Each Past 「Pokemon Watty Awards 2016」

Chapter 8 ♦ Selfish

♦ Dedicated to VanillaWind for being someone who's mature, caring and supportive, and someone I can have actual conversations with while also having loads of fun. :p You're an amazing writer, and your personality and skills and the calm way you handle everything while also being hyper is something I hope to learn. You're amazing!! <3 ♦

Oh hay look I was gone for one month xD This was just plain procrastinating and prioritising my other books before this. Sorry to those few supporters out there *crickets chirping* aNYWAY

:I do not own Pokemon or the images used in the cover, but the plot, personalities and the edited cover belongs to me. You may not copy, translate, or reproduce it in any form unless given permission by me, @NyxAbsol.:

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❝ What would you be selfish for?

Would you want to kill for the sake of everyone else?

Or

Would you want to protect at the expense of everyone else? ❞

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I stared at the remnants of the two Pokemon—the Espeon and Umbreon that I had killed. The creatures that had died because of me.

Today, I'd learnt what the emotion of guilt truly means.

Guilt was the ice lacing my guts. It could have been a hundred degrees out and I'd still be frozen on the inside. I couldn't melt it on my own, and I couldn't shift it to someone else at all.

It ate at me, pestering me like an annoying voice that refused to go away no matter what I did. A fire burned in my mind and throat. Remorse hit me like a three-ton sledgehammer. I could feel Jirachi's burning gaze carving holes in my heart like invisible daggers.

"They're gone," Jirachi stated. Her voice had taken on a robotic, cool tone, masking her grief by setting her face to one of casual indifference.

I hadn't just become a murderer. I'd hurt my ally—not just in a phisical manner, but mentally.

Regret washed over me like the long slow waves on a shallow beach. Each wave was icy cold and sent shivers down my spine. Those two Pokemon were Jirachi's friends, and one of her few joys in her monochromatic life—and I'd taken that happiness from her too.

I had been selfish, after all.

"I'm sorry." Those two words couldn't even begin to make up for the pain I'd dealt to my friend. "I was selfish."

"Whatever," she answered, her voice flat and dark eyes far colder than usual. "They chose to die. Besides, it was for the better good." The legendary snarled out the last few words in an icy tone, as if she didn't actually believe in them.

I knew she did. Jirachi had supported my cause from the beginning—she'd believed it was worth fighting for, but seeing—and being the one to perform the killing blow at that—her two friends die in front of her had shaken her.

I guess that did make us selfish in a way—me willing to sacrifice lives to better the world in the perspective of my vision alone, and Jirachi wanted her friends to be saved while ignoring the despair that legendary Pokemon—herself included—faced.

When we looked at it again, we were both the same. We just didn't want to admit it.

"I killed two of your friends," I mumbled, looking up to the sky, still painted in its abstract hues of red and blue. "...If you leave, I won't blame you."