Every day was always the same old routine.
Lightning woke up in the same old city, under the same old sky, feeling the same old things. He was alone, he was sad, he was lonely, he was miserable. The towering heights of Yoyle City, those concrete husks that were once known as buildings, they always loomed over him, always mocking. They stood all alone in their solitude, and yet they never complained. They just... existed. They let the wind blow through them, let time tick by without a single complaint. The fact that they were inanimate beings, things with no life, no soul, probably helped *immensely* in being able to deal with the solitude.
Why *was* he able to feel, able to have emotions? Why was he able to process and recognize the boredom and tedium of doing a whole lot of nothing for days, weeks, months, and years? Why was he singled out amongst all his inanimate brethren, his infinitely large extended family, and given the curse of living? Why must he be one of the *exceptional* few that can recognize their own existence? What was the point? Why? *Why*?
Moping didn't get anyone anywhere, and so eventually, even if it was after a little while, Lightning would proceed to get up from whatever nest of depression he had crafted for himself. He'd take a moment to look at his mediocre handiwork, an assemblage of things he haphazardly stuck together in the middle of the night. While he was able to illuminate the way even in the darkest of circumstances, there was still the fact that most things he touches withers and dies. If he brushes into something in one of 2,763 possible wrong ways, he'll send an innumerable number of volts straight to it, giving it a good zap and turning it into nothing more than ash and cinders. He might know *exactly* where the perfect place for something is, he might have the capability to get it there, even if it was high up, but he did not have the delicate maneuvering to actually do so. One wrong step, going one inch in the wrong direction, and the thing he's holding might end up going in flames; in the worst possible scenario, it could end up spreading to the rest of the collection, and it'd all be erased before his very eyes. That'd be another thing he'd grieve to himself about, something to keep him up at night...
*Ugh*.
Again, Lightning got nowhere by being sad and miserable all day. He had a lot of problems that no one else had, but he also had a lot of gifts, too. How many people did he know that could fly? Well, a few. But they were an *exceedingly* rare few. Puffball, Cloudy, and maybe several others he can't quite remember. Through some unknown fluke of the universe, they were given this extraordinary ability to just... fly away from their problems. To get away from everything that could possibly bother them. Up there, in the great, vast sky, there really wasn't much of anything. No fun, no excitement, no entertainment. But also no pain, no bullies, no misery. It's a rather strange trade, but given his predicament, given his situation...
Given that he had the capability to kill anyone he bumps into without batting an eyelid, it was rather hard for the lightning bolt to make any friends. Finding *anyone* for that matter was already a hard enough chore as it is; he was gifted this miraculous ability of flight, but he could scour through 2,763 square miles without seeing a single soul, not a single trace of a friendly face. Or an unfriendly face. Or whatever. Just... *anyone*. Only when the Announcer fell out of the sky to start the Battle for Dream Island did he finally find any more than one or two people, and that took... who knows how long, really. A year? Two? A dozen? Two dozen? There really isn't much of a way to keep track of it, given that all he had was the sun, the moon, the stars... and himself. All on his own. All alone.
Right. Flight.
After Lightning was just about done with this little period of depression, he'd fly right out of there, forget all about that place, leave it all behind. Yoyle City was *vast*, and even for someone that can fly, someone like him, there's just far too much ground to cover. He could cross the whole length and width of it in just a minute or two, sure, but all that distance was packed with so much *detail*. There were so many buildings, and in those buildings were so many floors, and in those floors were so many halls, rooms, and other little nooks and crannies, and in each of *those* were any number of little things, all sorts of curiosities and artifacts. There was always something new to explore, something novel to find, something to take the mind off the daily routine, the daily struggle.
