Harmonia | Pokémon Fanfiction

07 | Tell Me Something Good

Music in Media: Tell Me Something Good by Rufus and Chaka Khan

11 January, Tuesday, 9 a.m. | Winter

26 missed calls. 100 text messages. Cheren groaned as he picked up his phone.

Tell me something good, he moulded his expectations along this line of thought. Tell me I won the lottery because of my Trainer ID or the Original Dragon has re-emerged to save us all. Or the music has been cancelled the way society cancels everything one after another.

His heart told him otherwise with its intense palpitations. Situations like this were always anxiety-inducing. The first time he stepped up to teach at the school or become a Gym Leader, he wasn't sure if he was the right fit. What if it was too normal to be too ambitious? What if he lost himself again to radical liberation and the people around him were affected? What if Team Plasma struck again and this time he was on the crucified end of things, splayed out for the world to see, all that vulnerability on a cross.

Willing himself to override his thoughts, he made a quick scan of the inn. The incessant vibrations of his phone had woken up his companions. But he couldn't bring himself to apologise when he wasn't exactly at fault. They ate bacon and eggs as he scrolled through the messages, half a heart wondering if he should say something, even if it's the illusion of a "good morning", just so to maintain some modicum of decorum, half a mind craving a silence that would encase him like a Gimmighoul's chest. It was his whole face that played a traitor to his desires, becoming blanched like an almond the more he read.

When asked if he was okay, if he needed more rest to recover from this strange sickness he's gotten, he simply asked for a bottle of fresh Moomoo Milk and poked a straw through the foil.

"Bad news, everyone," he said after pulling the straw out and sucking the milk clean out of the hole, "we need to head back to Aspertia City immediately."

"What is it?" They shot him a look. It must be a dream to see people so different from each other in race and age coming together. Maybe suspense was the key to harmony after all.

"The students do not want to go to school." Cheren rose from his seat, the chair screeching after him. "School starts in thirty minutes and they are rebelling."

"It must be the music," offered Icosa. "You know they aren't usually like that."

While Cheren nodded at his statement, Rae sensed a déjà vu feeling welling up inside her. That line sounded way too familiar. But she must concur.

And so did everyone else. The signs were there all along when the Pokémon were becoming drowsy as her battle with Cheren dragged on. Icosa suggested that the Pokémon were more sensitive to the music than humans, and perhaps, just perhaps, the music had always been played for them and not humans, that it was the time for Pokémon to rebel against their superiors, at least that was how most humans saw themselves in relation to Pokémon, which was also a genuine concern Team Plasma, the faction loyal to Lord N anyways, tried dealing with. They dragged their feet back after thanking the owners of Floccesy Ranch once more.

The music, they realised, upon re-entering Aspertia City, bore no difference, still full of minor notes at 5 BPM. The difference instead came from the outlook of the city, the doors of every house swung open and ajar, hollers and yawns and whines exploding everywhere. The parents fled out of their homes the moment the quartet entered their field of vision and the aftermath of the students' rebellion grew crystal clear: burns and saliva and bite marks and injuries from all kinds of Pokémon heaped on their bodies, on their clothes.

"She has bewitched us all! She ain't no woman! She's a Pied Piper!" A woman dressed in a pompous office attire lunged at Lenora and jabbed the latter's chest. "She is jealous of us because she has no children!"