Story Notes:
Decided to repost the whole thing, but yeah, same story really, didn't make many changes. Hope you enjoy guys and gals.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.
Act 1: Chapter 3: New Experiences, Old Friends
The golden mass of energy shot out towards him, with barely a second to react he felt the adrenaline start to kick in, the feeling that he that was coursing through his body was extremely addictive, yet one only experienced it in the heat of battle. He felt the world around him slow down, and within an instant the lust for violence and blood kicked in...this was one of those feelings which he knew he could so easily lose himself in...but after what had happened last time he had allowed it to, he'd rather avoid that if at all possible. Dimly, in the background he heard Rose, shouting for him to get out of the way of the beam of light steadily approaching him. He smirked, during the fraction of a second that these thoughts had took place, his legs had already propelled him into the air, narrowly missing the hyper beam which then collided into the stadium wall. His ally, an elegeant creature that seemed to shimmer with fire looked at him quickly, and in her eyes he also saw the thrill of a battle fighting for dominance over her mind.
"Tes! Use flamethrower! Lance, go in behind with a leaf blade!" the sound of their trainer echoed, however a twinge of uncertainty clung to her voice, Lance cringed, the other smiled. Before them stood a pokémon which largely resembled a rock with legs, and another which looked much the same however with a very dubious looking nose. The Rustboro City gym leader looked puzzled for a moment, originally he had been puzzled at the trainer's choice of pokémon, a flame type against rock types, seemingly not a very good idea. And in the moment he made the mistake which lost him the match, he got cocky.
"Golem, Nosepass! Hold your ground and prepare to take down the Grovyle!" he shouted curtly, his pokémon would only suffer minor damage, and if he knocked the grass-type pokémon down first he'd be given a big advantage. Just after he had finished the sentence, the arena quite literally erupted into torrent of raging fire, he could feel the searing heat despite being a fair distance away. Both of his pokémon held their ground against the rush of fire with relative ease, but they were greatly discomforted by the fact that they couldn't see anything. It took the gym leader a split second to realise this, and it was then that the opposing trainer's plan unravelled before him.
"Lance, do it!" Rose shouted, in awe by the sheer volume of fire that Cynder had created, Rose just hoped that she could keep it going long enough for their plan to take action. Even though she had verified this plan with Lance, a deep pit of worry still inhabited her heart over whether he could pull it off in a short enough space of time. Lance grimaced as he prepared to do his part, the leaves on each side of his arms began to glow and radiate a dim green energy, and then he moved. With the speed of a fighter jet he darted around the side of the jet of fire, and disappeared into it. The Gym leader predicted this and tried to issue his last chance move, but he knew that both of his pokémon were already down for the count.
Lance flew through the jet of fire at top speed with his eyes tightly closed and racked his brain for the placements of the opposing two pokémon on the stadium, the memory quickly ran through his brain and he brought his arms down in between the two enemies. The blazing heat was scorching his skin but he managed to filter that out of his mind and slice through the two objects either side of him before speeding out of the river of fire and landed next to his partner, a little blackened and burnt but otherwise unharmed thanks to his speed. Gratefully, Cynder stopped the stream of fire erupting from her mouth and smiled, she'd never been able to hold one for anywhere near that long before, the training had definitely paid off, she couldn't hide the smile.
As the smoke slowly blew out of the stadium, the Gym leader allowed his mouth to hang open at the sight of his two most powerful pokémon flattened with relative ease. Rose let out a sigh of relief, that move had been a gamble but thankfully it paid off...she gave a concerned look at Lance but he simply shrugged his shoulders, sure it stung slightly but he'd had much worse. Cynder smiled sheepishly at Lance.
"Are you alright?" she asked in the strange name-calling speech which only pokémon could understand.
"Did you really have to overdue it that much?" he replied dryly. She simply rolled her eyes and tried to focus on getting the air back into her lungs.
When it became clear to the referee that the pokémon had definitely been incapacitated he called the end of the match. As modest as ever, Rose punched the sky in victory and smiled happily at the win of her first gym badge. Two years had passed since the events of her mothers death and her becoming a pokémon trainer, the main reason why she'd only just got her first gym badge was because of a few rather embarrassing incidents including her getting taken back to her home town by the police for further questioning, realising that she didn't have enough money for the journey so getting a small part-time job to compensate for this and the year that she had spent doing nothing but trying to track down the person/people who had killed her mother, which had ultimately ended in a dead end and a couple of emotional breakdowns. But now she was back on track to her original goal of reaching the elite four.
Rather stupidly, she jumped off of her elevated position in her rush to congratulate her companions, landed awkwardly and did quite an impressive front role however landed in a very unimpressive cluster of limbs at her pokémon feet. Lance connected his face with the palm of his hand, whilst Cynder just let out a smokey sigh of embarrassment. Over the past few years something had developed with Lance, whilst they had been trapped at the village by the police he had decided to learn how to speak human, he had taken it in quickly, and much to the shock of Rose they had been having conversations in six months. The many days spent learning had paid of however when he had managed to talk her out of the whole revenge thing, and instead focus on becoming a traine, in the last couple of months he had worked on his accent. The other new development in both of the pokémon was the fact that they had both evolved, Lance had evolved first into a Grovyle, he now stood at almost the same height as Rose. Cynder, originally an Eevee, had evolved by accident, and although at first she hadn't liked her new form she had grown into life as a Flareon, enjoying the fact that she could now have a advantage over Lance in a fight, and the fact that she could now get him to anything she really wanted.
"Oooouch..." Rose moaned as she stumbled to her feet, face red with embarrassment. "Anyways, completely eradicating that from our minds, you guys did awesome!" she shouted, pulling both of the two into a massive embrace. The two pokémon rolled there eyes at the show of attention, but eventually returned the embrace. At first, Lance's new form had bothered her, as at first he acted very strange and emotional, which led to a few extremely awkward moments which she now preferred not to talk about but Cynder kept reminding her about in the rare moments when her and Rose were alone together. That brings up another thing that Rose didn't understand, she couldn't understands what pokémon said but could hear the thought that they wish to convey in perfect English. The only thing Rose could use to explain it was her encounter with the Mew, it could have changed her slightly, but she looked at it as more of a gift than a curse.
"And on the plus side leafy was only slightly singed," Cynder added with a small giggle, earning a small grunt of annoyance from Lance. Rose sighed and turned toward the approaching gym leader, who didn't look exactly happy with the fact that he had been beaten.
"Well, despite the fact that you used underhand tactics to beat me, the fact is that you did...beat me. You showed initiative and an unpredictable style of battling, I believe that you'll do just fine later on...so take this badge as a token of your achievement," He handed her the badge, "Now then, I have work to do back at the mines, so I'm afraid I can't chat with you any longer," With that, he walked straight out of the gym and headed towards the mine, Rose and the other two followed him and parked outside.
"Weelll, for a gym battle that was pretty damn easy!" Lance exclaimed, practically reading her mind. "If they're all gonna be that easy we're gonna get to the top in no time at all!" Rose smiled, despite knowing that this was not the case it still cheered her up.
"Eterna City is going to be pushover too, its only grass and bug type pokémon so I could take them down without breaking a sweat!" Cynder reminded them. When she was an Eevee she'd been really quite shy and was practically a pacifist, but with her evolution into a Flareon came the aspects of fire, brave and passionate about everything she did.
"Yeah, but I'm sure the gym leader over there knows that, so she's probably got some kinda defence over it, remember Cynder, going in guns-blazing is generally a bad idea," Rose advised, before taking out a poke ball. "Anyway, you know the law, only one pokémon allowed at any time, and I'm afraid its your turn Cynder."
"Great...oh well, you two have fun!" Cynder shouted with a small grin on her face, before being engulfed by the red beam. Nowadays, Rose preferred not to be alone with Lance, it was a bit sad really but a Cynder was implying, usually something happened which resulted in one those extremely tense and awkward moments. She put the poke ball in her pocket and looked up at Lance.
"You ready to head out?" she asked him. He shrugged his shoulders.
"Whenever you are," he answered, shouldering the rucksack that she now forced one of the two to where. Rose sighed and began walking down the path with Lance trailing behind her slightly.
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Lance had been walking with Rose for almost an hour and throughout the whole time they had barely spoken to each other at all. The silence was killing him, before he couldn't speak with her, but now that he could and that he had so much to say every second of it was painful. He sighed gently, ever since he had evolved everything had changed, and he hated it...before the evolution he had been small and had enjoyed being handled by Rose, they had just been two friends. But now there was always a distance between them both, something that he yearned to be able to destroy, and it was all because of a few mistakes that he had made when he first evolved. Lance evolved in the middle of a battle against three wild pokémon who had managed to knock Rose out, he had done it for her...yet inside he believed she hated him for it. A huge torrent of emotions had developed the first time he laid eyes on her in his new form, and instantly he knew that it was nothing but love...but with a passion so deep and uncontrollable he had been powerless to fight it. Lance shook his head as the memories came back to him, he still had those feelings for her and he knew that she knew he did...but now he could resist these emotions, yet he didn't blame her for not completely trusting him, one bad experience is enough to ruin a whole group of good experiences.
Eventually midday beckoned and he heard the rather-hard-not-to-notice noise of the Rose's stomach craving food. Slowly they grinded to a halt by a small tree and she sat down to eat what she had packed for lunch today. Lance smiled and jumped onto the branch above her, looking up at the dense area of trees ahead of them.
"Is that Eterna Forest?" he asked, it was a dumb question but he just wanted to spark a conversation.
"Yeah..." she answered. Great, he thought, A single word answer, he let out a sigh and lay down on the branch. "Hey...Lance, you did a great job out there today..." she eventually said. That was more like it, he was however a bit surprised that she had continued.
"Really? Thanks...so I guess you're going to be using Cynder in the next one?" he asked.
"I don't know...it's a bit retarded to rely on one pokémon...and anyway, no offence and all, but you've gotta improve on your normal attacks, speed isn't everything you know," she said with an amused smiles on her lips. Lance narrowed his eyes, he didn't like to be criticised, even if it had a little truth in it.
"What, so you're saying I'm too weak?" he asked, presuming that she was joking.
"Pretty much," she replied bluntly, a small laugh escaping from her mouth at his expression. "Just joking, but you do need a bit more muscle here and there, exhibit one" she stated, reaching up to pinch a bit of flab from his belly, with a rather disgruntled noise coming from Lance. "See what I mean?"
"Well really its your fault for being a crummy trainer," he retorted, she never really liked to train them unless they forced her too, it was almost the same with battling. She hadn't really gotten to grips with the whole training and battling part of being a pokémon trainer. "A bad worker always blames her tools," he recited, sniggering slightly.
"Well fine then, if you want to play it that way..." she said with a malicious grin before pulling a rather surprised Lance out of the tree by his leg. "You want to train hard? Then get down and give me one-hundred!" she commanded. Lance sighed, maybe silence was a better alternative; he got up to forty smoothly, but by the sixtieth sweat was streaming off his forehead and arms, which were shaking with every press-up. "Hee, funny, I didn't even know that your species could sweat!" laughing as he collapsed onto the floor after he had narrowly finished. He didn't reply to that statement, he didn't want to waste the precious air that his lungs craved. "You see, this is why I don't train you so hard, its pokémon cruelty!" Another fit of laughter breaking free.
After ten minutes Lance had cooled off and was wolfing down the lunch the Rose had made for him, she wasn't a great cook, but right now he preferred not to make a smart-ass comment under the threat of more exercise. Legs he could do, but arms, not so much. Rose was watching Lance carefully as he was eating, a thoughtful look on her face, which he gradually picked up.
"What's up?" he asked, in between mouthfuls.
"...Should I be training you guys harder?" she asked, Lance groaned softly and rolled his eyes, she always brought this up. "I mean...if I do want to become a trainer...I have to train you guys so that you're good enough....and are you sure you like battling?" Lance sighed, what did he have to do to make her understand.
"Look," he started, "Fighting for us isn't the same as it is with you humies, in the wild it can be...but many times it's a fight for dominance or purely for fun...I know that makes us seem like violent creatures and all...but the fact is that we kinda are," Rose nodded, she'd heard this all before of course, but it was comforting to know that she was putting them through something that they hated. She knew pokémon had violent tendencies, but they were also kind and affectionate so it sort of balanced it out.
"Right...so do you reckon I should train you and Cyn more often?" He smiled at the thought of Rose putting Cyn through the same treatment that he had just experienced...only ten times worse. It was not that he hated the Flareon, quite the opposite, he actually quite liked her a lot, it was just a friendly sort of rivalry that they had going between each other.
"Well, it's your choice in the end, remember technically we are your pokémon, so you call the shots...but really I would actually quite like it...and well for Cyn...she's Cyn so if I do it she'll do it better...but still hate you for it," he smiled, this was one of those few moments when they actually managed to string a conversation together, minus the awkwardness. In truth, he didn't particularly want to do a great deal more training, due to by nature he was a lazy pokémon, but he would fight better if he worked harder, and possibly even impress Rose enou-, he erased that tempting thought from his brain quickly, now was definitely not the time for that to come up again.
"I guess...ah well, I'll see how I feel about it while we're in the forest..." she turned her gaze to the quite gloomy looking forest, despite having come along way, she still had a small fear of wild pokémon, so she briefly wrapped her hands around the fire-types poke ball. "Um, I think I'm going to bring Cyn out for this one," she said with a nervous laugh.
"Do we have to?" he asked, secretly enjoying his time alone with Rose. "We can get through there without her no problem, not to mention we'll be saving its inhabitants a few nasty burns," he added. Rose shook her head, but before she let her out she noticed the black marks that still scattered around Lance's skin.
"Shit! I forgot, I'd better give those burns a quick spray?" Lance gave a unhappy noise but stood still as she searched through her camping bag for a potion, which once she had located she carefully began to spray onto the more tender areas of flesh on his skin.
"Why do they make that stuff sting?" he complained.
"My mum always used to say that stinging was good...it means that it's actually doing something," The happier memories of the times spent with her mother comforted her slightly. "Hmm...you weren't quite fast enough," she observed as she looked over his body. This was another blow to his pride for him.
"First you insult, in my opinion, my perfectly good muscles and now you make fun of my speed," he said unhappily, testing out the amount of flab that his biceps had. Rose rolled her eyes.
"What is it with guys and not being able to take criticism?" she commented.
"A little self-esteem isn't a bad thing," he retorted, smiling as she glared at him. Ignoring him, she started to spray an area of his head, having to stretch upwards giving him a rather tasty view of her cleavage. She hadn't noticed and he knew that he should have kept quite but the words slipped out of his mouth before these thoughts ran through his head.
"Well, hullo there," he murmured, grinning like an idiot. Rose's face went a deeper shade of red many are ever likely to see and quickly shoved him onto the floor and stood up.
"God damn it Lance! Why do you have to be such a freakin' pervert!" she shouted, embarrassed and angry at the same time. Lance dug his grave even deeper.
"But why the hell am I punished so much for something like that, I'm sure if I was your old friend David you wouldn't complain," She'd always been slightly flattered by his jealousy over David, but this just sounded wrong.
"That's exactly the point, you're not a human, you're a pokémon and it's just...it's just wrong!" she said, Lance knew that she was thinking that but for her to actually say that quite hurt him actually, so he turned away from her, sat down and finish eating his lunch, Rose did the same but in the opposite direction, still fuming. With her usual great sense of timing Cynder popped out of her ball and stretched.
"Soooo, anything happen?" she asked with a large grin on her face as the crimson light faded away, she was met with only silence by both parties, "Yep...I guess something did..."
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Five minutes of silence later Rose and Lance simultaneously started to get ready for the trip into Eterna forest, and much to Cyn's annoyance she'd become a medium of speaking between the two. There sulking was so childish that is even seemed pathetic to her, that coupled with the fact that neither would tell her what had happened.
"Cyn, would you please tell pervie over there to remember his bag?" asked Rose angrily.
"What's the point, he's standing like two metres away from you, he just heard you..." she replied, humans were so confusing.
"Well I think he's ignoring me, so could you please ask him?" A slight amount of poison lased into her words. Cyn sighed, and bit the Grovyle on the leg lightly and looked towards the bag, well, she might as well get as much fun out of it as she could.
"Cyn, tell little miss racist over there that if she wants extra stuff, she can carry it herself," Cyn rolled her eyes, she'd have thought that he would have been a little more mature about this than Rose, but just as she was about to relay the comment the arguing commenced.
"What!? You're kidding me! Tell him that everything in there is for him so he can bloody well carry it himself!" she shouted, Lance folded his arms, technically they weren't having a conversation so he had to act like he was ignoring her.
"Why would you want to buy me stuff when you hate pokémon!?" he retorted angrily, still not making eye contact with her.
"Hey! Stop twisting my words you vegetable! At least I wasn't the one ogling a different species tits!" Cyn's ears perked up, something definitely had happened , and it seemed like it was getting juicier by the second so she just sat down and listened to the interesting parts.
"I wasn't ogling! They were right in front of me! And to be honest I'm surprised I saw them!"
"And what the hell is that supposed to mean!?" she asked bitterly. Lance smiled, it seemed that he was the one winning the fight.
"You have small tits, there I said it," Rose looked like her eyes were about to burst out, but she tried to regain calm.
"You know what else is small?" she retorted, now glaring at him.
"Ooooohhhh, don't you go there!" he threatened, returning the stare with his amber eyes.
"Well let's just say everything apart from your ego can be counted as small!" Obviously she was talking about his muscles...but Cyn seemed to get the wrong end of the proverbial stick.
"Seconded," she stated smugly, Rose and Lance both looked at her in shock, both hoping that she was talking about what they were, "What, he could use a workout!" Both of them let out a collective sigh, and then were back on to random insults, obviously running out of material.
"Vegetable!"
"Racist!"
"Pervert!
"Snorlax!" Lance seemed to feel strangely smug about being first to come up with something vaguely new but equally insulting, a bit childish but these sorts of arguments generally were.
"You just crossed the line mister!" Rose shouted, pulled out his poke ball and within moments the shocked looking Grovyle was inside the ball. "A snorlax am I? Then maybe I'll just eat your ball huh!?" Cyn chuckled at her trainer's attempt to get her mouth round the ball, but settled with just putting it back in her pocket.
"...You sure showed him," the Flareon said jokingly, but was quickly silenced by the icy stare she received.
"Not one wor-...thought, or I'll...I'll give you a bath!" Rose threatened, the fire-type's tail quivered at the unmentionable word, she didn't know that she was that serious. The trainer seemed to take the now available free time to gather herself and generally calm down. "Right then Cyn, let's get into the forest, we don't want to be stuck in there at night, it'd be way to creepy," So, she slung her bag across her back and started to walk up towards the forest, they had two hours before nightfall...shouldn't that be enough time to get through the forest?
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Wrong...by her watch they'd been the forest for less than half and hour and she was already lost...she'd tried following the trail but a group of wild Luxio had seemed to taken up camp there for the night, and she had gone against Cyn's wishes off frying them all and taken what she thought was a "short-cut", which had turned out badly, and the Flareon would not stop reminding her about that fact.
"Note to self : Disobey what trainer says at all possible opportunities," This was not actually a thought that Cyn had wanted to convey, but since it was all she was thinking about it Rose couldn't help but pick it up.
"Come on...no offence and everything but I doubt you could have taken on all of them," Rose retorted, trying to focus on the map that she held in her hands. Cyn simply "huffed" in reply, a bit annoyed that Rose had read through her thoughts to find out what she was thinking. "And anyway...if all else fails we get to spend a lovely night out in the forest...I'm sure that'd be great, wouldn't it?" she asked, an almost pleading look in her eyes.
"Not really, just thinking about all of the Spinorak's you'll wake up with in your tent scares the shit out of me...if we're being honest," Apparently Cyn either had never heard of telling a "white lie" or just didn't care about them. "And anyway, we could find our way out if you just brought Lance back out of the ball, he'd just climb up a tree and point us in the right direction." Rose knew that what she was saying made perfect sense, just the thought of seeing his smug smile once he knew that they were hopeless without him made her angry.
"No, that's not an option...maybe we'll find someone we can ask?" she thought allowed, true what she was saying was pure optimism which she doubted would happen, but hey, lying to yourself can help to alleviate stress s in hard times. Cyn rolled her eyes and decided it would be a better use of their time to search for a nice place to camp before it got pitch black and Rose would start freaking out.
"Wait a minute...wow...I think I can actually here someone out there...?" Cyn stated, her ears perked up, straining to make out where the faint sound was coming from. Rose stood up from the tree stump she was sitting on, excited by the new chance of not sleeping in the middle of creepy (supposedly haunted) forest.
"Really!? Where's it coming from?" Cyn smiled evilly, now she understood why the sound was faint, the person was actually reasonably close by and the trainer's scent was familiar to her...but she didn't want Rose to know that, no, that would ruin a bit of fun. So, she simply pointed in the right direction with her forepaw and Rose bolted off, with Cyn travelling a short while behind with a humoured expression on her face. Rose made out a clearing with two shadowy figure in it just a short while ahead, and a small survival instinct in her head told her to slow down, which she immediately did. With her pace slowed to a crawl she stood by the outline of the clearing, and immediately her face reddened.
In the clearing stood two figures, obscured by the sun setting behind them over an azure lake, locked in an extremely tight embrace, obviously engaged in fairly vigorous smooching. Rose tried to keep quiet, not wanting to spoil the fun that the two were having. Cyn slowly crept up behind her, and poked her with a paw, making Rose jump and stifle a scream.
"Wow, you're such a pervert," Cyn thought with a teasing smile, Rose quickly looked a way from the scene with her face a dark shade of crimson. "Hee, there's something else that you'll probably want to know...well...two things but only one really important thing," Rose shrugged her shoulders, not wanting to speak in case she alerted the couple. "That one in the middle...I Bet'cha can't guess who that is," She shrugged her shoulder again, it could be any num- wait...really? Surely not... "The one on the left, that's Davie boy," Cyn said, raising an eyebrow purposefully.
At first, Rose was pretty surprised by this (and admittedly even a little jealous) but then when she thought is over it had been almost two years since they had last seen each other, and a good looking guy like Dave was obviously going to have a girlfriend by now...maybe they'd chosen this place as some sort of romantic getaway...if that were the case she should probably go...but the thought of speaking to her old friend again would be nice...and stopping him from kissing the girl would be ever nicer.
After a few more minutes of waiting they eventually stopped kissing, and the smaller (presumably the girl) walked into the tent, Rose wanted to move but she also didn't, and in the end it was Cyn who made the first move...which was head butting her out into the clearing, making a very audible thumping sound. Dave looked up, obviously having heard the sound.
"Who's there?" he asked cautiously, but the only reply he got back was a slight "Oooow", so he got up and investigated the outline of the forest...it didn't take him long to find the mass of limbs which he remembered instantly. "...Um...Rose?" She looked up, rubbing her back, she tried to act cool and collected...a bit alien for her.
"Oh...hey Dave...um...long time no see?" she said nervously, standing up and casting a cold look out towards the trees. "Uuh, I wasn't interrupting anything...was I?" she asked, David quickly shook his head.
"Um no...I was just a little surprised to see you here...its been three years and all," Rose nodded, and managed to get look at the radically changed person in front of her. Gone was the clean-shaven, spotty face, instead replace by a short beard and fairly long hair which overlapped one of his eyes...it really had been two years, but he was no long a skinny 12-year old, he'd put on a bit of muscles and grow much taller than her, towering over her relatively short height at somewhere around 6 feet tall, but he still had the same childish gleam in his eyes and the general friendly expression. She noticed a little self-consciously that he was also looking her up and down, she didn't think that she'd changed that much, but she had probably just gotten use to it.
"You're hair looks nice long," he observed
"You've got a Bidoof on your face," she said with a smile, and before long the two were hugging one another. "Wow, I can't believe its been two years..." she said happily.
"Yeah, its been way too long...heard you got caught by the police, what was that like?" he asked matter-of-factly.
"Pretty boring, would have been more interesting if I'd actually done something wrong, but enough about me, what have you been doing for the past couple of years?" she asked, he smiled.
"Quite a bit, I set off to become a pokémon trainer...but I guess you kinda rubbed off on me, I didn't like the whole battling thing so instead a coordinator, and its been pretty good going really, you?" Rose was actually rather surprised by this change, it almost made her feel bad about becoming a trainer.
"Well, after my late start I kept going with being a pokémon trainer...I got my first badge earlier today actually, which was kinda neat..." An audible cough came from behind her, and she realised that she had completely forgotten about Cyn, so she scooped her up into her arms and showed her to David.
"Wow! A Flareon! I've been dying to get one of those, they're such beautiful pokémon, the judges always love them," He leant down to stroke Cyn, and obviously his remark about her beauty had appeased her as he still had an arm and was even rewarded with a soft yip.
"You know...I wouldn't mind going with him, for a human he's pretty good looking," Cyn told Rose, who rolled her eyes at the comment. "What, I was being serious, I can see why you had a crush on him, I wouldn't object if he got all alpha-male on me if you know what I mean" she said playfully, a comment which Rose frantically tried to block out of her mind
"Well...I think she likes you," Rose assured him cautiously, and then quickly tried to sneak a view in the tent to see who David's "special someone" was.
"You're not going to like iiittt," Cyn thought with a silent giggle, confusing Rose for a moment.
"Soo, Dave, if anyone else here with you?" Rose asked innocently, hoping that she wasn't being a little to nosy, however much to her surprise he shook his head.
"Nope, I'm just on my way to Eterna City, the only thing I have with me are my pokémon," This confused Rose further, as his eyes gave away the fact that he was telling the truth...so if he is alone who was he smooching? "I would show you Ella...but she gets cranky when I get her out of her ball at night, and trust me, the last thing you want is a bitchy Lucario on your case all day," he said, looking like he'd experienced it before. And that was when it clicked in Rose's mind, if he was alone...apart from him and a female Lucario...and since those have a human-ish shape...then was he -!?
"Bingo," said the Flareon, "Did he used to be into that sort of thing?" Cyn teased, Rose simply squeezed her to make her shut up, the thought of her friend doing that to a pokémon...was that right?
"Uuuuhh...Rose...is something wrong?" he asked, bringing her back into reality.
"Um, no! Not at all...I'm just tried...yeah, really tired...it's been a bit of a rough day today," Admittedly, she knew that the excuse was feeble...but it was kind of the truth. David nodded in agreement, then looked up at the steadily darkening sky.
"You want help getting your tent up?" Rose nodded her head, judging by how quickly she had gotten lost in broad daylight, it wouldn't be sensible to go out when it was dark...and besides, even if David was...well weird in that respect, he was nice company and hopefully good at reading maps. So they started putting up her tent under the moonlit sky, Rose and David catching up some more before crawling into their sleeping bags.
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Three hours later and Rose was still awake in the tent, having got restless and crawled out of the sleeping bag, she was being kept warm by Cyn who was sleeping softly on her lap. For all this time she couldn't help thinking about how David and his Lucario were together...and she didn't really no why, she knew that it wasn't because it repulsed her as she knew it really should...she couldn't place her finger on another reason other than that in her heat...this was kind of what she had imagined Lance and her being like. When she had first thought of it as a younger girl, the idea of it actually seemed to make sense, she liked him and he liked her...however an "educational" video that the school had provided when she was 11 had changed that, even today four years later she had nightmares of that. But still, the idea had some appeal to her...it was her human brain that screamed it was wrong whenever she thought about it, and she couldn't decide whether she should go with her heart of brain.
Rose sighed as the thoughts began to give her a headache, and carefully put the sleeping pokémon back onto the floor, deciding to head out into the crisp evening air, donning a thin coat. Dew had already started to coat the grass with a thin film of glimmering water, which were icy to the touch, but she had seen something else which took her mind of this. In the grass, a metre of two away from the small lake emitted a crimson glow in contrast with the emerald around it, she walked closer and a reached down to pick up the small item, it was metallic in structure, about the size of the palm of her hand and was in the shape of a ruby serpent coiled around a jagged dagger, which she found out was rather sharp the hard way. She let out a muffled curse, but again something drew her attention away from discomfort. Where the blood had touched the apparent insignia, it had trace over a few words which were etched into the surface, which were now revealed by the moonlight, "Si vis pacem, para bellum,".
"Come to me..." a voice whispered somewhere behind her, quickly pocketing the symbol, she turned around quickly and found no-one there...great a psychic type was screwing with her head. "Come to me..." the voice repeated, this time Rose started to walk towards a cliff next to the lake, she tried to stop but failed...whoever was the owner of the voice was forcing her to walk into the wall, her breathing became short and restless as she tried to fight against whatever was manipulating her body, but the thing carried on effortlessly banishing her attempts. She was almost a metre away from the wall. Her legs kept moving. She tried to put her hands up to push into the rock face but they were frozen in place. She shut her eyes tightly, yet the expected surge of pain never came. Slowly, she opened one of her eyes...and a small gasp escaped from her lips as she beheld the staggering sight in front of her. She was inside a cavern which seemed to be carved out of the very rock, beautiful emerald trees spilled over a raised area of rock, where an iridescent azure pond sat, bathed in luminescence from the sliver of moon which seemed to expand upon the body of water. The tranquil setting was only disrupted by the eerily dampened sound of water cascading off of a small waterfall onto the gleaming water, creating small ripples which sank into the golden shore of sand on which she now stood on.
In the middle of the pond stood a figure, which despite being bathed in moonlight appeared only as a shadow, it looked upon her and as she stared into the gaping darkness of its eyes she felt herself fall into them, she felt them devour her.
"I've been watching you..." The creature was not communicating with its mouth, nor with its mind, its voice was a tremor which reverberated through the very ground, creating small waves along the once smooth surface of the water. "I've been waiting for a chance to meet with you personally, whilst you're watcher was no longer around," Her mouth had suddenly become very dry, and her mouth felt as if it was glued shut. "Yes, that's right Rose, there is no escaping, no screaming, no talking for you until I have told you what I feel...compelled to do, so it will be in your...best interests to stop struggling and listen," Cautiously, Rose did what he said, what other choice did she have? "Good, then I may begin."
"I have called you here in order to...shall we say give you a fair chance, as what good is any game without one of the main players having a fair chance..." Their surroundings had suddenly changed into a vast desert, a figure battling for his life where the lake had once been, Rose recognised the scene, something that she hadn't forgotten in all her life, "You're father used to be one of my favourites, but as you probably know his seemingly infinite supply of luck was really quite finite..." The scene gave way to a kitchen that she also knew, the scene, although she had been not be present to see it, also dreadfully familiar. "The same can also be said for your mother, whose death actually quite saddened me, such a pointless death of such a great mind...however both of their lives were worth being lost in order to give you the drive that I saw only a month ago, your want for revenge was so great that even I was left wondering what you might do next..." The shadow smiled, a set of jagged phosphorescent teeth appearing. "You should be careful with emotions as strong as that...it would be a pity for you to lead yourself to death so soon...when you still have so much to do." For a moment Rose's mouth was no longer frozen, and she managed to speak, trying to ignore the film of her mother being shot in the head.
"I-I...I'm n-not like that...a-anymore," she stammered, to put it eloquently, scared shitless.
"Oh? But it is so easy to see, the want for revenge upon the scoundrels behind this...I can give you this information," Rose's eyes lit up that, the creature laughed, a laugh which cracked the tiles of the stained kitchen floor. "You see now, dear child? The want for this will never leave your heart...but if you truly wish to avenge the deaths of your parents your journey will take you there, but take heed, if you go down the road of revenge, not only will you lose your own life...but the lives of the creatures that you are destined to save..." Again the creature chuckled, splintering the fading wall, "I know what you're thinking Rose, you want me to tell you what to do to make everything better...but that would be cheating, and I have no interest in doing such a thing...I'm simply supplying you with the information necessary...sometimes having further questions is better than having answers, as with questions that journey may continue, but if you had ever answer...where'd the fun in that be? Life is about having many questions and little answers, and you must live through the same burden,".
"...U-um...w-what information...do you have for me?" she asked carefully.
"As I said, listen instead of speaking, and perhaps you will gain a few answers. In the next few years of yout lifetime...you will face many struggles and many opponents...but you must remember...sometimes the greatest of opponents come from within, even the greatest mind, the best goal is susceptible to corruption of a very unpleasant nature," Thoughts raced through her mind, did it mean someone close to her would betray her...the word goal worried her...as she didn't really have any goals that could be turned bad. The creature floated closer to her, and rested a ghostly hand on her shoulder, "Love is an unstoppable force, simple boundaries such as race and kin often collapse under its force...but remember, to love is to leave oneself open to hurt...and hurt can lead to anger and hate, both dangerous and deadly, do not let love cloud your mind..." Rose shivered at his ice-cold touch, but could not shrink away from it. "Even the smallest action has a consequence which can change the writings of destiny in an instant, in anybody's life they can change the course of the future...in your's similar choices will be made, someone will doom or save your friend's lives, and others will start or stop war." It took the hand of her shoulder and floated back over the newly-appeared lake and forest, "Finally...before I bid you farewell...heed my words...beware the newly-found companions, for they may lead you into a new-world of danger and violence...and may ultimately lead in death..." Rose was inside those eyes again, but this time she felt like she was losing energy...and growing so cold... "Now I must take my leave..." the creature stated, the forest around him suddenly setting on fire...screams of pain erupting from the area, "Remember...revenge leads only to pain, suffering and death...oh...and try not to die before we get to the interesting part,, as I said, I may have evened the playing field, but I'm afraid that carelessness leads to death..." She was being pulled down into the dark now...falling endlessly into oblivion with only the sound of deep laughter shaking the tunnels of her mind...
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Gradually, she opened her eyes and saw nothing but the emerald gleam of grass...the next thing was that she felt how cold she was, she'd been lying face down in the wet grass, but she had not idea for how long. Despite her whole body feeling as if she'd gone skinny dipping in Snowpoint City, she managed to push herself onto her unsteady feet, and stumble back into her tent, where upon she promptly wrapped herself in a sleeping bag, used Cyn as the equivalent of hot-water-bottle (much to her disproval) and fell into a deep sleep due to sheer exhaustion...Chapter End Notes:Don't know why that chapter was long...but ah well, review if you wanna
"Tes! Use flamethrower! Lance, go in behind with a leaf blade!" the sound of their trainer echoed, however a twinge of uncertainty clung to her voice, Lance cringed, the other smiled. Before them stood a pokémon which largely resembled a rock with legs, and another which looked much the same however with a very dubious looking nose. The Rustboro City gym leader looked puzzled for a moment, originally he had been puzzled at the trainer's choice of pokémon, a flame type against rock types, seemingly not a very good idea. And in the moment he made the mistake which lost him the match, he got cocky.
"Golem, Nosepass! Hold your ground and prepare to take down the Grovyle!" he shouted curtly, his pokémon would only suffer minor damage, and if he knocked the grass-type pokémon down first he'd be given a big advantage. Just after he had finished the sentence, the arena quite literally erupted into torrent of raging fire, he could feel the searing heat despite being a fair distance away. Both of his pokémon held their ground against the rush of fire with relative ease, but they were greatly discomforted by the fact that they couldn't see anything. It took the gym leader a split second to realise this, and it was then that the opposing trainer's plan unravelled before him.
"Lance, do it!" Rose shouted, in awe by the sheer volume of fire that Cynder had created, Rose just hoped that she could keep it going long enough for their plan to take action. Even though she had verified this plan with Lance, a deep pit of worry still inhabited her heart over whether he could pull it off in a short enough space of time. Lance grimaced as he prepared to do his part, the leaves on each side of his arms began to glow and radiate a dim green energy, and then he moved. With the speed of a fighter jet he darted around the side of the jet of fire, and disappeared into it. The Gym leader predicted this and tried to issue his last chance move, but he knew that both of his pokémon were already down for the count.
Lance flew through the jet of fire at top speed with his eyes tightly closed and racked his brain for the placements of the opposing two pokémon on the stadium, the memory quickly ran through his brain and he brought his arms down in between the two enemies. The blazing heat was scorching his skin but he managed to filter that out of his mind and slice through the two objects either side of him before speeding out of the river of fire and landed next to his partner, a little blackened and burnt but otherwise unharmed thanks to his speed. Gratefully, Cynder stopped the stream of fire erupting from her mouth and smiled, she'd never been able to hold one for anywhere near that long before, the training had definitely paid off, she couldn't hide the smile.
As the smoke slowly blew out of the stadium, the Gym leader allowed his mouth to hang open at the sight of his two most powerful pokémon flattened with relative ease. Rose let out a sigh of relief, that move had been a gamble but thankfully it paid off...she gave a concerned look at Lance but he simply shrugged his shoulders, sure it stung slightly but he'd had much worse. Cynder smiled sheepishly at Lance.
"Are you alright?" she asked in the strange name-calling speech which only pokémon could understand.
"Did you really have to overdue it that much?" he replied dryly. She simply rolled her eyes and tried to focus on getting the air back into her lungs.
When it became clear to the referee that the pokémon had definitely been incapacitated he called the end of the match. As modest as ever, Rose punched the sky in victory and smiled happily at the win of her first gym badge. Two years had passed since the events of her mothers death and her becoming a pokémon trainer, the main reason why she'd only just got her first gym badge was because of a few rather embarrassing incidents including her getting taken back to her home town by the police for further questioning, realising that she didn't have enough money for the journey so getting a small part-time job to compensate for this and the year that she had spent doing nothing but trying to track down the person/people who had killed her mother, which had ultimately ended in a dead end and a couple of emotional breakdowns. But now she was back on track to her original goal of reaching the elite four.
Rather stupidly, she jumped off of her elevated position in her rush to congratulate her companions, landed awkwardly and did quite an impressive front role however landed in a very unimpressive cluster of limbs at her pokémon feet. Lance connected his face with the palm of his hand, whilst Cynder just let out a smokey sigh of embarrassment. Over the past few years something had developed with Lance, whilst they had been trapped at the village by the police he had decided to learn how to speak human, he had taken it in quickly, and much to the shock of Rose they had been having conversations in six months. The many days spent learning had paid of however when he had managed to talk her out of the whole revenge thing, and instead focus on becoming a traine, in the last couple of months he had worked on his accent. The other new development in both of the pokémon was the fact that they had both evolved, Lance had evolved first into a Grovyle, he now stood at almost the same height as Rose. Cynder, originally an Eevee, had evolved by accident, and although at first she hadn't liked her new form she had grown into life as a Flareon, enjoying the fact that she could now have a advantage over Lance in a fight, and the fact that she could now get him to anything she really wanted.
"Oooouch..." Rose moaned as she stumbled to her feet, face red with embarrassment. "Anyways, completely eradicating that from our minds, you guys did awesome!" she shouted, pulling both of the two into a massive embrace. The two pokémon rolled there eyes at the show of attention, but eventually returned the embrace. At first, Lance's new form had bothered her, as at first he acted very strange and emotional, which led to a few extremely awkward moments which she now preferred not to talk about but Cynder kept reminding her about in the rare moments when her and Rose were alone together. That brings up another thing that Rose didn't understand, she couldn't understands what pokémon said but could hear the thought that they wish to convey in perfect English. The only thing Rose could use to explain it was her encounter with the Mew, it could have changed her slightly, but she looked at it as more of a gift than a curse.
"And on the plus side leafy was only slightly singed," Cynder added with a small giggle, earning a small grunt of annoyance from Lance. Rose sighed and turned toward the approaching gym leader, who didn't look exactly happy with the fact that he had been beaten.
"Well, despite the fact that you used underhand tactics to beat me, the fact is that you did...beat me. You showed initiative and an unpredictable style of battling, I believe that you'll do just fine later on...so take this badge as a token of your achievement," He handed her the badge, "Now then, I have work to do back at the mines, so I'm afraid I can't chat with you any longer," With that, he walked straight out of the gym and headed towards the mine, Rose and the other two followed him and parked outside.
"Weelll, for a gym battle that was pretty damn easy!" Lance exclaimed, practically reading her mind. "If they're all gonna be that easy we're gonna get to the top in no time at all!" Rose smiled, despite knowing that this was not the case it still cheered her up.
"Eterna City is going to be pushover too, its only grass and bug type pokémon so I could take them down without breaking a sweat!" Cynder reminded them. When she was an Eevee she'd been really quite shy and was practically a pacifist, but with her evolution into a Flareon came the aspects of fire, brave and passionate about everything she did.
"Yeah, but I'm sure the gym leader over there knows that, so she's probably got some kinda defence over it, remember Cynder, going in guns-blazing is generally a bad idea," Rose advised, before taking out a poke ball. "Anyway, you know the law, only one pokémon allowed at any time, and I'm afraid its your turn Cynder."
"Great...oh well, you two have fun!" Cynder shouted with a small grin on her face, before being engulfed by the red beam. Nowadays, Rose preferred not to be alone with Lance, it was a bit sad really but a Cynder was implying, usually something happened which resulted in one those extremely tense and awkward moments. She put the poke ball in her pocket and looked up at Lance.
"You ready to head out?" she asked him. He shrugged his shoulders.
"Whenever you are," he answered, shouldering the rucksack that she now forced one of the two to where. Rose sighed and began walking down the path with Lance trailing behind her slightly.
*******************
Lance had been walking with Rose for almost an hour and throughout the whole time they had barely spoken to each other at all. The silence was killing him, before he couldn't speak with her, but now that he could and that he had so much to say every second of it was painful. He sighed gently, ever since he had evolved everything had changed, and he hated it...before the evolution he had been small and had enjoyed being handled by Rose, they had just been two friends. But now there was always a distance between them both, something that he yearned to be able to destroy, and it was all because of a few mistakes that he had made when he first evolved. Lance evolved in the middle of a battle against three wild pokémon who had managed to knock Rose out, he had done it for her...yet inside he believed she hated him for it. A huge torrent of emotions had developed the first time he laid eyes on her in his new form, and instantly he knew that it was nothing but love...but with a passion so deep and uncontrollable he had been powerless to fight it. Lance shook his head as the memories came back to him, he still had those feelings for her and he knew that she knew he did...but now he could resist these emotions, yet he didn't blame her for not completely trusting him, one bad experience is enough to ruin a whole group of good experiences.
Eventually midday beckoned and he heard the rather-hard-not-to-notice noise of the Rose's stomach craving food. Slowly they grinded to a halt by a small tree and she sat down to eat what she had packed for lunch today. Lance smiled and jumped onto the branch above her, looking up at the dense area of trees ahead of them.
"Is that Eterna Forest?" he asked, it was a dumb question but he just wanted to spark a conversation.
"Yeah..." she answered. Great, he thought, A single word answer, he let out a sigh and lay down on the branch. "Hey...Lance, you did a great job out there today..." she eventually said. That was more like it, he was however a bit surprised that she had continued.
"Really? Thanks...so I guess you're going to be using Cynder in the next one?" he asked.
"I don't know...it's a bit retarded to rely on one pokémon...and anyway, no offence and all, but you've gotta improve on your normal attacks, speed isn't everything you know," she said with an amused smiles on her lips. Lance narrowed his eyes, he didn't like to be criticised, even if it had a little truth in it.
"What, so you're saying I'm too weak?" he asked, presuming that she was joking.
"Pretty much," she replied bluntly, a small laugh escaping from her mouth at his expression. "Just joking, but you do need a bit more muscle here and there, exhibit one" she stated, reaching up to pinch a bit of flab from his belly, with a rather disgruntled noise coming from Lance. "See what I mean?"
"Well really its your fault for being a crummy trainer," he retorted, she never really liked to train them unless they forced her too, it was almost the same with battling. She hadn't really gotten to grips with the whole training and battling part of being a pokémon trainer. "A bad worker always blames her tools," he recited, sniggering slightly.
"Well fine then, if you want to play it that way..." she said with a malicious grin before pulling a rather surprised Lance out of the tree by his leg. "You want to train hard? Then get down and give me one-hundred!" she commanded. Lance sighed, maybe silence was a better alternative; he got up to forty smoothly, but by the sixtieth sweat was streaming off his forehead and arms, which were shaking with every press-up. "Hee, funny, I didn't even know that your species could sweat!" laughing as he collapsed onto the floor after he had narrowly finished. He didn't reply to that statement, he didn't want to waste the precious air that his lungs craved. "You see, this is why I don't train you so hard, its pokémon cruelty!" Another fit of laughter breaking free.
After ten minutes Lance had cooled off and was wolfing down the lunch the Rose had made for him, she wasn't a great cook, but right now he preferred not to make a smart-ass comment under the threat of more exercise. Legs he could do, but arms, not so much. Rose was watching Lance carefully as he was eating, a thoughtful look on her face, which he gradually picked up.
"What's up?" he asked, in between mouthfuls.
"...Should I be training you guys harder?" she asked, Lance groaned softly and rolled his eyes, she always brought this up. "I mean...if I do want to become a trainer...I have to train you guys so that you're good enough....and are you sure you like battling?" Lance sighed, what did he have to do to make her understand.
"Look," he started, "Fighting for us isn't the same as it is with you humies, in the wild it can be...but many times it's a fight for dominance or purely for fun...I know that makes us seem like violent creatures and all...but the fact is that we kinda are," Rose nodded, she'd heard this all before of course, but it was comforting to know that she was putting them through something that they hated. She knew pokémon had violent tendencies, but they were also kind and affectionate so it sort of balanced it out.
"Right...so do you reckon I should train you and Cyn more often?" He smiled at the thought of Rose putting Cyn through the same treatment that he had just experienced...only ten times worse. It was not that he hated the Flareon, quite the opposite, he actually quite liked her a lot, it was just a friendly sort of rivalry that they had going between each other.
"Well, it's your choice in the end, remember technically we are your pokémon, so you call the shots...but really I would actually quite like it...and well for Cyn...she's Cyn so if I do it she'll do it better...but still hate you for it," he smiled, this was one of those few moments when they actually managed to string a conversation together, minus the awkwardness. In truth, he didn't particularly want to do a great deal more training, due to by nature he was a lazy pokémon, but he would fight better if he worked harder, and possibly even impress Rose enou-, he erased that tempting thought from his brain quickly, now was definitely not the time for that to come up again.
"I guess...ah well, I'll see how I feel about it while we're in the forest..." she turned her gaze to the quite gloomy looking forest, despite having come along way, she still had a small fear of wild pokémon, so she briefly wrapped her hands around the fire-types poke ball. "Um, I think I'm going to bring Cyn out for this one," she said with a nervous laugh.
"Do we have to?" he asked, secretly enjoying his time alone with Rose. "We can get through there without her no problem, not to mention we'll be saving its inhabitants a few nasty burns," he added. Rose shook her head, but before she let her out she noticed the black marks that still scattered around Lance's skin.
"Shit! I forgot, I'd better give those burns a quick spray?" Lance gave a unhappy noise but stood still as she searched through her camping bag for a potion, which once she had located she carefully began to spray onto the more tender areas of flesh on his skin.
"Why do they make that stuff sting?" he complained.
"My mum always used to say that stinging was good...it means that it's actually doing something," The happier memories of the times spent with her mother comforted her slightly. "Hmm...you weren't quite fast enough," she observed as she looked over his body. This was another blow to his pride for him.
"First you insult, in my opinion, my perfectly good muscles and now you make fun of my speed," he said unhappily, testing out the amount of flab that his biceps had. Rose rolled her eyes.
"What is it with guys and not being able to take criticism?" she commented.
"A little self-esteem isn't a bad thing," he retorted, smiling as she glared at him. Ignoring him, she started to spray an area of his head, having to stretch upwards giving him a rather tasty view of her cleavage. She hadn't noticed and he knew that he should have kept quite but the words slipped out of his mouth before these thoughts ran through his head.
"Well, hullo there," he murmured, grinning like an idiot. Rose's face went a deeper shade of red many are ever likely to see and quickly shoved him onto the floor and stood up.
"God damn it Lance! Why do you have to be such a freakin' pervert!" she shouted, embarrassed and angry at the same time. Lance dug his grave even deeper.
"But why the hell am I punished so much for something like that, I'm sure if I was your old friend David you wouldn't complain," She'd always been slightly flattered by his jealousy over David, but this just sounded wrong.
"That's exactly the point, you're not a human, you're a pokémon and it's just...it's just wrong!" she said, Lance knew that she was thinking that but for her to actually say that quite hurt him actually, so he turned away from her, sat down and finish eating his lunch, Rose did the same but in the opposite direction, still fuming. With her usual great sense of timing Cynder popped out of her ball and stretched.
"Soooo, anything happen?" she asked with a large grin on her face as the crimson light faded away, she was met with only silence by both parties, "Yep...I guess something did..."
**********************************
Five minutes of silence later Rose and Lance simultaneously started to get ready for the trip into Eterna forest, and much to Cyn's annoyance she'd become a medium of speaking between the two. There sulking was so childish that is even seemed pathetic to her, that coupled with the fact that neither would tell her what had happened.
"Cyn, would you please tell pervie over there to remember his bag?" asked Rose angrily.
"What's the point, he's standing like two metres away from you, he just heard you..." she replied, humans were so confusing.
"Well I think he's ignoring me, so could you please ask him?" A slight amount of poison lased into her words. Cyn sighed, and bit the Grovyle on the leg lightly and looked towards the bag, well, she might as well get as much fun out of it as she could.
"Cyn, tell little miss racist over there that if she wants extra stuff, she can carry it herself," Cyn rolled her eyes, she'd have thought that he would have been a little more mature about this than Rose, but just as she was about to relay the comment the arguing commenced.
"What!? You're kidding me! Tell him that everything in there is for him so he can bloody well carry it himself!" she shouted, Lance folded his arms, technically they weren't having a conversation so he had to act like he was ignoring her.
"Why would you want to buy me stuff when you hate pokémon!?" he retorted angrily, still not making eye contact with her.
"Hey! Stop twisting my words you vegetable! At least I wasn't the one ogling a different species tits!" Cyn's ears perked up, something definitely had happened , and it seemed like it was getting juicier by the second so she just sat down and listened to the interesting parts.
"I wasn't ogling! They were right in front of me! And to be honest I'm surprised I saw them!"
"And what the hell is that supposed to mean!?" she asked bitterly. Lance smiled, it seemed that he was the one winning the fight.
"You have small tits, there I said it," Rose looked like her eyes were about to burst out, but she tried to regain calm.
"You know what else is small?" she retorted, now glaring at him.
"Ooooohhhh, don't you go there!" he threatened, returning the stare with his amber eyes.
"Well let's just say everything apart from your ego can be counted as small!" Obviously she was talking about his muscles...but Cyn seemed to get the wrong end of the proverbial stick.
"Seconded," she stated smugly, Rose and Lance both looked at her in shock, both hoping that she was talking about what they were, "What, he could use a workout!" Both of them let out a collective sigh, and then were back on to random insults, obviously running out of material.
"Vegetable!"
"Racist!"
"Pervert!
"Snorlax!" Lance seemed to feel strangely smug about being first to come up with something vaguely new but equally insulting, a bit childish but these sorts of arguments generally were.
"You just crossed the line mister!" Rose shouted, pulled out his poke ball and within moments the shocked looking Grovyle was inside the ball. "A snorlax am I? Then maybe I'll just eat your ball huh!?" Cyn chuckled at her trainer's attempt to get her mouth round the ball, but settled with just putting it back in her pocket.
"...You sure showed him," the Flareon said jokingly, but was quickly silenced by the icy stare she received.
"Not one wor-...thought, or I'll...I'll give you a bath!" Rose threatened, the fire-type's tail quivered at the unmentionable word, she didn't know that she was that serious. The trainer seemed to take the now available free time to gather herself and generally calm down. "Right then Cyn, let's get into the forest, we don't want to be stuck in there at night, it'd be way to creepy," So, she slung her bag across her back and started to walk up towards the forest, they had two hours before nightfall...shouldn't that be enough time to get through the forest?
********************************
Wrong...by her watch they'd been the forest for less than half and hour and she was already lost...she'd tried following the trail but a group of wild Luxio had seemed to taken up camp there for the night, and she had gone against Cyn's wishes off frying them all and taken what she thought was a "short-cut", which had turned out badly, and the Flareon would not stop reminding her about that fact.
"Note to self : Disobey what trainer says at all possible opportunities," This was not actually a thought that Cyn had wanted to convey, but since it was all she was thinking about it Rose couldn't help but pick it up.
"Come on...no offence and everything but I doubt you could have taken on all of them," Rose retorted, trying to focus on the map that she held in her hands. Cyn simply "huffed" in reply, a bit annoyed that Rose had read through her thoughts to find out what she was thinking. "And anyway...if all else fails we get to spend a lovely night out in the forest...I'm sure that'd be great, wouldn't it?" she asked, an almost pleading look in her eyes.
"Not really, just thinking about all of the Spinorak's you'll wake up with in your tent scares the shit out of me...if we're being honest," Apparently Cyn either had never heard of telling a "white lie" or just didn't care about them. "And anyway, we could find our way out if you just brought Lance back out of the ball, he'd just climb up a tree and point us in the right direction." Rose knew that what she was saying made perfect sense, just the thought of seeing his smug smile once he knew that they were hopeless without him made her angry.
"No, that's not an option...maybe we'll find someone we can ask?" she thought allowed, true what she was saying was pure optimism which she doubted would happen, but hey, lying to yourself can help to alleviate stress s in hard times. Cyn rolled her eyes and decided it would be a better use of their time to search for a nice place to camp before it got pitch black and Rose would start freaking out.
"Wait a minute...wow...I think I can actually here someone out there...?" Cyn stated, her ears perked up, straining to make out where the faint sound was coming from. Rose stood up from the tree stump she was sitting on, excited by the new chance of not sleeping in the middle of creepy (supposedly haunted) forest.
"Really!? Where's it coming from?" Cyn smiled evilly, now she understood why the sound was faint, the person was actually reasonably close by and the trainer's scent was familiar to her...but she didn't want Rose to know that, no, that would ruin a bit of fun. So, she simply pointed in the right direction with her forepaw and Rose bolted off, with Cyn travelling a short while behind with a humoured expression on her face. Rose made out a clearing with two shadowy figure in it just a short while ahead, and a small survival instinct in her head told her to slow down, which she immediately did. With her pace slowed to a crawl she stood by the outline of the clearing, and immediately her face reddened.
In the clearing stood two figures, obscured by the sun setting behind them over an azure lake, locked in an extremely tight embrace, obviously engaged in fairly vigorous smooching. Rose tried to keep quiet, not wanting to spoil the fun that the two were having. Cyn slowly crept up behind her, and poked her with a paw, making Rose jump and stifle a scream.
"Wow, you're such a pervert," Cyn thought with a teasing smile, Rose quickly looked a way from the scene with her face a dark shade of crimson. "Hee, there's something else that you'll probably want to know...well...two things but only one really important thing," Rose shrugged her shoulders, not wanting to speak in case she alerted the couple. "That one in the middle...I Bet'cha can't guess who that is," She shrugged her shoulder again, it could be any num- wait...really? Surely not... "The one on the left, that's Davie boy," Cyn said, raising an eyebrow purposefully.
At first, Rose was pretty surprised by this (and admittedly even a little jealous) but then when she thought is over it had been almost two years since they had last seen each other, and a good looking guy like Dave was obviously going to have a girlfriend by now...maybe they'd chosen this place as some sort of romantic getaway...if that were the case she should probably go...but the thought of speaking to her old friend again would be nice...and stopping him from kissing the girl would be ever nicer.
After a few more minutes of waiting they eventually stopped kissing, and the smaller (presumably the girl) walked into the tent, Rose wanted to move but she also didn't, and in the end it was Cyn who made the first move...which was head butting her out into the clearing, making a very audible thumping sound. Dave looked up, obviously having heard the sound.
"Who's there?" he asked cautiously, but the only reply he got back was a slight "Oooow", so he got up and investigated the outline of the forest...it didn't take him long to find the mass of limbs which he remembered instantly. "...Um...Rose?" She looked up, rubbing her back, she tried to act cool and collected...a bit alien for her.
"Oh...hey Dave...um...long time no see?" she said nervously, standing up and casting a cold look out towards the trees. "Uuh, I wasn't interrupting anything...was I?" she asked, David quickly shook his head.
"Um no...I was just a little surprised to see you here...its been three years and all," Rose nodded, and managed to get look at the radically changed person in front of her. Gone was the clean-shaven, spotty face, instead replace by a short beard and fairly long hair which overlapped one of his eyes...it really had been two years, but he was no long a skinny 12-year old, he'd put on a bit of muscles and grow much taller than her, towering over her relatively short height at somewhere around 6 feet tall, but he still had the same childish gleam in his eyes and the general friendly expression. She noticed a little self-consciously that he was also looking her up and down, she didn't think that she'd changed that much, but she had probably just gotten use to it.
"You're hair looks nice long," he observed
"You've got a Bidoof on your face," she said with a smile, and before long the two were hugging one another. "Wow, I can't believe its been two years..." she said happily.
"Yeah, its been way too long...heard you got caught by the police, what was that like?" he asked matter-of-factly.
"Pretty boring, would have been more interesting if I'd actually done something wrong, but enough about me, what have you been doing for the past couple of years?" she asked, he smiled.
"Quite a bit, I set off to become a pokémon trainer...but I guess you kinda rubbed off on me, I didn't like the whole battling thing so instead a coordinator, and its been pretty good going really, you?" Rose was actually rather surprised by this change, it almost made her feel bad about becoming a trainer.
"Well, after my late start I kept going with being a pokémon trainer...I got my first badge earlier today actually, which was kinda neat..." An audible cough came from behind her, and she realised that she had completely forgotten about Cyn, so she scooped her up into her arms and showed her to David.
"Wow! A Flareon! I've been dying to get one of those, they're such beautiful pokémon, the judges always love them," He leant down to stroke Cyn, and obviously his remark about her beauty had appeased her as he still had an arm and was even rewarded with a soft yip.
"You know...I wouldn't mind going with him, for a human he's pretty good looking," Cyn told Rose, who rolled her eyes at the comment. "What, I was being serious, I can see why you had a crush on him, I wouldn't object if he got all alpha-male on me if you know what I mean" she said playfully, a comment which Rose frantically tried to block out of her mind
"Well...I think she likes you," Rose assured him cautiously, and then quickly tried to sneak a view in the tent to see who David's "special someone" was.
"You're not going to like iiittt," Cyn thought with a silent giggle, confusing Rose for a moment.
"Soo, Dave, if anyone else here with you?" Rose asked innocently, hoping that she wasn't being a little to nosy, however much to her surprise he shook his head.
"Nope, I'm just on my way to Eterna City, the only thing I have with me are my pokémon," This confused Rose further, as his eyes gave away the fact that he was telling the truth...so if he is alone who was he smooching? "I would show you Ella...but she gets cranky when I get her out of her ball at night, and trust me, the last thing you want is a bitchy Lucario on your case all day," he said, looking like he'd experienced it before. And that was when it clicked in Rose's mind, if he was alone...apart from him and a female Lucario...and since those have a human-ish shape...then was he -!?
"Bingo," said the Flareon, "Did he used to be into that sort of thing?" Cyn teased, Rose simply squeezed her to make her shut up, the thought of her friend doing that to a pokémon...was that right?
"Uuuuhh...Rose...is something wrong?" he asked, bringing her back into reality.
"Um, no! Not at all...I'm just tried...yeah, really tired...it's been a bit of a rough day today," Admittedly, she knew that the excuse was feeble...but it was kind of the truth. David nodded in agreement, then looked up at the steadily darkening sky.
"You want help getting your tent up?" Rose nodded her head, judging by how quickly she had gotten lost in broad daylight, it wouldn't be sensible to go out when it was dark...and besides, even if David was...well weird in that respect, he was nice company and hopefully good at reading maps. So they started putting up her tent under the moonlit sky, Rose and David catching up some more before crawling into their sleeping bags.
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Three hours later and Rose was still awake in the tent, having got restless and crawled out of the sleeping bag, she was being kept warm by Cyn who was sleeping softly on her lap. For all this time she couldn't help thinking about how David and his Lucario were together...and she didn't really no why, she knew that it wasn't because it repulsed her as she knew it really should...she couldn't place her finger on another reason other than that in her heat...this was kind of what she had imagined Lance and her being like. When she had first thought of it as a younger girl, the idea of it actually seemed to make sense, she liked him and he liked her...however an "educational" video that the school had provided when she was 11 had changed that, even today four years later she had nightmares of that. But still, the idea had some appeal to her...it was her human brain that screamed it was wrong whenever she thought about it, and she couldn't decide whether she should go with her heart of brain.
Rose sighed as the thoughts began to give her a headache, and carefully put the sleeping pokémon back onto the floor, deciding to head out into the crisp evening air, donning a thin coat. Dew had already started to coat the grass with a thin film of glimmering water, which were icy to the touch, but she had seen something else which took her mind of this. In the grass, a metre of two away from the small lake emitted a crimson glow in contrast with the emerald around it, she walked closer and a reached down to pick up the small item, it was metallic in structure, about the size of the palm of her hand and was in the shape of a ruby serpent coiled around a jagged dagger, which she found out was rather sharp the hard way. She let out a muffled curse, but again something drew her attention away from discomfort. Where the blood had touched the apparent insignia, it had trace over a few words which were etched into the surface, which were now revealed by the moonlight, "Si vis pacem, para bellum,".
"Come to me..." a voice whispered somewhere behind her, quickly pocketing the symbol, she turned around quickly and found no-one there...great a psychic type was screwing with her head. "Come to me..." the voice repeated, this time Rose started to walk towards a cliff next to the lake, she tried to stop but failed...whoever was the owner of the voice was forcing her to walk into the wall, her breathing became short and restless as she tried to fight against whatever was manipulating her body, but the thing carried on effortlessly banishing her attempts. She was almost a metre away from the wall. Her legs kept moving. She tried to put her hands up to push into the rock face but they were frozen in place. She shut her eyes tightly, yet the expected surge of pain never came. Slowly, she opened one of her eyes...and a small gasp escaped from her lips as she beheld the staggering sight in front of her. She was inside a cavern which seemed to be carved out of the very rock, beautiful emerald trees spilled over a raised area of rock, where an iridescent azure pond sat, bathed in luminescence from the sliver of moon which seemed to expand upon the body of water. The tranquil setting was only disrupted by the eerily dampened sound of water cascading off of a small waterfall onto the gleaming water, creating small ripples which sank into the golden shore of sand on which she now stood on.
In the middle of the pond stood a figure, which despite being bathed in moonlight appeared only as a shadow, it looked upon her and as she stared into the gaping darkness of its eyes she felt herself fall into them, she felt them devour her.
"I've been watching you..." The creature was not communicating with its mouth, nor with its mind, its voice was a tremor which reverberated through the very ground, creating small waves along the once smooth surface of the water. "I've been waiting for a chance to meet with you personally, whilst you're watcher was no longer around," Her mouth had suddenly become very dry, and her mouth felt as if it was glued shut. "Yes, that's right Rose, there is no escaping, no screaming, no talking for you until I have told you what I feel...compelled to do, so it will be in your...best interests to stop struggling and listen," Cautiously, Rose did what he said, what other choice did she have? "Good, then I may begin."
"I have called you here in order to...shall we say give you a fair chance, as what good is any game without one of the main players having a fair chance..." Their surroundings had suddenly changed into a vast desert, a figure battling for his life where the lake had once been, Rose recognised the scene, something that she hadn't forgotten in all her life, "You're father used to be one of my favourites, but as you probably know his seemingly infinite supply of luck was really quite finite..." The scene gave way to a kitchen that she also knew, the scene, although she had been not be present to see it, also dreadfully familiar. "The same can also be said for your mother, whose death actually quite saddened me, such a pointless death of such a great mind...however both of their lives were worth being lost in order to give you the drive that I saw only a month ago, your want for revenge was so great that even I was left wondering what you might do next..." The shadow smiled, a set of jagged phosphorescent teeth appearing. "You should be careful with emotions as strong as that...it would be a pity for you to lead yourself to death so soon...when you still have so much to do." For a moment Rose's mouth was no longer frozen, and she managed to speak, trying to ignore the film of her mother being shot in the head.
"I-I...I'm n-not like that...a-anymore," she stammered, to put it eloquently, scared shitless.
"Oh? But it is so easy to see, the want for revenge upon the scoundrels behind this...I can give you this information," Rose's eyes lit up that, the creature laughed, a laugh which cracked the tiles of the stained kitchen floor. "You see now, dear child? The want for this will never leave your heart...but if you truly wish to avenge the deaths of your parents your journey will take you there, but take heed, if you go down the road of revenge, not only will you lose your own life...but the lives of the creatures that you are destined to save..." Again the creature chuckled, splintering the fading wall, "I know what you're thinking Rose, you want me to tell you what to do to make everything better...but that would be cheating, and I have no interest in doing such a thing...I'm simply supplying you with the information necessary...sometimes having further questions is better than having answers, as with questions that journey may continue, but if you had ever answer...where'd the fun in that be? Life is about having many questions and little answers, and you must live through the same burden,".
"...U-um...w-what information...do you have for me?" she asked carefully.
"As I said, listen instead of speaking, and perhaps you will gain a few answers. In the next few years of yout lifetime...you will face many struggles and many opponents...but you must remember...sometimes the greatest of opponents come from within, even the greatest mind, the best goal is susceptible to corruption of a very unpleasant nature," Thoughts raced through her mind, did it mean someone close to her would betray her...the word goal worried her...as she didn't really have any goals that could be turned bad. The creature floated closer to her, and rested a ghostly hand on her shoulder, "Love is an unstoppable force, simple boundaries such as race and kin often collapse under its force...but remember, to love is to leave oneself open to hurt...and hurt can lead to anger and hate, both dangerous and deadly, do not let love cloud your mind..." Rose shivered at his ice-cold touch, but could not shrink away from it. "Even the smallest action has a consequence which can change the writings of destiny in an instant, in anybody's life they can change the course of the future...in your's similar choices will be made, someone will doom or save your friend's lives, and others will start or stop war." It took the hand of her shoulder and floated back over the newly-appeared lake and forest, "Finally...before I bid you farewell...heed my words...beware the newly-found companions, for they may lead you into a new-world of danger and violence...and may ultimately lead in death..." Rose was inside those eyes again, but this time she felt like she was losing energy...and growing so cold... "Now I must take my leave..." the creature stated, the forest around him suddenly setting on fire...screams of pain erupting from the area, "Remember...revenge leads only to pain, suffering and death...oh...and try not to die before we get to the interesting part,, as I said, I may have evened the playing field, but I'm afraid that carelessness leads to death..." She was being pulled down into the dark now...falling endlessly into oblivion with only the sound of deep laughter shaking the tunnels of her mind...
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Gradually, she opened her eyes and saw nothing but the emerald gleam of grass...the next thing was that she felt how cold she was, she'd been lying face down in the wet grass, but she had not idea for how long. Despite her whole body feeling as if she'd gone skinny dipping in Snowpoint City, she managed to push herself onto her unsteady feet, and stumble back into her tent, where upon she promptly wrapped herself in a sleeping bag, used Cyn as the equivalent of hot-water-bottle (much to her disproval) and fell into a deep sleep due to sheer exhaustion...Chapter End Notes:Don't know why that chapter was long...but ah well, review if you wanna