Story Notes:
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.Retrace I - in remakeRetrace II - in remakeRetrace III - in remakeRetrace IV - in remakeRetrace V - in remake
Retrace V - in remake
Memory I
Shattered Sand
Retrace V
don't Forget if you Die
The Grovyle leapt like an aerialist through the thick foliage of the Leppa tree, olive cloak fluttering, and landed deftly onto a bough of a Pecha tree, nibbling on the Leppa berry he had just snatched off the tree as he watched curiously a Nidorino atop a Quilava. He tossed the rest of the fruit into his welcoming jaws and squinted at the strange couple, chewing slowly on the tough texture of a Leppa.
The Grovyle had not the faintest idea what they were doing, for the Nidorino seemed to be in a state of wordless ecstasy as he rocked swiftly his body above the Quilava. He winced in disgust when he noticed the drool from the Nidorino's open jaws leak onto the Quilava's scruff. The Nidorino seemed to be hurting the Quilava in any case; her face was furrowed in pain and he could quite clearly hear her strange cries every time the Nidorino rocked over her.
He fell from the tree and channeled his energy into his leaf-blades as they glowed faintly in emerald, then felt his Leaf Blade attack shatter against the skull of the Nidorino as he forced him off the Quilava and ten feet back into the ground.
The Quilava panted in pain, or at least the Grovyle thought it was in pain that she cried (for some reason it might have instead been pleasure), and gazed up at him with jaded eyes, her face near complete scarlet. It occurred to him that she was quite cute for a Quilava, somehow more so when she was panting softly and blushing like that.
"Who are you?"
The Nidorino had risen again, and the Grovyle was thoroughly surprised that the incision on his head that he had earlier inflicted was almost fully gone.
"That should be my line. What the fuck were you doing to her?"
"None of your business." The Nidorino frowned for a moment at the Grovyle, then twitched his lips to the left. "Oh, but you look quite cute there."
Somehow pissed thoroughly that another male had called him cute, the Grovyle leapt at the Nidorino and slashed a Leaf Blade right through his head, the Nidorino managed somehow within the split second to press his four limbs flat to the ground and evade a critical hit. The Leaf Blade sliced right through his horn, the appendage left a stump.
The Nidorino was laughing, but the Grovyle wasn't horrified of his laugh. He was horrified that he was laughing as his stump bled a sickening mixture of pus and blood.
"And plenty strong to boot! Ha! Cut off my horn, would you believe that?" The Nidorino shook like a ragdoll his head, the Grovyle dodged the blood that sprinkled by his feet. "Now I really want you! Oh how sad I'm not really in the appetite for Grovyle right now, so don't you die before that time comes. Promise?"
"What do you want?"
"Oops. No time. Bye bye."
Then all of a sudden the Nidorino sunk into the ground, matter into matter, and the Grovyle could no longer sense his presence. He would have dug for at least five feet the patch of soil if only he wasn't so dead curious about what the Nidorino had done to the Quilava. He turned his attention back to her when he heard her moan, and blushed furiously as he noticed her privates dribbling a mixture of blood and a clear liquid.
"Um ... I, uh ... are you okay there? I mean you're bleeding, uh ... in uh ... down there."
"Yeah, I think so." The Quilava blushed and moved her rear away from the Grovyle's view. "My hips are a bit painful, that's all."
"Um ... as long as you're okay I'll, uh ..."
"Thanks for saving me anyways."
The Grovyle stared speechlessly at the ground, as the Quilava tried to wipe the blood and liquid off on a nearby patch of grass and mask the Nidorino's strange musk by rolling in a puddle of mud.
"Oh, Arceus ... I'm gonna get into trouble with mom anyways."
"What's your name?" The Grovyle then blushed as he realized that he had asked a question he hadn't intended to ask, but the Quilava seemed glad that he wanted to know her name, however.
"My name? My name's Hirogane Shi -" The Quilava paused as her ears twitched, then turned apologetically to the Grovyle. "I have to go, my mom's calling. Sorry."
The Grovyle looked as the Quilava ran back down the pavement, her rear now caked in a fresh layer of mud, till she had disappeared into the trees, then smiled to himself. He kicked off the patch of land where the Nidorino had disappeared into the uppermost layer of dirt, picked up his severed horn, and pitched the bleeding thing into the bushes.
Forgot your horn, you horny dick.
*****
The Quilava licked off the remaining crumbs of omelette, holding the glass plate in her paws, and looking through the clear material at the Lucario in the kitchen with a phone squeezed between her right cheek and shoulder. She had a faint Japanese accent, leaving slightly monotonous her English.
"Shizue, Shiza's come looking for you. Finish your breakfast."
"Hai." The Quilava laid with a clatter the plate on the coffee table, then rushed to the door.
"Put on your windbreaker before you go out, it's probably windy out there."
"Atashi ni wa samukunai wa yo." Nonetheless the Quilava picked her brown jacket off the coat hanger and pulled it on as she left.
She would meet as she did every other time Shiza underneath the same Yache tree. Their Yache tree. Sure enough, the Sandshrew was already underneath the same tree with its nostalgic blue leaves, swaying even throughout the season when most other trees had their leaves turned crisp hazel.
"Hi Shiza."
"Oh. Hi Shizue."
The Quilava plucked off a nearby Orca tree a scarlet fruit shriveled to the size of an Oran berry, and joined the Sandshrew in her more-fruits-a-day-keep-more-doctors-away routine. The Sandshrew's scales were now dripping with a light yellowish juice, with her habit of peeling clean off a fruit's skin before eating the flesh.
"Eewww, why do you like that wrinkly plum?"
"Why do you like that rocky water balloon?" The Quilava snapped, then bit into the fruit's seedy flesh.
"It's not rocky ... more like icy." The Sandslash paused, inspecting her half-skinned fruit. "Or is it crunchy?"
"How is it in Terrano? Is your new house big?"
"No, it's small. I think it's called a ... a part ... a partment? Daddy says they're like prison cells. But much better." The Sandshrew tossed the peel aside into a small pile of cumulated fruit skins, then jammed the fruit into her mouth. "How's your dad? Has he written any books?"
"I think he has a lot of papers stuffed under his table ... but I didn't see any of his book friends lately."
"You know I stole one from daddy's bookshelf, it was called the ... Loony Dragon ... I think. It was so hard to understand, it was something about the moon and a dragon ... and no pictures, you know what I mean?" Shiza seemed however proud that she had managed to figure at least that much of an adult's novel though.
"Oh, that one ... dad says that was about a dragon living on the moon." The Quilava finished the Orca fig, then reached up for another.
"Oh ... did anything happen this week?"
"Yeah. Yesterday this Nidorino attacked me and um ... stuck something into my um ... my vagina."
"What's vagina?"
"Mom says that's what adults call their privates."
"Oh ... so that bump down daddy's privates was a vagina." The Sandshrew frowned the way a kid who had just heard his parents spout in a single sentence multiple scientific jargon does. "How did it feel?"
"I don't know ... it hurt a lot, and it was weird."
"Weird?"
"A good weird. You know it hurts but it feels good at the same time ... I don't know but I sorta liked it."
"And then?"
"Then a Grovyle chased him away." The Quilava rubbed gently her privates and murred. "It feels kinda nice."
"Lemme try." The Sandshrew scratched lightly a claw down the outer lips of her privates, then dipped it into her folds, sighing softly. "Feels strange, like jelly. It makes me want more."
"Don't do that. He stuck the thing into me and made me bleed."
"Blood huh?"
The Sandshrew removed from her crotch her paw and picked from over her head another violet berry.
*****
The Quilava yawned and hugged her windbreaker closer to her small body, smiling simply at the trees that loomed far above her head. As she began to run along the beaten path the fusion of hazel and emerald flashed past her peripheral vision, and she inhaled eagerly the fresh crisp scent of bare sapwood. When she had caught sight of the cottage along the flower patches however, it wasn't the usual smell of tomato and olives her mother loved to cook that she had smelled.
No, it was the smell of death.
The Quilava threw open the door, and her eyes shot straight towards the kitchen, where her mother would usually be five in the evening, trying all combinations of sauce and spaghetti bolognese. No, this evening the Lucario was lying on the wooden flooring, beside the kitchen countertop, one arm over her abdomen like a person in his final hour.
The door swung along its hinges and bounced against its frame as the Quilava released the support. Why was she crying? For there was no way her mother would've died, she wouldn't accept that.
"Mom!"
She ran over to the fallen Lucario, pawing her blood-soaked shoulder. The Quilava's eyes were tearing so bad it blurred too much her vision to see clearly the Lucario's once-elegant face with her closed eyes, the red liquid running from beneath her eyelids like teardrops. For a moment she was outside her body, watching the scene like out of a movie; mother bleeding to death on the floor, daughter crying beside her.
Crying blood, would you believe that?
"Shizue."
The Lucario's voice was choked and gargled, faint like words drawn out of a dream, but hopeful like the flickering candlelight in a shadowed corridor of doors. The Lucario raised her left arm from her soaked clothes, and placed the wet paw over the Quilava's left eye, drawing to a gentle close her eyelid. The Quilava trembled as blood trickled from the paw into her mouth. Her mother's blood was sweet.
"Mom?"
"Thank Arceus you're here ... don't ever tell your dad what I'm going to do to you."
The paw held for a moment, then fell away, leaving a smear of dark red. The Lucario was gone, and she did something before she had died.
She left her daughter a bloody eye.
"Mom! MOM!"
The footsteps down the wooden steps paused, and the Quilava looked up through her half-clear half-scarlet vision at the Typhlosion who had frozen by the foot of the stairs. There was something deadly wrong with the fleeting situation; for the Typhlosion's eyes glowed each a varying hue as he stood in the darkness, and the Quilava had a sudden urge to lunge at her father and rip through his throat his gullet.
The Typhlosion blinked twice his eyes; left iris raven right iris silver, blooding pumping in small spurts from between underneath his eyeballs and his lower eyelids and onto the polished boards. He opened halfway his bloodied lips, like a husband about to confess he had been fucking for the last few years another woman, then sighed.
"Do you want to kill me?"
He walked past the Lucario and the Quilava huddled upon the floor, and thrust aside the hanging door, the demented crimson of nightfall shining into the room of some gothic tragedy.
"Become stronger. Then one day, you will come looking for me."
Then the fine column of light diminished to a resonant darkness.Chapter End Notes:Retrace VI will come sooner than I thought, I will begin on the main story