Praxiteles
Friendly POKéMON.
It's time I did a satisfactory 'foreword' to this.
This is my first completed fiction, and one of the most entertaining I have been through. It has a very sprawling and meandering plot, with several revelations and surprises, and there's no point in attempting to summarize it. However, I will lay down some basic themes from it for the consideration of the reader.
First of all, an effect which lingers throughout the entirety of the fiction--it is very ambiguous, with several muddles of plot, references and ironies which are never explained and require steady and patient work by the reader to understand, and whole stretches of plot which are only implied and never obviously explained. Additionally, many parts are overbearingly verbose and descriptive (though this problem is steadily lightened as the story goes on). In a nutshell, this is not light reading. It is also not particularly happy reading--while beginning portions are neutral and often very happy, remain forever wary of sudden tragedy and great misery, and also gruesome, detailed gore. Indeed, I do not advise you to sympathize with the characters, unless you have a high tolerance for depression. A measure of this is the fact that, lately, I have been having the entirely converse ideals about a storyline (usually my own)--where most people find it hollow and unsatisactory if there are no messages of hope and light themes in the story, I can never go without the opposite. If you go beyond this point of the post, be full prepared for anything but easy reading. (Interestingly, despite all this, the length of chapters has never gone beyond twelve pages.)
AS OF 31 DECEMBER, 2008, AFTERSHOCK IS COMPLETED.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue: Run
Chapter 1: Compression
[post=7051080]Chapter 2: The Uncertain Traveler[/post]
[post=7068707]Chapter 3: Challenge[/post]
[post=7099712]Chapter 4: New Developments[/post]
[post=7132421]Chapter 5: Introduction into the Brine[/post]
[post=7163985]Chapter 6: The Peak - Part 1[/post]
[post=7188012]Chapter 7: The Peak - Part 2[/post]
[post=7202543]BRIDGE: an Introduction[/post]
[post=7218444]Chapter 8: Aftermath [Aftershock][/post]
[post=7247858]Chapter 9: 3S1[/post]
[post=7283960]Chapter 10: Old Acquaintances[/post]
[post=7310723]Chapter 11: Point of No Return[/post]
[post=7421151]Chapter 12: Warm Hospitality[/post]
[post=7450216]Chapter 13: Ruin to the Truth![/post]
[post=7480997]Chapter 14: The Third Act of Seymul Colt[/post]
[post=7534254](THE UNEDITED)[/post]
[post=7564383]Chapter 15[/post]
[post=7603309]Chapter 16[/post]
[post=7765735]Chapter 17[/post]
[post=7940338]Chapter 18[/post]
[post=8300377]Chapter 19: Setting the Table (Part I)[/post]
[post=8336134]Chapter 20: Setting the Table (Part II)[/post]
[post=8535315]Chapter 21: Setting the Table (Part III)[/post]
[post=8703245]Resolution 1[/post]
[post=9117365]Resolution 2[/post]
[post=9201039]Resolution 3[/post]
[post=9225865]Finale[/post]
Amaren stumbled through the smoldering wreckage, fear erasing all other thought, flames licking at his heels. Out of a subconscious daze, memories arose to flash before his eyes.
…
Noises of amazement, admiration. A flash of ruby and white as the centerpiece of the display swiveled into full view.
Age three, if he recalled correctly. His uncle, an illustrious trainer with four badges to his name, had returned to his home village near the perimeters of Saffron City to relate the tales of the outside world with the members of his vast family. Amaren had been too young to understand him then, but the strange tokens of his adventures had not failed to dazzle him.
“Everyone must know what a trainer is, eh?” Amaren’s uncle announced, his voice rising above the noise. A note of mock concern darkened his face as a large majority shouted back their ignorance of the trade, and he quickly remedied the fact with another speech - largely meaningless to Amaren, though he appreciated the wonder of the situation. Various greater participants to the discussion shot their comments at the old friend.
“And the pokèmon were fine with that?”
“Madmen, they are, my man, don’t get your head too turned by their flashiness.”
“Go on, Artir, you can’t possibly say you did that for a living…”
“Oh, yes, I did,” Uncle Artir called back, producing what seemed to be a small, metallic ball from his breast pocket. “And just because you won’t believe me, I brought this: a pokèball, a device capable of capturing – yes, capturing, I know how it sounds – Pokèmon and fitting them into its tiny form! Watch!”
He pointed the sphere at a nearby spoon, and the odd device split down its middle to form a red and white half, releasing a beam of crimson light which jumped at the spoon and swallowed it whole, before dissipating to leave a faint circle of soot where the utensil had been. With a laugh, he shouted out a command – “I call you: Teaspoon!” – and depressed a button at the center of the pokèball, releasing the beam again; and, this time, it materialized back into the spoon, at a different place. It seemed evident that the pokèball had somehow stored the spoon inside it, even though the spoon was far too long for its diameter, and this caused widespread amazement (and panic) among the group.
A great deal of time and bother was expended upon this new development, but relative order was finally restored to the gathering. Amaren’s uncle took on a new gravity to his voice, though it was uncertain whether he was still joking.
“This was my very first pokèball. The one item, bestowed to me by a professor himself, which made me an official trainer. I spent the entirety of my journey with my dear starter living within this very ‘ball, but now I have moved on from it, and I must carry its legacy to the next holder. I bestow this to…” Choosing randomly, he picked through the crowd and pointed at one member…
“Little Amaren, of course.”
The toddler looked about in confusion, and then realized the greatness of the privilege he had been given. He gasped in wonder and pride.
“Someday you’ll become a great trainer like me, but until then, keep this with you to remember your uncle Artir. I even made a chain to go along with the pokèball, so you can keep it around your neck!
“Here, Amar, this is how it works,” he explained, crouching down to the boy’s level to ensure he had his full attention – an unnecessary task, due to the raptness of his sheer joy - and the present Amaren felt his consciousness of the memory slipping. A single sentence reverberated off in his mind, before it finally faded…
Someday you’ll become a great trainer like me…
…
Age twelve, the beginning of Amaren’s coming of age in the village. Winter fast approached, and the last stores of supplies for its preparation were being collected. He and his elder brother, Garten, had been assigned the task for firewood, and it was to this end that they hastened from their small abode, their parents shooting a flurry of cautionary words as they jogged down the path to the ring of forest around their village.
They dared a heavy sprint, blundering through the silver forest (ignorant of danger), and came to rest at a promising clearing, which they set up as temporary base for their operations. A great deal of branches had shed from a great deal of trees around them, and the boys quickly worked to collect them in neat piles.
Despite the bleak onset of cold, a decided air of good spirits yet wafted in the air, and the brothers worked with the efficient swiftness of cheer, calling out jokes to each other sporadically. They settled completely into their respective tasks, working single-mindedly, before –
“Did you hear that?’ Amaren suddenly hissed, and the snap of dried twigs punctuated his statement. Winter was a lethal season for the forest-dwellers, and many Pokèmon - otherwise tame and peaceful - were driven into desperation in preparation for the frost. Legends told of the lone, deathless Houndoom who prowled the frigid confines, preying on the weak…
Another rustle, and Garten’s hand tensed on his hunting knife. A single, maniacal eye peered out of the darkness before them, devoid of reason, and Amaren slowly drew out his own blade –
A full-grown Mightyena burst out from the gloom in a roar of desperation and lunged for Amarin’s brother, who dodged out of the way nimbly. Onward flashed his knife, zooming into the monster’s side, but the moment of offense cost him his guard; the Mightyena pounced on Garten, attempting to crush the human under its steaming weight, and his left arm broke with a sickening crack despite all efforts.
With a cry of pure agony, the prone human tore away from the Mightyena’s rough embrace, staggering off; and this cry alone was sufficient to jar Amaren into motion, raising the knife held loosely in his hand and throwing his form in the way of the heaving creature. It remained there or only an instant, however; Garten pushed him back away, turning feebly to face the Mightyena, and prevented all of Amaren’s attempts to join the brawl. The wolf reared back again, charging for the elder fighter’s forlorn figure, but iron stabbed his great chest this time, clean through the heart, as Garten threw the knife with the last of his strength – and the monster fell at last with a great report.
The two minutemen staggered together, out of the battleground.
“Why didn’t you let me help you?” Amaren groaned as he heaved his brother’s near-limp weight onto his shoulder. “I could have held my own with him!”
“No… you couldn’t! You should have stayed out of this, you’re too –“ He trailed off into unintelligible tangents of agitation.
“Too what?” his supporter snapped bitterly. “Too weak, too incompetent, too useless?”
But Amaren felt his thought slipping from this memory, and pulled into another, fresher...
…
Present day, age fourteen. Lone sojourns into the forest were finally, grudgingly allowed him by his parents, and he took this privilege very well.
What had transpired to cause the forest fire, and how the Water Sport proofing yet allowed its devastating tongues to envelop the land whole, no living observer could say; these secrets are lost forever with the forest itself. Amaren himself, however, had moved halfway up the untrodden dirt path that clove the woods in two, more used as a reference to areas within the woods themselves than the path from the village to the rest of civilization, when he saw news of the wildfire.
It had made its abrupt introduction by wrecking the way of the path with the charred remains of a fallen trunk, forcing him into the woods into panic and in search of escape. Every bottleneck, every natural gateway, every ford, was utterly ruined by the desolate ravages of flame, and Amaren felt an insuppressible rage of panic flood his own mind, pushing him forward through bramble and peril. Soon, within moments, reality seemed to give way entirely to nightmare, and at each turn lay another wooden corridor blocked with searing flame, another puzzle to unlock, another game with no lesser stakes than his very life. The length of his flight reached an event horizon, pushing his mind closer and closer to insanity, nearing the point of infinity…
A clearing, and a single Abra huddled at its center. A brief moment of indecision, and then grudging determination; the clink of chain as he took out the pokèball from within his shirt, compelled to save at least this last remnant of his home, his life, despite all inhibitions. With a flash of light, the tiny form was hidden safe within its sphere. A feeble twitch and a ping, though startling, served only to convince the human of the complete intersection between the Pokèmon’s path and his. Another exhausted, desperate sprint, and then air.
The stunning vastnesses of Saffron City hammered his hazy eyes.
Saffron City, at first inspection, seemed no lesser than the grand kingdoms of legend itself, pushed into reality and dipped in pure, shimmering light. Where Uncle Artir’s technological souvenirs had numbered no more than three or four, Amaren saw a great legion of such devices as he could only label magic, so fully integrated into the lifestyles of the strange folk that he wondered if they were mere humans, or higher, transcendental beings.
His arrival (and, possibly, his appearance) seemed to cause a fair quantity of unrest among the cityfolk, eliciting everything from rapidly-quelled glances in his direction to naked staring and interested comments, most of which he ignored. It was only when a passerby reached the extent of stopping him from his wayward wanderings and asking if he was perfectly fine, that Amaren replied, suddenly remembering the emergency lying within his one pokèball.
“Where are you from?” exclaimed the nonplussed jogger, thoroughly bewildered by Amaren’s old-fashioned apparel. “You couldn’t be from the village in the forest, could you?”
“Er… it’s a long story,” the villager replied. “I heard there were departments committed to healing pokèmon, do you know where I might find one?”
“What, you mean a Pokèmon Center?” The stranger’s expression was intensifying every moment. “Um, yeah, sure, it’s just in the next street. Take a right from that intersection. You’ll see a building with a distinct red roof.”
Amaren began walking to the indicated “intersection”, still fighting with shock. His village, the center of his world… all of his life, he had been ignorant of its infinitesimal niche in an unknown forest, seeing cities as the mere stuff of legends. He had never realized: the village was but an offshoot of the grand Saffron city; his home lay secluded within the woods, but the city itself was the center of civilization, fixed on a sweeping plain at the crossroads of the raging universe around it. Now that the burning ruin of his old illusions lay behind Amaren, he felt an overwhelming urge to accustom himself to the true scale of events, but, try as he might, it was beyond him.
He spotted a vividly noticeable, red-roofed building carrying itself amidst the crowds with a distinct amount of pomp and remarkableness. With no further thought, the newcomer plunged into its chrome interior.
A short line awaited a reception desk at the head of the entrance room, and Amaren joined it with an equal lack of contemplation, after the manner of those awaiting breakfast back at home. Without incident, he met the pink-haired receptionist and wordlessly handed her his pokèball.
“A pokèball!” she exclaimed, as though it was something quite as treasured as Amaren felt it to be. “Do you know how rare these things are?” She peered intently at some invisible marking at its bottom, and gasped.
“Late 1990’s, this is! I don’t even know if we have a Recovery Machine to fit it! Hold on – “
She fumbled with a lower drawer in her vast desk, searching within hoards of heavy metal objects. With a satisfied sound, she pulled out a flat steel slab, with six shallow, spherical indentations carved into its top surface. A thick layer of dust dulled its mirrorlike polish.
“Here you go, this should work –” and the nurse shakily grabbed at Amaren’s Pokèball, placing it neatly in the topmost niche. “Let me see, a minor Abra, caught less than an hour ago, moderate burning and heat exhaustion. What have you been doing with the poor thing?” She fixed him with a stern look, and then relented. “Never mind, not my business to know. Here, just have a seat at one of the chairs over there, I’ll have your Abra back in a moment.”
And so he fell into one of the row of chairs lined up near the walls, reaching for the first he could find.
A large, burly man sat to his left, seeming as if he would find it at home at the butcher’s at Amaren’s home village, but the girl to his right possessed a light cerulean to her eyes and hair that legend had assured him was reserved exclusively for the highest class of nobles. What was this strange, fantastical land?
The moment of brief interest which Amaren had lent the girl seemed to be repaid tenfold back to him, and a question followed it.
“Hi, have we met before?” she said brightly.
“No,” he replied, not bothering to look up at her. An irresistible wave of distrust of this people had suddenly overwhelmed him.
“Call me Ruki,” she persisted. “Where are you from… er…?”
Amaren stared intently at his hands for a moment, and then realized what this new character implied. “My name is Amaren,” he ventured.
“Oh, hello, Amaren. You don’t look like you’re from around here.”
The stranger to the city finally raised his head and gave the girl a closer gaze. Pleasantly slim, with shoulder-length hair tied in a simple ponytail, she carried a natural, disarming vestige of good looks – common, it seemed, with these civilized cityfolk. Her hair colour, however, still baffled Amaren.
“I only just came into this city,” he began, and was compelled to explain the long story which he had denied to so many others. Disconcertingly, his faint xenophobia was quickly falling into submission.
“I’m a rookie Trainer, as you can see,” Ruki explained. “Got my first Cyndaquil the normal way, from Prof. Oak right here in Saffron. “
From what he had heard, the eminent Professor lived in a tiny town in some secluded corner of the region, and Amaren said so.
“Oh, Pallet Town? That was ages ago, generations up the line. Where have you been? After Prof. Gary Oak became the Champion of Kanto itself, I believe he got so much publicity that he couldn’t stay in a village like that at all. Of course, I think it was Gary Oak. History class was never my favourite, you know.”
There were a fair amount of things which Amaren failed to understand in this bout of explanation, but he allowed it to pass.
“The… nurse…” he began. “She said my pokèball was rare, an antique. What did she mean? What’s the usual way to do it?”
“Oh, wow, you have a pokèball?” she said, showing some remnant of the receptionist’s ardent admiration. She eyed it appreciatively for a second, and then answered to Amaren’s curiosity. “No one ever uses those things anymore. They developed a ‘revolutionary new storage device’ now that is really exactly like a pokèball, except one of them can keep up to twenty-five Pokèmon inside it. Here, have a look at mine.”
A small, rectangular version of a pokèball was produced from the pocket of her jeans – no denim in his own village would ever be that delicate, Amaren wondered – and he had to admit he saw no point in redesigning the pokèball into this form.
“They haven’t changed the rules,” she continued, “about maximum pokèmon in a party, though. Once you get seven or more, you have to pick six Pokèmon of your choice at a Pokèmon Center like this one, using that machine, over there – “ she indicated to a nondescript grey iron box at a corner of the room – “just before you leave any town at all, and you can’t change them until you reach the next town. Which means, of course, that these Concentrated Storage Devices mean exactly the same for us trainers as an ordinary pokèball. I really like Silph Co.’s sense of logic, don’t you?”
It was Amaren’s inability to participate in the conversation which disconcerted him this time – but, at lighter thought, he was gradually accustoming himself to the new life inevitable to him.
It was approaching that time when a call from the receptionist raised Ruki from her engagement.
“I have to go, Amaren, nice talking to you,” she spoke in a rush. “I’m going to be here for a while, so you can meet me any time if you want. Tomorrow, same time, main hall?”
Without waiting for an answer, she hurried to the severely multitasked receptionist-nurse, conversed with her briefly about the length of her stay (where?), and disappeared into one of the doors that led from this entrance hall with what appeared to be a set of keys. The only conclusion Amaren could draw from this was that this center lent free lodging for those who sought it. The foyer of the building was, after all, merely a foyer, and there were undoubtedly several rooms, a main hall, and any other luxury an adventurer would care to wish for.
It seemed not long afterwards that he was also called to the main desk to receive the Abra in his pokèball. He decided, then, to explain his predicament to the nurse and ask for help.
“We can give you five days’ free stay here,” she replied apologetically, “but no more than that, I’m afraid. You’ll have to start paying then.”
“All right, I’ll take the five days.” He required only some time to plot his further course of action.
“Though, you know,” she leaned over confidentially, “you could always become a trainer. Your method of obtaining Abra is unusual, but not illegal. No, that would be murderously unfair. If you get registered as one, you can have free lodging forever.”
Amaren hesitated, contemplating what he could say, and was immediately cut off by the nurse’s persistence.
“You could turn you pokèmon over to rehabilitation centers, but the methods there aren’t always luxurious. It would be best for him if you decided to train with him.”
But this served only to increase his apprehension. With a somewhat disappointing “I’ll think about it,” he ducked into his temporary quarters in the confines of the massive Pokèmon Center.
Amaren lay in the midst of the labyrinth of soft, cotton covers which consisted of his bed. A warm, wooden side table accompanied his corner of his room, and another glass-topped table covered its center, placed on rich carpet. Though he had only recently bathed with greater luxury than he could ever remember, the tasteful decorations adorning every surface seemed fit for kings, and he felt small and unworthy as he huddled in the bed. A lamp stood beside him, a beaker of some species, filled with a scarlet liquid and accented with suspended, violet globules. A hidden light at its bottom cast a near surreally beautiful glow around the dark room, reflecting off the other technological marvels to create a starscape of rainbow light. Or, at least, such it seemed to him.
The pokèball lay still on his chest, beating serenely alongside his heart. Usual ritual requested him to take off the heavy device before bed, but the ball had suddenly gained much more value than he had once accorded it, his only remaining possession. There were other reasons for its sudden amplification of worth, as well. It was undoubtedly a rare antique even in this kingdom of gold, priceless by monetary measures, but there was another, implacable instinct deep within him which urged him to keep it safe. One, he realized, as he struggled to uncover it, which saw it as a link to home, and also to a concept closely bound to his aged Uncle Artir. Amaren pushed a tad more, and then let the matter rest.
The small boy within the king’s mansion had not yet forgotten the Abra, still lying dormant inside his ball. He knew he would have to eventually decide what to do with it, but he was compelled, each time he pondered it, to procrastinate, hold the matter off. He had thought of allowing the Psychic out of its shell temporarily, but he had a growing adversity against seeing it again, despite how fully he knew the Abra would inevitably become a part of him. Amaren wished to stall the inevitable still, if only for a while.
As the last strains of sleep finally overcame him, a half-forgotten memory of a memory resounded through his head.
Someday you’ll become a great trainer like me…
Very dearly did he wish to stall the inevitable still. But for how long a while?
This is my first completed fiction, and one of the most entertaining I have been through. It has a very sprawling and meandering plot, with several revelations and surprises, and there's no point in attempting to summarize it. However, I will lay down some basic themes from it for the consideration of the reader.
First of all, an effect which lingers throughout the entirety of the fiction--it is very ambiguous, with several muddles of plot, references and ironies which are never explained and require steady and patient work by the reader to understand, and whole stretches of plot which are only implied and never obviously explained. Additionally, many parts are overbearingly verbose and descriptive (though this problem is steadily lightened as the story goes on). In a nutshell, this is not light reading. It is also not particularly happy reading--while beginning portions are neutral and often very happy, remain forever wary of sudden tragedy and great misery, and also gruesome, detailed gore. Indeed, I do not advise you to sympathize with the characters, unless you have a high tolerance for depression. A measure of this is the fact that, lately, I have been having the entirely converse ideals about a storyline (usually my own)--where most people find it hollow and unsatisactory if there are no messages of hope and light themes in the story, I can never go without the opposite. If you go beyond this point of the post, be full prepared for anything but easy reading. (Interestingly, despite all this, the length of chapters has never gone beyond twelve pages.)
It's best to have opened this after you read most (preferably all) of the story, as far as Chapter 16.
The development of this storyline has a long and convoluted history, most of which I hardly remember but will attempt to put down here. Somewhere in early 2006 (revised from my earlier estimate of early 2005 at the consideration that I had only become a fanfiction writer after I joined SPPF) I had a strange, meaningless dream, which was differentiated from any other dream solely by its outlandishness. It detailed the final scene of Chapter 6, part two, and since then I've made many revisions to it, so it wouldn't be correct to say it was roughly identical to the scene in the fiction. There Ruki had the precise appearance of the female character from Fr/Lg, and the exact physical process of her 'death' was explained in much detail: by a process which will be explained in the fiction, her body was dissected by removing portions of it, level by level, and then teleported to a parallel world. First her skin was removed, then muscle, then organs, and so on. In all this, of course, she was fully alive and conscious and in extreme pain. Despite its strangeness, I felt some sort of determination to make this into a fiction, for some unknown reason.
As others may have noted (if this is universal for all writers), unless the 'seed' of the fiction is an idea easily embodied in the beginning and/or end of a plot, it is very difficult to develop a storyline for it, and any attempts result at first in a very shaky, deformed gestation of the story. This scene, I knew, lay squarely in the middle of a storyline. At that point, all I knew of it was what I had seen: a character being transported in a bizarre way to another world, and other characters looking in shock and despair. However, I developed a basic storyline for it which was later heavily edited into what you see today. Ruki herself was the main character (which brought up questions as to how her story could go on in the human world when she had all but died from it), who had escaped from a burning vilage surrounded by burning trees in much the same way as Amaren, aside from the fact that she experienced a generic legendary visitation by Mew, who had been trying to minimize the damage of the forest fire and could not find the time to teleport one single bulbasaur out, and so entrusted Ruki to run with it to safety. After her eventual escape from the fire, a large portion of plot was only vaguely formed in my mind involving being introduced to training, and joining a group of other trainers, one of which would eventually become Amaren and (as of then) shared no characteristic with Amaren apart from a older-brotherly affection for Ruki. Then followed the death scene.
I had very little plans for the plot after this; I was going to explore the effect of the death on the other trainers, and eventually reveal that Ruki had indeed not died, but merely come to a parallel world of legendaries in which she played a prime role as the Chosen One to fight a new wave of chaos in the natural laws of the world, and eventually to discover this was only the tip of the iceberg. You can analogize all this to its revised counterpart in the fiction.
The development of this storyline has a long and convoluted history, most of which I hardly remember but will attempt to put down here. Somewhere in early 2006 (revised from my earlier estimate of early 2005 at the consideration that I had only become a fanfiction writer after I joined SPPF) I had a strange, meaningless dream, which was differentiated from any other dream solely by its outlandishness. It detailed the final scene of Chapter 6, part two, and since then I've made many revisions to it, so it wouldn't be correct to say it was roughly identical to the scene in the fiction. There Ruki had the precise appearance of the female character from Fr/Lg, and the exact physical process of her 'death' was explained in much detail: by a process which will be explained in the fiction, her body was dissected by removing portions of it, level by level, and then teleported to a parallel world. First her skin was removed, then muscle, then organs, and so on. In all this, of course, she was fully alive and conscious and in extreme pain. Despite its strangeness, I felt some sort of determination to make this into a fiction, for some unknown reason.
As others may have noted (if this is universal for all writers), unless the 'seed' of the fiction is an idea easily embodied in the beginning and/or end of a plot, it is very difficult to develop a storyline for it, and any attempts result at first in a very shaky, deformed gestation of the story. This scene, I knew, lay squarely in the middle of a storyline. At that point, all I knew of it was what I had seen: a character being transported in a bizarre way to another world, and other characters looking in shock and despair. However, I developed a basic storyline for it which was later heavily edited into what you see today. Ruki herself was the main character (which brought up questions as to how her story could go on in the human world when she had all but died from it), who had escaped from a burning vilage surrounded by burning trees in much the same way as Amaren, aside from the fact that she experienced a generic legendary visitation by Mew, who had been trying to minimize the damage of the forest fire and could not find the time to teleport one single bulbasaur out, and so entrusted Ruki to run with it to safety. After her eventual escape from the fire, a large portion of plot was only vaguely formed in my mind involving being introduced to training, and joining a group of other trainers, one of which would eventually become Amaren and (as of then) shared no characteristic with Amaren apart from a older-brotherly affection for Ruki. Then followed the death scene.
I had very little plans for the plot after this; I was going to explore the effect of the death on the other trainers, and eventually reveal that Ruki had indeed not died, but merely come to a parallel world of legendaries in which she played a prime role as the Chosen One to fight a new wave of chaos in the natural laws of the world, and eventually to discover this was only the tip of the iceberg. You can analogize all this to its revised counterpart in the fiction.
AS OF 31 DECEMBER, 2008, AFTERSHOCK IS COMPLETED.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue: Run
Chapter 1: Compression
[post=7051080]Chapter 2: The Uncertain Traveler[/post]
[post=7068707]Chapter 3: Challenge[/post]
[post=7099712]Chapter 4: New Developments[/post]
[post=7132421]Chapter 5: Introduction into the Brine[/post]
[post=7163985]Chapter 6: The Peak - Part 1[/post]
[post=7188012]Chapter 7: The Peak - Part 2[/post]
[post=7202543]BRIDGE: an Introduction[/post]
[post=7218444]Chapter 8: Aftermath [Aftershock][/post]
[post=7247858]Chapter 9: 3S1[/post]
[post=7283960]Chapter 10: Old Acquaintances[/post]
[post=7310723]Chapter 11: Point of No Return[/post]
[post=7421151]Chapter 12: Warm Hospitality[/post]
[post=7450216]Chapter 13: Ruin to the Truth![/post]
[post=7480997]Chapter 14: The Third Act of Seymul Colt[/post]
[post=7534254](THE UNEDITED)[/post]
[post=7564383]Chapter 15[/post]
[post=7603309]Chapter 16[/post]
[post=7765735]Chapter 17[/post]
[post=7940338]Chapter 18[/post]
[post=8300377]Chapter 19: Setting the Table (Part I)[/post]
[post=8336134]Chapter 20: Setting the Table (Part II)[/post]
[post=8535315]Chapter 21: Setting the Table (Part III)[/post]
[post=8703245]Resolution 1[/post]
[post=9117365]Resolution 2[/post]
[post=9201039]Resolution 3[/post]
[post=9225865]Finale[/post]
Aftershock
Prologue: Run
Amaren stumbled through the smoldering wreckage, fear erasing all other thought, flames licking at his heels. Out of a subconscious daze, memories arose to flash before his eyes.
…
Noises of amazement, admiration. A flash of ruby and white as the centerpiece of the display swiveled into full view.
Age three, if he recalled correctly. His uncle, an illustrious trainer with four badges to his name, had returned to his home village near the perimeters of Saffron City to relate the tales of the outside world with the members of his vast family. Amaren had been too young to understand him then, but the strange tokens of his adventures had not failed to dazzle him.
“Everyone must know what a trainer is, eh?” Amaren’s uncle announced, his voice rising above the noise. A note of mock concern darkened his face as a large majority shouted back their ignorance of the trade, and he quickly remedied the fact with another speech - largely meaningless to Amaren, though he appreciated the wonder of the situation. Various greater participants to the discussion shot their comments at the old friend.
“And the pokèmon were fine with that?”
“Madmen, they are, my man, don’t get your head too turned by their flashiness.”
“Go on, Artir, you can’t possibly say you did that for a living…”
“Oh, yes, I did,” Uncle Artir called back, producing what seemed to be a small, metallic ball from his breast pocket. “And just because you won’t believe me, I brought this: a pokèball, a device capable of capturing – yes, capturing, I know how it sounds – Pokèmon and fitting them into its tiny form! Watch!”
He pointed the sphere at a nearby spoon, and the odd device split down its middle to form a red and white half, releasing a beam of crimson light which jumped at the spoon and swallowed it whole, before dissipating to leave a faint circle of soot where the utensil had been. With a laugh, he shouted out a command – “I call you: Teaspoon!” – and depressed a button at the center of the pokèball, releasing the beam again; and, this time, it materialized back into the spoon, at a different place. It seemed evident that the pokèball had somehow stored the spoon inside it, even though the spoon was far too long for its diameter, and this caused widespread amazement (and panic) among the group.
A great deal of time and bother was expended upon this new development, but relative order was finally restored to the gathering. Amaren’s uncle took on a new gravity to his voice, though it was uncertain whether he was still joking.
“This was my very first pokèball. The one item, bestowed to me by a professor himself, which made me an official trainer. I spent the entirety of my journey with my dear starter living within this very ‘ball, but now I have moved on from it, and I must carry its legacy to the next holder. I bestow this to…” Choosing randomly, he picked through the crowd and pointed at one member…
“Little Amaren, of course.”
The toddler looked about in confusion, and then realized the greatness of the privilege he had been given. He gasped in wonder and pride.
“Someday you’ll become a great trainer like me, but until then, keep this with you to remember your uncle Artir. I even made a chain to go along with the pokèball, so you can keep it around your neck!
“Here, Amar, this is how it works,” he explained, crouching down to the boy’s level to ensure he had his full attention – an unnecessary task, due to the raptness of his sheer joy - and the present Amaren felt his consciousness of the memory slipping. A single sentence reverberated off in his mind, before it finally faded…
Someday you’ll become a great trainer like me…
…
Age twelve, the beginning of Amaren’s coming of age in the village. Winter fast approached, and the last stores of supplies for its preparation were being collected. He and his elder brother, Garten, had been assigned the task for firewood, and it was to this end that they hastened from their small abode, their parents shooting a flurry of cautionary words as they jogged down the path to the ring of forest around their village.
They dared a heavy sprint, blundering through the silver forest (ignorant of danger), and came to rest at a promising clearing, which they set up as temporary base for their operations. A great deal of branches had shed from a great deal of trees around them, and the boys quickly worked to collect them in neat piles.
Despite the bleak onset of cold, a decided air of good spirits yet wafted in the air, and the brothers worked with the efficient swiftness of cheer, calling out jokes to each other sporadically. They settled completely into their respective tasks, working single-mindedly, before –
“Did you hear that?’ Amaren suddenly hissed, and the snap of dried twigs punctuated his statement. Winter was a lethal season for the forest-dwellers, and many Pokèmon - otherwise tame and peaceful - were driven into desperation in preparation for the frost. Legends told of the lone, deathless Houndoom who prowled the frigid confines, preying on the weak…
Another rustle, and Garten’s hand tensed on his hunting knife. A single, maniacal eye peered out of the darkness before them, devoid of reason, and Amaren slowly drew out his own blade –
A full-grown Mightyena burst out from the gloom in a roar of desperation and lunged for Amarin’s brother, who dodged out of the way nimbly. Onward flashed his knife, zooming into the monster’s side, but the moment of offense cost him his guard; the Mightyena pounced on Garten, attempting to crush the human under its steaming weight, and his left arm broke with a sickening crack despite all efforts.
With a cry of pure agony, the prone human tore away from the Mightyena’s rough embrace, staggering off; and this cry alone was sufficient to jar Amaren into motion, raising the knife held loosely in his hand and throwing his form in the way of the heaving creature. It remained there or only an instant, however; Garten pushed him back away, turning feebly to face the Mightyena, and prevented all of Amaren’s attempts to join the brawl. The wolf reared back again, charging for the elder fighter’s forlorn figure, but iron stabbed his great chest this time, clean through the heart, as Garten threw the knife with the last of his strength – and the monster fell at last with a great report.
The two minutemen staggered together, out of the battleground.
“Why didn’t you let me help you?” Amaren groaned as he heaved his brother’s near-limp weight onto his shoulder. “I could have held my own with him!”
“No… you couldn’t! You should have stayed out of this, you’re too –“ He trailed off into unintelligible tangents of agitation.
“Too what?” his supporter snapped bitterly. “Too weak, too incompetent, too useless?”
But Amaren felt his thought slipping from this memory, and pulled into another, fresher...
…
Present day, age fourteen. Lone sojourns into the forest were finally, grudgingly allowed him by his parents, and he took this privilege very well.
What had transpired to cause the forest fire, and how the Water Sport proofing yet allowed its devastating tongues to envelop the land whole, no living observer could say; these secrets are lost forever with the forest itself. Amaren himself, however, had moved halfway up the untrodden dirt path that clove the woods in two, more used as a reference to areas within the woods themselves than the path from the village to the rest of civilization, when he saw news of the wildfire.
It had made its abrupt introduction by wrecking the way of the path with the charred remains of a fallen trunk, forcing him into the woods into panic and in search of escape. Every bottleneck, every natural gateway, every ford, was utterly ruined by the desolate ravages of flame, and Amaren felt an insuppressible rage of panic flood his own mind, pushing him forward through bramble and peril. Soon, within moments, reality seemed to give way entirely to nightmare, and at each turn lay another wooden corridor blocked with searing flame, another puzzle to unlock, another game with no lesser stakes than his very life. The length of his flight reached an event horizon, pushing his mind closer and closer to insanity, nearing the point of infinity…
A clearing, and a single Abra huddled at its center. A brief moment of indecision, and then grudging determination; the clink of chain as he took out the pokèball from within his shirt, compelled to save at least this last remnant of his home, his life, despite all inhibitions. With a flash of light, the tiny form was hidden safe within its sphere. A feeble twitch and a ping, though startling, served only to convince the human of the complete intersection between the Pokèmon’s path and his. Another exhausted, desperate sprint, and then air.
The stunning vastnesses of Saffron City hammered his hazy eyes.
Chapter 1: Compression
Saffron City, at first inspection, seemed no lesser than the grand kingdoms of legend itself, pushed into reality and dipped in pure, shimmering light. Where Uncle Artir’s technological souvenirs had numbered no more than three or four, Amaren saw a great legion of such devices as he could only label magic, so fully integrated into the lifestyles of the strange folk that he wondered if they were mere humans, or higher, transcendental beings.
His arrival (and, possibly, his appearance) seemed to cause a fair quantity of unrest among the cityfolk, eliciting everything from rapidly-quelled glances in his direction to naked staring and interested comments, most of which he ignored. It was only when a passerby reached the extent of stopping him from his wayward wanderings and asking if he was perfectly fine, that Amaren replied, suddenly remembering the emergency lying within his one pokèball.
“Where are you from?” exclaimed the nonplussed jogger, thoroughly bewildered by Amaren’s old-fashioned apparel. “You couldn’t be from the village in the forest, could you?”
“Er… it’s a long story,” the villager replied. “I heard there were departments committed to healing pokèmon, do you know where I might find one?”
“What, you mean a Pokèmon Center?” The stranger’s expression was intensifying every moment. “Um, yeah, sure, it’s just in the next street. Take a right from that intersection. You’ll see a building with a distinct red roof.”
Amaren began walking to the indicated “intersection”, still fighting with shock. His village, the center of his world… all of his life, he had been ignorant of its infinitesimal niche in an unknown forest, seeing cities as the mere stuff of legends. He had never realized: the village was but an offshoot of the grand Saffron city; his home lay secluded within the woods, but the city itself was the center of civilization, fixed on a sweeping plain at the crossroads of the raging universe around it. Now that the burning ruin of his old illusions lay behind Amaren, he felt an overwhelming urge to accustom himself to the true scale of events, but, try as he might, it was beyond him.
He spotted a vividly noticeable, red-roofed building carrying itself amidst the crowds with a distinct amount of pomp and remarkableness. With no further thought, the newcomer plunged into its chrome interior.
A short line awaited a reception desk at the head of the entrance room, and Amaren joined it with an equal lack of contemplation, after the manner of those awaiting breakfast back at home. Without incident, he met the pink-haired receptionist and wordlessly handed her his pokèball.
“A pokèball!” she exclaimed, as though it was something quite as treasured as Amaren felt it to be. “Do you know how rare these things are?” She peered intently at some invisible marking at its bottom, and gasped.
“Late 1990’s, this is! I don’t even know if we have a Recovery Machine to fit it! Hold on – “
She fumbled with a lower drawer in her vast desk, searching within hoards of heavy metal objects. With a satisfied sound, she pulled out a flat steel slab, with six shallow, spherical indentations carved into its top surface. A thick layer of dust dulled its mirrorlike polish.
“Here you go, this should work –” and the nurse shakily grabbed at Amaren’s Pokèball, placing it neatly in the topmost niche. “Let me see, a minor Abra, caught less than an hour ago, moderate burning and heat exhaustion. What have you been doing with the poor thing?” She fixed him with a stern look, and then relented. “Never mind, not my business to know. Here, just have a seat at one of the chairs over there, I’ll have your Abra back in a moment.”
And so he fell into one of the row of chairs lined up near the walls, reaching for the first he could find.
A large, burly man sat to his left, seeming as if he would find it at home at the butcher’s at Amaren’s home village, but the girl to his right possessed a light cerulean to her eyes and hair that legend had assured him was reserved exclusively for the highest class of nobles. What was this strange, fantastical land?
The moment of brief interest which Amaren had lent the girl seemed to be repaid tenfold back to him, and a question followed it.
“Hi, have we met before?” she said brightly.
“No,” he replied, not bothering to look up at her. An irresistible wave of distrust of this people had suddenly overwhelmed him.
“Call me Ruki,” she persisted. “Where are you from… er…?”
Amaren stared intently at his hands for a moment, and then realized what this new character implied. “My name is Amaren,” he ventured.
“Oh, hello, Amaren. You don’t look like you’re from around here.”
The stranger to the city finally raised his head and gave the girl a closer gaze. Pleasantly slim, with shoulder-length hair tied in a simple ponytail, she carried a natural, disarming vestige of good looks – common, it seemed, with these civilized cityfolk. Her hair colour, however, still baffled Amaren.
“I only just came into this city,” he began, and was compelled to explain the long story which he had denied to so many others. Disconcertingly, his faint xenophobia was quickly falling into submission.
“I’m a rookie Trainer, as you can see,” Ruki explained. “Got my first Cyndaquil the normal way, from Prof. Oak right here in Saffron. “
From what he had heard, the eminent Professor lived in a tiny town in some secluded corner of the region, and Amaren said so.
“Oh, Pallet Town? That was ages ago, generations up the line. Where have you been? After Prof. Gary Oak became the Champion of Kanto itself, I believe he got so much publicity that he couldn’t stay in a village like that at all. Of course, I think it was Gary Oak. History class was never my favourite, you know.”
There were a fair amount of things which Amaren failed to understand in this bout of explanation, but he allowed it to pass.
“The… nurse…” he began. “She said my pokèball was rare, an antique. What did she mean? What’s the usual way to do it?”
“Oh, wow, you have a pokèball?” she said, showing some remnant of the receptionist’s ardent admiration. She eyed it appreciatively for a second, and then answered to Amaren’s curiosity. “No one ever uses those things anymore. They developed a ‘revolutionary new storage device’ now that is really exactly like a pokèball, except one of them can keep up to twenty-five Pokèmon inside it. Here, have a look at mine.”
A small, rectangular version of a pokèball was produced from the pocket of her jeans – no denim in his own village would ever be that delicate, Amaren wondered – and he had to admit he saw no point in redesigning the pokèball into this form.
“They haven’t changed the rules,” she continued, “about maximum pokèmon in a party, though. Once you get seven or more, you have to pick six Pokèmon of your choice at a Pokèmon Center like this one, using that machine, over there – “ she indicated to a nondescript grey iron box at a corner of the room – “just before you leave any town at all, and you can’t change them until you reach the next town. Which means, of course, that these Concentrated Storage Devices mean exactly the same for us trainers as an ordinary pokèball. I really like Silph Co.’s sense of logic, don’t you?”
It was Amaren’s inability to participate in the conversation which disconcerted him this time – but, at lighter thought, he was gradually accustoming himself to the new life inevitable to him.
It was approaching that time when a call from the receptionist raised Ruki from her engagement.
“I have to go, Amaren, nice talking to you,” she spoke in a rush. “I’m going to be here for a while, so you can meet me any time if you want. Tomorrow, same time, main hall?”
Without waiting for an answer, she hurried to the severely multitasked receptionist-nurse, conversed with her briefly about the length of her stay (where?), and disappeared into one of the doors that led from this entrance hall with what appeared to be a set of keys. The only conclusion Amaren could draw from this was that this center lent free lodging for those who sought it. The foyer of the building was, after all, merely a foyer, and there were undoubtedly several rooms, a main hall, and any other luxury an adventurer would care to wish for.
It seemed not long afterwards that he was also called to the main desk to receive the Abra in his pokèball. He decided, then, to explain his predicament to the nurse and ask for help.
“We can give you five days’ free stay here,” she replied apologetically, “but no more than that, I’m afraid. You’ll have to start paying then.”
“All right, I’ll take the five days.” He required only some time to plot his further course of action.
“Though, you know,” she leaned over confidentially, “you could always become a trainer. Your method of obtaining Abra is unusual, but not illegal. No, that would be murderously unfair. If you get registered as one, you can have free lodging forever.”
Amaren hesitated, contemplating what he could say, and was immediately cut off by the nurse’s persistence.
“You could turn you pokèmon over to rehabilitation centers, but the methods there aren’t always luxurious. It would be best for him if you decided to train with him.”
But this served only to increase his apprehension. With a somewhat disappointing “I’ll think about it,” he ducked into his temporary quarters in the confines of the massive Pokèmon Center.
[{//\/\/\/\/\//\\//\\//\/\/\|/|\|/\/\/\\//\\//\\/\/\/\/\/\/\}]
Amaren lay in the midst of the labyrinth of soft, cotton covers which consisted of his bed. A warm, wooden side table accompanied his corner of his room, and another glass-topped table covered its center, placed on rich carpet. Though he had only recently bathed with greater luxury than he could ever remember, the tasteful decorations adorning every surface seemed fit for kings, and he felt small and unworthy as he huddled in the bed. A lamp stood beside him, a beaker of some species, filled with a scarlet liquid and accented with suspended, violet globules. A hidden light at its bottom cast a near surreally beautiful glow around the dark room, reflecting off the other technological marvels to create a starscape of rainbow light. Or, at least, such it seemed to him.
The pokèball lay still on his chest, beating serenely alongside his heart. Usual ritual requested him to take off the heavy device before bed, but the ball had suddenly gained much more value than he had once accorded it, his only remaining possession. There were other reasons for its sudden amplification of worth, as well. It was undoubtedly a rare antique even in this kingdom of gold, priceless by monetary measures, but there was another, implacable instinct deep within him which urged him to keep it safe. One, he realized, as he struggled to uncover it, which saw it as a link to home, and also to a concept closely bound to his aged Uncle Artir. Amaren pushed a tad more, and then let the matter rest.
The small boy within the king’s mansion had not yet forgotten the Abra, still lying dormant inside his ball. He knew he would have to eventually decide what to do with it, but he was compelled, each time he pondered it, to procrastinate, hold the matter off. He had thought of allowing the Psychic out of its shell temporarily, but he had a growing adversity against seeing it again, despite how fully he knew the Abra would inevitably become a part of him. Amaren wished to stall the inevitable still, if only for a while.
As the last strains of sleep finally overcame him, a half-forgotten memory of a memory resounded through his head.
Someday you’ll become a great trainer like me…
Very dearly did he wish to stall the inevitable still. But for how long a while?
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