Beast Speaker, Monster Tamer

70: A Music Box of Memories, and We Move Forward

Ruined buildings like broken bones jutting up into the sky. Dust, dust everywhere. Dust in her mouth, in her lungs, dust on her skin, and in her eyes. They were burning, tears and horrors seared into them. It was all one horrible, messy nightmare, she wanted to wake up, she wanted to wake up if only she could open her eyes she needed to wake up wake up WAKE UP—

Elise opened her eyes.

Her phone screen glowed starkly in the dark on the nightstand to her right. An unread message from Lucas, received hours ago. She sat herself up, reaching for the device as she leaned back on her headboard.

'Message from BudgetMagneto: Hey kid opened ur gifts yet ?'

It took her a moment to comprehend the message and another moment longer to realize what he was talking about.

Oh.

Her sight drifted over to the shelf on top of the school-given cabinet. On the topmost were her various trinkets, knickknacks accumulated over time and brought along with her to the dowm. And nestled next to them were the still-wrapped packages passed to her by her brother. And the beautiful box that was solely Lucas's gift, lovingly tied with a bow. In all honesty, she had forgotten about them in the past few days, busy trying to play catch up with her classmates or taking short, exhausted naps to compensate for her lack of sleep.

A check of the time showed that it was well past being reasonably late. It was more appropriate to say early morning at this point and Elise exhaled softly, resigned to her fate. Flipping the covers off her legs, the girl slipped out of the bed and padded towards the shelf. Grabbing them all, she went back and gently deposited them on her bed. The first was the packages from the shop owners. A note fluttered out as she unwrapped the paper. Elise picked it up, seeing the short and sweet phrase written there.

'To you, with love. We will always support you. You will always be welcome.'

Elise ran her thumb over the details on the patch. A lovingly handmade sewn-on patch in the shape of a Pokéball with her hero name embossed in a banner underneath it. Fine craftsmanship made to last.

Wow...

Seeing the love put into it gave her the idea of integrating it into her costume, perhaps sewn by a sleeve. An homage to all that she was and where she came from. There was no better way to honor them than to proudly wear their work with her. With that decided, the girl carefully set it aside and moved to Lucas's gift.

She reached for the box, picking it up with delicate fingers and holding it in her hand. It was bigger than her palm by a margin, a pretty pale blue and heavy, whatever inside the box solid for its size. A moment passed as the girl regarded the innocuous object, knees drawn up to her chest before putting it down and slowly pulling at the ribbon and unraveling the bow tying it all together. She carefully set it aside, slid the box closer, and lifted its lid. The walls, only held together by the lid, fell outwards to reveal tissue papers and a spherical object in the center. Elise reached in and picked it up.

A... Pokéball replica...

The same size as the ones made by her quirk, it was a gunmetal gray and sat on a pedestal made out of the same material. A hinge was on the back and the classic button in front. Elise pressed it.

Blue light whirred to life, spreading between the seams of the two halves from the inside. The top popped open with a smooth, quiet hiss. In the dim lighting of her room, Elise saw that the insides weren't hollow like a Pokéball and had a small figurine in the bottom half. It was a Torchic, standing in the base that was made out of the bottom. It was posed with one leg in the air, mid-dance, and beak open in a joyous expression. It, like the rest of the Pokéball, held the marks of metalwork tools, perfectly imperfect, and Elise knew right away that her brother had crafted this. As her fingers brushed over the metal feathers, the eyes of the Torchic lit up and a glowing blue hologram projected up above the sphere. Lucas's grease-smudged face popped up, the familiar walls of the workshop back home in the background behind him.