[attr="class","ashley1body"]
Crash.[break][break]
It all just happens at once. The Zapdos throws a leg out, and like lightning, it shatters Pluto's protection. It sslams into Haku's chest, the dragon beginning to fall out of the sky, plummeting ever faster downwards, Ash's eyes staring on with fear, and ever faster does his heart sink as he grabs onto Kepler.[break][break]
Down to earth, Haku slams into the ground. She's alive, but as soon as the impact is made, the world goes dark. Ash's silvers close as he tumbles away from him. His body damn near ragdolls over, as consciousness leaves him a spell.[break][break]
For a couple of minutes, he's still, but breathing.[break][break]
His eyes shoot open.[break][break]
He wakes up to the masses surrounding him. The peasantry just surround him, and he pulls himself up to see the way they look at him. Some of them he noticed on his reconnaissance above the world, and some of them, he noticed just around on the ground during his assault on poisoned palms. They look at him like... he was something more. A hero?[break][break]
"I'm not a her-"[break][break]
He tries to deny it, but there are children here, and he remembers a dream he had a awhile ago now. His lips turn up. A day way back when, he wanted to open an orphanage, for kids like him to have a life. He never really got to have a hero when he was younger. Someone to look up to? The best he had was
THEO BECKETT. And, well. That was a problem to begin with, back then at least.[break][break]
One of the kids puts a crown on his head. He melts, because... that was enough to tip him over. He tries to smile. Maybe this was fine? When he turns his head towards where his boyfriend was, he stares at the little bird in his lap.[break][break]
He is nothing like a king. He is no king. He's hardly that, but he gave people hope. Isn't that enough? So as he enjoys this, they laugh, they crown him as royalty. Let them believe. Let him believe.[break][break]
If he can inspire this much... why not more?[break][break]
---[break][break]
It becomes abundantly clear, sleeping in their bed, lil' Chocobo between them, that home was fading away. He missed home sometimes. He'd get up, in a lavish robe, to stare at the moon, and just... settle. Come to terms with home being gone. A far off memory. He missed
Isaac Merlo,
ana fell,
Naia Kayode,
mint frost, and
jayden cross. The world was so much different now.[break][break]
He had to be a king now. He dealt with people coming in his courts, and asking him for help, of which in the first month he did about as well as a plank of wood does establishing parliament.[break][break]
Barely. Sometimes, probably most times, he had to delegate to
Selena Desmarais, because she was a superior. A mentor, almost. A safety net. A lot of the times, he did speak with
kepler brueshaber as well. Ash was many things, but an intellectual? Not much. He read the odd magazine...[break][break]
Heh. Magazines were so old now. A far off memory.[break][break]
When Calyrex came, the prophecy comes with him. And Ashley is forced to reason his way through it all. Constellations would reveal wisdom? So it was important to stay awake at night. It would give them the wisdom they needed. So nightly, he would stare in the night sky. Waiting for a sign.[break][break]
Kepler is so perfect for the role. Smartest guy in the room... that was a joke he kept razzing Kep about, and with the prophecy so readied for them, it helps give Ash peace of mind.[break][break]
Weeks on, he just keeps staring at the night sky. To look at the stars, to study each one, as he leans into a disabled Haku, who can no longer take flight. Her days of flight over, she resorts herself to be a pillow, while he studies the night sky over and over again. Stars. He begins to draw constellations, trying to derive meaning...[break][break]
They used to call this astronomy.[break][break]
---[break][break]
The war continues. He's grown older, another year wiser. His black hair is back, and it's probably gonna stay a fixture, with a little half and half. He's even taken up wearing glasses now. It's weird. Every single attack has him go out to assist the war effort, but he barely feels like he gets to do anything anymore.[break][break]
It's been months, but... well. He was gonna do this, until he was pulled from Hoenn to this Galar. Now was as good a time as any. One particularly nasty Grimmsnarl was sighted, and Kep went to go fight.[break][break]
Ashley was always worried.[break][break]
When he came home though, that's when. He'd peel Kep off of Chocobo, and hug into him, a kiss laced to his filthy cheek.
"Hey filthy, I'm Ash." He'd gotten into puns now. How long had he been here?[break][break]
He'd tended to the men, the women, the children. He inspired hope, he tried to anyways. All the soldiers happy for the moment to be home, the battle hard fought and won. Tomorrow was another day, but tonight, they feasted. Ash said as much, because tonight he picked his queen.[break][break]
"Marry me."[break][break]
Because Ashley holds the ring out to Kep. A feast for this joyous day. He's crying now. Ash is too, and he presses his forehead Kep's.[break][break]
The crowd is offput, because royalty wedding a commoner, but King Ash has done little to show anyone else his heart but Kep, and as he sweeps him off his feet, and they holds each other tightly, he's grinning ear to ear.[break][break]
"Tonight! We feast!" He calls out to light the peasantry's spirits, and all while he carries Kepler away. He was so much happier, like the troubles of Hoenn were so far and away now.[break][break]
He was happy. Finally. Happy.[break][break]
---[break][break]
Ash was a frontline Rocket once upon a time, in another life. An Executive, but here, he felt like he remembered what drove him for so long. Without the poison of Rocket so much affecting his mind, he could just be Ashley Shepard. Well. King Ash, but that was different. Entirely so. But sometime in that, he had found a fascination with protecting the people. Something in him grew a desire to protect.[break][break]
When the Necrozma came, things took a turn for the worse. Ashley, wiser at the age of 35, would look upon his people, and bare his heart. He saw men and women, crying for their loved ones in battle. He saw children missing their slain parents. And...[break][break]
It got worse when it was the parent who lost the kid. Those times, he felt his heart shatter again and again.[break][break]
Necrozma would leave... he would give them their reprieve, but an older Ashley would grip his head. This was troubling, but nothing they hadn't dealt with before.[break][break]
He holds Kepler close to him that night, when he confides in him, and Ashley just... remarks with a smile.
"Well, the Black Knight is troubling. But, you always do seem to lead our people brilliantly." He says it like it was always their people. As he pulls Kepler closer, and kisses his forehead.[break][break]
But go back...?[break][break]
"Maybe one day... believe it or not, I was intending to ask you to come to Galar with me when I proposed all those years ago. The luscious greenery, the vibrant stadiums... I miss Hoenn, but I remember so little of it now. I can't even remember most of their faces." Sad as it was, it wasn't untrue. He doesn't really want to.[break][break]
As Haku, the fluffy old Dragonite, would crawl into the room, and sit right by the bed in a curl, much tihnner now and unable to fight, Ashley would go to sleep with his queen, holding him tightly.[break][break]
---[break][break]
Maybe it was the happiness he felt, or how Rocket didn't affect him, but those black fragments from Necrozma, he found himself creating something himself; a need to lead the way, to protect those who followed. He found himself, in the shop at night, creating himself a shield. He spends nights on it, taking words from local blacksmiths, learning how best to forge it, the strongest materials...[break][break]
But it is done. The shield is large, enough for him to struggle to throw it around. They called it a kite shield? Black, with these red colorations. It was like Rocket, almost. A fun memory.[break][break]
He would gaze upon it.[break][break]
"The King's Shield is done." And that's exactly what it did. A
King's Shield.[break][break]
A shield for the people. Hopefully. It would be enough.
Sx6bpZ4l
[break]
@tag[break][break]
NOTES
-
WARDROBE[break]
- They crash land, Haku the Dragonite can no longer fly. The people crown him, and he at first is reluctant. He finally accepts it after remembering a dream he had one day.[break]
- He isn't a great king at first. He's pretty bad, and Kep actually is more proactive in figuring it out. But, Ash still tries in his own way.[break]
- War continues. He tends to the people during one particular fight.[break]
-- He proposes to Kepler as he gets home, and yells to the people of a feast tonight for his queen. Ash is happy.[break]
- Necrozma comes in, and shit is fucked. But Ash and Kep get through it, and share a night to confide. Ash didn't want to go home.[break]
- Creates the King's Shield, capable of
King's Shield. Defensive, baybee!