve to die a very painful death for what they've done to us.

"VALERIE!" Kris shouts.  This snaps me out of it, and I turn to see the slightly-scared expressions of my friends.  Before I can ask what that's about, Kris just desperately points to the window.

I turn just in time to see a fairy who's clearly very desperate to get in.

I'd like to apologize for this chapter, like I said I had so much writer's block while writing this so I don't think the quality is on-par with what I usually make, so I'm sorry.  I'm really sorry.

It's midnight when I'm writing this, what is the point of my life anymore, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter at least a little bit.  I'll catch you all next week for a (hopefully) better one.

Edit: Guys when I was writing this I was NOT having a fun time.  I'm fine.  Don't worry about me, I just wasn't feeling it that day and it was affecting my writing.  I think I used that beginning A/N to vent a little so my apologies.