Each Past 「Pokemon Watty Awards 2016」

Chapter 18 ♦ Autonomy

❝ I think that 

realising the truth

can be less painful than

living a lie,

right? ❞

Cresselia

"I see," Jirachi hummed, her dark eyes concentrating on interpreting my recount—and the words that came next were spoken at a slow, troubled pace. "So...this Pidgeot wanted to honour his mentor by hoping towards the future."

I let out a troubled sigh. "It would seem that way," I confirmed. "But we can only hope that some trace of the Pidgeot's personality—yes, it appears that he evolved some time after his mentor's death—is left behind, and that we can use that personality to turn his mindset around."

"Ironic, is it not?" Meloetta glanced at us with a thoughtful expression in her azure-tinted irises. "We are using the word 'hope' for a situation where we are suppose to eradicate this element. No matter, however—I do not mean any offence to what I was saying."

"None taken," I responded, quivering my wings and lifting myself a few metres into the air. "Anyway, this Pidgeot is located in Johto. We will reach there by nighttime if we hurry—"

An azure glow surrounded Jirachi—and Meloetta mimicked the action, both of them rising to my side. "Then we will leave at once," Jirachi proclaimed. "As the granter of the wish, I can feel the different elements start to burn in my true eye. We are getting closer and closer to our goal as we speak."

With that, our ascent began, and the three of us climbed into the air—and I was, for the first time in centuries—were they centuries? Or millenniums?—excited about the future. Maybe I would not awake to face the everyday task of handling Pokemon's problems—maybe we would be able to liberate ourselves for the first time in our immortal lives.

Holding that thought in mind, I looked ahead of me—now was not the time to fantasise about my dreams. To achieve these dreams, I had to concentrate—and if I did, my goals would be within my—speaking a humanlike term—hand's reach at last.

༺༻

"I'm still happy," the Pidgeot insisted, cutting us off even before we could finish our introduction. Her dark eyes were glittering, and her beak snapped out the sentence at a rapid pace. "I'm sure I am—you do not need to ask me again. I'm happy as I am now."

...Is she telling the truth? A frown slid across my face—and I did nothing to mask that. My perplexed expression was more than genuine—how in Arceus could someone in a state like her even be happy in the slightest?

The avian's smooth voice contained no trace of hostility—yet, I wondered just how she could bear to keep living like that.

She was just as I had seen in that flashback of hers—I could still see traces of the young Pidgey left in her eyes. Her wing had not healed a single bit—it was still bent at the same unnatural angle that it had been years ago.

That wasn't even enough to describe the animal's pitiful condition, however—I could see the skeletal frame of the Pidgeot peeking through the creature's paper-thin coat of caramel feathers. Every feature of the bird's body was too sharp, too angular—and I spotted a few rings of healing, still-fresh bruises leaving fading marks of abuse along her tender flesh.