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“heh, i didn’t take you for the fighting type.” [break][break]

mika pauses, a handful of poke balls held in the crook of her arms. “i’m really not,” she begins to say, “but i found that it helps to have more pokemon for all sorts of different situations.” [break][break]

Julie Solette laughs. her laughter could make the sun rise and the stars fall — her brightness could make blazing fires look pale. “always prepared, aren’t you?” [break][break]

the ranger sets down her things. she’s heard that saying a few times before, and her answer to that remains the same each time. “not always.” [break][break]

rays of sun enter through the window, blinding rays of light that cast onto the shadows of their body and slowly crawl upward. in this light, a reflection of their entire lives — one family’s vacation in the summer, the other family’s vocation, blue and pink like the early dawn, meeting at the horizon between the sky and the sea. months spent in happy bliss, months turning into years, young and hopeful love carrying them like petals on the breeze, like sunlight across a vast ocean. [break][break]

(and at one section of the crossroad, a world where mika takes off flying, going higher and higher where no one can reach her. not her pokemon, not her parents, not even julie. soaring above the clouds as though she could truly distance herself from whatever happens on the surface beneath.) [break][break]

(but at this section of the crossroad—) [break][break]

julie looks at mika, carves a little space next to her on the couch. the sun washes over them, but all mika feels is the way julie’s hand fits in hers. “...i don’t want to talk about this next part.” [break][break]

in a perfect world, julie would reply “what part?” because she would be oblivious to what happens next; to the wrinkle in the fabric of mika’s reality, the wrinkle in everyone’s fabric, reality, life. [break][break]

instead, even dreams are tainted by the cruel reality — by the history of the region and all it’s done to the people living within it. [break][break]

julie says, “you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. i already know.” [break][break]

mika leans in closer, close enough they can rest their head on julie’s shoulder, eyes closed against her image. “do you?” [break][break]

“i do. team rocket, the wars, the legendary pokemon, all that stuff that sounds way above our pay grade. everything.” [break][break]

“then you know that—” [break][break]

“that you’ll be busy? that you’ll have to leave?” a rueful laugh, this time. mika’s heart twisting in its cage. julie places a hand near mika’s face, fingers curling against her cheek — slender and cool to the touch. “i figured as much. it’s okay. i’ll be right here waiting for you.” [break][break]

“will you?” [break][break]

and in this dream, mika doesn’t hear an answer. [break][break]

(or maybe, it would have been easier on their own heart not to listen.) [break][break]

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some part of mika hesitates. there are a hundred different things she can dream of, but to think of this particular one is… [break][break]

does she want to hurt Julie Solette by imagining this next part? or will they skip to the part where they get better — where everything gets better — because mika is too afraid of living through the parts that are worse? [break][break]

… [break][break]

let me do it, mika wills themself in the dream. julie… [break][break]

wind funnels as a barrier around mika. she reaches out, and the rest of the scene bleeds at her fingertips, coming to life. [break][break]

it’s midnight and there’s dried blood on her fingers. [break][break]

she blinks once, twice. the dream she creates is not a nice one, and the scenes of before flash in her mind, body and mind wavering as they remember it all. the medics already took care of everything serious, but… [break][break]

even in this sorry state, she wants to see julie. [break][break]

the door opens, and mika steps inside. there, she draws the attention of her lover, who’s radiant even in her nightwear and a pair of buneary houseslippers. julie peers behind her shoulder for a moment, casual in the way she says, “welcome home! you’re a little later than usual, did everything go okay?” [break][break]

“julie—” [break][break]

“mika?” [break][break]

she stands up from her place at the couch, ami and ruru (the latter who’d always stayed home with her other mama whenever mika went out to do something dangerous) startled at the sudden movement. julie comforts them with a shaky hand, then moves closer to her beloved with worry etched into the brights of her eyes. [break][break]

mika exhales softly, vision slowly blinking into the reality she’s chosen. [break][break]

a reality where she’s covered in evidence of a hard-won fight: dried blood stains (her own, her own, her own — she’ll never let her pokemon or her friends get hurt before she does), ranger uniform torn in places where she’d been caught on terrain, or where she’d fallen from being impacted, and a slight bruise forming on her right cheek. [break][break]

the smell of smoke and ash lingering around them like a ghost. [break][break]

julie runs to her, hands so gentle and so sweet, face falling devoid of emotion. except for fear. “what happened to you?” [break][break]

“...long day at work. there were some dangerous pokemon and—” she flinches— “people.” [break][break]

“oh, mika…” [break][break]

“it’s not that bad, really. i’m mostly fine, and i already saw a doctor and everything, but i just…”[break][break]

“...” [break][break]

i wanted to see your reaction. if you’d see the dangers and if you’d still stay — if being near me for long isn’t too much for you. [break][break]

isn’t that cruel? [break][break]

“well, let’s try not to make this a habit,” julie slowly says, a gentle attempt at humor in a dark time, “sit down and take it easy, okay? i’ll grab the first aid kit. let’s get you cleaned up.” [break][break]

and everything moves in retrograde, colors and light expanding and stretching, flecks of lights eclipsing into each other. julie’s image blurring at the edges. [break][break]

it’d be so easy to go further, to imagine that she’d continue to be silently supportive of mika, or always be ready to face dangerous aftermaths to dangerous consequences, but… [break][break]

would any of it matter if it wasn’t real? [break][break]

mika doesn’t answer themself. they simply sit in silence, watching as the julie of their dreams walks away, and mika — as always — doesn’t stop her, even if she wants to. [break][break]

she lets the feeling wash away, sighing as a new sight fills her vision and a new resolve fills in the empty hollow of her chest. let’s try that one again. [break][break]

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mika tries a second time, blinking her eyes against blinding light, stretching her fingers against dried bloodstains — grimacing at the way it cakes her skin, staining her body the way a red sun stains the sea. [break][break]

then she sees the door in front of her, and pushes it open at the handle, well-worn. [break][break]

inside, Julie Solette . inside, a chance to set things right. [break][break]

when jules startles with alarm, when she rises to her feet, mika inhales. “be honest,” mika says, a little shaky at the irony in her words stabbing her right back, “would you stay?” [break][break]

“...” [break][break]

“if…if things got dire, if i don’t come back, or if it’s worse than this…would you still…” [break][break]

be by my side? they choke on the words, swallowing everything but their fears. julie doesn’t move during this part, and the colors around them waver, lights flashing and dimming and flashing again. [break][break]

the furthest wall crumbles — mika speaks among the falling debris. “would you still want to be with me? would you regret everything? would you have…” more and more parts of the home disappear. the beautiful scenery of fortree, its magnificent trees and endless stretches of greenery, bleed into blues and reds, the sun setting and rising. endless colors in every direction. [break][break]

julie takes a step forward. [break][break]

mika continues to say, “would you have rather we never got together in the first place?” [break][break]

which, they’d understand. these are the thoughts running through their head, these are the doubts that informed their decisions in the past. for fear of losing julie — for fear of hurting her — mika took scissors to their relationship first, making the cuts that would sever them entirely. [break][break]

except, it never happened as cleanly as that. the threads frayed but didn’t break, and fate finds them in each other’s worlds, anyway. fate finds a way, and now mika stands before julie, silent. cognizant of all the wrongs they’d done to her; guilty of the crimes of ending their relationship, but still yearning for what could’ve been. [break][break]

for what might still be. [break][break]

“...say something, jules.” [break][break]

“what do you want me to say, mimi?” the other gets closer, her eyes downcast as she reaches for mika’s hands, fingers gently probing at the dried bloodstains. “do you want to say that i regret everything? that if i could go back, i’d never love you at all?” [break][break]

“...” [break][break]

“or do you want me to say that i’ll stay with you always, that i’ll weather the storm with you, that our love will never die?” she glances up at them, eyes glimmering. [break][break]

around them, an endless sky, clouds and stars dotted across stretches of blue and pink. wind that blows in every direction, mika’s sight obscured by wisps of navy-blue hair. “i don’t know what i want you to say,” she finally admits. “but i just want to hear you say it.” [break][break]

julie laughs. “then you already know your answer, don’t you?” [break][break]

and as dream-julie gently scrapes off the dried blood on mika’s hands with her long nails — as the sunlight catches on them both, setting their eyes and hair and skin alight — mika closes her eyes against the sight, nodding once. [break][break]

it’s just as well.[break][break]

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for as long as she can remember, mika had been living life for others. in her youth, she’d been the perfect daughter to two reserved parents, never questioning them, never acting out against their wishes. in her teenagedom, she’d been the model student and aspiring ranger-to-be, fulfilling everyone’s expectations, and never imagining a life of her own outside of these constraints. [break][break]

but in her adolescence, mika nakayama found Julie Solette , and everything changed. it hadn’t just been what does julie want, but what does mika want for herself, when all is said and done? when someone who brings out the best in her makes her see that there’s more to life than dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, that no one would reprimand mika for not signing directly on the line, or initialing where it needs initials. that if she stepped out of the four walls of her home, she’d see just how vast and wondrous the world outside is. [break][break]

she would see that her desire to save her region and help people doesn’t come from a life of obligation, but a heart of generosity — choosing to assist others when it’d be so easy to just stay on the sidelines. does this make them a hero? no, far from it. but does it save them in a different way, in a harmless way, in an exploratory and self-realizing way? [break][break]

mika doesn’t have the answer yet. but the more she dreams, the more her own reality is blurred, and it becomes painfully obvious that not even the sweetest fantasies can give her what she wants. the answer they’re searching for, the memories they’ve preserved…they’re all within reach, and all mika has to do is go out and grab them. [break][break]

my life starts with me. [break][break]

the dream shatters and breaks, colors and saturation fading out into a startlingly normal world, in the hoenn and in the world that mika really and truly lives in — not some sad paradise where nothing ever goes wrong. [break][break]

the julie of this world, the julie in the next, the julie from before… [break][break]

mika can’t change the past, nor can she predict the future. all she has is the here and now. [break][break]

and this time, when they reach out, it won’t be just color, light, and prismatic beauty scintillating at her fingertips. [break][break]

it’ll be something real. [break][break]

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the moment the dream continues into something resembling a game, mika knows she's out of her own depth. she's experienced some of this strangeness in dreams and distortions before, and has always tolerated it because it's easier to do that than to fight against her fate. [break][break]

but it feels different when she's no longer in control of said dream. before, mika's dreams seemed to bend to her will, and she lived out her fantasies for only a moment, facing the one she loves and telling her all the things she could never say. now? now, every scene in this dream world shifts with uncontrollable speed, colors and sensations blurring together imperceptibly so. one moment, the king tells a tale of conquest and fates, the next, a loud cry from outside draws the attention of her annihilape, the creature bounding out the door before mika can stop it. [break][break]

the king bestows upon her, and the other players in the hall, a strange dream ball each, telling them to take it with them on their journey. [break][break]

take this with me? she holds the pink capture capsule in one hand, blinking slowly. something this cute would better suit someone else, but... mika remembers that there's no time to waste, as the countdown has already started. a loud, blaring sound catches her off guard, and new information presents itself in a flurry of light and lines. it reads: [break][break]


[newclass=.rbynote]border-width: 9px 9px 9px 9px;border-style:solid;border-image: url('https://i.imgur.com/UUqNs3l.png') 9 9 9 9 repeat repeat;padding:6px 8px;color:#232323;text-align:justify;font:11px Calibri;letter-spacing:1px; margin-top:20px;background:#aaa;background-clip: padding-box;[/newclass] [break][break]

at that moment, mika's vision changes, and every object and value darkens around her, as though her eyes have become radars, instead. almost everything from the castle walls to the tall trees to the dirt roads are highlighted a bright red color, straining against her sight. however, she spots a few blue spots, instead, and looks down to see that the dream ball in her hand is also highlighted in blue. [break][break]

a distant cry shatters the sky and garners mika's attention. outside of the castle, into the depths of this kingdom, mika runs towards a forest, whose trees are spindly and leaf-less, more like bones sticking out of the ground than any plant life. among these skeletal groves, she follows a trail of footsteps dyed in helpful blue, ignoring anything else that even gleams of red. [break][break]

eventually, she finds a familiar face. it's kirai, her annihilape, who'd run out on her before. "what are you doing here?" she asks. "let's go back..." [break][break]

the annihilape stands still for a time. it doesn't move an inch, not even at mika's insistence. a deep black and purple miasma surrounds its body, eyes unblinking and hands curled up into fists. mika's breath catches in her throat. [break][break]

something's wrong. before she can react, kirai leaps onto his trainer, fists baring down on her. mika doesn't scream, only puts up her arms to block her face, the dream ball clicking open in the midst of their physical altercation. in a flash of light, the dream ball captures kirai the annihilape, and his weight disappears from this (dream) reality. [break][break]

mika falls to the ground, no longer being assaulted by her own pokemon, but not understanding what had just happened, either. she doesn't realize that the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, everything held in breathless suspension as a pop-up displays in her radar-vision. [break][break]


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and:


[newclass=.rbynote]border-width: 9px 9px 9px 9px;border-style:solid;border-image: url('https://i.imgur.com/UUqNs3l.png') 9 9 9 9 repeat repeat;padding:6px 8px;color:#232323;text-align:justify;font:11px Calibri;letter-spacing:1px; margin-top:20px;background:#aaa;background-clip: padding-box;[/newclass] [break][break]

mika stares at the words floating in front of her. these messages are talking about kirai, aren't they? her gaze shifts to the dream ball in her hands. it feels heavy with her pokemon's weight. sure, it had attacked her just now, but she senses there's more to its behavior than its typical latent aggression. perhaps kirai had been scared, confused, or hurt by something in his time out here alone. mika wouldn't try to "fix" something about her pokemon without yet ascertaining if it had even been broken in the first place. [break][break]

she decides to keep kirai the way he is, selecting the second option. the moment she does, the world lulls back into motion, and mika exhales. [break][break]

she certainly had her work cut out for her.

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she won't shy away. [break][break]

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