Only courage in the face of doubt can lead one to the answer…

5/10/2017

Veilstone City

8:00am

I’ve only been to Veilstone a few times before. Most of them were just for sightseeing, and figuring out what the latest tech craze was from the Galactic corporation.

Now standing in front of their main building fills me with a bit of curiosity. I never got to enter the building before, most of the technology developed here that I've seen are from the demonstrations by the main doors.

It's understandable. Their CEO Cyrus is a decent guy, but is stated to be pretty paranoid when it comes to people stealing his ideas. They do give tours sometimes but they usually cost an arm and a leg, which is way out of the budget of a little league coach.

The job doesn't pay too well, but seeing how much fun the ankle biters have, makes the hours not too much of a slog. I wish I could bring half their enthusiasm when it comes to just about everything in life.

I'm pulled out of my thoughts by a tap on my shoulder. I look to see a lean Zorark holding a hotdog in one hand and a cup in the other. He extends the drink to me while taking a bite out of the hotdog.

I give him an unimpressed look.

“Zeke, where did you get this?”

Zeke shrugs. “Not my fault the vendors can't remember their own employees.”

“Can you stop doing this, you're going to get us in trouble someday.” I say while taking the drink.

Instead of responding, he continues to eat the hotdog while changing his form into a fat cop.

“Hey you, you're going in for 10 years for assisted theft.” He says, pausing every other word two continue eating.

I roll my eyes and hit him in the shoulder, breaking his illusion.

I take a sip of the mystery drink. Root beer… not the worst choice.

I take a look at my watch. 8:10, he should be here in a few minutes. It's been a while since Abel and I hung out. Or even seen him at all. What he's up too now completely eludes me. From what I remember, which isn’t much, he's got a job in the Hearthome market as the Teddiursa mascot. I can’t imagine the pain that being in one of those suits all day causes. Long hours on a burning summer day sounds like hell in one of those.

I hear footsteps approaching from my left.

Speak of the devil. I look over to see Abel walking towards us, waving.

He looks like a complete mess. His white hair looks unkempt. His button up shirt is wrinkled to the point where if I had to guess, I would say he crumples it into a ball whenever he takes the thing off. His pants… well his pants are fine for the most part, save for the fact that he is wearing suspenders but leaving the straps to dangle at his sides. Finally there's his red scarf which I'm not sure if he's ever washed since I’ve never seen him take it off. All in all, it's exactly how I remembered him.

“Hey Kenny, long time no see.”

He's absolutely beaming, meeting back up with me can't be that interesting can it?

Once we are in speaking distance, he starts to barrage me with a bunch of questions. Some about my job, Zeke, and the type of stuff I’ve been watching and reading. I struggle to form an answer for any of them as he spouts questions out faster than I can think.

“So like when your team wins now, does that also mean yo-”

“Hey, dude.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to be honest, I couldn't understand half of what you said.”

He pauses for a second.

“Oh… Well I can ask you again once we get going.”

Knowing Abel there's no way of getting out of this so I resign myself to my fate of answering 1000 questions. We begin the trek to our destination with Zeke trailing behind us, sometimes commenting on my answers.

During our walk I take in the atmosphere. The sun is shining brightly without a cloud in the sky. The temperature hits that middle ground of being warm, but not to the point where you feel like you're dying from the heat. People and their pokemon are running up and down the street, greeting and catching up on eachothers day.

While answering Abel’s questions, I stop occasionally to listen to some passing by conversations. Conversations about family, the latest sports news, and plans for the future.

It was nice, hearing people living their lives around me.

Although I enjoy teaching the kids how to play baseball, I wish it could be like this everyday.

After about fifteen minutes we finally reach our destination. The Veilstone festival. A celebration that is held annually to commemorate the scientific breakthroughs made with the three lake guardians.

As we enter the festival grounds I hand the tickets to one of the workers who gives me three orange wristbands. I keep one and give the others to Zeke and Abel, the former deciding to put it on his hair bead.

The festival itself consisted of a lot of food booths, some carnival games scattered throughout the area, the occasional ride, and a theater that had shows playing every other hour.

I’ve gone to the festival before, but it’s kind of boring without friends, so this time around I invited Abel.

I look over to gauge his reaction, it only takes a few seconds to determine that he was the right pick. Abel looked like he was a kid again. Taking in each sight asif it were the first time he's seen any of this stuff.

I turn back to Zeke who is eyeing the food stands.

“Steal anything and you can forget being outside of your ball for the rest of the day.”

He thinks about it for a second.

“Fine. Can you atleast give me the money then?”

I roll my eyes, reach into my wallet and present enough cash to buy some food and play a few games. He happily accepts my offering and prances away.

I turn back to Abel.

“So what do you wan-”

“That one!” He says pointing at a tea cups ride.”

“Are you sure? That's usually for little kids.”

“Yes!” He yells, sounding so sure of himself.

I follow him to one of the cups and we both sit down. It’s only a few seconds after the ride starts do I realize that following him was a bad idea. Once things get going, Abel takes the metal plate in the middle and twists it at full force. For a second my life flashes before my eyes, then everything in my vision except Abel becomes a blur.

Well at least he is having fun.

When the ride ends I have to run over to a nearby garbage bin. I then proceed to fill it with everything I ate for breakfast. Note to self, never get on a ride that Abel can control again.

After I'm done spitting my stomach out through my mouth I fall on my ass and take a second to breathe. In the distance I can hear a few people and probably pokemon laughing. At least it was entertaining.

After that we head to get some food. I decipher that there isn't a lack of options as everywhere you look there is at least one vendor. There's hot dogs, churros, candy apples, burgers, the list goes on. I decide to just get some fries with a drink, but Abel on the other hand looks like he's having a stroke trying to figure out what to get.

I convince him to settle on a candy apple and we find a place to sit.

During our snack break, my mind starts to wander to the last times I talked to Abel.

“Hey I have a question?”

“Yea?”

“Remember last time we met up, you were at one of the games for my team.”

“Sure.”

“We lost that game and one kid, Kyle, got really upset. He was usually one of the best, but this game he did pretty poorly. He came to me crying, saying that his parents would hate him because he failed the one sport he was good at. I tried reassuring him, but that didn’t work. You though, you said something and although he didn’t look too happy after he’s done nothing, but look to get better since. We lost another game later, but this time he didn’t seem bothered. What did you say to him back then?”

Abel stares at the sky for a second.

“I said that life sucks.” He says before taking a bite out of his apple.

“That’s it?”

“Sorry I wasn't finished. I said that life sucks, and this stuff happens, but at the end of the day, no matter how hard you try, you can’t expect yourself to always come out on top just because you’re talented. Being born with talent or gifts is nice, but it shouldn’t be a representation of your worth. No matter how talented you are there's always going to be someone who is better. So the best thing you can do is take what you have and get better. You may never be the best, but you will be happy.”

I stayed silent for a while.

“Did you actually say that to a kid?”

“Yea, why?”

“That seems a lot for a twelve year old to take in, but it worked so who am I to say anything.”

I stopped to think for a second.

“How are you so good at stuff like this?”

Abel thought about it for a second. Then gave an award winning smile as he disclosed his methods.

“Well one thing I have in mind is that, you're not the only person in the world, everyone has their own stuff going on whether you are aware of it or not, so never assume that you understand or know how the other person is feeling.”

I give him a nod and return to my fries, reflecting on those words.

“It also helps to be more curious instead of judgmental.”

That felt like it came out of nowhere.

“What? I don't act that judgmental, do I?”

His eyes darted up to the sky.

“I guess not. Just a general thing to keep in mind.”

After I threw out the empty fry package, Abel came up to me with a brochure.

“There’s a play starting in fifteen minutes.”

He points to a picture on the brochure. It seems to depict a kid in front of a school like in Anne of Green Gables.

“Moon Child. What kind of name is that?”

“I've seen this one before. It’s about this kid who goes to thi-, look, just watch it, I know you’ll love it.”

“Alright if you say so.”

When we reach the theater there are barely any seats left. Luckily we find two near the top few rows.

After a few minutes the room’s main lights turn off and the curtain opens.

The play begins by showing the life of a boy in a school for gifted kids. The first few minutes depict him and his class at recess wandering the school’s yard. I was bracing for one of them to randomly burst into song or do something to get the show rolling, but instead the kids just kept on milling about occasionally talking.

On top of that, when the kids did get into groups and talk, most of the kids would just spout factual statements, not really showing any interest in the subjects they were actually talking about like it was their job to do so.

A sound effect of a bell played and the kids lined up, waiting to enter the school, completely silent. The play lingers on this scene for a few seconds which feels like an eternity, until the curtain closes as they change the scene.

I turn over to Abel.

“Are you sure this was good, it's kind of boring. How did you of all people find this entertaining?”

Stolen story; please report.

“Just wait, I think you should see this.”

I decide to trust his judgment and sit through the next scene.

It begins in class and it introduces the teacher. The guy’s a middle aged man who seems too enthusiastic about teaching basic geometry to kids who would probably like to be anywhere else. The guy can’t go five minutes without saying how honored he is to teach the class and how he wishes all the best in their learning.

If the point of this play was to immerse the audience in the tedious and dull life of school, it sure is working.

Much of the second act was devoted to hammering in that this kid was for the most part, ahead of almost everyone else.

By the time act three rolled around, I'd almost fallen asleep about six times. The first half of the act was more of the same stuff the other two had, but in the middle they introduced something new.

During a recess, the boy found a Litten in the field. The rest of act three was devoted to showing a bond being formed between the two.

I'm still not seeing why Abel wanted me to watch this, it's mostly just that feel good schmuck you usually get from those early 200X movies.

From that point on the boy would look much livelier, now having something to look forward to in everyday life. While he was happy at the moment, act 4 made a point to show that his performance in class was slipping and the teacher was slowly getting more and more frustrated with him. The act ends with him confronting the boy about it.

I guess it's cool that they added some stakes, but it took till act 4. It kind of sucks knowing it's going to be quickly resolved in the next one to wrap up the story.

I look over to Abel. He has his eyes glued to the stage now, watching more intently than he had before this point. Maybe this act will turn the pretty boring story into the masterpiece he made it out to be. Maybe it would be one of those stories where there is a hidden meaning to all the stuff that happened before, so when you rewatch it it resonates with you more.

The act opens with the boy and the teacher arguing and the Litten gets brought up. The teacher then goes to get the Litten and bring it to the boy.

Guessing that this is the part where it wins the teacher over or they both find a compromise.

But that didn't happen.

Instead the teacher pulls a bolt pistol from behind the desk and uses it on the Litten.

“WHOAH, WHAT THE FUCK!” I yell, without thinking.

It's obviously fake, but just the scene itself was so out of pocket for an otherwise family friendly play.

The boy in the play starts to cry as the teacher lectures him about the importance of staying focused and how that “thing” doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Then everything goes off the rails as the boy takes the used bolt pistol and busts the teacher's shin with it. He then proceeds to slam it into the teacher's head over and over again.

The curtains came to a close after that and the lights turned on.

I just sat there staring at the red fabric covering the scene I just witnessed. I didn't know what to think. For some reason that one scene in particular felt so real. It didn't seem like it was from the same script the rest of the play was from.

It takes me a few moments to find my voice.

“That was, uh… really disturbing. Hey, Abel, why did you want to watch this again?”

I turn my head to look at him. As I do I notice that all the other seats are empty.

“Well, I thought that it would be something you were interested in. Sorry if it was a bit much”

It definitely was more than a bit much.Thinking about it almost makes me as nauseous as after the teacups ride, but for some reason something about the play felt familiar.

We sat in silence for a few more minutes until Abel turned and started speaking.

“You know I haven’t thanked you yet.”

“For, what?”

“For finding this.”

Abel reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small yellow marble.”

“When did I ever find that for you?”

He looks back to the stage with a blank expression.

“It's been a while now. Two months? Yea I think that long.”

“Two months? It's been much longer since I last saw you, how did I give that to you two months ago.”

He takes a bit longer to respond.

“Maybe I'm getting the days wrong. I tend to lose track of time. It feels like eternity here, ya know?”

“What do you mean by that? Like at your job?”

“Sure.”

He doesn't seem to elaborate on it and I don't know what to do so we continue to sit at the back of the theater in silence.

I've heard people say “the silence is deafening” before but I don't think I've ever really understood it until now.

Then Abel sits up again.

“Hey, you don't have to, but I'm still missing five more. If you ever find them, can you give them back to me? It's really important.”

I don't know how to respond to that. I can't even remember ever finding or giving that first one to him. How does he expect me to just stumble across the other ones?

“Uh, sure. Do you know where you lost them?” I say humoring him. He is my friend and if it’s important then it couldn’t hurt to at least help if I saw them.

He begins to smile. It looks different from his usual one. I don't really know how to describe it other than he just looked creepier.

“Don't worry you'll come across them. You'll know it when you see them.”

Just then a pair of lights near the front of the stage turn off.

Abel seems disappointed.

“Already? That sucks.”

The next pair shut off.

“Well I guess you'll be going now. I still had so much more to say”

The lights ahead of us turn off.

Abel looks at me with a reassuring grin.

“Don't worry, we'll be able to talk again soon.”

The last thing I see is him waving. Then the final lights above us turn off, shrouding the theater in darkness. Then I begin to fall.

—

I was jolted awake, vision blurry but slowly getting clearer. I feel lightheaded and struggle to find balance, while sitting up.

While waiting for my eyes to adjust I try recalling the dream I just had.

Surprisingly I can’t remember too much from it. Usually I’m able to recall a good majority, but the only thing I can remember is the sight of a festival and even then I’m losing details by the second.

Once I was able to properly see my surroundings I realized that I’m currently in a hospital room.

My rational thought kicks in and I realize there were bandages over the left side of my face blocking part of my view.

The next thing that pops into my mind is the Team Galactic building.

The grunts

The executives

The masked person

The Garchomp

Ashley

Me getting shot.

I got shot.

First in the stomach, then in the arm, the leg, finally…

I trace my hand over the bandaged part of my face. Everything seems fine, until I get to my left eye. Instead of feeling a bump, my finger presses parts of the bandage into my eye socket.

I got shot directly in the eye.

My eye is completely gone.

I'm never going to be able to see normally again.

I lost depth perception for the rest of my life.

Shit

I take a look around the room. Aside from basic medical equipment, there isn't much, except for a single card and flowers on a nightstand next to me.

The card has a cartoonishly large bandage with a Chansey next to it. At the top in bold letters reads “GET WELL SOON!” The contents of the card are everyone's signatures. I never understood the relevance of these things. While in theory they are meant to cheer someone up; make them feel like they are being thought about, it falls apart when most of the time, people just feel obligated to do it, and treat it more as a chore. That’s what I got from this, especially since Ben put his name on it.

I hear a door opening to my right. I quickly toss the card back on the nightstand.

A nurse walks into the room and notices I’m awake. He’s wearing the usually blue hospital garb with a surgeon mask on. The guy looks no older than late thirties.

He gives an uninterested look as he takes out a phone and dials a number into it.

There's an awkward silence as I stare at the nurse while the phone rings.

Eventually someone picks up.

“Hello… Yea… Room 505, he’s awake… okay… sure…”

He hangs up.

“Im sorry, who wa-”

“Doctors coming up in a bit, be patient” The nurse snaps

That's rude.

“Hey, so do you mind if I can see a report of what happened?”

The nurse chuckles a bit, then walks over to the foot of the bed I'm at and takes a clipboard that was attached to it.

“Lets see here. It says that you-”

“Uh, I can read that than-”

“Sure you can.”

The snark in his voice makes me want to break the closest thing to me over his head.

The nurse begins to read the documents out loud.

“Says here that you fudged up a mission and almost died for it. Other officers had to save you from bleeding to death.”

He then mutters something about who they allow on the force these days. I try to push down all the thoughts of strangling him and try to focus on the important pieces of the information.

“What about the Garchomp?”

He gives an exasperated sigh and looks back at the paper.

“It was found dead when they got there.”

That thing was found dead? The fuck, how? Guess it's just a question I have to save for when I get back to the station.

“An infernape?”

“Unconscious.”

Unconscious.

Not dead, or KIA.

Unconscious.

It felt like a heavy weight being lifted off my shoulders. Ashley’s not dead.

My mini celebration was cut short by the nurse continuing to read.

“Most of the wounds on your body were covered in bug silk from a Levanny.”

Juno was let out? It’s not like her to act on her own, but there I guess I’ve never been in a life or death situation this dire before. There is always the chance that Ashley let her out before falling unconscious. Either way, I'm gonna have to thank her when I get out of here. If all of them are alive then according to protocol they should have put everyone in the pc once the scene of the incident was cleared. Although this is all good news to me, the nurse seems annoyed after reading it.

“While it did stop some of the bleeding, it was an unsanitary practice that could have caused an infection. On top of that it made it more difficult to operate on you. It was a waste of hospital money if you ask me. I would press charges on whoever owns that thing if I were you.”

He said “thing” with so much disdain.

And now my mind’s back to wanting to gut this guy.

I spot the vase on the nightstand next to my bed.

As the nurse continues reading, now in silence. I start to reach over to the decoration. A war between the urge to brain this guy and rational thought is going on in my head, but due to my light headedness rational thought is losing.

My hand almost reaches the vase as the door opens again. In walked an old man in a doctor's coat, holding a newspaper, and supporting himself up with a cane. His face was covered in wrinkles and had really glassy eyes. His name tag reads Akefu. If I had to guess, he was no younger than 89.

“Ah, so he is awake.” The old man said as he shuffled towards me.

“You are Mister Volpe, yes.”

The nurse moves backwards, making room for the old man. He looks annoyed that he might actually have to act professionally.

“Yes, that's me.”

The old man nodded and shuffled closer.

“How are you feeling?Your condition after your injury must have come as quite a shock as I can imagine.”

Losing an eye is definitely something I'm gonna have to get used to, but it shouldn't be too much of a setback.

“Nah, I'm feeling… okay. Uh, do you mind if I take a look at that paper?”

Dr. Akefu looks down at his paper, it takes him a little bit to put together what i'm saying, but he eventually gets it.

“Oh of course, you must be dying to know what’s happening now.”

He hands me the rolled up newspaper.

I start to quickly scan through each page until I reach the back of the paper. There's some stories of new construction, an ex- Johto champion recovering from an accident, and a few updates from the Aether Foundation. There is absolutely no news on the Team Galactic building. It seems almost impossible for what happened to not make the headlines, so why couldn’t I find anything on it. I glance over the pages a few more times. Still nothing.

“You think with what happened those journo leeches would write something about it, yeah.” I try to say it in a joking manner.

The doctor takes a moment to think about what I said. How is this guy still responsible for patients?

“Well, they did.”

“What do you mean they did?”

“It’s been all over the papers until last week.”

Until last week. Have I really been out for a week?”

A look of sympathy flashed on the doctor's face. He then turned to look at the nurse.

“You haven’t explained it to him yet?”

The nurse rolls his eyes, but doesn’t respond.

The doctor turns to look back at me.

“I’am sorry you had to learn this way, but you have been in a coma for almost three months now.”

Three months? I check the newspaper date which I passed over the many times I read through the paper. The date reads August 3rd. That is almost three months. I’ve been out for almost three months.

Three months. Holy shit.

My pokemon have been boxed for three months, three months of rent is due, all the shit in my fridge is probably bad now. A bunch of the consequences of being unconscious for 3 months start to flood my mind.

“We've alerted your boss of your current condition, he said he will be here soon”

The myriad of situations running through my head instantly stop.

“He’s coming here? Now?”

“Yeah, listen the first time.” The nurse snaps.

The doctor gives him an ugly look before turning back to me.

“Just rest before he gets here. In your current condition you may be able to be released tomorrow.”

With that they both leave the room and me to think about my current predicament.

Now that my thoughts are becoming a bit more coherent, I'm starting to realize just how much my field of view lacks by losing my left eye. Now I need to fully turn my head in order to see something next to me.

If everyone has been stored in my pc for three months, and assuming that it was right after backup arrived, would they know that I was in a coma? Do they even know if I'm alive? Ashley might since they couldn’t just throw her into the pc automatically due to the injuries.

This time I heard the footsteps outside the door, giving me time to mentally prepare before facing my next visitor.

The door opened as Chief Aaron walked into the room. He didn’t look too different from the last time we met, save for the somber look in his eyes.

“How are you doing kid?:

Hate the fact that he called me that, even if he was trying to be more reassuring, but whatever.

“I'm fine. It sucks that I lost an eye, but we have two for a reason.”

I try to put on a convincing smile, but it doesn’t seem like it’s working.

Well no point in wasting time.

“Anyway so now that I’m up, why don’t you tell me how the rest of the mission went.”

He’s taken aback at first by how fast I got to the point, but then scoffs.

“Really. Is this the first thing you want to talk about?”

“Well I assume that it must have gone well since I cleared out most of the organization before you guys even got there.”

He gives an exhausted sigh before disclosing the details.

From his and the rest of the forces point of view, they entered the building and made their way to the second floor, arresting a few stray Rocket members along the way. They found Blitz and Lucas in the auditorium with the unconscious grunts and executives. They cleared through the rest of the floors and finally made it to the lab. Once they got there they found me unconscious with Juno next to me. Ashley lying on the floor in the middle of the room, and the Garchomp dead near the wall on the opposite side. According to what they could find when examining the body, the chunk of metal that I was shooting at was pushed deeper into the Garchomp piercing its heart.

While the bullets did knock the metal into the Garchomp’s skin, there's no way it was deep enough to reach its heart. I can only assume that Ashley punched it in or something after I got shot in the face. But would a single hit or even a few be able to push it straight through its heart? I decided to worry about the details later.

From there they were able to retrieve all six of my pokemon and get me to a hospital.

I asked if they happened to find a member with a mask. The chief looked confused so I took that as a no. I told him that there was one and gave a description of what they looked like with the uniform, but left out the fact that I possibly knew who the person could have been.

There goes my potential lead for learning what happened after I left.

As the chief is wrapping up his side and all the press he had to deal with for two months, I interject with a question.

“So are we still looking for the stragglers? The doctor said, I’ll be out of here by tomorrow, so you can just assign me to-”

While I’m talking I notice a pained look on his face.

“What’s wrong?”

He takes a moment to carefully pick out his next few words

“While you did get us the information we needed, due to your injuries and the effect on your performance on your job that they may bring, the higher ups want to move you elsewhere.”

I took a second to make sure I heard him correctly.

“I’m sorry sir, what?”

“You will be stationed at Solaceon Town from next week to the foreseeable future.”

There’s no way.

“You're kidding right? You didn’t actually agree to that, did you?”

Theres no fucking way I’m being sent off to the boonies, the place where police careers go to die. It’s usually meant as some sort of punishment to be stationed there. So why am I being shipped off to bum fuck nowhere.

“Sir I can assure you that losing one eye is no reason to send me-”

As I try to plead my case, I push off the blanket and get out of the hospital bed. As soon as I take a step I feel something restricting my leg and I collapse to the floor.

Looking at my leg I see a leg brace around my shin, where the Garchomp shot it.

The chief helps me up to my feet and gives me a sympathetic look. For some reason that makes me mad. He means the best, but to me it feels like he's rubbing salt in the wound.

“Look, I did all I could, but they were really pushing this decision. So I was able to pull some strings and on top of getting you the most compensation possible, found a place you can live for cheaper than what you're paying here. Trust me it’s much better than your current apartment.”

I barely take in what he says as I’m trying to stop myself from getting a panic attack over my career basically being finished. I'm being sent off and stationed in the sticks.

“There is an old ranch in the woods of Solaceon Town that hasn’t been occupied for some time. You will be able to live there rent free. All you have to do is clean the place up.”

The chief goes on about the benefits of the place, but nothing registers to me.

I worked my ass off to get where I am, but now there's a good chance that for the rest of my life I’ll be stuck rescuing Skittys from trees and helping old ladies with their groceries.

The chief eventually finishes, but ends it with something I really didn’t want to hear.

“You are still young. Everyone at the station agrees that you shouldn’t throw your life away.”

Yes because the person who single handedly caught a wanted criminal the police were struggling to catch is too young to be doing his job.

After that he bids me farewell, once again leaving me alone in the hospital bed.

Maybe dying back in that lab wasn't such a bad way to go. It’s probably better than now being known as the police cripple. “Poor you, it must be super hard to wobble around the city like that. How about you go somewhere where the old people will help you cross the road.”

I look to the left of my bed. The windows unlocked. My mind automatically wanders to one possibility, which I instantly cross off.

Dying because of what's basically a demotion would be pretty stupid. Even if it means the end of everything I worked for so far. I guess it also wouldn't be fair to my pokemon to learn that I lived but then killed myself right after.

I try to clear my head and force the idea out.

Speaking of my pokemon, if I were to die then they would probably go to Aaron since I haven't written my will yet. If that happened he would most likely distribute them to officers who need them. Officers like Ben. Wouldn’t want to force anyone to be partnered with him. Even if I did write one, I can’t really think of anyone specifically I’d want them to go to.

I wonder if they miss me. If I died, there is probably no doubt that they would initially feel sad. I mean Taion did give a whole speech about it before things went to shit. He's probably not taking this too well at the moment.

But that being said, how long would that last? A few weeks, one or two months? How long would it take for them to move on?

If they did forget about me and move on pretty fast I can't really blame them. When life is happening you just need to take your losses and move on. There’s no point in crying over spilled milk. But for some reason thinking that’s a possibility makes me feel like shit. Normally that idea shouldn't phase me, but now I just feel sad.

Then I start to think about a situation where I didn’t do anything in the lab. One where I took the teleport and left. If that were the case then my one injury would not have been enough to move me and I probably would have continued to work in the city, maybe even making headlines again. But then Ashley would definitely have died.

“If that were the case then I would move on from it pretty fast. She willingly chose to continue attacking the Garchomp to save me so not doing what she wanted would be a waste” At least that's what I thought when I was crawling towards the teleporter.

Thinking about that makes me disgusted. Now I felt horrible knowing that there was a part of me that was ready to throw her under the bus. Losing one of the only people I could call an actual friend would feel way worse than the loss of some attention.

The image of a Zorua flashes in my mind.

I don’t really know how long it would take me. Maybe I just wouldn’t be able to move on.

Even now, when I know she's alive and is just in the PC, there is an empty feeling in my stomach. It's been the longest amount of time we’ve been separated, three months.

The room is almost silent with the only noise being the low hum of the AC. This would usually be the ideal situation, just being able to think and relax in peace, but I can’t really enjoy it right now.

I miss her.