Survival Project (PG-13)

[Dragonicwari]

Should the word "we" be in the excerpt?; (between when and were)

So, when were making our way to Goldenrod City, I knew I still had a choice to make. Though Sai seemed strict and set in his ways, I knew that he wouldn’t honestly take my choice away from me if I decided to bring it up again. He was clearly following someone else’s rules and setting his own aside, only allowing them to be set free when he deemed it safe and perhaps necessary. I felt that, this far into the journey, I could say this with certainty, when my life was anything but certain…

Also should where he thought he belonged be changed to where he thought it belonged?;

“I don’t deserve one, but thank you,” Sai said. He took the flower from Senori’s hand, but then put it back into the vase, where he thought he belonged. Then he went up to the counter and paid for the flowers that he had given us and the ladies.

[diamondpearl876]

...Oh, man. It's been a while, hasn't it? I'm sorry it's taken me so long to review these last two chapters. School and all that jazz.

Not a problem, I know things get busy sometimes!

Her personality is a nice contrast to Sai's comparatively narrow focus and always wanting to follow the "rules," whatever those may be. I think he'll get there one day, though.

That's some cute faith you have in him right there. I hope he'll make it, too.

Finally, Ezrem. That bird has Rennio completely brainwashed, doesn't he? I mean, he's the one that betrayed his trainer and his fellow Pokemon, yet Rennio still believes Ezrem is his true friend. And with Ezrem saying that Rennio is the last Elekid, and making him say that little catchphrase... What a jerk. My hate for Ezrem has gone right back up again. You seem to be good at doing that. :P

You're welcome. I do like to do that.

And now, for the grammar...

Fixed all.

Thanks for commenting as always!

Should the word "we" be in the excerpt?; (between when and were)



Also should where he thought he belonged be changed to where he thought it belonged?;

Fixed both, thanks for pointing them out!

[diamondpearl876]

SURVIVAL PROJECT

chapter 13 ; [RENNIO]
automatic

*

I had only been with Sai for a few days now, and already I could spot the many differences between him and Annie. For one, Sai was just weird. He’d never seen a movie before? Annie couldn’t leave a city without watching at least one. He bought knives as gifts? Okay, Annie might have done that, too, but I always thought she was silly for it, while she said it was a joke. Sai was clearly serious. And then there was the part where Sai fled out of nowhere! He seemed so easily frightened, and Annie was fearless. Were the two of them even from the same planet? It didn’t seem very likely.

Despite this, he was a good trainer—he kept us fed, sheltered, and was guilty when he felt he couldn’t take care of us. And I was glad to learn more about him. I was always glad to learn something about people. I had much to learn about the world, I knew, and being with this new team was helping me. I also learned more about religion thanks to Kuiora and her constantly following of Ezrem. She worshipped him, no doubt. I didn’t know how Ezrem was so special, though, but I didn’t say anything. And I learned that Atis was quiet, but I still have yet to figure out why. I hope someday to get him to talk to me.

Senori, he told me his story about his old clan after I told him about Annie. We had been walking to the north side of town, to the flower shop that day.

“So there are others out there like me,” I said to him, trying to cheer him up after he kept looking down to the ground solemnly.

“What do you mean?” he said, peering up.

“There are pokémon—and probably people—out there who carry around an endless amount of guilt, and try to hide it,” I said. “It feels good to be understood, to say the least. I don’t think I’ve ever felt understood before…”

“Well,” Senori started, “if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here. I like to take care of others, so you’re on the right team.”

I thought so, too.

Over the past few days, the idea of the team being carried around by a ton of pain had… slightly gone away. With Senori and me, there was clearly a lot of pain. There was pain with Ezrem, too, but he hid it a lot better. And there was clearly something bothering Atis and Kuiora and Sai, but they showed me that they could forget about their suffering under the right circumstances. In their cases, they needed proper distractions, and then they seemed fine. I wondered how they felt, then, when reality came crashing down on them.

I decided to figure it out on my own rather than asking. Asking could be too personal, after all. “So what is it like to be happy, and then have your life come flying back into view out of nowhere?” I wanted to know, but that wouldn’t go over too well. So I kept an eye on the people and pokémon around as we went from place to place every day. I kept mental notes to myself, notes about every happy instance that I saw.

A little green pokémon that looked suspiciously like one of the plush dolls we saw helped an older lady find her way to the shopping mall, as she was obviously lost, what with her going around in circles and everything. The little green pokémon helped the lady, and then went back to her trainer, receiving praise. That was happiness, I thought, being able to help others in their time of need. But who could I help at this moment? Senori was supposed to help me, so that didn’t make sense. I didn’t know the others well enough yet to determine whether they needed me. So I tried to lead Ezrem to all the places that we went to, tried to stay in front of him and tell him to follow me, but he brushed me off, scoffing each and every time. Still, I was glad to be with him.

Something else I saw: a human saying hello to everyone and anyone he passed by on the street. Those he said hi to had originally been staring down at the ground rather emotionlessly, but as soon as they were acknowledged, they had a giant smile on their faces. I started saying hello to everyone, too. The pokémon I said hello to waved or said hello back, while the humans just looked at me, confused. I stopped once Kuiora told me that not every human was like Sai, that not all of them could understand pokémon—but it was an interesting experience for me nonetheless.

Finally, I saw a most peculiar thing: a pokémon carrying another pokémon. The larger pokémon, the one who was doing the carrying, almost looked like a human, but its skin was blue in color, and it wasn’t wearing any clothes aside from a black belt around its waist. Its muscles were also fairly big compared to a human’s. The smaller pokémon was a simple purple rodent. My best guess was that it was injured somehow, probably from battle. Well, I could certainly sympathize with the rodent, and I left it at that.

The rest of the city seemed sad, or emotionless, somehow.

So, what did I learn in Goldenrod City? I learned that people came and went… They interacted with each other, sometimes on a superficial level, and sometimes on a deeper level that only the people in question could understand… But why they interacted with others, I could only guess. Maybe it was to ease themselves in thinking they were important. Maybe they just liked the way others made them feel. And maybe they did it because they simply felt they had to, like it was a rule that all humans faced.

In the end, I knew the truth: Annie was gone. I was still coming to terms with it, and it was hard, when everything reminded me of her. Even the way that the city air smelled reminded me of the many other places we had been. But there was nothing that I could do to bring her back, as much as I wanted to. There was nothing I could do to erase the fire, to erase our search for a new trainer, to erase the surprise and grief that accompanied us fully. All I had were memories to think of from time to time, when I felt I could handle it. So now I knew: when reality crashed back down on me, it felt like… being kissed by her ghost—as if she were kissing me on the cheek, calling me her baby, like she used to—and having her promising me that the distance between us was nothing.

*

It didn’t take long, though, for my suffering to increase tenfold…

Originally, Sai had planned for the gym battle to take place in two weeks. Two weeks! That gave me plenty of time to try to prepare mentally, in case he wanted me to fight. And while looking for happy pokémon and people, that’s partly what I did. Happiness could maybe keep the nerves from getting to me when the time came. I wished that I could say I was sure, but it had been far too long since I battled. The last time I had battled was against Ezrem when he had said something to offend me—whatever it was had escaped my mind now that I had forgiven him—and he knew better than anyone about my fear, so he went easy on me…

That wasn’t very likely to happen in a gym battle, against two people who were very, very determined to defeat each other. Then again, I hadn’t seen Sai’s fighting style, nor much of the Johto region’s gym leader. I just didn’t know what to think.

Needless to say, I was surprised when Sai announced that we would be going to the pokémon gym the day after we visited the radio tower. A while after calling Atis inside by himself for whatever reason, he gathered us all back into the room and sat us down to talk about it.

“After today, I’ve decided to forget about the appointment and just go,” he explained.

“But why?” I couldn’t help but blurt out. Maybe it was childish of me—no, it definitely was—but it just wasn’t fair!

“I know you’re new, Rennio, so you don’t know, right? We’ve been flying through the cities up until now. We’ve gotten the last two gym badges without problem. So we have to continue doing that, okay?” he said, trying to be reassuring. My nervousness must have been shining through somehow.

I thought that Ezrem would say something in protest, but apparently he didn’t think it was his place to speak. And none of the other pokémon said anything, either—they were used to this already, and accepted it for what it was.

But I couldn’t accept it. That night, I lay in the bottom bunk with everyone else, too anxious to sleep. And I wasn’t even sure if Sai would use me in battle or not! But what if he did? What if he used me in battle after all and I got hurt? What if I got injured so badly that I died, or had to be carried like that purple rodent? Who would carry me, then, and help me? Was there any help for me? There was just no telling what would happen to me tomorrow, and it killed me.

I huddled up next to Ezrem, wishing for Annie’s warmth, and didn’t sleep at all.

*

In the morning, we went to the Goldenrod City pokémon gym… just as planned. I tried to distract myself by finding more happy things in people and pokémon outside, but we were going far too fast for me to be able to pay attention to others and still keep up with everyone else. When we got there, I was more nervous than ever.

Next distraction: the inside of the building. It almost felt like a maze, and an inviting one at that! Like the flower shop, the aroma inside was nice. Several plants lined the walls and the ground, and the walls were colored white with various shades of pink. Every time we walked to the end of a path and turned onto a new one, we hoped it was the last path that we’d have to go through, but they never seemed to end. I would have been okay with that.

As luck would have it, we eventually reached the end of the… maze. It didn’t really feel like a maze anymore by the time we were done with it. It was too straightforward to be one. But as any path promises, we reached our destination and received our prize for it: the gym leader. She looked very young with that smile of hers, just like Annie had, and she almost blended in with the walls with her pink hair, her pink shorts, and her tight white shirt. It wasn’t much of a distraction, but I vaguely wondered what kind of pokémon she specialized in. I would soon find out, I supposed.

“You’re back already?” she said in a sing song voice. “I thought we had set up an appointment. Not that many trainers set up appointments, anyway, but, you know.”

“Yeah…” Sai said, rubbing the back of his head. “I’d like to just battle now, Whitney. If that’s possible, of course…”

“Well, does it look like I’m busy?” Whitney retorted, spreading her arms out as if she was encouraging us to look around. All I saw were more plants, more walls. “We can battle now if that’s what you really want.”

My heart fell, but Sai’s smile was wide.

“Thank you so much,” he said.

“Sure. It’ll be a two on two battle. Get over to that wall, and we’ll battle right here,” she instructed.

“Okay,” Sai said. He turned and motioned for all of us to back up, which we did. When we were against the wall, I knew it was time for him to pick which pokémon he was going to use. “Kuiora”—I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding—“do you want to battle first? I know you like to fight.”

“Yes! I do, I do!” she said immediately, and jumped back forward into the arena.

“All right, then, let’s get started,” Whitney said, smiling now. She reached behind her and pulled forth a pokéball. She didn’t say who was going to be choice of pokémon as she threw it forward. Perhaps not so surprisingly, a small, pink pokémon emerged from the ball. Yes, the pokémon was all pink, and it seemed exuberant over the fact with the hearty smile on its face and with its body dancing over to the middle of the arena.

“Clefairy!” it cried.

“I don’t know what that is,” Sai admitted, “so, uh, Kuiora, you can start off however you want.”

“Too lazy to think of an opening strategy? That’s not going to help you win!” Whitney cried, putting her hands on her hips. “Clefairy, use encore when you get the chance.”

I simply watched the battle, wondering what move Kuiora would use and have to repeat. Encore was a nasty, deceptive move, I knew, having had teammates be the victims of its manipulation once or twice.

Kuiora looked like she wasn’t going to do anything at first, but then she pulled her body back, preparing for an attack. When her body lurched forward, she also released a massive stream of water from her mouth, and it was headed straight for the clefairy. The clefairy jumped to the left in an attempt to dodge it. When Kuiora simply moved her jaw in the direction of the clefairy’s location, the pink pokémon jumped to the right. Kuiora kept moving her body and the clefairy kept dancing around like this until the croconaw got fed up and stopped.

“Why did you stop?” cried the clefairy. “It was such a good move! Please do it again!”

“What?” Kuiora asked, dumbfounded. “You thought it was a good move? It didn’t even hit you!”

“So? The water was so pretty.”

“Uh, Kuiora—” Sai said, probably understanding now where this was going.

“Fine,” she said, not listening. “I’ll do it again!”

And she did exactly that. She did it the same way as she had done before, right down to the part where she had to keep chasing the clefairy by turning her jaw in the direction of the pink pokémon’s jumps. This time, however, the clefairy jumped not only to the left and right, but also forward—and eventually, it became close enough to become a threat to Kuiora. Despite this, Kuiora did not stop the attack.

“Clefairy, doubleslap!” cried Whitney.

Since the clefairy was close enough, it took its tiny pink paws and scratched at Kuiora’s face, immediately stopping the flow of water emerging from her mouth. The clefairy did this over and over, on both sides of Kuiora’s face. Due to the tiny claws on its paws, the clefairy was able to draw a little bit of blood from Kuiora.

“Kuiora, punch it back so it stops hitting you!” Sai cried.

“Clefairy, keep using encore,” Whitney said calmly.

“That’s… not… going to happen again!” Kuiora said in between slaps, and finally she pulled her arm back and punched the clefairy in the belly, sending it flying backward. The opponent’s pokémon landed on its feet, but just barely, as it was putting its paws against the ground to help keep composure.

“But the water was so pretty,” the clefairy whined, dusting itself off.

“Of course it’s pretty! It’s my attack,” Kuiora said, grinning wildly. Still, she knew this was no time to be joking around, and she got right back down to business shortly after, her face turning serious. She stood there in battle position, presumably waiting for a command from Sai.

“Oh,” Sai said. “Well, water gun isn’t working, huh? Try bite!”

“Okay!” Kuiora said, making me wonder how she could be so silly and so serious at the same time. I wondered about that regarding myself, often, as that’s how Ezrem described me—but it was another thing entirely to see it happening in another pokémon. I kept watching, intrigued by her—and Sai’s—battling style. Sai, it seemed, didn’t like to be too involved; he liked being a spectator, just like me.

Kuiora leapt forward, dashing straight toward the clefairy, who simply stood there, also waiting for a command.

“Use sing, Clefairy!” cried Whitney, a hint of franticness in her voice now. Apparently, that encore trick worked a lot longer in the past.

The clefairy had started the song before Whitney had even finished calling out her command. It sang a song that sounded suspiciously like a lullaby I had heard in the past. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my heart fell further, as it reminded me of Annie.

As far as the battle went… The attack was meant to put Kuiora to sleep, but it didn’t have an effect on the croconaw. Either the clefairy didn’t have the time to sing enough of the song, or Kuiora was beyond determined to fulfill our trainer’s commands. She reached the clefairy rather quickly, opened her jaw, and clamped down on top of the clefairy’s head, immediately causing the pink pokémon’s lovely voice to be replaced by shrieking. This seemed to cause Kuiora to only bite harder, as the shrieking grew louder and louder over time. Eventually, the shrieking was reduced to crying, and Kuiora let go, leaping backward and surveying the damage.

“Clefairy, are you okay?” yelled Whitney. She looked like she was going to run into the arena, but stopped herself just in time.

“Yeesh… It hurts…” the clefairy said, rubbing the top of its head, staining its hands with a tiny bit of blood. I decided never to get on Kuiora’s bad side, as her teeth seemed too powerful for me to handle.

“Let’s keep going, clefairy! You can do it. Take your chances and use metronome!”

Surprisingly, I had never heard of this move before. I watched with interest as the clefairy did its best to recover and stand its ground. It took its bloodied hands and lifted them up in the air. Then it started moving its fingers in unison back and forth, back and forth. It did this for a long time, so long that I came to the conclusion that it was just a move to regain composure and focus one’s mind.

“Um, okay,” Sai said, apparently having similar thoughts. “Use bite again, Kuiora!”

Kuiora nodded and made her way over to her opponent, slower this time, probably not seeing the clefairy as much of a threat this time around. Once Kuiora reached the clefairy, she opened her mouth and was about to attack when the clefairy suddenly split into two. When Kuiora clamped her jaw down, the clefairy she was biting down on turned out to only be an illusion, one that disappeared just as quickly as it came.

“What?” she cried. She looked around. The clefairy had split again and again, and now a total of five pink pokémon were surrounding Kuiora on the arena.

Whitney laughed and said, “You already know double team, Clefairy! But I guess it works. Use metronome again!”

“Kuiora, find the real one, and fast!” Sai yelled as he was starting to finally see how dangerous the situation could turn out to be.

Kuiora went to each clefairy, one by one, and attempted to punch each in the stomach. The illusions disappeared, and she could tell she was running out of time as all of the illusions—and the real one—were waving their fingers around again. She went through three of them before the clefairy’s fingers glowed brightly. I heard the familiar cackling of electricity coming from the arena, and closed my eyes in response. I knew what was going to happen next; I didn’t need to watch. I didn’t hear Kuiora cry out, but I did hear her fall to the ground with a thud. Only then did I dare to open my eyes and see that she had fainted.

“Wow. A thundershock attack against a water-type! Yeah, how lucky!” Whitney said, confirming my thoughts. I let out a sigh of relief, glad that the thundershock attack was over. It had shaken me up inside, reminding me of my past battles, and how I had shocked others and been shocked myself. It was never fun, or fulfilling, or enlightening, or whatever pokémon battles were supposed to be.

“Whatever. I bet you knew it was going to an electric-type attack,” Sai said bitterly, returning Kuiora to her pokéball. He placed it in the backpack, which he had taken off and set behind him. “I guess that means I need someone who’s resistant to electricity…”

I froze. I had the vague notion that I should curse Ezrem for being a flying-type pokémon, but that wouldn’t have been fair. I knew what was coming, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. There was nothing I could do in any situation, it seemed.

“I want you to fight,” Sai said, turning to me.

“What?” I blurted out. Stupidly.

“I want you to fight,” he repeated.

“But—” I stopped myself, wondering what I could say. I didn’t know enough about the metronome attack to argue. In my haste, I tried to reason. “Whitney said that it was lucky, right? Right? That means—oh man—that the clefairy can use any attack out there… Any attack… Ground-type attacks… Oh, oh…”

The more and more I thought about it, the more devastated I became. I was about to be put up against an enemy that could use any attack in the world! One stroke of bad luck and I could surely be killed! I couldn’t face that.

Then again, I couldn’t put any of my teammates in that situation either. Now, I decided to curse the gym leader for having such a dangerous pokémon on her team. That just wasn’t fair! It wasn’t! Surely it was against the rules. I peered over at Ezrem, who only nodded to me.

“Ezrem! Ezrem—”

But that was all I could say.

“You should fight, Rennio! For our new trainer!” he said. He was trying to be reassuring, but I could tell that he didn’t have much hope for me. I didn’t know how I knew. It was a hunch of sorts that I couldn’t deny.

“But it’s been so long! And the gym leader has t-two pokémon left!” I cried, flailing my arms around.

“Please,” said Sai. “I need someone who won’t get hurt by electricity.”

“But the clefairy can use attacks other than electric-type attacks!” I cried, but Sai just wasn’t getting it.

“If you won’t fight for Sai,” Ezrem said loudly, “then you should fight for Annie.”

Annie. That hit me, and it hit me hard. Even though she considered me her baby, I knew she wouldn’t want me to act like one forever. She’d want me to grow and be strong and proud. I just couldn’t do that, not when I was the last elekid in the world, not when my species’ continuation depended on me.

But apparently, Sai took my quietness as a sign of surrender, as he said, “Okay. My elekid will fight.”

And apparently, Ezrem took my time to think as a sign of surrender, too, as he pushed me into the arena and left with a cheery “Good luck!”

I didn’t even have the energy to yell at him, to call him a jerk. Because that’s what he was being. A jerk! A real jerk… And what was I being?

“All right,” Whitney said. “Clefairy, use doubleslap!”

The clefairy was coming my way now. I knew that I had to get myself together, and fast. In reality, I knew I could win this battle. I had seen enough moves and strategies and battles for me to put something together quickly and come out as the victor. I had been on a journey long enough for me to have evolved into an electivire by now, though I hadn’t done that because Annie didn’t want a team of evolved pokémon. Yes, I knew that I could win, and easily. I wouldn’t die, or even come close to it. Still, I was frozen.

I was still frozen as the clefairy came up and hit me in the cheeks, over and over again. There was hardly any pain; the clefairy wasn’t that strong, which again told me I could win, and that I wouldn’t die. But there was another pokémon to fight after this! Even if I mustered up the strength to fight the clefairy, I’d have to do it all over again whenever the second pokémon came out. I just couldn’t handle that. So I stood there.

“Elekid, use your own thundershock!” Sai cried.

My first command from Sai. And I wasn’t going to be able to follow it. I continued to let the clefairy hit me, and pretended it hurt. In some ways, it did hurt. It hurt my pride, what little of it I had left. It hurt my species, and the image of strength that I believed we had… I tried to imagine being the clefairy as it used its thundershock. I tried to remember the feeling of releasing the neverending amount of electricity from my body. But I was so detached from myself that I couldn’t imagine it.

“Thundershock!” Sai said again, his voice louder this time.

I vaguely heard Ezrem’s voice, too, cheering me on. Then, I heard everyone’s voice. They were all trying to encourage me to fight, but it wasn’t going to work. I could barely hear them above my own thoughts.

I tried to imagine what it was like to be another elekid or electabuzz or electivire in their time of dying. Did it hurt? What move had finished them off? Or was it an accident? What happened when you died, anyway? What would happen to our legacy if I died and didn’t fulfill my goal to keep the species alive? It was times like these where I wished it was just all over already, so I wouldn’t have to bother trying.

Finally, I tried to imagine Annie… What her face would look like if she were here right now… I saw the fire, and the smoke, and the faces those guards made when I showed up at the end of Ilex Forest… It all haunted me, and perhaps it always would.

I knew—it all came down to one thing: I just wasn’t ready to move on. I just wasn’t ready to try.

“I forfeit,” Sai suddenly said. “I forfeit! Stop hitting him!”

The clefairy ceased its slapping session and stepped back. It smiled at me, but it was a painful smile, not a victorious smile. I wondered how pathetic it thought I was, and then decided I didn’t want to know. I bowed, turned around, and made my way back to my... new trainer, my new team.

“I should have listened to you,” Sai said as I walked back. He put his hands on the sides of his head. “Why don’t I ever listen to anyone? Why do people always tell me what to do?”

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault,” I said, suddenly feeling more terrible. I had been thinking far too much during the battle, but not once had I thought about Sai. Since he was my new trainer, I wanted to please him, I really did, but now I had done nothing but fail him and cause him to question himself.

“It is my fault! They always tell me that it’s my fault—”

“Who does?” Senori chimed in.

“They always do! And now, I’m not listening, so they’re following me!” Sai cried, shaking his head.

I looked at the team, hoping that they knew him well enough by now to know what to do when Sai got in these situations. But no one did anything, no one said anything. How could they not know? Then, I turned to Whitney, wondering if her knowledge of being a gym leader could help somehow. But she looked like she was about to cry, she was staring at us so sadly.

“I need to go,” Sai said, turning around. He walked around the corner, going back through the maze that we came through. He even forgot his backpack.

“Let’s go,” Senori said, leading us all to the maze as well after picking up the bag. When we reached the corner, though, we could hear him running instead of walking now. We started chasing after him, but when we reached the entrance to the gym, he had already left.

“He’s probably going back to the pokémon center,” Senori offered.

So we started heading there.

“Rennio, you really gotta learn to fight again sometime,” Ezrem said on the way back. I knew that he was going to say something, but I didn’t want it to be now. Couldn’t he tell that I felt horrible about what happened? Couldn’t he tell that I was still shaken up?

“I know,” I said quietly.

“Really, I meant what I said! You gotta do it for Annie. But now, more importantly, you’ve got to do it for Sai. He’s our new trainer! He can give us the happiness we’ve always dreamed of! But we can’t just get it for free,” Ezrem said, his voice turning calmer now. “We have to work for it. Okay?”

“I know.” My voice was barely above a whisper.

“Okay. We’ll work on it. I know you can do it,” Ezrem said, and that was the end of that. The rest of the journey to the pokémon center was uneventful and quiet.

We all thought that we’d find Sai locked in his room again, and we all thought that we’d have to sit outside in the hallway again. Senori knocked on the door over and over when we got to the room. But he didn’t answer. He wasn’t there.

“Where else could he be?” Senori said, talking to himself more than he was talking to us.

“Maybe the radio tower,” Atis offered.

“A good idea.”

But he wasn’t there either, despite the emotional reaction he had had there yesterday. He wasn’t at the flower shop, giving flowers to everyone. He wasn’t at the shopping mall, browsing and buying crazy things. We tried other places in the town, places we hadn’t explored yet. We tried searching all day.

…I never expected it to happen so soon.

I’m not talking about fighting, though that was unexpected, too. I’m talking about losing my trainer once more.

Sai, we couldn’t find him anywhere.

[The Great Butler]

SURVIVAL PROJECT

chapter 13 ; [RENNIO]
automatic

*

I had only been with Sai for a few days now, and already I could spot the many differences between him and Annie. For one, Sai was just weird. He’d never seen a movie before? Annie couldn’t leave a city without watching at least one. He bought knives as gifts? Okay, Annie might have done that, too, but I always thought she was silly for it, while she said it was a joke. Sai was clearly serious. And then there was the part where Sai fled out of nowhere! He seemed so easily frightened, and Annie was fearless. Were the two of them even from the same planet? It didn’t seem very likely.

It kind of makes me wish the two of them could meet. Of course, we sadly know that's impossible. Or is it? You've surprised me before!

Despite this, he was a good trainer—he kept us fed, sheltered, and was guilty when he felt he couldn’t take care of us. And I was glad to learn more about him. I was always glad to learn something about people. I had much to learn about the world, I knew, and being with this new team was helping me. I also learned more about religion thanks to Kuiora and her constantly following of Ezrem. She worshipped him, no doubt. I didn’t know how Ezrem was so special, though, but I didn’t say anything. And I learned that Atis was quiet, but I still have yet to figure out why. I hope someday to get him to talk to me.

Senori, he told me his story about his old clan after I told him about Annie. We had been walking to the north side of town, to the flower shop that day.

I like how you're showing the bonds growing between Sai's Pokemon. This is a very important thing for all authors to remember to do.

“So there are others out there like me,” I said to him, trying to cheer him up after he kept looking down to the ground solemnly.

“What do you mean?” he said, peering up.

“There are pokémon—and probably people—out there who carry around an endless amount of guilt, and try to hide it,” I said. “It feels good to be understood, to say the least. I don’t think I’ve ever felt understood before…”

Wow, Rennio's pretty thoughtful. I have to admit I'm a little surprised at how deep he actually is.

“Well,” Senori started, “if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here. I like to take care of others, so you’re on the right team.”

And that's very grown-up of Senori. I'm impressed with them both.

I thought so, too.

Over the past few days, the idea of the team being carried around by a ton of pain had… slightly gone away. With Senori and me, there was clearly a lot of pain. There was pain with Ezrem, too, but he hid it a lot better. And there was clearly something bothering Atis and Kuiora and Sai, but they showed me that they could forget about their suffering under the right circumstances. In their cases, they needed proper distractions, and then they seemed fine. I wondered how they felt, then, when reality came crashing down on them.

Rennio, you're going to find out how the three of them act when reality comes crashing down on them very, very soon, I think.

I decided to figure it out on my own rather than asking. Asking could be too personal, after all. “So what is it like to be happy, and then have your life come flying back into view out of nowhere?” I wanted to know, but that wouldn’t go over too well. So I kept an eye on the people and pokémon around as we went from place to place every day. I kept mental notes to myself, notes about every happy instance that I saw.

A little green pokémon that looked suspiciously like one of the plush dolls we saw helped an older lady find her way to the shopping mall, as she was obviously lost, what with her going around in circles and everything. The little green pokémon helped the lady, and then went back to her trainer, receiving praise. That was happiness, I thought, being able to help others in their time of need. But who could I help at this moment? Senori was supposed to help me, so that didn’t make sense. I didn’t know the others well enough yet to determine whether they needed me. So I tried to lead Ezrem to all the places that we went to, tried to stay in front of him and tell him to follow me, but he brushed me off, scoffing each and every time. Still, I was glad to be with him.

Something else I saw: a human saying hello to everyone and anyone he passed by on the street. Those he said hi to had originally been staring down at the ground rather emotionlessly, but as soon as they were acknowledged, they had a giant smile on their faces. I started saying hello to everyone, too. The pokémon I said hello to waved or said hello back, while the humans just looked at me, confused. I stopped once Kuiora told me that not every human was like Sai, that not all of them could understand pokémon—but it was an interesting experience for me nonetheless.

Finally, I saw a most peculiar thing: a pokémon carrying another pokémon. The larger pokémon, the one who was doing the carrying, almost looked like a human, but its skin was blue in color, and it wasn’t wearing any clothes aside from a black belt around its waist. Its muscles were also fairly big compared to a human’s. The smaller pokémon was a simple purple rodent. My best guess was that it was injured somehow, probably from battle. Well, I could certainly sympathize with the rodent, and I left it at that.

Very observant of Rennio, too. I have to admit I never expected anything like this from him.

I could see this having unforeseen consequences, though. If Rennio continues to internalize his observations and place so much stock in them, it could affect him poorly in the long run.

The rest of the city seemed sad, or emotionless, somehow.

This strikes me as important, though I'm not sure why yet.

So, what did I learn in Goldenrod City? I learned that people came and went… They interacted with each other, sometimes on a superficial level, and sometimes on a deeper level that only the people in question could understand… But why they interacted with others, I could only guess. Maybe it was to ease themselves in thinking they were important. Maybe they just liked the way others made them feel. And maybe they did it because they simply felt they had to, like it was a rule that all humans faced.

In the end, I knew the truth: Annie was gone. I was still coming to terms with it, and it was hard, when everything reminded me of her. Even the way that the city air smelled reminded me of the many other places we had been. But there was nothing that I could do to bring her back, as much as I wanted to. There was nothing I could do to erase the fire, to erase our search for a new trainer, to erase the surprise and grief that accompanied us fully. All I had were memories to think of from time to time, when I felt I could handle it. So now I knew: when reality crashed back down on me, it felt like… being kissed by her ghost—as if she were kissing me on the cheek, calling me her baby, like she used to—and having her promising me that the distance between us was nothing.

I love Rennio now. Not that I didn't like him before, but we're barely into this chapter and the way you're writing him is making me love him. He's seen way too much in his life already and I just want to see everything turn out okay for him.

It didn’t take long, though, for my suffering to increase tenfold…

But of course, things couldn't turn out okay. I expected it.

Originally, Sai had planned for the gym battle to take place in two weeks. Two weeks! That gave me plenty of time to try to prepare mentally, in case he wanted me to fight. And while looking for happy pokémon and people, that’s partly what I did. Happiness could maybe keep the nerves from getting to me when the time came. I wished that I could say I was sure, but it had been far too long since I battled. The last time I had battled was against Ezrem when he had said something to offend me—whatever it was had escaped my mind now that I had forgiven him—and he knew better than anyone about my fear, so he went easy on me…

That wasn’t very likely to happen in a gym battle, against two people who were very, very determined to defeat each other. Then again, I hadn’t seen Sai’s fighting style, nor much of the Johto region’s gym leader. I just didn’t know what to think.

Needless to say, I was surprised when Sai announced that we would be going to the pokémon gym the day after we visited the radio tower. A while after calling Atis inside by himself for whatever reason, he gathered us all back into the room and sat us down to talk about it.

I wonder how the other Pokemon would react if they knew about what happened in that room between Atis and Sai. That's the first thing that jumps into my mind.

“After today, I’ve decided to forget about the appointment and just go,” he explained.

“But why?” I couldn’t help but blurt out. Maybe it was childish of me—no, it definitely was—but it just wasn’t fair!

“I know you’re new, Rennio, so you don’t know, right? We’ve been flying through the cities up until now. We’ve gotten the last two gym badges without problem. So we have to continue doing that, okay?” he said, trying to be reassuring. My nervousness must have been shining through somehow.

Something's got Sai freaked out. It makes me wonder about the thought I had last chapter...

I thought that Ezrem would say something in protest, but apparently he didn’t think it was his place to speak. And none of the other pokémon said anything, either—they were used to this already, and accepted it for what it was.

But I couldn’t accept it. That night, I lay in the bottom bunk with everyone else, too anxious to sleep. And I wasn’t even sure if Sai would use me in battle or not! But what if he did? What if he used me in battle after all and I got hurt? What if I got injured so badly that I died, or had to be carried like that purple rodent? Who would carry me, then, and help me? Was there any help for me? There was just no telling what would happen to me tomorrow, and it killed me.

I huddled up next to Ezrem, wishing for Annie’s warmth, and didn’t sleep at all.

I know I keep saying it, but I just cannot get over how much I like your characterization. Rennio is just shining so much right now now that he's getting a chapter that really focuses on him. We're seeing straight into his mind and getting an amazing look at how he operates. Everything he feels is so understandable and makes so much sense that you can't help but sympathize with him.

In the morning, we went to the Goldenrod City pokémon gym… just as planned. I tried to distract myself by finding more happy things in people and pokémon outside, but we were going far too fast for me to be able to pay attention to others and still keep up with everyone else. When we got there, I was more nervous than ever.

Next distraction: the inside of the building. It almost felt like a maze, and an inviting one at that! Like the flower shop, the aroma inside was nice. Several plants lined the walls and the ground, and the walls were colored white with various shades of pink. Every time we walked to the end of a path and turned onto a new one, we hoped it was the last path that we’d have to go through, but they never seemed to end. I would have been okay with that.

I am so glad you actually kept the design of the Goldenrod Gym. I couldn't imagine the Goldenrod Gym without the Clefairy maze.

As luck would have it, we eventually reached the end of the… maze. It didn’t really feel like a maze anymore by the time we were done with it. It was too straightforward to be one. But as any path promises, we reached our destination and received our prize for it: the gym leader. She looked very young with that smile of hers, just like Annie had, and she almost blended in with the walls with her pink hair, her pink shorts, and her tight white shirt. It wasn’t much of a distraction, but I vaguely wondered what kind of pokémon she specialized in. I would soon find out, I supposed.

“You’re back already?” she said in a sing song voice. “I thought we had set up an appointment. Not that many trainers set up appointments, anyway, but, you know.”

“Yeah…” Sai said, rubbing the back of his head. “I’d like to just battle now, Whitney. If that’s possible, of course…”

“Well, does it look like I’m busy?” Whitney retorted, spreading her arms out as if she was encouraging us to look around. All I saw were more plants, more walls. “We can battle now if that’s what you really want.”

I see Whitney's the same as always. Good to see something that can be relied upon when so much is unpredictable.

My heart fell, but Sai’s smile was wide.

“Thank you so much,” he said.

“Sure. It’ll be a two on two battle. Get over to that wall, and we’ll battle right here,” she instructed.

“Okay,” Sai said. He turned and motioned for all of us to back up, which we did. When we were against the wall, I knew it was time for him to pick which pokémon he was going to use. “Kuiora”—I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding—“do you want to battle first? I know you like to fight.”

“Yes! I do, I do!” she said immediately, and jumped back forward into the arena.

Forgive me if I've forgotten something, but does Sai know that Whitney uses Normal-types? I thought Atis would be first.

“All right, then, let’s get started,” Whitney said, smiling now. She reached behind her and pulled forth a pokéball. She didn’t say who was going to be choice of pokémon as she threw it forward. Perhaps not so surprisingly, a small, pink pokémon emerged from the ball. Yes, the pokémon was all pink, and it seemed exuberant over the fact with the hearty smile on its face and with its body dancing over to the middle of the arena.

“Clefairy!” it cried.

“I don’t know what that is,” Sai admitted, “so, uh, Kuiora, you can start off however you want.”

“Too lazy to think of an opening strategy? That’s not going to help you win!” Whitney cried, putting her hands on her hips. “Clefairy, use encore when you get the chance.”

I simply watched the battle, wondering what move Kuiora would use and have to repeat. Encore was a nasty, deceptive move, I knew, having had teammates be the victims of its manipulation once or twice.

Kuiora looked like she wasn’t going to do anything at first, but then she pulled her body back, preparing for an attack. When her body lurched forward, she also released a massive stream of water from her mouth, and it was headed straight for the clefairy. The clefairy jumped to the left in an attempt to dodge it. When Kuiora simply moved her jaw in the direction of the clefairy’s location, the pink pokémon jumped to the right. Kuiora kept moving her body and the clefairy kept dancing around like this until the croconaw got fed up and stopped.

“Why did you stop?” cried the clefairy. “It was such a good move! Please do it again!”

“What?” Kuiora asked, dumbfounded. “You thought it was a good move? It didn’t even hit you!”

“So? The water was so pretty.”

“Uh, Kuiora—” Sai said, probably understanding now where this was going.

“Fine,” she said, not listening. “I’ll do it again!”

And she did exactly that. She did it the same way as she had done before, right down to the part where she had to keep chasing the clefairy by turning her jaw in the direction of the pink pokémon’s jumps. This time, however, the clefairy jumped not only to the left and right, but also forward—and eventually, it became close enough to become a threat to Kuiora. Despite this, Kuiora did not stop the attack.

This is actually an excellent depiction of Encore's effect, and Kuiora and Clefairy make a great combination.

“Clefairy, doubleslap!” cried Whitney.

Since the clefairy was close enough, it took its tiny pink paws and scratched at Kuiora’s face, immediately stopping the flow of water emerging from her mouth. The clefairy did this over and over, on both sides of Kuiora’s face. Due to the tiny claws on its paws, the clefairy was able to draw a little bit of blood from Kuiora.

“Kuiora, punch it back so it stops hitting you!” Sai cried.

“Clefairy, keep using encore,” Whitney said calmly.

“That’s… not… going to happen again!” Kuiora said in between slaps, and finally she pulled her arm back and punched the clefairy in the belly, sending it flying backward. The opponent’s pokémon landed on its feet, but just barely, as it was putting its paws against the ground to help keep composure.

Good for Kuiora, actually managing to catch on to how Encore worked. I almost think Clefairy drawing blood helped snap her out of it.

“But the water was so pretty,” the clefairy whined, dusting itself off.

“Of course it’s pretty! It’s my attack,” Kuiora said, grinning wildly. Still, she knew this was no time to be joking around, and she got right back down to business shortly after, her face turning serious. She stood there in battle position, presumably waiting for a command from Sai.

“Oh,” Sai said. “Well, water gun isn’t working, huh? Try bite!”

“Okay!” Kuiora said, making me wonder how she could be so silly and so serious at the same time. I wondered about that regarding myself, often, as that’s how Ezrem described me—but it was another thing entirely to see it happening in another pokémon. I kept watching, intrigued by her—and Sai’s—battling style. Sai, it seemed, didn’t like to be too involved; he liked being a spectator, just like me.

Kuiora leapt forward, dashing straight toward the clefairy, who simply stood there, also waiting for a command.

“Use sing, Clefairy!” cried Whitney, a hint of franticness in her voice now. Apparently, that encore trick worked a lot longer in the past.

That wasn't the way I was expecting the battle to turn here. I thought they would both stick to straightforward attacking.

The clefairy had started the song before Whitney had even finished calling out her command. It sang a song that sounded suspiciously like a lullaby I had heard in the past. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my heart fell further, as it reminded me of Annie.

Nice emotional touch right in the middle of the battle.

As far as the battle went… The attack was meant to put Kuiora to sleep, but it didn’t have an effect on the croconaw. Either the clefairy didn’t have the time to sing enough of the song, or Kuiora was beyond determined to fulfill our trainer’s commands. She reached the clefairy rather quickly, opened her jaw, and clamped down on top of the clefairy’s head, immediately causing the pink pokémon’s lovely voice to be replaced by shrieking. This seemed to cause Kuiora to only bite harder, as the shrieking grew louder and louder over time. Eventually, the shrieking was reduced to crying, and Kuiora let go, leaping backward and surveying the damage.

Well now, that was unexpected. I'm surprised Kuiora avoided falling asleep, and I'm even more surprised she attacked so viciously. Could evolution be coming again?

“Clefairy, are you okay?” yelled Whitney. She looked like she was going to run into the arena, but stopped herself just in time.

“Yeesh… It hurts…” the clefairy said, rubbing the top of its head, staining its hands with a tiny bit of blood. I decided never to get on Kuiora’s bad side, as her teeth seemed too powerful for me to handle.

“Let’s keep going, clefairy! You can do it. Take your chances and use metronome!”

Oh boy, this sure came out of nowhere. I bet whatever move it pulls is going to be shocking too.

Surprisingly, I had never heard of this move before. I watched with interest as the clefairy did its best to recover and stand its ground. It took its bloodied hands and lifted them up in the air. Then it started moving its fingers in unison back and forth, back and forth. It did this for a long time, so long that I came to the conclusion that it was just a move to regain composure and focus one’s mind.

“Um, okay,” Sai said, apparently having similar thoughts. “Use bite again, Kuiora!”

Kuiora nodded and made her way over to her opponent, slower this time, probably not seeing the clefairy as much of a threat this time around. Once Kuiora reached the clefairy, she opened her mouth and was about to attack when the clefairy suddenly split into two. When Kuiora clamped her jaw down, the clefairy she was biting down on turned out to only be an illusion, one that disappeared just as quickly as it came.

“What?” she cried. She looked around. The clefairy had split again and again, and now a total of five pink pokémon were surrounding Kuiora on the arena.

Double Team, huh? That's not one I thought it would be.

Whitney laughed and said, “You already know double team, Clefairy! But I guess it works. Use metronome again!”

Okay, that was funny. Whitney shouldn't be revealing Clefairy's known moves to her opponent, but the surprise of Metronome pulling a movie Clefairy already had is worth a laugh.

“Kuiora, find the real one, and fast!” Sai yelled as he was starting to finally see how dangerous the situation could turn out to be.

Kuiora went to each clefairy, one by one, and attempted to punch each in the stomach. The illusions disappeared, and she could tell she was running out of time as all of the illusions—and the real one—were waving their fingers around again. She went through three of them before the clefairy’s fingers glowed brightly. I heard the familiar cackling of electricity coming from the arena, and closed my eyes in response. I knew what was going to happen next; I didn’t need to watch. I didn’t hear Kuiora cry out, but I did hear her fall to the ground with a thud. Only then did I dare to open my eyes and see that she had fainted.

“Wow. A thundershock attack against a water-type! Yeah, how lucky!” Whitney said, confirming my thoughts. I let out a sigh of relief, glad that the thundershock attack was over. It had shaken me up inside, reminding me of my past battles, and how I had shocked others and been shocked myself. It was never fun, or fulfilling, or enlightening, or whatever pokémon battles were supposed to be.

That was more like what I was expecting all along, something that would give Clefairy a trump card over Kuiora.

“Whatever. I bet you knew it was going to an electric-type attack,” Sai said bitterly, returning Kuiora to her pokéball. He placed it in the backpack, which he had taken off and set behind him. “I guess that means I need someone who’s resistant to electricity…”

I froze. I had the vague notion that I should curse Ezrem for being a flying-type pokémon, but that wouldn’t have been fair. I knew what was coming, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. There was nothing I could do in any situation, it seemed.

“I want you to fight,” Sai said, turning to me.

A Gym battle in a Rennio chapter probably inevitably means this was coming.

“What?” I blurted out. Stupidly.

“I want you to fight,” he repeated.

“But—” I stopped myself, wondering what I could say. I didn’t know enough about the metronome attack to argue. In my haste, I tried to reason. “Whitney said that it was lucky, right? Right? That means—oh man—that the clefairy can use any attack out there… Any attack… Ground-type attacks… Oh, oh…”

The more and more I thought about it, the more devastated I became. I was about to be put up against an enemy that could use any attack in the world! One stroke of bad luck and I could surely be killed! I couldn’t face that.

Then again, I couldn’t put any of my teammates in that situation either. Now, I decided to curse the gym leader for having such a dangerous pokémon on her team. That just wasn’t fair! It wasn’t! Surely it was against the rules. I peered over at Ezrem, who only nodded to me.

“Ezrem! Ezrem—”

But that was all I could say.

“You should fight, Rennio! For our new trainer!” he said. He was trying to be reassuring, but I could tell that he didn’t have much hope for me. I didn’t know how I knew. It was a hunch of sorts that I couldn’t deny.

“But it’s been so long! And the gym leader has t-two pokémon left!” I cried, flailing my arms around.

Now, once again, I'm surprised. I thought Rennio would be willing to fight and not freak out until something went wrong during the battle. Although, I suppose you could say that Metronome is the thing that went wrong.

“Please,” said Sai. “I need someone who won’t get hurt by electricity.”

“But the clefairy can use attacks other than electric-type attacks!” I cried, but Sai just wasn’t getting it.

“If you won’t fight for Sai,” Ezrem said loudly, “then you should fight for Annie.”

Very good logic, Ezrem. Maybe it'll help.

Annie. That hit me, and it hit me hard. Even though she considered me her baby, I knew she wouldn’t want me to act like one forever. She’d want me to grow and be strong and proud. I just couldn’t do that, not when I was the last elekid in the world, not when my species’ continuation depended on me.

That thing about being the last Elekid in the world is going to be a major arc in Rennio's story, I can tell.

But apparently, Sai took my quietness as a sign of surrender, as he said, “Okay. My elekid will fight.”

And apparently, Ezrem took my time to think as a sign of surrender, too, as he pushed me into the arena and left with a cheery “Good luck!”

I didn’t even have the energy to yell at him, to call him a jerk. Because that’s what he was being. A jerk! A real jerk… And what was I being?

“All right,” Whitney said. “Clefairy, use doubleslap!”

The clefairy was coming my way now. I knew that I had to get myself together, and fast. In reality, I knew I could win this battle. I had seen enough moves and strategies and battles for me to put something together quickly and come out as the victor. I had been on a journey long enough for me to have evolved into an electivire by now, though I hadn’t done that because Annie didn’t want a team of evolved pokémon. Yes, I knew that I could win, and easily. I wouldn’t die, or even come close to it. Still, I was frozen.

I was still frozen as the clefairy came up and hit me in the cheeks, over and over again. There was hardly any pain; the clefairy wasn’t that strong, which again told me I could win, and that I wouldn’t die. But there was another pokémon to fight after this! Even if I mustered up the strength to fight the clefairy, I’d have to do it all over again whenever the second pokémon came out. I just couldn’t handle that. So I stood there.

I see where this is going, and it's not going to be pretty...

“Elekid, use your own thundershock!” Sai cried.

My first command from Sai. And I wasn’t going to be able to follow it. I continued to let the clefairy hit me, and pretended it hurt. In some ways, it did hurt. It hurt my pride, what little of it I had left. It hurt my species, and the image of strength that I believed we had… I tried to imagine being the clefairy as it used its thundershock. I tried to remember the feeling of releasing the neverending amount of electricity from my body. But I was so detached from myself that I couldn’t imagine it.

Wait, I just realized - is Rennio not using Thundershock a representation of Pokemon originally owned by another trainer being unreliable in battle if the current trainer doesn't have enough Badges?

“Thundershock!” Sai said again, his voice louder this time.

I vaguely heard Ezrem’s voice, too, cheering me on. Then, I heard everyone’s voice. They were all trying to encourage me to fight, but it wasn’t going to work. I could barely hear them above my own thoughts.

I tried to imagine what it was like to be another elekid or electabuzz or electivire in their time of dying. Did it hurt? What move had finished them off? Or was it an accident? What happened when you died, anyway? What would happen to our legacy if I died and didn’t fulfill my goal to keep the species alive? It was times like these where I wished it was just all over already, so I wouldn’t have to bother trying.

Finally, I tried to imagine Annie… What her face would look like if she were here right now… I saw the fire, and the smoke, and the faces those guards made when I showed up at the end of Ilex Forest… It all haunted me, and perhaps it always would.

I knew—it all came down to one thing: I just wasn’t ready to move on. I just wasn’t ready to try.

This chapter has been a psychological study of Rennio the entire time, and here's the end result. While it was fairly predictable that Rennio would lose, the exact conclusion - that he isn't ready to move on from Annie - is what we had to wait to find out.

“I forfeit,” Sai suddenly said. “I forfeit! Stop hitting him!”

I didn't think this was how the battle would end, though.

The clefairy ceased its slapping session and stepped back. It smiled at me, but it was a painful smile, not a victorious smile. I wondered how pathetic it thought I was, and then decided I didn’t want to know. I bowed, turned around, and made my way back to my... new trainer, my new team.

“I should have listened to you,” Sai said as I walked back. He put his hands on the sides of his head. “Why don’t I ever listen to anyone? Why do people always tell me what to do?”

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault,” I said, suddenly feeling more terrible. I had been thinking far too much during the battle, but not once had I thought about Sai. Since he was my new trainer, I wanted to please him, I really did, but now I had done nothing but fail him and cause him to question himself.

“It is my fault! They always tell me that it’s my fault—”

“Who does?” Senori chimed in.

“They always do! And now, I’m not listening, so they’re following me!” Sai cried, shaking his head.

Another possibility for who Sai is jumped into my head after reading this. There's definitely something going on with him.

“Rennio, you really gotta learn to fight again sometime,” Ezrem said on the way back. I knew that he was going to say something, but I didn’t want it to be now. Couldn’t he tell that I felt horrible about what happened? Couldn’t he tell that I was still shaken up?

“I know,” I said quietly.

“Really, I meant what I said! You gotta do it for Annie. But now, more importantly, you’ve got to do it for Sai. He’s our new trainer! He can give us the happiness we’ve always dreamed of! But we can’t just get it for free,” Ezrem said, his voice turning calmer now. “We have to work for it. Okay?”

“I know.” My voice was barely above a whisper.

“Okay. We’ll work on it. I know you can do it,” Ezrem said, and that was the end of that. The rest of the journey to the pokémon center was uneventful and quiet.

Rennio is going to have to get over Annie eventually. I just can tell it's not going to be easy.

We all thought that we’d find Sai locked in his room again, and we all thought that we’d have to sit outside in the hallway again. Senori knocked on the door over and over when we got to the room. But he didn’t answer. He wasn’t there.

Oh no, here we go. Sai lost it again.

“Where else could he be?” Senori said, talking to himself more than he was talking to us.

“Maybe the radio tower,” Atis offered.

“A good idea.”

But he wasn’t there either, despite the emotional reaction he had had there yesterday. He wasn’t at the flower shop, giving flowers to everyone. He wasn’t at the shopping mall, browsing and buying crazy things. We tried other places in the town, places we hadn’t explored yet. We tried searching all day.

…I never expected it to happen so soon.

I’m not talking about fighting, though that was unexpected, too. I’m talking about losing my trainer once more.

Sai, we couldn’t find him anywhere.

It's bad enough when you look at the impact that this obviously has on Rennio, the idea of losing Sai after losing Annie. But if you look at it on a bigger level, it's even worse - this may very well be the worst breakdown Sai's had yet.

Excellent chapter. It had a very fascinating character study of Rennio that really made me love him, and the drama surrounding Sai in this chapter added a good, heavy emotional background. I'm glad I read this right away.

[Sid87]

Something else I saw: a human saying hello to everyone and anyone he passed by on the street. Those he said hi to had originally been staring down at the ground rather emotionlessly, but as soon as they were acknowledged, they had a giant smile on their faces. I started saying hello to everyone, too. The pokémon I said hello to waved or said hello back, while the humans just looked at me, confused. I stopped once Kuiora told me that not every human was like Sai, that not all of them could understand pokémon—but it was an interesting experience for me nonetheless.

This scene is really cute. It's very childlike and innocent.

|So now I knew: when reality crashed back down on me, it felt like… being kissed by her ghost—as if she were kissing me on the cheek, calling me her baby, like she used to—and having her promising me that the distance between us was nothing.

Wonderful way with words and imagery, as always.

“I know you’re new, Rennio, so you don’t know, right? We’ve been flying through the cities up until now. We’ve gotten the last two gym badges without problem. So we have to continue doing that, okay?” he said, trying to be reassuring. My nervousness must have been shining through somehow.

That is a curious way of putting it. You usually think of GOOD qualities as "shining through", not a quality you'd be embarrassed of.

As luck would have it, we eventually reached the end of the… maze. It didn’t really feel like a maze anymore by the time we were done with it. It was too straightforward to be one. But as any path promises, we reached our destination and received our prize for it: the gym leader. She looked very young with that smile of hers, just like Annie had, and she almost blended in with the walls with her pink hair, her pink shorts, and her tight white shirt. It wasn’t much of a distraction, but I vaguely wondered what kind of pokémon she specialized in. I would soon find out, I supposed.

Usually when people say "as luck would have it", they mean GOOD luck. But Rennio didn't want to face the gym leader. So why would he say that? Most likely because the only luck he's really known has been bad (or, at least, that's how he'd view it).

Also... not loving the "I supposed" at the end there. I think it'd be more foreboding and tense without those last two words.

“Why did you stop?” cried the clefairy. “It was such a good move! Please do it again!”

“What?” Kuiora asked, dumbfounded. “You thought it was a good move? It didn’t even hit you!”

“So? The water was so pretty.”

“Uh, Kuiora—” Sai said, probably understanding now where this was going.

“Fine,” she said, not listening. “I’ll do it again!”

Ha! That's Encore, huh? Creative, and it got a laugh out of me.

“I should have listened to you,” Sai said as I walked back. He put his hands on the sides of his head. “Why don’t I ever listen to anyone? Why do people always tell me what to do?”

Hmmmmm.....?

“They always do! And now, I’m not listening, so they’re following me!” Sai cried, shaking his head.

So Sai has some actual ties to Team Rocket? They tell him what to do?


-Good chapter...I did a lot of reading without much to comment on because the story was very well-done and engrossing; your battle scenes are always a lot of fun, even if poor Kuiora got hurt.

-We didn't seem to get much character from Whitney, but I suppose she'll be back. Then again, this is some definite rising action from Sai; perhaps this will be a turning point of the story, and we won't be doing the journey anymore. Who's to say? I just think I wouldn't be surprised at all if the scope of the story changes here...

[Sidewinder]

For one, Sai was just weird

Hah! I love Rennio already

“Well,” Senori started, “if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here. I like to take care of others, so you’re on the right team.”

I called that! I knew he would lend a helping, emotional shoulder to Rennio if he ever needed it.

The larger pokémon, the one who was doing the carrying, almost looked like a human, but its skin was blue in color, and it wasn’t wearing any clothes aside from a black belt around its waist. Its muscles were also fairly big compared to a human’s

Machoke wouldn't go near a Rattata! You know that! lol I'm excited that you had one drop in for a moment

I learned that people came and went… They interacted with each other, sometimes on a superficial level, and sometimes on a deeper level that only the people in question could understand… But why they interacted with others, I could only guess. Maybe it was to ease themselves in thinking they were important. Maybe they just liked the way others made them feel. And maybe they did it because they simply felt they had to, like it was a rule that all humans faced.

Wonderfully described and terrific observation. I think the quoted portion is something we all think about but we let it slip away into not thinking about it because we're so used to it. That portion though, you hit it right on the money. I've told you many times that you have a talent with transferring observations and feelings, but that passage really is the bee's knees

“Why did you stop?” cried the clefairy. “It was such a good move! Please do it again!”

Really creative way to release Encore. Almost like taunt in fact, but nicer and more flattering.

I didn’t need to watch. I didn’t hear Kuiora cry out, but I did hear her fall to the ground with a thud.

That line felt odd to me as if he heard anything he would have heard her cry because it would assuredly be louder than her hitting the floor

“If you won’t fight for Sai,” Ezrem said loudly, “then you should fight for Annie.”

What a jerk for saying that, but I like how you've molded the relationship between the two of them to the point where he can affect Rennio so easily. I mean, his kinda mean-spirited and loquacious nature tells me that he can get almost anyone (except Sai) to do anything pretty easily, but underneath all that not only is he wordy and extremely off-putting, but he also seems extremely intelligent; which makes him potentially more threatening.

“They always do! And now, I’m not listening, so they’re following me!” Sai cried, shaking his head.

Hmmm. Maybe he's just a misunderstood kid running from a bad home life? Yeesh, every time I think I'm formulating an idea you drop something like this on me and I get forced back to square one. I liked the quoted portion because this is one of the few times I'm feeling real emotion from him. At the same time though I'm not really understanding the significance of what he's saying. I'm liking the fact that I'm confused lol

Overall, another good chapter. The only thing that kinda irked me slightly was the pacing of Kuiora's battle with Clefairy. For some reason it felt too slow; both Whitney and Sai didn't really feel like there head was truly in the fight. They had time for some short sentences each while they're Pokemon were fighting and the fighting itself just felt a little too slow. Like the examining of the blood that came from the injuries the Clefairy; I just felt like instances like that took away from how fast-paced and exciting I felt like the occasion should have been. Other than that slight thing I thought it was great and as always I eagerly await the next chapter

[diamondpearl876]

It kind of makes me wish the two of them could meet. Of course, we sadly know that's impossible. Or is it? You've surprised me before!

What are you talking about? I never surprise anyone!

I like how you're showing the bonds growing between Sai's Pokemon. This is a very important thing for all authors to remember to do.

It's easily forgettable when the friendships between each other often aren't the most important thing I'm focusing on.

Rennio, you're going to find out how the three of them act when reality comes crashing down on them very, very soon, I think.

Probably...

I love Rennio now. Not that I didn't like him before, but we're barely into this chapter and the way you're writing him is making me love him. He's seen way too much in his life already and I just want to see everything turn out okay for him.

Cute.

I wonder how the other Pokemon would react if they knew about what happened in that room between Atis and Sai. That's the first thing that jumps into my mind.

I think they've even more confused and lost.

Something's got Sai freaked out. It makes me wonder about the thought I had last chapter...

I'm interested in these thoughts of yours.

I know I keep saying it, but I just cannot get over how much I like your characterization. Rennio is just shining so much right now now that he's getting a chapter that really focuses on him. We're seeing straight into his mind and getting an amazing look at how he operates. Everything he feels is so understandable and makes so much sense that you can't help but sympathize with him.

I'm glad you like his characterization. I always thought he was my weakest character when it came to writing this, so... Lol.

I am so glad you actually kept the design of the Goldenrod Gym. I couldn't imagine the Goldenrod Gym without the Clefairy maze.

Me neither!

Forgive me if I've forgotten something, but does Sai know that Whitney uses Normal-types? I thought Atis would be first.

He does know, but he doesn't want to make Atis fight if he doesn't want to, and he likes catering to Kuiora anyway.

Well now, that was unexpected. I'm surprised Kuiora avoided falling asleep, and I'm even more surprised she attacked so viciously. Could evolution be coming again?

It's possible.

Now, once again, I'm surprised. I thought Rennio would be willing to fight and not freak out until something went wrong during the battle. Although, I suppose you could say that Metronome is the thing that went wrong.

I thought about having it that way too, but I think he's more paralyzed when it comes to battling than that.

Wait, I just realized - is Rennio not using Thundershock a representation of Pokemon originally owned by another trainer being unreliable in battle if the current trainer doesn't have enough Badges?

Partly.

Excellent chapter. It had a very fascinating character study of Rennio that really made me love him, and the drama surrounding Sai in this chapter added a good, heavy emotional background. I'm glad I read this right away.

Glad you liked it! Thanks for commenting!

Usually when people say "as luck would have it", they mean GOOD luck. But Rennio didn't want to face the gym leader. So why would he say that? Most likely because the only luck he's really known has been bad (or, at least, that's how he'd view it).

I guess I wasn't familiar with that term. I thought it could refer to good luck or bad luck.

Also... not loving the "I supposed" at the end there. I think it'd be more foreboding and tense without those last two words.

I seem to bother you a lot with this... lol.

-Good chapter...I did a lot of reading without much to comment on because the story was very well-done and engrossing; your battle scenes are always a lot of fun, even if poor Kuiora got hurt.

I'm glad you liked it, considering it was a Rennio chapter. Thanks for commenting!

I called that! I knew he would lend a helping, emotional shoulder to Rennio if he ever needed it.

You did! It's actually been appearing a lot more now that I've been writing more chapters. I thank you for it.

Wonderfully described and terrific observation. I think the quoted portion is something we all think about but we let it slip away into not thinking about it because we're so used to it. That portion though, you hit it right on the money. I've told you many times that you have a talent with transferring observations and feelings, but that passage really is the bee's knees

Glad you liked it.

That line felt odd to me as if he heard anything he would have heard her cry because it would assuredly be louder than her hitting the floor

I agree, it sounds weird. I'll have to go back and fix it.

Hmmm. Maybe he's just a misunderstood kid running from a bad home life? Yeesh, every time I think I'm formulating an idea you drop something like this on me and I get forced back to square one. I liked the quoted portion because this is one of the few times I'm feeling real emotion from him. At the same time though I'm not really understanding the significance of what he's saying. I'm liking the fact that I'm confused lol

Lol, nice. You're getting more simpler with your ideas, though, which is good.

Overall, another good chapter. The only thing that kinda irked me slightly was the pacing of Kuiora's battle with Clefairy. For some reason it felt too slow; both Whitney and Sai didn't really feel like there head was truly in the fight. They had time for some short sentences each while they're Pokemon were fighting and the fighting itself just felt a little too slow. Like the examining of the blood that came from the injuries the Clefairy; I just felt like instances like that took away from how fast-paced and exciting I felt like the occasion should have been. Other than that slight thing I thought it was great and as always I eagerly await the next chapter

I can see why you'd think that. I'll have to work on writing battles in the future, since there'll be quite a few. Thanks for pointing it out and for commenting.

[diamondpearl876]

SURVIVAL PROJECT

chapter 14 ; [SENORI]
chance

*

We thoroughly searched the city and its outskirts for two days before we… stopped. I don’t want to say that we gave up, but it almost felt that way. It seemed that we had accepted the fact that Sai was erratic, and to find any sort of predictability in his life was impossible and a waste of time. So we stopped searching—or gave up—all the while hoping that he would come back to us, and soon.

Though we had settled on having him find us, I of course was worried about him and his health. Surely, a human thinking that other humans following him wasn’t a good sign. There was that and the fact that he had left his backpack behind, so where he could go without access to money—and therefore human food—was beyond me. And hadn’t he said his home was in Vermilion City? That was in another region entirely! There was no way he would be going so far away to see that female friend or family member of his, but then… where else could he have gone? Nothing made sense to me.

But I didn’t have much time to think about Sai, because while we waiting for him to get over whatever spell he was going through, we had to figure out how to take care of ourselves. For the first day, things were easy. Since Sai had left his backpack behind, we had access to the room key and were able to stay in the pokémon center room. All I had to do was climb on Kuiora’s back and insert the key into the lock, and we were inside, even after a few unsuccessful tries on my part.

In one of our many group discussions, it was suggested that we try backtracking and going to Azalea Town, but it was too risky. What if Sai came back while we were gone? The idea of going to the next city, where no one had ever gone before, was worse. Besides, it was even riskier to separate and not be able to keep an eye out on each other—it was especially worrisome for the younger pokémon like Kuiora and Rennio. The only ones capable of taking care of them were me, Ezrem, and Atis. But I had so painfully learned that I couldn’t be in two places at the same time, I wouldn’t be able to trust Ezrem when I was so far away from him, and Atis didn’t seem too interested in the job anyway. I decided it, then: we would stay in Goldenrod City.

The next problem had us questioning whether or not we would be staying in the pokémon center until Sai came back, or if we would have to settle for temporarily living as wild pokémon again.

“I don’t want to be spending all of Sai’s money,” I said, “but I want him to have a place where he can look for us when he comes back.”

“If he comes back,” Kuiora said.

I shot her a look and said, “He’ll come back.”

“How do you know?”

I didn’t know, but I had to believe in him. I had to believe that this journey wasn’t all for nothing and that it wasn’t going to crash so easily. “I just know,” I said.

“Well,” Kuiora said, “I don’t care what we do, but it’d be cool to know what it’s like to be a wild pokémon.”

“You don’t want to know,” Rennio said rather solemnly. He was probably still feeling guilty, and I didn’t blame him.

“No one else has anything to add?” I said, trying to keep things on topic.

“I-I think we should stay here… for now,” Atis said.

“You do?”

“Yeah… This is a big city, and it’ll be a lot harder to find him when we’re out in the wild…” Atis replied.

“Fair enough,” Senori said. “In that case, I say we should stay here for five days. That seems like a reasonable amount of time, right? If he’s not back in five days, then we’ll leave.”

No one protested or offered any other possible solutions.

And just as I had suggested, we waited for five days. Amidst all the curious thoughts I had about Sai, I tried to take care of everyone. If anyone wanted to be out of the room—which was fairly often, as our personalities liked to clash so much—the pokémon that wanted to leave had to make sure that someone was still there, just in case Sai came back. For food and water, we used what Sai’s backpack had available; there was plenty to spread around. We passed the time mostly by sleeping, and there was the occasional teasing between Atis, Kuiora, and Ezrem. I thought that I even heard Rennio crying at some point, but I didn’t want to intrude. He needed time to heal, I knew.

Yes, we waited for five days… but Sai didn’t show up.

*

Needless to say, it was unfavorable to all of us when I said that we were going to leave the pokémon center room and return to the wild for now. We were bored and antsy and confused and we just wanted our trainer to be back, but we had to make the best out of our situation.

That was when Ezrem spoke up.

“Who said that you get to be in charge here?” he said.

“W-What?” I said, not expecting that from him at all. Even though I didn’t trust him, I didn’t expect him to have anything against me.

“I asked you what makes you think you get to be the boss of everyone.”

“Well,” I said, pausing because I really didn’t know, I really didn’t deserve it, “no one else wants the position, do they?”

“I do,” said Ezrem, standing up and walking over to me. “I’ll be the new leader.”

“You?” I said. “You’re not even officially on the team!”

“I can make a better leader than you.”

“You think so? How?”

“I’ve been with a trainer a lot longer than you, so I know what to do in dangerous situations,” he explained. After a moment, he added, “Plus, when we met, I gave you good advice on how to win that battle, so you owe me.”

“You may have been with a trainer longer, but you haven’t been with our trainer as long as I have. I was Sai’s first pokémon!” I said proudly. I could feel Kuiora’s subsequent glare.

“We should stay here. It’d be safer! What are you going to do if an extra strong pokémon attacks us? Huh?”

I thought for a moment before saying, “The pokémon around the forest are weaker, we already know that. We could stay there.”

“What about food and water?”

“We have food and water in Sai’s backpack still. And we know how to get food in the wild. Is that what you’re afraid of? You don’t know how to be a good wild pokémon, so you want to hide?” I said, grinning.

“That’s not it. I just think it’s a dumb idea!”

“Look, Sai’s money is not ours to spend. We need to save it for when he has to buy us stuff. And what are we going to do when we run out of food and water? We can’t go buying food like a human can. We were lucky that Sai had paid for the five nights we’ve spent here already!”

“And what are you going to do when a trainer comes along and tries to catch us?”

“I’m not worried about that. We’re strong, and can’t be caught by pokéballs,” I said, feeling more confident in myself when Ezrem didn’t say anything in response. “Now, I think everyone should have an escort that stays with them. This should keep everyone safe, especially when you want to wander off and do whatever.”

“Fine,” Ezrem said, smiling now and going back to sit with the others. “I’ll let you be the leader if I get to go with Kuiora.”

“Really?” Kuiora squealed.

“Yes, really!”

“That’s fine,” I said. I looked at Rennio and Atis. Both of them had been mostly quiet until now, but it was time to get their input. “I’d like to take Rennio with me, so I can protect him if needed. Is that okay with you, Atis? You’re strong enough to handle yourself, right?”

“Right,” Atis said immediately, and I could tell he was thankful for my decision to put him alone.

“Okay, then Rennio is coming with me. Is that fine?”

“Yeah,” Rennio said simply, looking down. I could tell he felt ashamed, and perhaps a little upset that he wasn’t with Ezrem. I looked over to the bird to see if he had any reaction to the pairings, but he was busy talking with the croconaw.

“Good,” I said softly. “Then let’s go.”

*

If Ezrem was good for anything, it was for deciding where to stay while we were in the wild, because he had brought up a good point, after all: strong pokémon could be out there. Staying near the forest was our best bet. So I took everyone to the outskirts of the forest, a little bit past the daycare center. Kuiora suggested that we stay at the daycare center for the time being, but I explained that that, too, would cost money that wasn’t ours to spend.

And so began our journey into the wild once more. If I was being honest, it did feel strange to be back right where I started. Still, I had to continue believing that Sai would return when he was ready, no matter how long it took. He was my trainer, and he wouldn’t just abandon us like that.

It was amusing, at least, watching Kuiora try to be a wild pokemon. I second guessed my decision to let her be paired together with Ezrem, noting his deceitful nature, but he seemed to genuinely help her out. I had suggested that they try to avoid the food and water in the backpack and try to earn it out in the open, so that they always had something to come back to if they were desperate. Surprisingly, they listened, so now Ezrem was teaching her that drinking out of ponds and rivers was the only way to get water, aside from having her shoot out water guns, of course. And since killing wild pokémon for food was apparently against his personal beliefs, Ezrem and Kuiora explored the area to find out where the best berries were, and he taught her how to choose which ones were good to eat.

“This isn’t fair. I have to be a wild pokémon again? I’m sick of these berries and gross pond water!” Ezrem said once, but I knew he was just making excuses so he could devour the food and water in the backpack, so I laughed at him.

“Don’t laugh at Ezrem,” Kuiora said seriously.

“You should choose your battles more wisely,” I said, remembering how Kuiora had recently confronted Ezrem to stick up for Atis.

“Whatever you say.”

I laughed again. Whatever I said, huh? I admitted that I liked when everyone followed my rules, my directions. It made me feel like a leader again. Granted, I had always felt like the leader of this team, since Sai seemed incapable of taking care of himself sometimes, but now, this only confirmed my self-centered thoughts and made me feel as if I were truly back with my clan once again. Still, I hoped Sai would return, because a part of me felt lost without him.

Atis stuck to himself, which wasn’t a shock at all. Occasionally, he tried to help out Kuiora when Ezrem could only laugh at her for whatever reason, so that was nice to see. But otherwise, he stayed in between the trees and kept himself hidden, and he slept by himself, as usual.

As for Rennio and me… Well, it was a quiet adventure. That was the best way I could put it. I just couldn’t get many words out of him, no matter how much I tried to make small talk. He knew what he was doing, however. He knew how to pick berries, where to get water, and he followed all the rules I put on him—the ones that said we should all sleep together, we shouldn’t leave our partners, and so on. So he wasn’t completely intolerable.

Eventually, though, I decided to try getting to the root of the problem, since it was clear that making small talk with him wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” I said to him a couple days after we had ventured out into the wild.

“Huh?” he said—with no emotion, so I knew he was pretending to not know what I was talking about.

“It’s not your fault that Sai left,” I said. “He’s always been a little bit weird. If you had been around longer, I guarantee that you wouldn’t be blaming yourself as much as you are now.”

“How do you know I’ve been blaming myself?” he said. That was the longest sentence I had gotten out of him thus far.

“Because I’ve felt guilty for things in my life, just like you, remember? Once you feel guilty for one thing, you pretty much feel guilty for everything bad that follows. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh. Yeah. You’re right.”

“See? So don’t worry about it,” I assured him, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I’ll try not to.”

“Is that all that’s bugging you?” I said, having a feeling that there was something else. There was always something else when it came to guilt—it was true. I hadn’t lied to him.

“Well,” Rennio said, “we’re so close to where my trainer was killed. I don’t know if I like it.” A pause. “Okay, I definitely don’t like it.”

“I understand,” I said. “I went back to my clan after the incident, and it wasn’t exactly the best experience in the world.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But it helped me start to let go. So hopefully, this can be the start of your new adventure… again. You get a third chance.”

Rennio chuckled lightly. It was a success in my book. But then he frowned and sniffled… and then he started sobbing.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “Water is supposed to be a good thing for electric-type pokémon, I know, but I can’t help but be so sad.”

“It’s okay. Don’t cry,” I said. “Don’t cry.”

He did anyway.

*

We continued with what we were doing. At least we were no longer bored and antsy, but we still definitely wanted our trainer to come back. But then, there was an incident. As if our luck couldn’t get any worse.

Sai’s backpack was stolen.

Even though I carried it by day and kept it near me by night, it was stolen. One night, we had gone to sleep with it there, and when we woke up, it was gone.

All that money, all that food, all that water… It was now gone. I vaguely wondered if Sai had come back to pick it up, but it didn’t seem likely. Surely he would have taken us with him if that were the case. Also, even if he was back in Goldenrod City, he wouldn’t know where we were. So someone—another trainer, probably—had swiped it while we were sleeping.

“Really?” Ezrem remarked, grinning. “It’s ironic to have all that money and food and water stolen when you were trying not to use it all, don’t you think? I knew I should have been the leader.”

I said nothing, evaluating the situation. On one hand, things were not so bad. We were faring quite nicely in the wild, here. The loss of water and food was not a problem. It was really the loss of money that worried me. What would happen when Sai came back and found that all of his hard earned cash was gone? Even worse, the two badges we had won were gone! How would he react to that? Would he go crazy again? Would he leave again? That’s how unpredictable he was.

I sighed.

“I guess we could keep an eye out for it,” I said. “Other than that, there’s nothing we can do but keep going on, just like we have been.”

Everyone agreed, even Ezrem, so that’s exactly what we did. The group dispersed and separated into escorts once more, except, I noted, that Ezrem went over to Rennio and whispered to him about something for a few moments before returning to Kuiora. He must have said something better than I did, because later on, Rennio actually decided to start a conversation with me.

“Do you feel guilty now, too?” he said.

“Of course. I was in charge of the backpack, after all. All of Sai’s stuff…”

“Well, don’t feel bad! I just remembered something about Goldenrod City as you were talking. I know of a way we can fix things!” Rennio said, smiling at me.

“You do?”

“Yeah! When we were exploring a bit with Atis, someone told me a secret about the people of Goldenrod City.”

“Oh…?”

“Apparently, they’re very giving people. They like to help out in others’ times of need. A human could walk up to another human, ask to borrow their kitchen, and the kitchen owner would say yes in a heartbeat! I’ll bet they’re kind to pokémon, too.”

“So you’re saying we should go to a bunch of human houses and replace the stuff we had in the backpack?”

“Exactly!”

“Uh,” I said, stunned. I hadn’t heard anyone say such a thing about the people of Goldenrod City, but it certainly was plausible. It’s not like we would be breaking into their houses and stealing or anything. No, they would be offering to us. Maybe it was finally a sign of luck coming our way. We could really maybe replace the money, food, water we had lost, as well as some of Sai’s clothes.

“We wouldn’t be able to replace the badges we lost,” I finally said. That was the most important part to me; that was what we had worked the hardest for.

“No, but perhaps Sai won’t even notice,” Rennio offered.

“You’re certainly optimistic,” I pointed out.

“So, are we going to do it or not?”

“It’s worth a try,” I said. I just couldn’t ignore that happy face of his, especially when he was so forlorn the day before. “We can even keep an eye out for Sai while we’re there, which is good. Let’s go.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

*

We let everyone know where we would be for the rest of the day, and then we headed back to Goldenrod City. I should have known better than to get my hopes up, because we didn’t see Sai anywhere.

“He’ll come back,” Rennio said, and I thought about how ironic it was that our roles had switched so suddenly.

“Yeah. I know,” I said, but I wasn’t entirely sure that I sounded at all convincing.

Coming back to Goldenrod City sure brought back some memories; it already seemed like forever since we had been here. Mostly, they were good memories. Sai was out expanding his horizons while Atis was breaking out of his shell. Kuiora and Ezrem got closer, and Rennio… Well, Rennio got the worst of it, but still. This city was on my list of favorites—until Sai had left us, of course.

Now, we had to pick up the pieces after his selfish disappearing act. I had had high hopes up until this point, because the idea of going from house to house to replace his belongings made everything feel all too real, and I didn’t want to accept that my trainer, the one I had put so much faith in since the very beginning, would do this sort of thing.

“Are we sure this house belongs to a human?” I asked when we came upon our first potential helpers. “This isn’t a building like the flower shop or anything, right?”

“Don’t know. Who cares? Anyone could help us out at this point.”

“True,” I said. I looked up, overwhelmed by the tallness of the house’s door. I wished that, for a moment, I could grow to the necessary height to be able to look into a human’s eyes, and plead for help in our time of need. That wasn’t going to happen—I simply knocked on the door as hard as I could with my little brown paws.

At first, no one answered. We waited outside the door for a very awkward few minutes before I suggested that maybe no one was home.

“Try knocking again. I know that sometimes, if you’re persistent, people will eventually answer,” Rennio offered.

So I knocked again. Sure enough, someone showed up within the minute. I couldn’t tell if Rennio was right or if I just hadn’t knocked loud enough, but I made a note to remember his words for future houses.

The person who answered the door was a man who looked like he was older than Sai, but he didn’t look as wrinkly as the lady at the daycare center. He had blonde hair that was parted in the middle, and brown eyes. He looked like he was wearing pajamas, which I thought was odd until I realized the sun was already setting, and that it was probably around dinner time. My stomach rumbled in response.

This seemed to catch the man’s attention, since before, he was just looking out the door with a blank look, wondering who on earth had been there. Finally, he looked down at us, and smiled.

“Pokémon at my door, huh? That’s a new one,” he said. My heart fell—maybe the people of Goldenrod City weren’t so accustomed to giving out items and food to pokémon, after all. I was about to lose hope and turn around when he added, “Sounds like you’re hungry. Are you here for food?”

I nodded as vigorously as I could. Yes, we were hungry! Yes, we needed food! Nevermind the fact that we could get food back where we were camping. We wanted human food or pokémon food, it didn’t matter which. To avoid looking desperate, I didn’t say any of this, of course.

“One moment,” he said, closing the door on us.

“I can’t believe that worked,” I said, turning to Rennio, who had a wide grin on his face.

“See? I told you. All of our problems are solved!” he cried, jumping up and down excitedly.

“Yeah,” I said. Then, in a quieter tone: “Sai will be happy.”

A few moments later, the door opened again, and there stood the same man as before. He leaned down to hand us a bag of opened pokémon food.

“Here,” he said. “I’m sure my snubbull won’t mind sharing, right?”

“Awesome,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

“Have a good night,” he said, and closed the door once more.

Again, I couldn’t believe it had worked. Maybe all of our problems really were solved. There was only one way to find out, so we went next door to get to the next house. Again, I knocked—as loud as I could this time around.

And again, someone answered the door for us! Things were going a lot easier than I had anticipated. Well, I don’t know what I had been anticipating, but it wasn’t this.

Of course, things don’t always go as planned.

We ran into some immediate trouble as soon as I said, “Hello!”

The person—this time a lady with brown hair and brown eyes, also wearing lazy clothes—peered down at us. She didn’t greet us with a smile, though. She looked at me, puzzled, and was about to close the door on us. She only failed because I stuck half my body into the door so she couldn’t get rid of us that easily.

“Wait!” I yelled. “We’re just looking for some food… or water… or clothes. Anything you don’t need, anything you want to get rid of! Someone stole all of our stuff, so, yeah…”

But still, she looked at me oddly, remaining mute. Suddenly, it hit me. She couldn’t understand pokémon. The language barrier wasn’t an issue at the last house because my stomach had spoken for me by rumbling ever so loudly.

“Sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying. Good-bye now,” she said, confirming my suspicions. She went to close the door again, and this time I didn’t stop her.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting that,” Rennio said as we walked away from the house. “I’ve always been so used to having Annie understand me… Sai could understand me, too…”

“All these gold houses look the same. You would think that all the people inside them would be the same—nice and friendly, like that first guy,” I said.

“That’s not how things work, I guess.”

“Apparently not.”

“Should we keep looking until we find someone who can understand pokémon?”

“Is it worth it? I mean, how many people can really understand us? Mostly trainers, and I’ll bet the trainers aren’t staying in houses here…”

“We could go to the pokémon center.”

“They’ll recognize us. We were there too long.”

“I say we go to one more house, see what those people are like,” he said.

I nodded. It would be a waste to go to just two houses and stop there. We went next door, the last house in this row. For what I hoped wouldn’t be the last time, I knocked on the door—only to have it automatically open in front of me.

“Uh,” I said, knocking again. The door opened a bit further. It was evident that no one was opening the door, but that they had already left the door open, and that my knocking was propelling it forward.

“Does that mean anyone can go in?” Rennio said. I should have taken this as an obvious no—if even Rennio, after traveling from place to place, region to region, didn’t know, then we should just accept the defeat and leave. Still, I was curious—what if the answer was yes? There was so much to gain, and little left to lose.

“Stay here,” I said. “I’m going in.”

“Are you sure about this…?”

“Yes,” I said. I was the leader here, and I was going to do what I thought was best. So I got down on all fours and crept through the door. It was unexpected for me, really—I used to yell at Sai for walking into random houses and for acting like a creepy person, and now I was doing the same exact thing. Almost, anyway. The owners were practically inviting me in by leaving the door open! If I was wrong, it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t know everything about human customs. I was just a pokémon that was swept away by fate from the forest near New Bark Town, that was all.

Of course, there wouldn’t be a way to relay that to the owners of the house, if they saw me. No—they had to see me, or me taking anything would be stealing. I started to purposefully look for them amongst all the human things that surrounded me. I hadn’t gotten far yet; I was still in the front hallway. I could already see stairs leading upward, but I decided to stay on the floor I was on. It seemed more inviting that the unknown, anyway, what with all of the paintings hung on the wall and the comfy-looking couches and the lamps that offered a dim amount of light, enough for me to make my way around. I vaguely wondered what kind of people lived here, since their house seemed much different from Sasha’s in Azalea Town. It was strange to me how the furnishing and layout of a house was made to fit the lives of the humans in it, while pokémon center rooms were so bland and made for anyone. I hoped that Sai would have a comfortable place to live someday, and that it would look like how he wanted it to.

While I was thinking of Sai and us and living in a house in the future, one odd thing occurred to me: there wasn’t a single sign of pokémon living in this house. There wasn’t even a painting of a pokémon. This seemed so odd to me, as all the houses I had been in had shown some sign of being our fans.

I should have taken this as an immediate sign to leave, but I kept on going until I reached the kitchen. It looked like a normal kitchen, with a stove and a fridge and a table and such, though there was some weird thing protruding in the middle of it all. I think Sasha had called it an island, once. It didn’t seem to serve a purpose for anything, not like everything else. I thought that it was good for keeping me hidden, but that was about it.

As it turns out, that “island” wasn’t good for anything, not even keeping me hidden. I didn’t get a chance to search the rest of the house or find the owners, because they found me. And they obviously weren’t very happy to see me, because I was met with a big slap in the back from a broom. The bristles scratched against my skin, and the impact of the blow caused me to fall flat on my stomach. I cried out briefly, and tried to get back on my paws to flee, but I was hit again.

“Get out of my house, you evil creature! How dare you come in here!” I heard a lady yell, along with some other crazy obscenities that made me look like I was a monster sent to her house to kill her.

After a few more hits, I was able to get on my paws and escape the next swipe of the broom. I darted back toward the front hallway, and saw my escape! The door was right there! But the lady was chasing me, and was doing quite a good job of it. She managed to hit me one more time before I was able to swiftly run out the door, past Rennio and out onto the street. I had to backtrack in order to get Rennio, because he was as confused as ever and now he was being hit by her broom, too. I ran up to him, grabbed him by the arm, ignoring how the open bag of pokémon food was spilling all over, and dragged him to the other side of the street.

“And stay out!” the lady yelled, threateningly waving her broom in the air. She then slammed the door, and that was the last we saw of her.

“What was that all about?” Rennio asked, rubbing his head.

“We explored the house of a pokémon hater,” I said. “Go figure. I think it’s safe to say we’re done, now.”

“I’m sorry,” Rennio said. “I was just trying to help.”

“It’s not your fault. At least we got one bag of food…” I trailed off, noting how there was very little left in the bag after having to run away from the lady. “Well, we got some, anyway.”

“Yeah…”

On the way back, I wondered who on earth would tell a pokémon that the people of Goldenrod City were so nice, when it was anything but true. I decided to ask him about it.

“Rennio, who told you that knocking on peoples’ houses and asking them for things in Goldenrod City was acceptable?”

“Um… Ezrem did,” Rennio replied. “He said not to tell you that he said it because you don’t like him… Why do you need to know?”

That explained everything—why Ezrem was okay with giving up the leader position, why Ezrem was whispering to Rennio that one time, and why Ezrem was okay with letting Rennio stay with me… All this time, he was planning to use Rennio to spite me somehow, someway. And his plan, whether it was thoroughly thought out or not, had certainly worked.

“Nothing. I’m an idiot.”

*

When we returned to the group, everyone except Atis came up to us to see what we had retrieved. When they saw that all we had was a measly bag of pokémon food that was already opened, they looked clearly upset.

“You guys were gone for a long time, and that’s what you come back with? Geez, I could have done better than that!” Kuiora cried.

“Yeah,” Ezrem said. “All that work for nothing.”

I glared at him. “Don’t you even talk, Ezrem. I know it was you who told Rennio about that. You wasted our time!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, smiling widely.

“I would think that your smile lights up the sky, considering how nice you were trying to be, but now I know it’s just the glow of everyone else’s hopes and dreams being incinerated,” I said, too angry and upset to care if my words hurt him or not.

“You don’t say,” he replied, still smiling.

“I’ll bet you stole Sai’s backpack and hid it somewhere just to make me mad!”

“I wouldn’t do such a thing to my new trainer,” he said. “You’re losing your head over something so silly. That just goes to show you that I should have been the leader!”

And maybe he was right. Maybe his deceitful nature could have benefited us in this situation. Had he gone instead of me, he may have been able to convince those humans to give him what he wanted. I didn’t know how that was possible since the language barrier would still exist and that lady would still be hating pokémon no matter what, but after what happened, I was second guessing myself yet again. He probably would have kept us in the pokémon center for a longer time, and then we would still be there, happy and safe, with all of our belongings intact.

I was no leader, and if I was, I was a shameful one—forever and always.

That night, I didn’t sleep. There wasn’t anything to protect except one bag of food, but I kept watch over it anyway. I lay there all night, wondering what I could do to be better. I thought that I had gotten past this pain already by scrutinizing the team’s individual needs and by deciding that I wouldn’t let Sai’s rollercoaster emotions get to me. Those things had gone over well for me, but now, Sai was gone entirely… and my world was turned upside down. He obviously needed me at this very moment, but I couldn’t help him because I didn’t know where he was. And the team here obviously needed me, too, but in different ways… in ways that always seemed to backfire against me no matter how hard I tried.

After thinking some more, I couldn’t rationalize any reason for me to continue thinking that I was a bad leader. I had done the best I could, and the bad things that had happened were out of my control. Besides, the bad things that happened weren’t even… bad. They hadn’t extremely harmed anyone emotionally and physically, after all. Really, all I had to do was go along with my instincts and not follow others’, mainly Ezrem’s (and Rennio’s, which was unfair, but look where it had gotten me this time).

So why was I still doubting myself? I recalled the conversation that me and Rennio had had earlier in our adventure. And of course, I concluded that the guilt of ruining my entire clan was still haunting me. Everyone’s cries, the sneasel’s lies, being banished after all of my hard work and after all of my heartfelt explanations… I always knew that it wouldn’t be something I could get over so easily, but the fact that it was still bothering me made me wonder if I would get over it.

There had to be another way.

I vowed to figure it out, with or without Sai.

[Dragonicwari]

If Ezrem was good for anything, it was for deciding where to stay while we were in the wild, because he had brought up a good point, after all: strong pokémon could be out there. Staying near the forest was out best bet. So I took everyone to the outskirts of the forest, a little bit past the daycare center. Kuiora suggested that we stay at the daycare center for the time being, but I explained that that, too, would cost money that wasn’t ours to spend.

That should be our

[The Great Butler]

SURVIVAL PROJECT

chapter 14 ; [SENORI]
chance

*

I might be wrong, but it feels like it's been a while since we saw a Senori chapter, too.

We thoroughly searched the city and its outskirts for two days before we… stopped. I don’t want to say that we gave up, but it almost felt that way. It seemed that we had accepted the fact that Sai was erratic, and to find any sort of predictability in his life was impossible and a waste of time. So we stopped searching—or gave up—all the while hoping that he would come back to us, and soon.

Though we had settled on having him find us, I of course was worried about him and his health. Surely, a human thinking that other humans following him wasn’t a good sign. There was that and the fact that he had left his backpack behind, so where he could go without access to money—and therefore human food—was beyond me. And hadn’t he said his home was in Vermilion City? That was in another region entirely! There was no way he would be going so far away to see that female friend or family member of his, but then… where else could he have gone? Nothing made sense to me.

Somehow I get the feeling that he isn't going to come back immediately. Two days isn't a good sign.

But I didn’t have much time to think about Sai, because while we waiting for him to get over whatever spell he was going through, we had to figure out how to take care of ourselves. For the first day, things were easy. Since Sai had left his backpack behind, we had access to the room key and were able to stay in the pokémon center room. All I had to do was climb on Kuiora’s back and insert the key into the lock, and we were inside, even after a few unsuccessful tries on my part.

It's worrying that they have to take care of themselves outside of their individual natural habitats, but what really surprises me in this paragraph is Senori using a key. XD;

In one of our many group discussions, it was suggested that we try backtracking and going to Azalea Town, but it was too risky. What if Sai came back while we were gone? The idea of going to the next city, where no one had ever gone before, was worse. Besides, it was even riskier to separate and not be able to keep an eye out on each other—it was especially worrisome for the younger pokémon like Kuiora and Rennio. The only ones capable of taking care of them were me, Ezrem, and Atis. But I had so painfully learned that I couldn’t be in two places at the same time, I wouldn’t be able to trust Ezrem when I was so far away from him, and Atis didn’t seem too interested in the job anyway. I decided it, then: we would stay in Goldenrod City.

It's good to see that they're at least thinking this through.

The next problem had us questioning whether or not we would be staying in the pokémon center until Sai came back, or if we would have to settle for temporarily living as wild pokémon again.

“I don’t want to be spending all of Sai’s money,” I said, “but I want him to have a place where he can look for us when he comes back.”

“If he comes back,” Kuiora said.

I shot her a look and said, “He’ll come back.”

“How do you know?”

I didn’t know, but I had to believe in him. I had to believe that this journey wasn’t all for nothing and that it wasn’t going to crash so easily. “I just know,” I said.

I'm fascinated by the seeming breakdown of society in the group of Sai's Pokemon. This is already turning out to be a very interesting chapter.

“Well,” Kuiora said, “I don’t care what we do, but it’d be cool to know what it’s like to be a wild pokémon.”

“You don’t want to know,” Rennio said rather solemnly. He was probably still feeling guilty, and I didn’t blame him.

That one hit me quite emotionally.

“No one else has anything to add?” I said, trying to keep things on topic.

“I-I think we should stay here… for now,” Atis said.

“You do?”

“Yeah… This is a big city, and it’ll be a lot harder to find him when we’re out in the wild…” Atis replied.

“Fair enough,” Senori said. “In that case, I say we should stay here for five days. That seems like a reasonable amount of time, right? If he’s not back in five days, then we’ll leave.”

No one protested or offered any other possible solutions.

And just as I had suggested, we waited for five days. Amidst all the curious thoughts I had about Sai, I tried to take care of everyone. If anyone wanted to be out of the room—which was fairly often, as our personalities liked to clash so much—the pokémon that wanted to leave had to make sure that someone was still there, just in case Sai came back. For food and water, we used what Sai’s backpack had available; there was plenty to spread around. We passed the time mostly by sleeping, and there was the occasional teasing between Atis, Kuiora, and Ezrem. I thought that I even heard Rennio crying at some point, but I didn’t want to intrude. He needed time to heal, I knew.

Yes, we waited for five days… but Sai didn’t show up.

I didn't want to be right about that prediction, but... I had a bad feeling about how long Sai's absence would be.

Needless to say, it was unfavorable to all of us when I said that we were going to leave the pokémon center room and return to the wild for now. We were bored and antsy and confused and we just wanted our trainer to be back, but we had to make the best out of our situation.

That was when Ezrem spoke up.

“Who said that you get to be in charge here?” he said.

Oh no, now is absolutely not the time Ezrem...

“W-What?” I said, not expecting that from him at all. Even though I didn’t trust him, I didn’t expect him to have anything against me.

“I asked you what makes you think you get to be the boss of everyone.”

“Well,” I said, pausing because I really didn’t know, I really didn’t deserve it, “no one else wants the position, do they?”

“I do,” said Ezrem, standing up and walking over to me. “I’ll be the new leader.”

“You?” I said. “You’re not even officially on the team!”

“I can make a better leader than you.”

Starting to feel a little turned off on Ezrem again, but it's working nonetheless - he's the type who would take advantage of a situation to get ahead like this.

“You think so? How?”

“I’ve been with a trainer a lot longer than you, so I know what to do in dangerous situations,” he explained. After a moment, he added, “Plus, when we met, I gave you good advice on how to win that battle, so you owe me.”

“You may have been with a trainer longer, but you haven’t been with our trainer as long as I have. I was Sai’s first pokémon!” I said proudly. I could feel Kuiora’s subsequent glare.

“We should stay here. It’d be safer! What are you going to do if an extra strong pokémon attacks us? Huh?”

I thought for a moment before saying, “The pokémon around the forest are weaker, we already know that. We could stay there.”

“What about food and water?”

“We have food and water in Sai’s backpack still. And we know how to get food in the wild. Is that what you’re afraid of? You don’t know how to be a good wild pokémon, so you want to hide?” I said, grinning.

Wait, wait, wait, I just realized something. Is Ezrem trying to overcompensate for the nervousness he feels about going back to the wild after following a trainer for the second time? If that's the case, I feel sympathetic for him again.

“That’s not it. I just think it’s a dumb idea!”

“Look, Sai’s money is not ours to spend. We need to save it for when he has to buy us stuff. And what are we going to do when we run out of food and water? We can’t go buying food like a human can. We were lucky that Sai had paid for the five nights we’ve spent here already!”

“And what are you going to do when a trainer comes along and tries to catch us?”

“I’m not worried about that. We’re strong, and can’t be caught by pokéballs,” I said, feeling more confident in myself when Ezrem didn’t say anything in response. “Now, I think everyone should have an escort that stays with them. This should keep everyone safe, especially when you want to wander off and do whatever.”

Well, in that case, the Poké Balls shouldn't work on any of them but Ezrem himself, right? You kind of touch on that idea but it's not defined clearly whether you mean that they would be too strong to be caught or the Poké Balls would be ineffective.

“Fine,” Ezrem said, smiling now and going back to sit with the others. “I’ll let you be the leader if I get to go with Kuiora.”

Well then, that surprised me a little.

“Really?” Kuiora squealed.

“Yes, really!”

“That’s fine,” I said. I looked at Rennio and Atis. Both of them had been mostly quiet until now, but it was time to get their input. “I’d like to take Rennio with me, so I can protect him if needed. Is that okay with you, Atis? You’re strong enough to handle yourself, right?”

“Right,” Atis said immediately, and I could tell he was thankful for my decision to put him alone.

“Okay, then Rennio is coming with me. Is that fine?”

“Yeah,” Rennio said simply, looking down. I could tell he felt ashamed, and perhaps a little upset that he wasn’t with Ezrem. I looked over to the bird to see if he had any reaction to the pairings, but he was busy talking with the croconaw.

“Good,” I said softly. “Then let’s go.”

Wait, I'm a little confused. I thought they weren't going to split up?

If Ezrem was good for anything, it was for deciding where to stay while we were in the wild, because he had brought up a good point, after all: strong pokémon could be out there. Staying near the forest was out best bet. So I took everyone to the outskirts of the forest, a little bit past the daycare center. Kuiora suggested that we stay at the daycare center for the time being, but I explained that that, too, would cost money that wasn’t ours to spend.

And so began our journey into the wild once more. If I was being honest, it did feel strange to be back right where I started. Still, I had to continue believing that Sai would return when he was ready, no matter how long it took. He was my trainer, and he wouldn’t just abandon us like that.

I am really beginning to wonder if it's not going to be more than just a short time that Sai is gone...

It was amusing, at least, watching Kuiora try to be a wild pokemon. I second guessed my decision to let her be paired together with Ezrem, noting his deceitful nature, but he seemed to genuinely help her out. I had suggested that they try to avoid the food and water in the backpack and try to earn it out in the open, so that they always had something to come back to if they were desperate. Surprisingly, they listened, so now Ezrem was teaching her that drinking out of ponds and rivers was the only way to get water, aside from having her shoot out water guns, of course. And since killing wild pokémon for food was apparently against his personal beliefs, Ezrem and Kuiora explored the area to find out where the best berries were, and he taught her how to choose which ones were good to eat.

“This isn’t fair. I have to be a wild pokémon again? I’m sick of these berries and gross pond water!” Ezrem said once, but I knew he was just making excuses so he could devour the food and water in the backpack, so I laughed at him.

“Don’t laugh at Ezrem,” Kuiora said seriously.

Hmm. I wonder if Kuiora's line isn't indicative of something a little bit bigger going on. She seems awfully protective of Ezrem.

“You should choose your battles more wisely,” I said, remembering how Kuiora had recently confronted Ezrem to stick up for Atis.

“Whatever you say.”

I laughed again. Whatever I said, huh? I admitted that I liked when everyone followed my rules, my directions. It made me feel like a leader again. Granted, I had always felt like the leader of this team, since Sai seemed incapable of taking care of himself sometimes, but now, this only confirmed my self-centered thoughts and made me feel as if I were truly back with my clan once again. Still, I hoped Sai would return, because a part of me felt lost without him.

Atis stuck to himself, which wasn’t a shock at all. Occasionally, he tried to help out Kuiora when Ezrem could only laugh at her for whatever reason, so that was nice to see. But otherwise, he stayed in between the trees and kept himself hidden, and he slept by himself, as usual.

I'm liking these distinct personalities each Pokémon is showing. You're doing great showing them as individuals.

As for Rennio and me… Well, it was a quiet adventure. That was the best way I could put it. I just couldn’t get many words out of him, no matter how much I tried to make small talk. He knew what he was doing, however. He knew how to pick berries, where to get water, and he followed all the rules I put on him—the ones that said we should all sleep together, we shouldn’t leave our partners, and so on. So he wasn’t completely intolerable.

Eventually, though, I decided to try getting to the root of the problem, since it was clear that making small talk with him wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” I said to him a couple days after we had ventured out into the wild.

“Huh?” he said—with no emotion, so I knew he was pretending to not know what I was talking about.

“It’s not your fault that Sai left,” I said. “He’s always been a little bit weird. If you had been around longer, I guarantee that you wouldn’t be blaming yourself as much as you are now.”

“How do you know I’ve been blaming myself?” he said. That was the longest sentence I had gotten out of him thus far.

“Because I’ve felt guilty for things in my life, just like you, remember? Once you feel guilty for one thing, you pretty much feel guilty for everything bad that follows. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh. Yeah. You’re right.”

“See? So don’t worry about it,” I assured him, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I’ll try not to.”

“Is that all that’s bugging you?” I said, having a feeling that there was something else. There was always something else when it came to guilt—it was true. I hadn’t lied to him.

“Well,” Rennio said, “we’re so close to where my trainer was killed. I don’t know if I like it.” A pause. “Okay, I definitely don’t like it.”

These two are standing out as the best interaction of them all. They're different and yet so alike in what they've seen and suffered through that they go together perfectly, and reading their exchange is quite honestly tugging on my heartstrings a bit.

“I understand,” I said. “I went back to my clan after the incident, and it wasn’t exactly the best experience in the world.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But it helped me start to let go. So hopefully, this can be the start of your new adventure… again. You get a third chance.”

Rennio chuckled lightly. It was a success in my book. But then he frowned and sniffled… and then he started sobbing.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “Water is supposed to be a good thing for electric-type pokémon, I know, but I can’t help but be so sad.”

“It’s okay. Don’t cry,” I said. “Don’t cry.”

He did anyway.

This really is quite emotional to read...

We continued with what we were doing. At least we were no longer bored and antsy, but we still definitely wanted our trainer to come back. But then, there was an incident. As if our luck couldn’t get any worse.

Sai’s backpack was stolen.

Why do I have a hunch I know who did it?

Even though I carried it by day and kept it near me by night, it was stolen. One night, we had gone to sleep with it there, and when we woke up, it was gone.

All that money, all that food, all that water… It was now gone. I vaguely wondered if Sai had come back to pick it up, but it didn’t seem likely. Surely he would have taken us with him if that were the case. Also, even if he was back in Goldenrod City, he wouldn’t know where we were. So someone—another trainer, probably—had swiped it while we were sleeping.

“Really?” Ezrem remarked, grinning. “It’s ironic to have all that money and food and water stolen when you were trying not to use it all, don’t you think? I knew I should have been the leader.”

Although now I wonder if Ezrem isn't behind it as part of his seeming power grab.

I said nothing, evaluating the situation. On one hand, things were not so bad. We were faring quite nicely in the wild, here. The loss of water and food was not a problem. It was really the loss of money that worried me. What would happen when Sai came back and found that all of his hard earned cash was gone? Even worse, the two badges we had won were gone! How would he react to that? Would he go crazy again? Would he leave again? That’s how unpredictable he was.

I sighed.

“I guess we could keep an eye out for it,” I said. “Other than that, there’s nothing we can do but keep going on, just like we have been.”

Everyone agreed, even Ezrem, so that’s exactly what we did. The group dispersed and separated into escorts once more, except, I noted, that Ezrem went over to Rennio and whispered to him about something for a few moments before returning to Kuiora. He must have said something better than I did, because later on, Rennio actually decided to start a conversation with me.

“Do you feel guilty now, too?” he said.

I really can't decide if I trust Ezrem or not.

“Of course. I was in charge of the backpack, after all. All of Sai’s stuff…”

“Well, don’t feel bad! I just remembered something about Goldenrod City as you were talking. I know of a way we can fix things!” Rennio said, smiling at me.

“You do?”

“Yeah! When we were exploring a bit with Atis, someone told me a secret about the people of Goldenrod City.”

“Oh…?”

“Apparently, they’re very giving people. They like to help out in others’ times of need. A human could walk up to another human, ask to borrow their kitchen, and the kitchen owner would say yes in a heartbeat! I’ll bet they’re kind to pokémon, too.”

“So you’re saying we should go to a bunch of human houses and replace the stuff we had in the backpack?”

“Exactly!”

Oh no... Senori, please figure out why this is a bad idea...

“Uh,” I said, stunned. I hadn’t heard anyone say such a thing about the people of Goldenrod City, but it certainly was plausible. It’s not like we would be breaking into their houses and stealing or anything. No, they would be offering to us. Maybe it was finally a sign of luck coming our way. We could really maybe replace the money, food, water we had lost, as well as some of Sai’s clothes.

“We wouldn’t be able to replace the badges we lost,” I finally said. That was the most important part to me; that was what we had worked the hardest for.

“No, but perhaps Sai won’t even notice,” Rennio offered.

“You’re certainly optimistic,” I pointed out.

“So, are we going to do it or not?”

“It’s worth a try,” I said. I just couldn’t ignore that happy face of his, especially when he was so forlorn the day before. “We can even keep an eye out for Sai while we’re there, which is good. Let’s go.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

Something really bad is about to happen. I can feel it.

“True,” I said. I looked up, overwhelmed by the tallness of the house’s door. I wished that, for a moment, I could grow to the necessary height to be able to look into a human’s eyes, and plead for help in our time of need. That wasn’t going to happen—I simply knocked on the door as hard as I could with my little brown paws.

Sentret knocking on a door is oddly adorable.

At first, no one answered. We waited outside the door for a very awkward few minutes before I suggested that maybe no one was home.

“Try knocking again. I know that sometimes, if you’re persistent, people will eventually answer,” Rennio offered.

So I knocked again. Sure enough, someone showed up within the minute. I couldn’t tell if Rennio was right or if I just hadn’t knocked loud enough, but I made a note to remember his words for future houses.

The person who answered the door was a man who looked like he was older than Sai, but he didn’t look as wrinkly as the lady at the daycare center. He had blonde hair that was parted in the middle, and brown eyes. He looked like he was wearing pajamas, which I thought was odd until I realized the sun was already setting, and that it was probably around dinner time. My stomach rumbled in response.

This seemed to catch the man’s attention, since before, he was just looking out the door with a blank look, wondering who on earth had been there. Finally, he looked down at us, and smiled.

“Pokémon at my door, huh? That’s a new one,” he said. My heart fell—maybe the people of Goldenrod City weren’t so accustomed to giving out items and food to pokémon, after all. I was about to lose hope and turn around when he added, “Sounds like you’re hungry. Are you here for food?”

I nodded as vigorously as I could. Yes, we were hungry! Yes, we needed food! Nevermind the fact that we could get food back where we were camping. We wanted human food or pokémon food, it didn’t matter which. To avoid looking desperate, I didn’t say any of this, of course.

“One moment,” he said, closing the door on us.

“I can’t believe that worked,” I said, turning to Rennio, who had a wide grin on his face.

“See? I told you. All of our problems are solved!” he cried, jumping up and down excitedly.

“Yeah,” I said. Then, in a quieter tone: “Sai will be happy.”

A few moments later, the door opened again, and there stood the same man as before. He leaned down to hand us a bag of opened pokémon food.

“Here,” he said. “I’m sure my snubbull won’t mind sharing, right?”

“Awesome,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

“Have a good night,” he said, and closed the door once more.

I can't believe this actually worked. I'm sure it's not going to keep working, though.

Again, I couldn’t believe it had worked. Maybe all of our problems really were solved. There was only one way to find out, so we went next door to get to the next house. Again, I knocked—as loud as I could this time around.

And again, someone answered the door for us! Things were going a lot easier than I had anticipated. Well, I don’t know what I had been anticipating, but it wasn’t this.

Of course, things don’t always go as planned.

We ran into some immediate trouble as soon as I said, “Hello!”

The person—this time a lady with brown hair and brown eyes, also wearing lazy clothes—peered down at us. She didn’t greet us with a smile, though. She looked at me, puzzled, and was about to close the door on us. She only failed because I stuck half my body into the door so she couldn’t get rid of us that easily.

“Wait!” I yelled. “We’re just looking for some food… or water… or clothes. Anything you don’t need, anything you want to get rid of! Someone stole all of our stuff, so, yeah…”

But still, she looked at me oddly, remaining mute. Suddenly, it hit me. She couldn’t understand pokémon. The language barrier wasn’t an issue at the last house because my stomach had spoken for me by rumbling ever so loudly.

“Sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying. Good-bye now,” she said, confirming my suspicions. She went to close the door again, and this time I didn’t stop her.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting that,” Rennio said as we walked away from the house. “I’ve always been so used to having Annie understand me… Sai could understand me, too…”

So not everyone can understand Pokemon after all. I wonder what that says about Annie and Sai?

I nodded. It would be a waste to go to just two houses and stop there. We went next door, the last house in this row. For what I hoped wouldn’t be the last time, I knocked on the door—only to have it automatically open in front of me.

“Uh,” I said, knocking again. The door opened a bit further. It was evident that no one was opening the door, but that they had already left the door open, and that my knocking was propelling it forward.

Bad sign. Get out now.

I should have taken this as an immediate sign to leave, but I kept on going until I reached the kitchen. It looked like a normal kitchen, with a stove and a fridge and a table and such, though there was some weird thing protruding in the middle of it all. I think Sasha had called it an island, once. It didn’t seem to serve a purpose for anything, not like everything else. I thought that it was good for keeping me hidden, but that was about it.

As it turns out, that “island” wasn’t good for anything, not even keeping me hidden. I didn’t get a chance to search the rest of the house or find the owners, because they found me. And they obviously weren’t very happy to see me, because I was met with a big slap in the back from a broom. The bristles scratched against my skin, and the impact of the blow caused me to fall flat on my stomach. I cried out briefly, and tried to get back on my paws to flee, but I was hit again.

“Get out of my house, you evil creature! How dare you come in here!” I heard a lady yell, along with some other crazy obscenities that made me look like I was a monster sent to her house to kill her.

Yeah, I knew something bad was going to happen there.

On the way back, I wondered who on earth would tell a pokémon that the people of Goldenrod City were so nice, when it was anything but true. I decided to ask him about it.

“Rennio, who told you that knocking on peoples’ houses and asking them for things in Goldenrod City was acceptable?”

“Um… Ezrem did,” Rennio replied. “He said not to tell you that he said it because you don’t like him… Why do you need to know?”

How did I know.

How did I somehow know.

There goes the sympathy I felt for him again.

That explained everything—why Ezrem was okay with giving up the leader position, why Ezrem was whispering to Rennio that one time, and why Ezrem was okay with letting Rennio stay with me… All this time, he was planning to use Rennio to spite me somehow, someway. And his plan, whether it was thoroughly thought out or not, had certainly worked.

“Nothing. I’m an idiot.”

*

When we returned to the group, everyone except Atis came up to us to see what we had retrieved. When they saw that all we had was a measly bag of pokémon food that was already opened, they looked clearly upset.

“You guys were gone for a long time, and that’s what you come back with? Geez, I could have done better than that!” Kuiora cried.

“Yeah,” Ezrem said. “All that work for nothing.”

I glared at him. “Don’t you even talk, Ezrem. I know it was you who told Rennio about that. You wasted our time!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, smiling widely.

“I would think that your smile lights up the sky, considering how nice you were trying to be, but now I know it’s just the glow of everyone else’s hopes and dreams being incinerated,” I said, too angry and upset to care if my words hurt him or not.

“You don’t say,” he replied, still smiling.

“I’ll bet you stole Sai’s backpack and hid it somewhere just to make me mad!”

“I wouldn’t do such a thing to my new trainer,” he said. “You’re losing your head over something so silly. That just goes to show you that I should have been the leader!”

I'm convinced now he did steal it. This is an obvious power grab.

And maybe he was right. Maybe his deceitful nature could have benefited us in this situation. Had he gone instead of me, he may have been able to convince those humans to give him what he wanted. I didn’t know how that was possible since the language barrier would still exist and that lady would still be hating pokémon no matter what, but after what happened, I was second guessing myself yet again. He probably would have kept us in the pokémon center for a longer time, and then we would still be there, happy and safe, with all of our belongings intact.

I was no leader, and if I was, I was a shameful one—forever and always.

That night, I didn’t sleep. There wasn’t anything to protect except one bag of food, but I kept watch over it anyway. I lay there all night, wondering what I could do to be better. I thought that I had gotten past this pain already by scrutinizing the team’s individual needs and by deciding that I wouldn’t let Sai’s rollercoaster emotions get to me. Those things had gone over well for me, but now, Sai was gone entirely… and my world was turned upside down. He obviously needed me at this very moment, but I couldn’t help him because I didn’t know where he was. And the team here obviously needed me, too, but in different ways… in ways that always seemed to backfire against me no matter how hard I tried.

After thinking some more, I couldn’t rationalize any reason for me to continue thinking that I was a bad leader. I had done the best I could, and the bad things that had happened were out of my control. Besides, the bad things that happened weren’t even… bad. They hadn’t extremely harmed anyone emotionally and physically, after all. Really, all I had to do was go along with my instincts and not follow others’, mainly Ezrem’s (and Rennio’s, which was unfair, but look where it had gotten me this time).

So why was I still doubting myself? I recalled the conversation that me and Rennio had had earlier in our adventure. And of course, I concluded that the guilt of ruining my entire clan was still haunting me. Everyone’s cries, the sneasel’s lies, being banished after all of my hard work and after all of my heartfelt explanations… I always knew that it wouldn’t be something I could get over so easily, but the fact that it was still bothering me made me wonder if I would get over it.

There had to be another way.

I vowed to figure it out, with or without Sai.

Step one, Ezrem has to go. He could clearly not care less about what happens to Senori, Kuiora, Atis or even Rennio. He is manipulative and self-centered; I'm glad you brought up that Sneasel from Senori's past, because Ezrem is lying to him and manipulating him in a very similar way. But it's what Ezrem put Rennio up to doing that was truly cold-blooded - it's just plain as day now that Ezrem has no sympathy even for Rennio.

I guess you could tell, but I really got emotionally invested in this chapter. Sai disappearing provided a catalyst for a lot of very challenging developments to come forth. At this point, any semblance the story had to a typical trainer fic is gone - the trainer is out of the picture, and now the plot is entirely centered on the Pokemon. This is a great, unique development, but I'm not sure how I feel about its practical effects in-universe. On one hand, it seems to be making Senori and Atis (at least) try their best to do what's right for the group, but on the other, Ezrem has decided to take advantage of and manipulate his new teammates instead of working together with them. I give you credit for actually establishing one of them as not very nice, though, as if the plot was simply a quest to find Sai it would feel a lot less unique than it does.

[Doryuzu]

Chapter 14

So..I'm caught back up, I figured I would go ahead and review the latest chapter right here and now instead of starting off from where I left off. Feels like its been a while since we've had a Senori-centric chapter, personally out of all the Pokemon Senori comes off as one of the lesser interesting ones. That's not meant to be an insult either since I find him interesting, I just don't find him as interesting as the other Pokemon. Ezrem's deceitful nature, Atis' social anxiety mannerisms, Rennio's innocence and naive behavior, and Kuiora's battle spirit all are interesting. I'll start by saying the chapter was pretty engrossing from the start, I like the way there was some strife between Ezrem and Senori for the leader position, I also enjoyed how Senori's past personal sins were highlighted with him connecting to Rennio in the same way as them feeling guilty for their mistakes. Rennio's sadness over failing at the Goldenrod Gym was a nice touch as well. Ezrem and Kuiora getting so close seems like it might be heading somewhere since Kuiora is under the false notion that Ezrem is legendary and did defend him against Senori. Atis didn't speak much this chapter unsurprisingly. I have to wonder how Sai's backpack got stolen, I originally thought Ezrem did it out of spite. Ezrem more than anything else seems more like an "Anti-Hero" rather than a villain. Sai certainly is an enigma in himself, no appearance from him all chapter and running off like that and abandoning his Pokemon? I really just wonder where he went and he has ties to Team Rocket in some form. I wonder what will happened with stolen backpack, specifically the purloined badges. You really are going for unpredictable unique developments in this story and it certainly breaks the mold of most trainer fics.

Good chapter!

[Sidewinder]

We thoroughly searched the city and its outskirts for two days before we… stopped. I don’t want to say that we gave up, but it almost felt that way. It seemed that we had accepted the fact that Sai was erratic, and to find any sort of predictability in his life was impossible and a waste of time. So we stopped searching—or gave up—all the while hoping that he would come back to us, and soon.

I can understand what Senori is trying to express here, too much in fact. I feel like you portrayed what he was trying to say very well, but I feel like you almost too hard. You didn't say it too many times in the quoted passage, but after the second sentence I understood that they stopped looking and it felt like you we're almost trying to hard to express that. Meh, i'm not sure if I'm off base or not

All I had to do was climb on Kuiora’s back and insert the key into the lock, and we were inside, even after a few unsuccessful tries on my part.

lol I love it when Senori acknowledges the difficulties he experiences due to his height. Kind of a charmingly odd moment

or if we would have to settle for temporarily living as wild pokémon again.

When I read that I instantly pictured a badly built club house in Ilex Forest with a 'Beware of Kuiora' sign on the front door, with Ezrem and Rennio patrolling outside. I had the thought that Senori might be with them on guard but then remembered he wouldn't be the best one for that job (for sad/obvious reasons)

We passed the time mostly by sleeping,

I liked that you included that little tidbit. It's exactly how I like to pass the day as well haha

I could feel Kuiora’s subsequent glare.

Her pride and arrogance are going to get her into serious trouble one day

“I’m not worried about that. We’re strong, and can’t be caught by pokéballs,” I said, feeling more confident in myself when Ezrem didn’t say anything in response.

Nice observation from Senori there. I don't really think it was implied that he meant that portion was maliciously, but I like to think he did. Not just because Ezrem is a little bastard but also because I like to think that Senori has a lot of rage potential boiling underneath the surface

Once you feel guilty for one thing, you pretty much feel guilty for everything bad that follows. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.”

Your insight into emotion and feelings still amaze me. Wonderful

“Water is supposed to be a good thing for electric-type pokémon, I know, but I can’t help but be so sad.”

Sorry if I'm being thick here, but I don't really understand this sentence. Care to elaborate on what he means?

“I’ve always been so used to having Annie understand me

I'm not sure if he means that Annie could completely understand him like Sai, or she just got the general point like a lot of the anime episodes. I'm thinking the latter but for a moment I thought that maybe Annie had been somewhat odd like Sai and maybe they had some sort of connection, but then I told myself that I need to stop being stupid and focus on the fact that the explanation for Sai is very simple lol. Sometimes I can't stop coming up with elaborate theories

“Rennio, who told you that knocking on peoples’ houses and asking

typo there

but now I know it’s just the glow of everyone else’s hopes and dreams being incinerated,

Sometimes I get really jealous about how verbally smooth you are. Perfectly written sentence there. Made me laugh and made me get to the point where I despise Ezrem on the cellular level now

but the fact that it was still bothering me made me wonder if I would get over it.

the quoted portion read somewhat weird for me. I might suggest you add an absolute after would to give it a little more definition and make it seem a little bit bigger. Maybe a word like 'ever'. I hope that makes sense

All in all, I enjoyed myself thoroughly through the chapter. I could be wrong but I felt like there was much more dialogue in this chapter than there usually is, and I liked it quite a bit. The absence of Sai was definitely felt throughout the chapter for me. As much as I sometimes dislike him, I did miss him and his weirdness. Not in a way where I'm disappointed he wasn't in it, but in a way that made me appreciate him more (which is not something I thought I'd ever say about Sai). As I knew you would, you made the chapter work wonderfully without Sai's sticky awkwardness glue that I've come to adore. As always, I'm eager for the next chapter

[Sid87]

In one of our many group discussions, it was suggested that we try backtracking and going to Azalea Town, but it was too risky. What if Sai came back while we were gone? The idea of going to the next city, where no one had ever gone before, was worse. Besides, it was even riskier to separate and not be able to keep an eye out on each other—it was especially worrisome for the younger pokémon like Kuiora and Rennio. The only ones capable of taking care of them were me, Ezrem, and Atis. But I had so painfully learned that I couldn’t be in two places at the same time, I wouldn’t be able to trust Ezrem when I was so far away from him, and Atis didn’t seem too interested in the job anyway. I decided it, then: we would stay in Goldenrod City.

I like the protective leadership role that Senori is taking here. I wonder why he feels he must. Does he think it's his role as Sai's first pokemon? Is he making atonement for his past mistakes? Or both? It suits him, though, better than he would think.

“You don’t want to know,” Rennio said rather solemnly. He was probably still feeling guilty, and I didn’t blame him.

Sneaky double meaning. Senori doesn't blame him for feeling guilty...so he DOES blame him for Sai's leaving. But it's not the kind of thing he'd outright say, so... nice way to throw that in.

“We have food and water in Sai’s backpack still. And we know how to get food in the wild. Is that what you’re afraid of? You don’t know how to be a good wild pokémon, so you want to hide?” I said, grinning.

Wow, Senori seems to have quite an edge when dealing with Ezrem and Rennio. Does he think they don't really "belong" since they already had a trainer?

“Fine,” Ezrem said, smiling now and going back to sit with the others. “I’ll let you be the leader if I get to go with Kuiora.”

Ezrem's going to work on turning Kuiora. Uh-oh!

It was amusing, at least, watching Kuiora try to be a wild pokemon. I second guessed my decision to let her be paired together with Ezrem, noting his deceitful nature, but he seemed to genuinely help her out. I had suggested that they try to avoid the food and water in the backpack and try to earn it out in the open, so that they always had something to come back to if they were desperate. Surprisingly, they listened, so now Ezrem was teaching her that drinking out of ponds and rivers was the only way to get water, aside from having her shoot out water guns, of course. And since killing wild pokémon for food was apparently against his personal beliefs, Ezrem and Kuiora explored the area to find out where the best berries were, and he taught her how to choose which ones were good to eat.

Ezrem is pulling a long con. I don't buy it!

“I understand,” I said. “I went back to my clan after the incident, and it wasn’t exactly the best experience in the world.”

There's been a few lines thus far that just haven't "felt like" Senori to me, and this was one. This dialogue just doesn't seem to come from the voice I have for him. Just the sarcastic use of "best experience in the world". Senori does seem "edgier" here, but this stretched it a bit for me.

“Awesome,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

There's another instance. "Awesome"? From Senori? It rings untrue in my head. Or maybe I don't know Senori as much as I thought.

“All these gold houses look the same. You would think that all the people inside them would be the same—nice and friendly, like that first guy,” I said.

What an interesting, quasi-racist (but not in an offensive way; more naive and innocent) way of looking at it. I guess that would be true for pokemon. Nice work describing that.

That night, I didn’t sleep. There wasn’t anything to protect except one bag of food, but I kept watch over it anyway.

Such a sad, definitive moment for Senori.

I lay there all night, wondering what I could do to be better. I thought that I had gotten past this pain already by scrutinizing the team’s individual needs and by deciding that I wouldn’t let Sai’s rollercoaster emotions get to me. Those things had gone over well for me, but now, Sai was gone entirely… and my world was turned upside down. He obviously needed me at this very moment, but I couldn’t help him because I didn’t know where he was. And the team here obviously needed me, too, but in different ways… in ways that always seemed to backfire against me no matter how hard I tried.

Oh, and it continued. This paragraph was pretty much Senori in a nutshell.

So why was I still doubting myself? I recalled the conversation that me and Rennio had had earlier in our adventure. And of course, I concluded that the guilt of ruining my entire clan was still haunting me. Everyone’s cries, the sneasel’s lies, being banished after all of my hard work and after all of my heartfelt explanations… I always knew that it wouldn’t be something I could get over so easily, but the fact that it was still bothering me made me wonder if I would get over it.

There had to be another way.

I vowed to figure it out, with or without Sai.

I think the ending might be a bit too much. I already got the sense of all of this from the previous paragraphs with Senori guarding the empty bag of food and thinking about leadership. This section here seemed to be just beating me over the head and spelling out what you'd already "said" with Senori's actions and thoughts. It just seemed a bit extraneous.

I think some of the dialogue was a bit odd here. The examples I pointed out and maybe a few others. It just wasn't as much in the characters' voices as I had come to know them. But, like I said, maybe that was just my not knowing them as much as I think I do.

Some good Senori stuff in here, though. And I was genuinely surprised to NOT get any answers on the mystery of where Sai is! I want to know!

Keep it coming!

[diamondpearl876]

That should be our

Fixed, thanks for pointing it out.

I might be wrong, but it feels like it's been a while since we saw a Senori chapter, too.

Yeah, seems like Ezrem and Rennio showing up put a big break on things.

It's worrying that they have to take care of themselves outside of their individual natural habitats, but what really surprises me in this paragraph is Senori using a key. XD;

Anything Senori does related to humans is either strange or adorable. Lol.

Wait, wait, wait, I just realized something. Is Ezrem trying to overcompensate for the nervousness he feels about going back to the wild after following a trainer for the second time? If that's the case, I feel sympathetic for him again.

Indeed.

Well, in that case, the Poké Balls shouldn't work on any of them but Ezrem himself, right? You kind of touch on that idea but it's not defined clearly whether you mean that they would be too strong to be caught or the Poké Balls would be ineffective.

Pokeballs would be ineffective. Sorry for the confusion.

Wait, I'm a little confused. I thought they weren't going to split up?

They’re still together with a partner, so it’s not technically splitting up.

Step one, Ezrem has to go. He could clearly not care less about what happens to Senori, Kuiora, Atis or even Rennio. He is manipulative and self-centered; I'm glad you brought up that Sneasel from Senori's past, because Ezrem is lying to him and manipulating him in a very similar way. But it's what Ezrem put Rennio up to doing that was truly cold-blooded - it's just plain as day now that Ezrem has no sympathy even for Rennio.

I guess you could tell, but I really got emotionally invested in this chapter. Sai disappearing provided a catalyst for a lot of very challenging developments to come forth. At this point, any semblance the story had to a typical trainer fic is gone - the trainer is out of the picture, and now the plot is entirely centered on the Pokemon. This is a great, unique development, but I'm not sure how I feel about its practical effects in-universe. On one hand, it seems to be making Senori and Atis (at least) try their best to do what's right for the group, but on the other, Ezrem has decided to take advantage of and manipulate his new teammates instead of working together with them. I give you credit for actually establishing one of them as not very nice, though, as if the plot was simply a quest to find Sai it would feel a lot less unique than it does.

Ah, well, don’t count of Ezrem leaving just yet. And I’m glad you were emotionally invested in this chapter. Thanks for commenting!

Chapter 14

So..I'm caught back up, I figured I would go ahead and review the latest chapter right here and now instead of starting off from where I left off. Feels like its been a while since we've had a Senori-centric chapter, personally out of all the Pokemon Senori comes off as one of the lesser interesting ones. That's not meant to be an insult either since I find him interesting, I just don't find him as interesting as the other Pokemon. Ezrem's deceitful nature, Atis' social anxiety mannerisms, Rennio's innocence and naive behavior, and Kuiora's battle spirit all are interesting. I'll start by saying the chapter was pretty engrossing from the start, I like the way there was some strife between Ezrem and Senori for the leader position, I also enjoyed how Senori's past personal sins were highlighted with him connecting to Rennio in the same way as them feeling guilty for their mistakes. Rennio's sadness over failing at the Goldenrod Gym was a nice touch as well. Ezrem and Kuiora getting so close seems like it might be heading somewhere since Kuiora is under the false notion that Ezrem is legendary and did defend him against Senori. Atis didn't speak much this chapter unsurprisingly. I have to wonder how Sai's backpack got stolen, I originally thought Ezrem did it out of spite. Ezrem more than anything else seems more like an "Anti-Hero" rather than a villain. Sai certainly is an enigma in himself, no appearance from him all chapter and running off like that and abandoning his Pokemon? I really just wonder where he went and he has ties to Team Rocket in some form. I wonder what will happened with stolen backpack, specifically the purloined badges. You really are going for unpredictable unique developments in this story and it certainly breaks the mold of most trainer fics.

Good chapter!

Glad you caught up and that you think the fic is unique. That’s what I like to go for. And interesting that you think Ezrem is an anti-hero; we’ll see how your thoughts about him progress. Hope to see some more of your comments ,they’re insightful!

I can understand what Senori is trying to express here, too much in fact. I feel like you portrayed what he was trying to say very well, but I feel like you almost too hard. You didn't say it too many times in the quoted passage, but after the second sentence I understood that they stopped looking and it felt like you we're almost trying to hard to express that. Meh, i'm not sure if I'm off base or not

Well, I did write 80,000 words in one month (11 chapters)… so at some point, something was doomed to sound forced. I guess that was it for you. Thanks for pointing it out.

[QUOTE=Sidewinder;15444362]When I read that I instantly pictured a badly built club house in Ilex Forest with a 'Beware of Kuiora' sign on the front door, with Ezrem and Rennio patrolling outside. I had the thought that Senori might be with them on guard but then remembered he wouldn't be the best one for that job (for sad/obvious reasons)

Cute and sad comment at the same time. Rofl.

Sorry if I'm being thick here, but I don't really understand this sentence. Care to elaborate on what he means?

Water boosts electricity’s power, right? So Rennio feels that tears should be boosting his power as an electric-type pokémon, but they’re just making him sadder.

All in all, I enjoyed myself thoroughly through the chapter. I could be wrong but I felt like there was much more dialogue in this chapter than there usually is, and I liked it quite a bit. The absence of Sai was definitely felt throughout the chapter for me. As much as I sometimes dislike him, I did miss him and his weirdness. Not in a way where I'm disappointed he wasn't in it, but in a way that made me appreciate him more (which is not something I thought I'd ever say about Sai). As I knew you would, you made the chapter work wonderfully without Sai's sticky awkwardness glue that I've come to adore. As always, I'm eager for the next chapter

I miss(ed) Sai, too. And he’s my own character. Lol. Thanks for commenting!

I like the protective leadership role that Senori is taking here. I wonder why he feels he must. Does he think it's his role as Sai's first pokemon? Is he making atonement for his past mistakes? Or both? It suits him, though, better than he would think.

Indeed, you are correct about why.

There's been a few lines thus far that just haven't "felt like" Senori to me, and this was one. This dialogue just doesn't seem to come from the voice I have for him. Just the sarcastic use of "best experience in the world". Senori does seem "edgier" here, but this stretched it a bit for me.

Weird. I wonder why you feel this way, because nothing seems “unlike” Senori to me. egfgjfdj I will watch his dialogue in future chapters and try to see anything.

I think the ending might be a bit too much. I already got the sense of all of this from the previous paragraphs with Senori guarding the empty bag of food and thinking about leadership. This section here seemed to be just beating me over the head and spelling out what you'd already "said" with Senori's actions and thoughts. It just seemed a bit extraneous.

I think some of the dialogue was a bit odd here. The examples I pointed out and maybe a few others. It just wasn't as much in the characters' voices as I had come to know them. But, like I said, maybe that was just my not knowing them as much as I think I do.

Some good Senori stuff in here, though. And I was genuinely surprised to NOT get any answers on the mystery of where Sai is! I want to know!

Keep it coming!

I appreciate your honesty. I like to wrap everything up in one fell swoop at the end of every chapter, though maybe I overdid it this time. And again, I’ll watch for dialogue. Thanks for commenting!

[diamondpearl876]

SURVIVAL PROJECT

chapter 15 ; [EZREM]
unfettered

*

Ah, how nice it was to have things go my way once in a great while.

I do mean that. It truly felt like it had been a long time since the positive side of life had catered to me. First, there was Annie’s death… which I tried not to dwell on, but it seemed to keep showing up in my life, thanks to Rennio’s obvious and subsequent grief. Then, I spent the longest time looking for a new trainer. When I finally found him, he had rejected me faster than I could blink! And now… that new trainer was already gone, off doing whatever, wherever. It was like Annie’s disappearance all over again—except this time, an air of uncertainty wafted about us. I couldn’t imagine what that had done to poor Rennio! If things like this kept happening, not only would he have issues about death and loss, but he would have abandonment issues, too. Well, I could at least make sure that I stayed with him, even if Sai despised me.

And so far, that was exactly what I did. Even when Sai, my main reasoning for staying, left, I remained by Rennio’s side. I stood by the team. I even offered to be the leader! Seeing Senori send us out into the wild once more was the last thing I wanted, especially when it reminded me of Annie, so I wanted to take over. That didn’t go as planned. (I had started learning that most things, when done for my selfish reasons, didn’t go as planned.) I agreed to let go of my offer if I was with Kuiora, because at least she treated me with some respect. She marveled over me every chance she got! It was a boost to my ego which I always so desperately needed.

Still, I didn’t like Senori for bringing us closer to the place that had caused me so much pain in the past. I looked for any way to get back at him, and when the backpack was stolen (which, contrary to popular belief, I had no part of) I found my chance. I told Rennio that all of Goldenrod City’s citizens were nice people, and that Senori and him should go see them and try to get more supplies. I knew that the city people probably weren’t so nice, as I had learned in the past that snobbish people often lived in big, expensive cities like this one. Apparently, Rennio hadn’t noticed. And I could tell by the look on Senori’s face when he returned that things hadn’t gone as well as he had previously hoped. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Kuiora’s called me evil for it—and various other things—a few times, but I don’t like that term. It makes me sound worse than I actually thought I was. I preferred being called… ethically unfettered.

Yes, that sounded about right.

*

“So, what do you think is wrong with Sai?” Kuiora asked me once. We were sitting against the trees near the entrance—or exit, depending how you looked at it—of Ilex Forest. I was sure that the rest of the team couldn’t hear us, so I didn’t bother telling her to hush, as Sai seemed to be a complex, confusing, and argumentative topic among the group.

“As if I know!” I said, my eyes closed as I rested. “Haven’t you been with him longer?”

“Of course I have,” she retorted. “But you’re a legendary, so you should know these things.”

Legendary. I wasn’t legendary, that much was very clear to me. I had been given special treatment before, for some unknown reason… but no one went so far as to bow down to me. To her, however, I was the most important thing in life! I was the last thing she thought about before she went to sleep at night, and I was the first thing she thought of when she awoke in the morning. I was the one she worshipped and put before her own self. Religion, I knew, was something that people and pokémon believe for the same reason children believe in fairy tales: it gives them false, redeeming hope. I could provide that for her, I supposed. So I had to continue playing my newfound role, or it would be lost forever.

“Well,” I said, thinking, “it’s like Sai has read the handbook for human behavior, but he didn’t quite understand most of the instructions.”

“Tell me about it,” Kuiora said, and her calmer demeanor told me I had done well in answering her, even though I was being about as vague as I could possibly get. “You think there’s really someone following him?”

“Who knows? Paranoia is poisonous. It’s a poisonous wish that makes everything become true, so even if it’s not true, it’s at least real in his mind.”

“That’s creepy.”

“I know. He better not go off and get himself killed or anything,” I said softly.

“Death,” Kuiora said, her chin lifted, “is just a myth invented to scare young children.”

“You think so?” I said, looking up at her. I knew she was young, but to be this naïve about such a pertinent concept seemed unreal to me. Could I possibly tell her about Annie, about what I did? Surely, she would accept that it was the work of a legendary; it was something that simply had to be done to communicate with other fellow legendaries. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There was always the off chance that she could tell someone else… and I mostly worried about Rennio finding out. It would have simply broken his heart into a million more pieces.

“Yeah. There’s all these stories about dying too soon, or too late, or in the most horrible ways, and it’s all meant to scare people and pokémon like me. I don’t know why anyone would go to the trouble to make those things up! If you believe in the legendary pokémon, you can never die. It’s as simple as that. They’ll always remember you, no matter what happens to you.”

How delusional, I thought, but didn’t say anything.

A few moments of silence passed before she changed the topic and said, “Do you want to hear a story?”

“A story?”

“Yes! I know plenty of stories about rare and legendary pokémon. You might already know this story, but I’d like to tell you anyway. It’s about your evolved form.”

At this I was intrigued. There were tales about my species? About my evolved form? Now, that was something. I nodded, wanting to hear more.

“Okay,” she said. “Most stories try to avoid spoiling the end. But you need to know before we decide to continue: she didn’t want to come back.”

“Who was?”

“Shut up, and listen to the story!” she snapped, hitting me lightly in the face.

“With a temper like yours, I’m truly surprised the world is still here…” I said, rubbing the spot where she hit me.

“Shut up,” she said again. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

“Yes, yes. I will be quiet,” I said. For thinking I was a legendary pokémon, she sure still had a lot of guts, standing up to me the way she did. Maybe she believed that it was a way for legendaries to remember her better, I thought—it was the best I could think of, and I admired it, in a way.

And so, she went on.

There once was a girl who was a con. She was a con because she became close to anyone and everyone she came into contact with in Unova, just to steal their hearts. Everyone became enamored with her at first sight, and they always wanted to be there for her, always wanted to be by her side, even in the darkest moments. But she was only with them for her own benefit. She just wanted their money, their jewelry, their priceless heirlooms—anything that she could get her hands on successfully, and in a decent amount of time.

But one day, she stole too much. She had taken a diamond ring that her boyfriend—whom she pretended to care for—had bought for her, and then immediately left him in the dust. And she didn’t have an explanation for this boy who had come to love her so much, so he kept bothering her and bothering her, becoming for threatening each time, hoping for an answer. This was the first time that anyone had ever called her out on her selfish crimes, and she couldn’t handle it. Somehow, she had let her guard down, and now, it was time to pay for all that she had done. She decided to leave the town.

Leaving by train or by plane was out of the question, as it was easy to follow those who left that way. Besides, to take a plane or a train meant that she would know where she was going, and she had not a clue where to go.

She decided to leave in a hot air balloon that she had taken from an old friend, to put it to good use and to make sure she wasn’t followed to wherever she was going. She made sure it was a light blue hot air balloon, so that if anyone looked into the sky at the exact same moment she was passing by, they wouldn’t notice her, as she was blending in perfectly.

But her plan still backfired. The boyfriend had been a trainer once, and a very strong one at that. He sent his braviary out to look for her, because he knew that the braviary would not give up, no matter what. It took many days and nights to find her, but the braviary eventually located her hovering above the sea. And then it took many days and nights for the braviary to turn around and come back home, but she wouldn’t listen. She was starting to feel bad for all she had done, and she couldn’t face the past.

What happened next was both karma and a stroke of luck all at once. A streak of lightning crashed down on the hot air balloon one night when there was a storm, and she went careening, along with the remains of the balloon, into the water below. But the braviary, despite its confusion and disdain for the girl’s audacity and thievery, caught her in its claws just as she was about to break her fall. It took her home, and from there, the girl worked to improve her life so that she could form real relationships that she reciprocated fully.

“The end,” she said. She added hastily, “Of course, if we were at Professor Elm’s lab, there’d be pictures and stuff, but we don’t have that here. Sorry.”

I thought about the story for a moment. How appropriate, to hear a story about my species and have the human in question have a similar personality to my own. Perhaps Kuiora had done that on purpose, or maybe it was just fate to have the guilt of thievery follow me wherever I went. The difference between me and the story was simple: I couldn’t save anyone, not even Rennio. That was definite, it was a given. And besides that, there was something else bugging me.

“I have a question,” I said after a few moments, not wanting to make her angry, but I was genuinely wondering about this, above all else.

“What?”

“Legendaries aren’t owned by trainers. It’s just not feasible, right?”

“Yeah, legendaries are far too powerful. Why?”

“Well, the braviary in the story is owned by a trainer. So, by default, the braviary is not a legendary pokémon. And, well, Sai has me as his pokémon. Kind of, anyway. So…” I explained, trailing off. I braced myself, waiting to be hit again or something. But surprisingly, she had an answer for me.

“Rufflet and braviary are really rare. I heard they can only be caught by the toughest of trainers on Victory Road! That’s almost legendary status. You’re right, normal rufflet and braviary aren’t legendary. But you, Ezrem, are legendary, and for a very special reason!”

“What reason is that?” I asked, so very curious to hear something that could potentially redeem my terrible personality.

But I didn’t get my answer, as I was knocked in the head by something other than Kuiora’s fist. I let out a tiny squeal of surprise, and looked in the opposite direction, wondering what on earth the team was trying to do to me—probably trying to get revenge somehow, I thought. But I didn’t see the team. All I saw was a red and white object on the grass.

A pokéball.

“Oh, man,” I said. “Not this again.”

“What’s wrong? What was that?”

“A trainer’s trying to catch me. As usual. It happened a lot in the forest. Look”—I frantically looked around, and saw a girl running up to us—“I have to go. You should hide if you can,” I said, and with that, I darted away from her, away from the rest of the team.

At first, I didn’t know where to go. All I could think about was why so many trainers were after me. Yes, rufflet were rare. Yes, rufflet were usually only found in Unova. But it didn’t mean that every trainer who looked at my pretty face had to come after me so aggressively! I considered myself lucky because no one could officially catch me by pokéball, thanks to Annie, but there were other means of catching a pokémon, I knew. The trainer could try to battle me and take me by force. I know—trainers have tried.

Before I knew it, I was heading back into Ilex Forest. I passed the gates and the guards, their expressions more curious than alarmed. It wasn’t the brightest idea, heading back to the place that brought so much pain for me, but it was a lot easier to hide amongst a bunch of trees than it was amongst clear, open paths.

I dared to stop and look behind me for a moment to see if the girl was still following me. Indeed, she was, and she didn’t seem to have any intentions on losing me in the forest. Well, we would see about that. I darted to the left, crossing a pond by running on the rocks that stood out above the water. The human tried to cross, too, but since she was much larger than me, she was also going much slower.

I made my way through this part of the forest, and of course came upon the burnt part of it, the one I had so casually knocked down in the past. Though it would hurt, I decided to stay here, because it was more likely for the girl to try to find me in an area with a lot of trees, rather than a part of the forest that had a small amount of hiding places. I slowed down now, sure that she wouldn’t catch up. I started walking, surveying the damage. I stepped over dropped tree branches, had to go around fallen trunks, saw nothing but debris polluting a nearby body of water… I saw no pokémon—surely no one would want to live here anymore.

And the next time I turned, I came across another pokéball. It was floating in the nearby pond. Curious, I made my way into the water until I could grab it. When I got out of the water, I examined it. The ball showed no sign of being affected by the fire, so maybe it was a fairly new item here, or maybe it had been spared. And it was a special kind of pokéball, not just a regular red and white one…

It looked like the one Annie had had for me—it was blue on top and white on bottom, with two stripes of red on the sides. A great ball, she had called it once, though I didn’t see what was so great about it. But it hit me—this could be my pokéball! This could have once belonged to Annie! Now, I had to decide what to do with it… Who knew how much time I had to consider, given my situation?

Part of me wanted to destroy the pokéball. Part of me wanted to be set free of Annie’s grasp—forever. If that was the route I went down, I would crush the pokéball and make it crumble into a bunch of pieces. Part of me thought this was a bad idea, because then maybe other trainers could really catch me with pokéballs now. Is that even how it worked? After all this time traveling, I didn’t know. And then, part of me was skeptical, wondering if it was really my pokéball at all. What if there was a pokémon inside? If I destroyed the pokéball, would the pokémon inside die? I didn’t want to kill anyone else…

I heard a rustle, and the girl appeared once more.

So she had followed me to the burnt area of the forest. She was smarter than I gave her credit for. Luckily for her, I suddenly didn’t have the energy to move. I turned to face her, and we stared at each other for a few moments. I realized the direness of the situation once more—she wanted me as her pokémon, when I already belonged to someone else. I went to run again, but she called for me to wait.

“Wait,” she said again. “That pokéball might belong to my brother! We’ve been looking for it for a long time.”

I stood there, unsure of what to do. Part of me wanted the ball to be mine after all, and part of me wanted to give it to this girl and forget this whole situation had even happened.

I looked at the girl again, seeing that she was putting away the pokéball she had in her hand. She put up her arms and said, “My name is Sasha. I won’t catch you if that’s what you want… Please, could I just have the ball, and I’ll leave you alone?”

“Ezrem!”

“Sasha!”

Two new players of this game showed up—Kuiora, and a boy who looked like this Sasha girl. Great, I thought. Now I had to worry about Kuiora being caught—what if Sai hadn’t properly caught her in a pokéball?—and I had to worry about the new guy potentially chasing us.

“Ezrem, why did you run away like that?” Kuiora said, walking up to me and looking me over, as if to see whether or not I sustained any damage.

“She was trying to catch me,” I said simply.

“Look, Marty, it might be Halcyon’s ball. Remember, you dropped it while we were out here?” Sasha said. I looked down at the ball, so curious about its true origins. How hard it was, to think about the possibility of passing up this once in a lifetime chance!

“Oh. That’s right. So that… bird… has it?”

“It’s a rufflet, from Unova! I was trying to catch it to give it to you for your birthday, since pokémon like that one are one in a million! But it didn’t work…”

“It’s the thought that counts, right? Besides, that Sai’s croconaw. Looks like it’s his… rufflet, too.”

“Sai? I didn’t see him anywhere…”

“Oh…” said Kuiora. She whispered into my ear: “That Marty kid really hates Sai. We can’t let him know that Sai’s disappeared or they’ll kill each other for sure.”

Then, to Marty, she said, “Sai’s out shopping.”

I automatically said, “Sai is sleeping at the pokémon center, and we’re out here exploring.” This, of course, only got me knocked in the head by Kuiora again for telling two completely different stories.

“I don’t know what they just said, but I’m fairly sure whatever the rufflet said can’t be repeated in polite conversation,” Marty said sarcastically.

“Idiot,” I said, now realizing that our efforts were futile, since they couldn’t understand us, anyway. “And I was almost destined to be your pokémon? As if.”

“Sai’s probably letting them run rampant on purpose. Go figure,” Marty said.

“You should really be nicer to him. He does try.”

“Not hard enough.”

At this, I threw the great ball directly at Marty’s face. At this point, I didn’t care if the ball was mine. I was just glad that I hadn’t been caught by this imbecile, and that I hadn’t chosen him during the battle between him and Sai. I felt fiercely proud of having Annie as a trainer, and therefore suddenly didn’t care if I was still bound by her or not. She was never so stuck up and she never looked down upon others the way he did. Sasha, on the other hand, was nice—but it didn’t stop me from being a jerk to her brother! And of course, there was Sai, who was nice to me half the time and completely ignorant during the other half.

“Thanks a lot,” Marty muttered, rubbing his head as he reached down to get the pokéball. “Let’s go, Sasha.”

I stuck out my tongue at them as they turned to leave, with Sasha looking back at me one more time, regretfully. I also got another hit in the head from Kuiora once they were gone. Soon, I would have a permanent bump there.

“Well, should we go back, too?” Kuiora said. “Senori might kill us if he realizes we’ve been gone.”

“I’ll only go with you if you stop saying that word,” I said, but I was already walking in the direction that would lead us back to the team.

“What word?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Don’t make me guess it.”

I turned, walking backwards so I could glare at her. “If you’re going to say it, then stop following me.”

“I’m not following you. I’m following the path,” she said, pointedly keeping her gaze on the horizon just to prove a point.

I sighed. I felt that this was one of the longest days ever. Still, some things had been made concrete to me. Kuiora cared about me, for one. This meant more to me than I could say. There was always Rennio, but Rennio stood by my side because he didn’t know my faults. Kuiora knew I had faults, knew that there was plenty of them to go around, but she stayed with me, and she even put me on a rather high pedestal.

In addition, it appeared that I cared for Annie more than I originally thought I did. For the first time, I had felt pride over being her past pokémon, and I didn’t mind the fact that I gave up the possibility of destroying my old pokéball. She was always in the back of my mind, whether I liked it or not. She kept my conscience at bay. I vowed to continue trying to be good, for her—once I figured out what good was, anyway.

In a more general sense, I had learned that having something wasn’t the same as keeping something. It was a lesson I wished I hadn’t learned, but such was life. This meant that just because I had Rennio and Kuiora’s love, it didn’t mean that it would last forever. Just because Annie had been there for me once, didn’t mean that she would ever be there for me again. Just because I thought Sai would make a great trainer for me, didn’t mean that he would actually live up to my expectations. And just because I would have made my home in the future, didn’t mean that it would stay with me forever.

Yes, there were many levels to my pain. I unraveled each level, one by one, as we went back to the team, wondering and wishing. The pain wasn’t like a knife, or like fire, or ice, or any of a thousand other metaphors. It was simply just pain. And it drowned out the rest of the world as I felt a harsh, white flash of sensation take over, reminding me that I should try a little harder.

[Dragonicwari]

But one day, she stole too much. She had taken a diamond ring that her boyfriend—whom she pretended to care for—had bought for her, and then immediately left him in the dust. And she didn’t have an explanation for this boy who had come to love her so much, so he kept bothering her and bothering her, becoming for threatening each time, hoping for an answer. This was the first time that anyone had ever called her out on her selfish crimes, and she couldn’t handle it. Somehow, she had let her guard down, and now, it was time to pay for all that she had done. She decided to leave the town.

Is that suppose to be more not for?

“I don’t know what they just said, but I’m fairly sure whatever the rufflet said can’t be repeated in polite conversation,” Marty said sarcastically.

Since the croconaw was hit, shouldn't it be what thecroconaw said?

Nevermind, I re read that and saw what you meant

[The Great Butler]

SURVIVAL PROJECT

chapter 15 ; [EZREM]
unfettered

*

Oh boy, an Ezrem chapter! Maybe we'll get his side of the story and it'll make me see things differently.

Ah, how nice it was to have things go my way once in a great while.

I do mean that. It truly felt like it had been a long time since the positive side of life had catered to me. First, there was Annie’s death… which I tried not to dwell on, but it seemed to keep showing up in my life, thanks to Rennio’s obvious and subsequent grief. Then, I spent the longest time looking for a new trainer. When I finally found him, he had rejected me faster than I could blink! And now… that new trainer was already gone, off doing whatever, wherever. It was like Annie’s disappearance all over again—except this time, an air of uncertainty wafted about us. I couldn’t imagine what that had done to poor Rennio! If things like this kept happening, not only would he have issues about death and loss, but he would have abandonment issues, too. Well, I could at least make sure that I stayed with him, even if Sai despised me.

It's a little hard to take this straightforwardly coming from Ezrem, considering how manipulative the "positive side of life" appears to be for him. Yet at the same time, parts of this (namely the parts that don't involve Rennio, who Ezrem has manipulated just as much) come off as surprisingly genuine. I'm having a hard time getting a read on him.

And so far, that was exactly what I did. Even when Sai, my main reasoning for staying, left, I remained by Rennio’s side. I stood by the team. I even offered to be the leader! Seeing Senori send us out into the wild once more was the last thing I wanted, especially when it reminded me of Annie, so I wanted to take over. That didn’t go as planned. (I had started learning that most things, when done for my selfish reasons, didn’t go as planned.) I agreed to let go of my offer if I was with Kuiora, because at least she treated me with some respect. She marveled over me every chance she got! It was a boost to my ego which I always so desperately needed.

I'm beginning to wonder if Ezrem genuinely doesn't fully understand how manipulative he can be. He seems to genuinely believe some of the things he's saying.

Still, I didn’t like Senori for bringing us closer to the place that had caused me so much pain in the past. I looked for any way to get back at him, and when the backpack was stolen (which, contrary to popular belief, I had no part of) I found my chance. I told Rennio that all of Goldenrod City’s citizens were nice people, and that Senori and him should go see them and try to get more supplies. I knew that the city people probably weren’t so nice, as I had learned in the past that snobbish people often lived in big, expensive cities like this one. Apparently, Rennio hadn’t noticed. And I could tell by the look on Senori’s face when he returned that things hadn’t gone as well as he had previously hoped. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Kuiora’s called me evil for it—and various other things—a few times, but I don’t like that term. It makes me sound worse than I actually thought I was. I preferred being called… ethically unfettered.

Yes, that sounded about right.

The "ethically unfettered" comment fits with what I just speculated above, but given that he still doesn't seem to understand why it's especially wrong to manipulate Rennio, I still have a hard time finding him sincere.

“So, what do you think is wrong with Sai?” Kuiora asked me once. We were sitting against the trees near the entrance—or exit, depending how you looked at it—of Ilex Forest. I was sure that the rest of the team couldn’t hear us, so I didn’t bother telling her to hush, as Sai seemed to be a complex, confusing, and argumentative topic among the group.

“As if I know!” I said, my eyes closed as I rested. “Haven’t you been with him longer?”

“Of course I have,” she retorted. “But you’re a legendary, so you should know these things.”

Legendary. I wasn’t legendary, that much was very clear to me. I had been given special treatment before, for some unknown reason… but no one went so far as to bow down to me. To her, however, I was the most important thing in life! I was the last thing she thought about before she went to sleep at night, and I was the first thing she thought of when she awoke in the morning. I was the one she worshipped and put before her own self. Religion, I knew, was something that people and pokémon believe for the same reason children believe in fairy tales: it gives them false, redeeming hope. I could provide that for her, I supposed. So I had to continue playing my newfound role, or it would be lost forever.

Ezrem's a ... weird character. He's clearly enjoying this power trip he's getting, but at the same time, towards the end of this quote he appears to be becoming sincere about not wanting to disappoint Kuiora.

It's fascinating.

“Well,” I said, thinking, “it’s like Sai has read the handbook for human behavior, but he didn’t quite understand most of the instructions.”

“Tell me about it,” Kuiora said, and her calmer demeanor told me I had done well in answering her, even though I was being about as vague as I could possibly get. “You think there’s really someone following him?”

“Who knows? Paranoia is poisonous. It’s a poisonous wish that makes everything become true, so even if it’s not true, it’s at least real in his mind.”

I think Ezrem probably has experience with paranoia, to be able to say that.

“That’s creepy.”

“I know. He better not go off and get himself killed or anything,” I said softly.

“Death,” Kuiora said, her chin lifted, “is just a myth invented to scare young children.”

This is probably foreshadowing for something that's going to be heartbreaking later, I can tell.

“You think so?” I said, looking up at her. I knew she was young, but to be this naïve about such a pertinent concept seemed unreal to me. Could I possibly tell her about Annie, about what I did? Surely, she would accept that it was the work of a legendary; it was something that simply had to be done to communicate with other fellow legendaries. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There was always the off chance that she could tell someone else… and I mostly worried about Rennio finding out. It would have simply broken his heart into a million more pieces.

“Yeah. There’s all these stories about dying too soon, or too late, or in the most horrible ways, and it’s all meant to scare people and pokémon like me. I don’t know why anyone would go to the trouble to make those things up! If you believe in the legendary pokémon, you can never die. It’s as simple as that. They’ll always remember you, no matter what happens to you.”

How delusional, I thought, but didn’t say anything.

Yeah, I'm definitely feeling an ominous sense of foreshadowing here.

“Shut up,” she said again. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

“Yes, yes. I will be quiet,” I said. For thinking I was a legendary pokémon, she sure still had a lot of guts, standing up to me the way she did. Maybe she believed that it was a way for legendaries to remember her better, I thought—it was the best I could think of, and I admired it, in a way.

And so, she went on.

There once was a girl who was a con. She was a con because she became close to anyone and everyone she came into contact with in Unova, just to steal their hearts. Everyone became enamored with her at first sight, and they always wanted to be there for her, always wanted to be by her side, even in the darkest moments. But she was only with them for her own benefit. She just wanted their money, their jewelry, their priceless heirlooms—anything that she could get her hands on successfully, and in a decent amount of time.

But one day, she stole too much. She had taken a diamond ring that her boyfriend—whom she pretended to care for—had bought for her, and then immediately left him in the dust. And she didn’t have an explanation for this boy who had come to love her so much, so he kept bothering her and bothering her, becoming for threatening each time, hoping for an answer. This was the first time that anyone had ever called her out on her selfish crimes, and she couldn’t handle it. Somehow, she had let her guard down, and now, it was time to pay for all that she had done. She decided to leave the town.

Leaving by train or by plane was out of the question, as it was easy to follow those who left that way. Besides, to take a plane or a train meant that she would know where she was going, and she had not a clue where to go.

She decided to leave in a hot air balloon that she had taken from an old friend, to put it to good use and to make sure she wasn’t followed to wherever she was going. She made sure it was a light blue hot air balloon, so that if anyone looked into the sky at the exact same moment she was passing by, they wouldn’t notice her, as she was blending in perfectly.

But her plan still backfired. The boyfriend had been a trainer once, and a very strong one at that. He sent his braviary out to look for her, because he knew that the braviary would not give up, no matter what. It took many days and nights to find her, but the braviary eventually located her hovering above the sea. And then it took many days and nights for the braviary to turn around and come back home, but she wouldn’t listen. She was starting to feel bad for all she had done, and she couldn’t face the past.

Wait, Kuiora is aware of what Ezrem evolves into?

What happened next was both karma and a stroke of luck all at once. A streak of lightning crashed down on the hot air balloon one night when there was a storm, and she went careening, along with the remains of the balloon, into the water below. But the braviary, despite its confusion and disdain for the girl’s audacity and thievery, caught her in its claws just as she was about to break her fall. It took her home, and from there, the girl worked to improve her life so that she could form real relationships that she reciprocated fully.

“The end,” she said. She added hastily, “Of course, if we were at Professor Elm’s lab, there’d be pictures and stuff, but we don’t have that here. Sorry.”

I thought about the story for a moment. How appropriate, to hear a story about my species and have the human in question have a similar personality to my own. Perhaps Kuiora had done that on purpose, or maybe it was just fate to have the guilt of thievery follow me wherever I went. The difference between me and the story was simple: I couldn’t save anyone, not even Rennio. That was definite, it was a given. And besides that, there was something else bugging me.

That was a good story, and I'm liking the way it already appears to be affecting Ezrem. This might be the catalyst for some changes in his character.

Does Kuiora know how similar the girl in the story is to Ezrem, or is she accidentally making that point?

“I have a question,” I said after a few moments, not wanting to make her angry, but I was genuinely wondering about this, above all else.

“What?”

“Legendaries aren’t owned by trainers. It’s just not feasible, right?”

“Yeah, legendaries are far too powerful. Why?”

Dare I say that this may also be foreshadowing?

“Well, the braviary in the story is owned by a trainer. So, by default, the braviary is not a legendary pokémon. And, well, Sai has me as his pokémon. Kind of, anyway. So…” I explained, trailing off. I braced myself, waiting to be hit again or something. But surprisingly, she had an answer for me.

“Rufflet and braviary are really rare. I heard they can only be caught by the toughest of trainers on Victory Road! That’s almost legendary status. You’re right, normal rufflet and braviary aren’t legendary. But you, Ezrem, are legendary, and for a very special reason!”

I'm surprised that Kuiora knows so much about the Rufflet and Braviary species.

“What reason is that?” I asked, so very curious to hear something that could potentially redeem my terrible personality.

This line alone makes me think about reevaluating Ezrem, if he recognizes that he has done some terrible things.

But I didn’t get my answer, as I was knocked in the head by something other than Kuiora’s fist. I let out a tiny squeal of surprise, and looked in the opposite direction, wondering what on earth the team was trying to do to me—probably trying to get revenge somehow, I thought. But I didn’t see the team. All I saw was a red and white object on the grass.

A pokéball.

“Oh, man,” I said. “Not this again.”

Ezrem's reaction is just about what mine is right now.

“What’s wrong? What was that?”

“A trainer’s trying to catch me. As usual. It happened a lot in the forest. Look”—I frantically looked around, and saw a girl running up to us—“I have to go. You should hide if you can,” I said, and with that, I darted away from her, away from the rest of the team.

At first, I didn’t know where to go. All I could think about was why so many trainers were after me. Yes, rufflet were rare. Yes, rufflet were usually only found in Unova. But it didn’t mean that every trainer who looked at my pretty face had to come after me so aggressively! I considered myself lucky because no one could officially catch me by pokéball, thanks to Annie, but there were other means of catching a pokémon, I knew. The trainer could try to battle me and take me by force. I know—trainers have tried.

Before I knew it, I was heading back into Ilex Forest. I passed the gates and the guards, their expressions more curious than alarmed. It wasn’t the brightest idea, heading back to the place that brought so much pain for me, but it was a lot easier to hide amongst a bunch of trees than it was amongst clear, open paths.

I dared to stop and look behind me for a moment to see if the girl was still following me. Indeed, she was, and she didn’t seem to have any intentions on losing me in the forest. Well, we would see about that. I darted to the left, crossing a pond by running on the rocks that stood out above the water. The human tried to cross, too, but since she was much larger than me, she was also going much slower.

Why doesn't he just hide up in the trees? It would be easier for him to lose her if he went above the tree covering and then hid elsewhere concealed by leaves.

I made my way through this part of the forest, and of course came upon the burnt part of it, the one I had so casually knocked down in the past. Though it would hurt, I decided to stay here, because it was more likely for the girl to try to find me in an area with a lot of trees, rather than a part of the forest that had a small amount of hiding places. I slowed down now, sure that she wouldn’t catch up. I started walking, surveying the damage. I stepped over dropped tree branches, had to go around fallen trunks, saw nothing but debris polluting a nearby body of water… I saw no pokémon—surely no one would want to live here anymore.

I'm not sure I support his reasoning, because if she does look in the burned area, it'll be easier to find him.

And the next time I turned, I came across another pokéball. It was floating in the nearby pond. Curious, I made my way into the water until I could grab it. When I got out of the water, I examined it. The ball showed no sign of being affected by the fire, so maybe it was a fairly new item here, or maybe it had been spared. And it was a special kind of pokéball, not just a regular red and white one…

It looked like the one Annie had had for me—it was blue on top and white on bottom, with two stripes of red on the sides. A great ball, she had called it once, though I didn’t see what was so great about it. But it hit me—this could be my pokéball! This could have once belonged to Annie! Now, I had to decide what to do with it… Who knew how much time I had to consider, given my situation?

Part of me wanted to destroy the pokéball. Part of me wanted to be set free of Annie’s grasp—forever. If that was the route I went down, I would crush the pokéball and make it crumble into a bunch of pieces. Part of me thought this was a bad idea, because then maybe other trainers could really catch me with pokéballs now. Is that even how it worked? After all this time traveling, I didn’t know. And then, part of me was skeptical, wondering if it was really my pokéball at all. What if there was a pokémon inside? If I destroyed the pokéball, would the pokémon inside die? I didn’t want to kill anyone else…

I'm surprised he's actually having this moral dilemma now.

I heard a rustle, and the girl appeared once more.

So she had followed me to the burnt area of the forest. She was smarter than I gave her credit for. Luckily for her, I suddenly didn’t have the energy to move. I turned to face her, and we stared at each other for a few moments. I realized the direness of the situation once more—she wanted me as her pokémon, when I already belonged to someone else. I went to run again, but she called for me to wait.

“Wait,” she said again. “That pokéball might belong to my brother! We’ve been looking for it for a long time.”

I don't trust her. This smells like a trap to me.

I stood there, unsure of what to do. Part of me wanted the ball to be mine after all, and part of me wanted to give it to this girl and forget this whole situation had even happened.

I looked at the girl again, seeing that she was putting away the pokéball she had in her hand. She put up her arms and said, “My name is Sasha. I won’t catch you if that’s what you want… Please, could I just have the ball, and I’ll leave you alone?”

“Ezrem!”

“Sasha!”

Two new players of this game showed up—Kuiora, and a boy who looked like this Sasha girl. Great, I thought. Now I had to worry about Kuiora being caught—what if Sai hadn’t properly caught her in a pokéball?—and I had to worry about the new guy potentially chasing us.

“Ezrem, why did you run away like that?” Kuiora said, walking up to me and looking me over, as if to see whether or not I sustained any damage.

“She was trying to catch me,” I said simply.

“Look, Marty, it might be Halcyon’s ball. Remember, you dropped it while we were out here?” Sasha said. I looked down at the ball, so curious about its true origins. How hard it was, to think about the possibility of passing up this once in a lifetime chance!

“Oh. That’s right. So that… bird… has it?”

“It’s a rufflet, from Unova! I was trying to catch it to give it to you for your birthday, since pokémon like that one are one in a million! But it didn’t work…”

“It’s the thought that counts, right? Besides, that Sai’s croconaw. Looks like it’s his… rufflet, too.”

Well, I guess that puts a stop to that.

“Sai? I didn’t see him anywhere…”

“Oh…” said Kuiora. She whispered into my ear: “That Marty kid really hates Sai. We can’t let him know that Sai’s disappeared or they’ll kill each other for sure.”

Oh, it's him! It slipped my mind what his name actually was, and I completely forgot his sister's name.

Then, to Marty, she said, “Sai’s out shopping.”

I automatically said, “Sai is sleeping at the pokémon center, and we’re out here exploring.” This, of course, only got me knocked in the head by Kuiora again for telling two completely different stories.

“I don’t know what they just said, but I’m fairly sure whatever the rufflet said can’t be repeated in polite conversation,” Marty said sarcastically.

“Idiot,” I said, now realizing that our efforts were futile, since they couldn’t understand us, anyway. “And I was almost destined to be your pokémon? As if.”

“Sai’s probably letting them run rampant on purpose. Go figure,” Marty said.

“You should really be nicer to him. He does try.”

“Not hard enough.”

At this, I threw the great ball directly at Marty’s face. At this point, I didn’t care if the ball was mine. I was just glad that I hadn’t been caught by this imbecile, and that I hadn’t chosen him during the battle between him and Sai. I felt fiercely proud of having Annie as a trainer, and therefore suddenly didn’t care if I was still bound by her or not. She was never so stuck up and she never looked down upon others the way he did. Sasha, on the other hand, was nice—but it didn’t stop me from being a jerk to her brother! And of course, there was Sai, who was nice to me half the time and completely ignorant during the other half.

Hahaha, serves Marty right. He deserved it.

“Thanks a lot,” Marty muttered, rubbing his head as he reached down to get the pokéball. “Let’s go, Sasha.”

I stuck out my tongue at them as they turned to leave, with Sasha looking back at me one more time, regretfully. I also got another hit in the head from Kuiora once they were gone. Soon, I would have a permanent bump there.

“Well, should we go back, too?” Kuiora said. “Senori might kill us if he realizes we’ve been gone.”

“I’ll only go with you if you stop saying that word,” I said, but I was already walking in the direction that would lead us back to the team.

“What word?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Don’t make me guess it.”

What word?

I turned, walking backwards so I could glare at her. “If you’re going to say it, then stop following me.”

“I’m not following you. I’m following the path,” she said, pointedly keeping her gaze on the horizon just to prove a point.

I sighed. I felt that this was one of the longest days ever. Still, some things had been made concrete to me. Kuiora cared about me, for one. This meant more to me than I could say. There was always Rennio, but Rennio stood by my side because he didn’t know my faults. Kuiora knew I had faults, knew that there was plenty of them to go around, but she stayed with me, and she even put me on a rather high pedestal.

Some of this is Ezrem's own fault, though. Especially the parts with Rennio.

In addition, it appeared that I cared for Annie more than I originally thought I did. For the first time, I had felt pride over being her past pokémon, and I didn’t mind the fact that I gave up the possibility of destroying my old pokéball. She was always in the back of my mind, whether I liked it or not. She kept my conscience at bay. I vowed to continue trying to be good, for her—once I figured out what good was, anyway.

In a more general sense, I had learned that having something wasn’t the same as keeping something. It was a lesson I wished I hadn’t learned, but such was life. This meant that just because I had Rennio and Kuiora’s love, it didn’t mean that it would last forever. Just because Annie had been there for me once, didn’t mean that she would ever be there for me again. Just because I thought Sai would make a great trainer for me, didn’t mean that he would actually live up to my expectations. And just because I would have made my home in the future, didn’t mean that it would stay with me forever.

Yes, there were many levels to my pain. I unraveled each level, one by one, as we went back to the team, wondering and wishing. The pain wasn’t like a knife, or like fire, or ice, or any of a thousand other metaphors. It was simply just pain. And it drowned out the rest of the world as I felt a harsh, white flash of sensation take over, reminding me that I should try a little harder.

I have to say, this chapter succeeded in redeeming Ezrem quite a bit in my eyes. Just having this additional peer into the way his mind works did wonders for making him more sympathetic. I still don't approve of a lot of the things he does, especially to Rennio, but I certainly understand them a lot better now.

I think what really struck me about this chapter, though, is what's not in it - Sai's absence continues to be a major influence, and I feel like my dread of what has happened involving him grows with every chapter that he's not present.

[Sid87]

Kuiora’s called me evil for it—and various other things—a few times, but I don’t like that term. It makes me sound worse than I actually thought I was. I preferred being called… ethically unfettered.

Kuiora's relationship with Ezrem is so strange. She was marveled by him, then angry at him, then marveled by him, and now angry at him again. Let's see where it goes now...

Legendary. I wasn’t legendary, that much was very clear to me. I had been given special treatment before, for some unknown reason… but no one went so far as to bow down to me. To her, however, I was the most important thing in life! I was the last thing she thought about before she went to sleep at night, and I was the first thing she thought of when she awoke in the morning. I was the one she worshipped and put before her own self. Religion, I knew, was something that people and pokémon believe for the same reason children believe in fairy tales: it gives them false, redeeming hope. I could provide that for her, I supposed. So I had to continue playing my newfound role, or it would be lost forever.

Nice establishment of Ezrem's self-absorption through crooked narration. Obviously Ezrem is not THAT important to Kuiora, but he imagines he is.

“Death,” Kuiora said, her chin lifted, “is just a myth invented to scare young children.”

....Kuoira is the one that dies. Oh, I might hate you forever.

A few moments of silence passed before she changed the topic and said, “Do you want to hear a story?”

“A story?”

One of my favorite things about Kui! (I'm calling her Kui now, is that okay? I am.)

“Rufflet and braviary are really rare. I heard they can only be caught by the toughest of trainers on Victory Road! That’s almost legendary status. You’re right, normal rufflet and braviary aren’t legendary. But you, Ezrem, are legendary, and for a very special reason!”

So the plot thickens...

Anyway, as always, I love Kui's stories. They add such a beautiful, flavorful level to the story, and really add in a sense of realism that this world has its own fables and tales. Thank you for another such moment.

At this, I threw the great ball directly at Marty’s face. At this point, I didn’t care if the ball was mine.

The two "At this" that start each sentence repeat a bit. I would drop the first one and just leave it at "I threw the great ball...". It's more impactful.



I'm actually curious about two things. One, obviously, is where Sai is. The other, why is this story call Survival Project? I figured by now, I'd have an answer, but not so much. Obviously Sai is the project, and it SEEMS to be a project of Team Rocket's, but... to what end? And why doesn't he seem to want to be a part of it?

Anyway, another good chapter!

[Sidewinder]

chapter 15 ; [EZREM]

Ezrem chapter huh? I'm going to go ahead and start a tally of how many times I want to punch him in the face before the chapter is over

Well, I could at least make sure that I stayed with him

Hmm, that's odd seeing as how the previous Ezrem chapter showed him as a little bit more uncaring and emotionless. Whereas in this one he's actually worrying about issues that Rennio may develop. I may have to go back and read the last Ezrem chapter because this is confusing me slightly; perhaps I painted him in the wrong light afterall?

because at least she treated me with some respect. She marveled over me every chance she got! It was a boost to my ego which I always so desperately needed.

Actually, I think I did paint him in the right light. That statement I quotes screams narcissism and as much as I dislike him, you make his little desires and plans come off pretty damn well. And you do it in a way where I want to follow him even though I destest him. Nicely done

I preferred being called… ethically unfettered.

Made both me and my wife actually lol

it’s like Sai has read the handbook for human behavior, but he didn’t quite understand most of the instructions.”

Wow, someone finally understands how I feel lol. Ezrem really hit it right on with that line

“Death,” Kuiora said, her chin lifted, “is just a myth invented to scare young children.”

That statement, or rather that mindset is kinda concerning to me because it feels like she's winding down a path towards becoming a mini Ezrem. I know she has a little bit of a power complex, especially now that she's evolved, but what she said there really surprised me

becoming for threatening each time, hoping for an answer.

Shouldn't that be becoming more threatening?

caught her in its claws just as she was about to break her fall.

That read weird to me. I feel like it would sound better if you put something like, 'just as she was about to hit the water.' When you phrase it like you did, it sounds like she was maybe trying to catch herself before she hit, or something. I hope that makes sense.

felt fiercely proud of having Annie as a trainer, and therefore suddenly didn’t care if I was still bound by her or not

How delusional is he? So proud to have had had her, but at the same time being responsible for her death. Wow, you've done a wonderful job creating a character that I literally love to hate. If anything, he's almost more disconnected from reality than Sai is, at least when it comes to his thought process. I mean, he has had a few redeeming moments, but on the whole, he's still an ***

Well, as a whole I really enjoyed the chapter, and my number for punching Ezrem only came to five. Which surprised me because I thought that it was going to be 10+ lol. The only weak spot I found throughout the chapter was the story that Kuiora told. I felt like it was quite inventive and did the job, but I also think that you could have expanded on it little more when it came to the description of the events and went a little more in-depth with the girl. I know going detailed wasn't the point of why you were telling the story, but I do feel like a bit more emotion could have been added. Not just that, but the Braviary tracking down the girl and saving her from dying didn't really seem like enough for Kuiora to have committed the story to memory. Yes, it's brave and heroic, but I don't think those two actions alone warrants her telling a story to Ezrem that exalts his evolved form to the stature that she was portraying it as. Don't get me wrong, you did a good job with it, but those were a few things that struck as I finished reading it

Other than that, wonderful job as always and I'm excited for the next installment

[Doryuzu]

Chapet 15

Ezrem, without a doubt, like I've said before is a bit of an enigma with some Anti-Heroic qualities thrown in there. He's a bit of a conniving Pokemon, but regardless he shows normal weakness you find in any human being or Pokemon with him showing he wouldn't have these emotional attachments to these specific people forever. Funny hearing him talk so emotionally about Annie when I thought he didn't really care for Annie hugely. After everything that was done, it certainly didn't seem like he cared for her. The return of Marty, the trainer that despises Sai. I still wonder what overall impact him and his sister are going to have on Sai and where exactly is Sai, looking forward to the next chapter. So, Kuiora, thinks of Ezrem as a Pseudo-Legendary in a way? Not legendary but close to legendary status, it was cute since she's so young and naive, yet so strong. Her personality somewhat reminds me of Korra from The Legend of Korra. Yeah, she was cute.