I want to embrace only you.
A sequence of dreams: Dream numero uno: I will not remain in memory.
Lila... The girl suddenly jerked, shoulder ripping involuntarily across the stilled air, as instinctively, the human girl tensed, nearly bolting from her guarded stance in a cowardice manner, instead balling dainty hands up into two double fists, narrowing lilac eyes as she unfurled one of these fists, flattening it so that the surface of her left hand was flate, a stark-still sheet of flesh, and narrowing her eyes in what she thought was an intimidating manner, she pounded the remaining fist into this hand.
That creepy horror movie crap isn't going to work on me! The girl snarled, finding that she needn't even open her set lips, or even shift the guarded expression on her face for the response to be formed aloud. The words, like a script in a soundless clip portion of a cheap Video Game scrolled across the screen, and the owner to the voice who had first courted the girl in the dark, from the shadows, smirked. For a second, Lila let her charade slip, her threatening posture slacking in the slightest, and her overcast lilac irises widening, as they settled on the twisted grin of the figure hunched in the shadows.
I am the predator, you are the prey. It's quite cute how you humans fall into your own stereotypes; so hopelessly naive in pretending that you are the ultimate, you are the vast, the proud, the noble. But in reality, all your kind is are a lot of cowards, cowards in Hollywood acting as proud, as noble, as dignant. Yes, you fall in perfectly, Lila. My own cookie-cut Human Goddess puzzle piece. Good thing you aren't the real deal, huh? You are just the ninth Goddess weapon, a puzzle to be manipulated. A puppet, MY puppet, a sign on Arceus that the reign of good is done, and that the one of evil has just begun...
Suddenly, the Shadow launched itself from the shadow at the girl, and Lila, true to the predictions of the malicious silhouette, felt the wind escape her lungs, and her brave pose deflate as she did what those of her species were most well-known for: Running. Why she took flight she didn't know, did she really think she could outsprint the Prince of Darkness? Of course not. So why did she run? Lila wasn't one hundred percent positive of her lowly demonstration, would she really die as the hunted fleeing, and not as the hunted rising up to rebel?
And then, Lila saw something, or rather someone promising. No, it wasn't Bane, the Pokemon she liked to think ironically of as her sole Knight in shining armor. Like a Chess piece, the Silhouette of this figure was one who was statuesque, a shining, black hard hunk of plastic- although hunk wasn't necessarily the best word to describe him. He stood in a humble, yet strangely elegant demeanor, an angel disguised as a peasant. Panting, and feeling so raw and run-down that she could taste the tart essence of blood being forced up from her trachea and into her mouth, the tears tugged at Lila's doe-like eyes as she let out a disgruntled cry, throwing herself at the Angel's form, and burying her face there into his chest, seeking immediate sanctuary. The dark shadow flew at her, but seemed to falter in step as it took notice of what she clung to. Letting loose a low hiss of displeasure, the shadow seethed in hate as he watched the spectacle taking place before him, how the simple touch of th cowering Goddess seemed to break the statue out of his hard shell, and to life.
Caelum! He snarled as what Lila had originally seen as an Angel, emerged, after a series of cracks and fractures rumbled across the outer shell of the Anthropomorph, after a great shattering. Divine light burst forth in rays from the ebony shell as it fell in shambles to the monotone ground at the silhouette's feet, and a boy emerged, a boy not too short, but not too tall either, not too skinny, but not entirely muscular either, one very near to perfection. A shake of his golden mane, just shades darker than Lila's own, and several chunks of the plaster binding him fell out, those which Lila had to close her eyes to shield against. Fierce brown eyes assessed the room with raptor-like vision for but a second, and the infusions of red within them shone especially bright. The most magnificent part of him, however, were his wings. Long, slender appendages, tugging away from their base seemingly in an act of rebellion, but then fanning out as the owner stretched them, unfurling them. Tears of gratitude trickled down Lila's face, and quietly, she detached herself from the Falcon Anthropormorph, as he caught the Shadow, which had stopped completely, in his sgihts. A shrill bird-like cry, and the Anthropomorph descended, fearlessly charging the shadow, as if he had been bred specifically, like the bird he was based off of, to track and kill the beast. An appreciative smile tossed the bird man's way, and Lila jogged quietly away, confident that the boy had a handle on the fight. In watching the magnificent spectacle of the bird boy tearing into the shadow obviously caught off-guard, Lila nearly tripped over another silhouette. This one toppled to the ground, underneath her, and shattered. Lila immediately leapt up, a thousand words of apology already gurgling and overflowing from her mouth as she threw her tiny hands out in apology, but not before a girl just as beautiful and delicate as her arose from the rubble, in a daze.
Ebony Cat ears twitched, and golden eyes surveyed the startled Human teenager momentarily, before a sly smile of satisfaction twisted itself across the Cat girl's face, and before letting out a soft purr, stepped toward Lila, Lila's own irises darting back and forth nervously, following every graceful movement the Cat girl made. After batting a long, crimson strand irritably from before her wide Amber eyes, the girl rested a hand on Lila's bare shoulder before whispering only,
"Soon.."
"Having another one? Was it the same-old same-old? Or in this one, did you actually do something?"
Slowly, unwilling to let the dream drift into oblivion just yet, Lila peeled open her wide, lilac eyes, momentarily taking into consideration the words of her Shuppet, before decidedly feigning innocence.
"I haven't a clue what you might be talking about, Bane" She murmured drowsily amongst a yawn, and an involuntary stretch as she stood, playfully dealing out a gentle punch to the Puppet Pokemon, and before he could make himself transparent, sending Bane careening across the room, for he wasn't more than a few light pounds. Immediately, however, the Shuppet rebounded, persistent.
"I don't know why I even bother with asking. You know as well as I do that I can see every last thought that worms its way into your pretty little silly head, Lila. EVERY single thought..." Bane cackled, his eyes widening in what gave off a spooky and sinister sensation, as he flew at Lila, a miniscule version of the shadow in her dream, intending on startling her into flinching. To the Ghost pokemon's dismay, Lila only arched an eyebrow in what was a half-bemused, half-amused observation, formed her fingers into Praying-mantis style formation, and snatched the Shuppet up, dangling the tiny Ghost in front of her face.
"I'm not sure which is more alarming.."Lila mused, standing up from the rustled sheets she had just vacated. "You admitting that you listen in on me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, even insisting on not tuning out when you stumble in on my incessant girly ramble, or the fact that you think you could actually scare me into talking to you about my dream." Bane grimaced, face shifting downward into a disappointed frown, doing the best imitation he could muster of "Puppy Dog Eyes". Lila, finding herself in an unusually optimistic mood today, decided to humor him.
"It was nothing, really.." She began, somehow managing to weave a tune in through her thoughts, that which the Shuppet perceived as well, as it spun through her head into his.
Angels in flight.. I love you more than you know; My Sanctuary, My Sanctuary now..
She smiled at the message this simple tune presented, the one her head had configured, in its random jumbled fray of perhaps hundred of songs. Lila found herself painfully drawn to music, any music, all music.. But it was the gentler, sweeter tunes such as this one that pulled her in, hook line and sinker. Bane, on the other hand, obviously repulsed by the content of this song, ignored this, choosing not to respond.
"I was being chased by that Shadow again.." She remembered with a slight tremor, as she stepped into the bathroom conjoined with her room, Bane passing with ease through the solid plaster of the painted door and staring at his reflection, or lack of it thereof in the mirror.
"Let me guess, he took you in his big, ugly maw again and completely wasted you?! He severed you in half first, and then tore you limb for limb for--"
"Alright Bane, enough.." Lila grumbled, feeling sick as she swiped her toothbrush back and forth across her teeth, rolling her big lilac eyes at him.
"No, much to your obvious dismay, this dream didn't contain every piece of my gore being spilled out and then bouncing comically across the floor, as I know you anticipate every morning. You think I haven't noticed your presence spying on my dreams?"
Bane grimaced again at th mirror, amusd once again by his lack of reflection in the smooth surface, no matter the infinite amount of times he had already discovered and done this.
"What was it about then?" He asked absentmindedly. Lila paused, in both the vigorous brushing of her teeth, and in her line of thought to ponder the question. Finally, a tiny smile cracking the serious expression on her face, she blushed once, this of course going unnoticed to Bane, partly because the natural rosy tint in her face caused her humiliation to go unnoticed most of the time, but because he was otherwise preoccupied making faces in the mirror, the surface which obstinately refused to show any sight other than the one of Lila brushing her teeth.
"Well, I guess it was about two angels.." Lila admitted, emitting a tiny, dreamy smile, a faraway glint already beginning to shine in her pale purple iris..
"You've got a little something on your face!" Bane cackled, eyes shifting to focus on the girl's own reflection in the mirror, no longer amused with the lack of his. A steady stream of white foam drizzled down her chin and onto her silken nightgown, staining it see-through.
"You look like a rabid Houndoom." Bane continued, cackling as he simply watched his human counterpart scrub away at the mess she had made. His fill of mischief satiated for the time being, his meter of fun being fulfilled as usual by his less-than observant human companion, Bane lapsed into silence, waiting for Lila to elaborate. But not before letting out a snide comment of his own.
"Angels? That's what you've decided to tag them with? That gangly group of Anthropomorph rejects who, about every other page, are shot to the ground fatally wounded? You would've had a better chance beating the Shadow by yourself. By simply just flailing about like you usually do, I bet you could've inflicted more damage-"
Lila waved him off, closing her mind to the Shuppet's voice before responding, this time aloud, with a comment of her own as skillfully, she stepped out of her nightgown and began dressing in normal attire. The morning routine. Her morning routine. Mundane, constant, never-changing. So predictible. Any minute now..
"Lilaaaaa! Breakfast!" A voice just as predictible and evitable as Lila stepping out of that same nightgown every morning. Pausing at the thick Oak door barring entrance into her attic room, Lila let a pale hand linger on the edge of the sanded-smooth wood, turning back for a moment to glance back at Bane.
"They saved me, Bane. And I know that in your eyes, that makes them angels too. Wings or no wings, they both saved me. That was the first time in the history of EVER, you know, since i've been alive, and you know it as well as me, that I haven't been torn to carrion by that Shadow."
"It was just a dream." Bane responded, gliding nearer to Lila without missing a beat, perching his Puppet-like body on the rounded groove of Lila's shoulder. Playfully, using his Psychic, he flipped the hood of her cotton jacket up, yanking it down over her eyes, causing a major hair spaz attack as the static in her hair caused the mussed part of it to stand up on end, like a cockeral.
"Lila!" The voice cried again, beginning to sound exasperated.
"Uh.. Coming?" Lila called back, meaning it as truth, not simply just an excuse to shut her surrogate mother up from her screaming. Without another word between them, Lila and Bane raced downstairs, Lila taking the normal route down the spiraled wooden staircase, Bane of course sliding down the Banister. Consistent. Mundane. Ordinary. Nothing was amiss. As far as Lila knew, that is.
Approximate time: 12:53 pm. Appromximate destination: Arceus knows where!
"Don't forget, honey. Dinner at 4:00 tonight, okay? We're dining-in early tonight, remember? It's your father- Erhm, it's Mr. Everthorn's birthday today, and I know you may think that he doesn't want you there, he has been incessantly distant to you since you arrived, but even still, he doesn't mean any harm by it. Anyways, it would mean so much to me and Kodi if you were there, not that you have anywhere else to go but-"
Lila and Bane exchanged glances, before Lila grinned good-naturedly at the Human woman peering out from behind her doorframe. House number 1305. Next door was 1306, and so on down the block. When Lila thought of what a "Mother" should be like, her own foster "Mother" came to her mind, for when it came to doctoring, cooking, cleaning, mending, and parenting, it seemed that nobody reigned as quite the domestic Goddess that Mrs. Everthorn did. From beneath her chestnut bob peered two anxious azure eyes, eyesthat in their vulnerable mortal sensitivty, Lila wanted to turn tail, flee to, and cling for dear life, all so that the middle-aged woman wouldn't have to worry for the newest member of the nuclear family she solely had built for herself and her husband. Kodi, the oldest and only child of Bobbi Everthorn was twenty-one, and still parked firmly in the little typical suburban home of the Everthorns in Vermillion city. A product of the immense tender loving care Bobbi Everthorn insisted on showering everyone and everyhing she came into contact with, the boy, Lila's surrogate "Brother", had no intentions of leaving, satiated with him mezzo-comfortable Guitar-strumming lifestyle. His only domestic disturbance? Lila herself.
From day one, the spacey girl had been a Lamb in a den of Wolves, and the only one who had been unaware of the obvious deviance in type, species, and class was her "Mother", the sole person of the three who had ushered the confused and dazed teenage girl into the warm embrace of her modest home. Now, for the first time in the history of her life, Lila was being sent to forage in the city alone. She gulped. This time, Bane wouldn't even be at her side, as the previous night's drama playing out in Lila's head had kept him wide awake spying and prying the night before, and so he had been forced to succumb to the lulling pulls of sleep, as she had while he had watched over her. Too bad he was missing out on such an epic adventure. NOT. In a way, she was relieved. Without Bane, sure she wouldn't be alert to every prowling pervert, peeping Tom, or otherwise foul-intentioned miser, but at least without Radio-Bane, as much as she adored the Shuppet's insight, she would be able to reflect on the previous night's events in peace. With her "mom" bidding farewell, Lila stole a sneak peek at the crudely-drawn map of the city, which didn't exactly resemble the labrynith that Vermillion city was splayed out before her, but at the very least contained several recognizable shapes and structures. And one that looked like Meowth Road-Kill.
Tucking the map away, Lila refused to let this slight setback rain on her parade, and so, setting out with a march in her step and a throbbing beat in her head, her theme music for the day, Lila set off for her first and only destination of the day: Antonio's Bakery. It was daddy-o's birthday afte all, and while Bobbi Everthorn was at home whipping up a meal fit for a king, not so much a grumpy old mega-arse who looked down at Lila like mud on his shoe. If she was aware of the circumstances she had been sent out in, however, Lila didn't show it as she made a point of humming the beat in her head aloud, and skipping every break she came to in the sidewalk, so as not to break her mother's back.
You're going the wrong way... Droned the distinguishing chill of Bane's voice, and sheepishly stopping in mid-step, Lila only sweatdropped, letting her mouth drop open in a dumbfounded little laugh, upsetting a few people by pivoting on her heel, disrupting the human flow of traffic as she continued on her quest in the opposite direction. It astounded Lila how much of the outside world she had been missing out on. Everything! The enticing smell of a Cheri Berry had her bounding playfully over to a bush, and practically snorting the fruit, much to the passing crowd's amusement, people chattering on little devices that had been nonexistent inside Lila's own home, the only home she had ever known, magical little toys that people prattled on about senselessly to themselves in, making Lila curious to who or what exactly dwelled in the miniature devices. Pokemon, who seemed overly friendly and enthusaistic to make the startled girl's aquaintence, to which she intercepted each meeting equally as an honor, stopping for long minutes to the trainer's dismay to "converse" in one-sided conversations with every Pokemon she saw. Crowing Grimer in the gutters, Ratatta burrowing and reveling in stinking trash, a poor Ekans she saw writhing down the street, obviously lost and displaced, avoiding the sharp jabs of an Elephantine woman's stilettos as fearfully, she tried to stomp the poor beast to death.
It was here that Lila's merry stopped, and with a shriek for the poor creature, she picked it up and ducked into a narrow alley. After kindly spraying the Ekans down with a Super Potion and bandaging its fresh blisters from writhing about on the hot pavement, she had found sanctuary for the poor creature fortune had cheated in a garden adjoined to a tiny Cafe. It was actually after releasing the grateful ekans into the cool vegetation, that on a stroke of fortune delivered seemingly from Lady Luck herself, Lila stumbled, incredulously enough, into the place she had been looking for.
"I'm not even going to pretend to know what language that man was speaking ,if it even is a language, but I do hope that one of us knows what he- she's doing!" Lila muttered, examining the admiring bill, which amazingly enough, had racked up to nearly 20,000 Poke for a couple of Cake ingredients, including molds, Icing Basters, and a few generic small-party supplies. Even more staggering were the odd assorment of packages Lila had been laden with, and now, the walk back on her sensory-enlightening delightful little excursion didn't seem quite as appealing as the walk here.
"Hey, Bane!" She huffed, nearly tripping over a grating in the city sidewalk, which, comically enough, was at the same level as the Sidewalk.
"I'm strapped down with so many packages, that any minute now people are going to start mistaking me for a confused Delibird and lob Pokeballs at me! A little help here? You use your Psychic powers everyday to snoop, spy, and stir through my thoughts to satiate your black-mailing purposes! Can you maybe, just this one time, actually do something that helps me and teleport these packages back home or something?" Lila begged. She was at her wit's end. The trek through the bustling city hadn't been kind to her sandaled feet, and now, beyond being badly sunburned, they were beginning to develop blisters as well. As if that weren't enough, her frail arms were beginning to buckle under the weight of all these packages! Lila let out a little cry, to which Bane sighed irritably.
"What do I look like, girly? An Abra? You know I only installed this Psychic to keep watch over you, tyke. Now would you please cease your moaning so I can get maybe an hour's worth of sleep before tonight? Keeping watch over you, even while unconscious, is a full-time job! I should get paid for this or something.."
"Your pay is the all the free Pokemon food I can shovel into your gullet day by day by day, though i'm sure you haven't seen a single battle in your entire life! Now unless you would like to be seriously considered for a Nazi cut diet, three meals down to one- then I suggest you not bite the hand that feeds you, Bane." Lila retorted back with a mischevious and victorious little smile. She knew that this would be the end of it. She was only kidding, of course. Even if most Pokemon did eat only once a day, even the battling champions in their prime, she could never refuse Bane. Bane wasn't simply just a tamed beast in her posession, after all. He was her bestest friend.
As she formerly predicted, silence ensued.
"Owned." She whispered fiercely in her head, right before turning the corner into a delightful little square, a square she observed to simply be a resting spot for the weary traveler and Pokemon inhabitant of the city alike. The square wasn't exactly a square, but more like a circle set back from the hazy, smog-clouded dull grey streets of the concrete city. In fact, a harmonious and surprisingly natural atomosphere took hold of Lila as ecstatically, she rushed headfirst into the serene landscape. At the heart of the circle, she found a bronze statue set amongst a colorful cornicopia of flowers, wild and tame, Wildflowers, Daisies, Magnolias, Dahlias, Tulips, a Daisy here and there, and at the innermost ring, a tiny semi-circle of spotted-pink Orchids. The statueitself was that of a woman, a woman of painstaking beauty, who, in her simple purity and heavenly stare, eyes cast graciously heavenward as if looking for something, a shy smile adding a note of humble modesty to the delicate curves of her face. She was so lovely, so obviously a representative of purity, that it was almost a given that even though the statue was set in bronze, she would be wearing white. Two Pixie-like wings extended from her back, and as the entity of the glowing sun shone brilliantly down upon this gentle deity, a halo of gold graced the brow of her bronzed forehead. Settled around this lady was a group of Pokemon, a Growlithe and a Buneary cradled within her arms, perfectly content, and delighted in fact, to be there, while a Houndoom, a Mawile, a Swalot, a Whismer, a Hitmonlee, an Umbreon, a Dusclops, and even a Chatot perched on her shoulder surround her. Rushing up to the statue, oddly compelled to it by an inner sense of recoginition, Lila read the plague beneath the woman:
"Impression of the Goddess of Happiness- Anyonomous. 'The Goddess loves all Pokemon', as stated in by mythology. Donated by Melvin and Gertrude Fairchild."
As Lila was occupied standing in an awe-stricken stupor staring at the woman, the hauntingly beautiful deity who was so devine, so perfect in her beauty, yet so human..
"I wonder if she looks like that naturally.." Lila murmured, lilac eyes round as saucers as she again marveled at the breathtaking beauty of this crude statue, the thought not even crossing her mind that the presumed Goddess may not exist. Suddenly, her shoulders went slack, and a sweatdrop of acceptance wriggled its way down the side of her bare temple.
"It would take a decade or two tarting up in front of the mirror before I could look even a third of the way she does, right Bane? OSNA--" Lila cried, and she spun on her heel too fast, careening smack-dab into a girl scurrying across the circle from the opposite direction, seemingly negligient to the course she herself was taking. Unfortunately, as in a Pokemon battle, the girls' oncoming "Tackles" combining as one didn't cancel out. The girl slamming into Lila was obviously one toned to some degree, and so she prevailed, sending Lila spiraling out of control, and onto her back as the packages towering so dangerously already in her arms bounced merrily away, the circular boxes rolling all the way across the circle, and many of them even making a break for it in the streets.
"Oh! I'm sorry!" Both girls exclaimed, as Lila instaneously leapt to her feet, it being the perfect comedial moment, for as Lila snapped her hand out to assist the girl, the girl did the same to Lila, their hands interlocking without a second thought, until the two dumbfounded girls were left gawking at each other, several people clearing their throats inconspicuously at the awkward hand-holding. The girls seemed to pay no mind though, as Lila, ignoring the escaped packages, ignoring Bane even who had shot galliantly from the white-canvas backpack he had been lying low in, in a wholehearted attempt to retrieve them, to the Angel-like silhouette of a certain avian boy passing overhead, the same one Lila would've found, had she bothered toglance up, who had initially protected her in her dream. She didn't, though. Her eyes remained locked on the other girl's, unseeing to the large Cat ears protruding from the base of her head, the pointed fangs, though the sheltered human had never witnessed a live Anthropomorph up close. She ignored the tail twisting anxiously about the girl's body, in a sense of conflict and peril. Instead, Lila traced the eyes with her own, the double irises of glowing golden Halo-like energy. Lila shook her head to clear it, but found herself still caught in the mesmerizing spell. Not, she wasn't smitten necessarily by this girl, but intrigued more or less. Besides, she would know those eyes from anywhere.
"You're.. the girl of my dreams!" Lila exclaimed aloud, joyously in a triumphant grin, before she could help herself, earning the duo some new sets of astounded stares. Immediately, as Lila realized the full extent of what she said, she flushed lightly, not that her blush could be noted anyways, for the natural rosy color already in her cheeks.
"I mean.. You're the girl I dreamed about last night. You're Konan, and you're real! Not just a page in my Great Big Book of Everything With Everything Inside!" Coming to this conclusion, Lila's mouth stretched ever-wider in an ecstatic grin, as if she had for the very first time come to the acquaintence of her childhood hero or something. And in a sense, she had, as she had been in existence only for around a month, and had followed the adventures of Konan and the rest of the team dutifully every night, for the past thirty days. As her excitement surged, a flash of heat, emitted from the already-broiling sun baked the crowd, causing many shrugs of confusion, and complaints from people walking or congregating in the square. Lila hardly noticed, however, intent on finding out if what she claimed was true, or if this girl happened to be just a look-alike of the Neko-descended heroine in the pages of her storybook, a heartbreaking disappointment indeed.
