Everyone is shambled out of their holes in the earliest hours of the night, long before the sun paints the sky; something Vivienne and Usmar’s sides of the family seem to have in common.
They shift to the center of the party, around their newly-adopted monsterman kin. Every critter in the nest has the same different question on their minds; ‘are you staying here with us?’
When the answer passed around the crowd is ‘No’, the next, inevitable concern comes to light. ‘Do you live far away?’
They know the answer. Bataille has told them the tales of his family’s days along the Silver-Lanes time and time again, but they hope to hear something different straight from the chatot’s beak this time.
‘Will you come back to the nest, someday?’ the youngest monsters ask in a thousand different ways, infinitely assured by their elders, but this is still strange and difficult for them all.
‘The nest stays together’, that’s the rule, it’s the only thing they’ve ever known. The only time someone leaves the nest is when they’re cast out for being bad monsters, and it confuses them to no end; why would the Merchands possibly want to leave when the valley provides anything anyone could ever need in life?
‘Is Bataille leaving the den?’
No one says the words, but they’re spoken loud and clear from Monet’s exquisite mess of a face.
Batty kneels down to pick his little painter up and all three of them squeeze the rat silly in a long loving hug.
Tears stream down the artists’s colorful cheeks as random nesties pile on into a sobbing mound of atavistic words.
His human family need not speak the monster way to know the sound of a hard goodbye.
Monet says something to Vivienne with a sniveling swipe of his nose and she responds with a firm nod.
She squeaks a new decree, then a hoard begins to form as Bataille helps his mother and grandmother onto Poppy’s back for the long difficult hike up, wiping his eyes with a smile.
“What’s going on?” Usmar asks with a tingle of concern rolling out in misty clouds of breath.
Pikachu leaps onto the man’s shoulder, pointing up the trail that leads out the other side of their natural fortress home. “Chuuu!”
“Vivienne says everyone but the monsters on watch can come with us,” Bataille explains, waving to the skittering mass of yellow, black, and brown running towards them.
“That’s quite the procession,” Mère says, inviting Monet to hop up and ride alongside her.
What starts as a small parade of ‘chus slowly grows into an exodus as they climb the southern kalosian mountainside. Wild wandering monsters from all the other nests approach, curious of the crowd.
Upon discovering Bataille is due to leave the valley, they too join the fray.
Whole dens-worth of mountain-dwelling monsters merge with the mob, until the trails fail to contain them all and they snake up the pass in line as the sun prepares to rise.
A meadow comes into view, lined by a stretch of bocage bordering the forest, overgrown with citrusberry vines. The dilapidated remains of a burnt house stare out from the furthest-top depths of the thicket. A massive smorgasbord of vittles that, curiously, nobody in the parade jumps in to take.
Vivienne insists they stop and eat their fill, finding herself preaching to a choir of anxious voices.
The crowd moves in, as the Nest-Head says, but the children collectively stop meters from the edge, shaking in place.
Their parents look back to Vivienne, who slouches with a sigh and waves them on.
The old gather for the young and the swarm picks its edges clean in less than an hour flat. None are willing to venture deeper than a couple dozen steps, even for the promise of larger choicer fruits.
With timid refrain, each monster speaks a tiny word of thanks to the place before dining in. Without exception; especially the pichu under Vivienne’s watchful, matron's eye.
“Thank you for the gift,” Bataille says, looking towards the ruined building within. “May our passing not disturb you.”
“What’s that about, Batty?” Odétte asks, bringing a plump yellow fruit to her lips. “Thanks,” she says, overcome with an eerie superstitious chill down her back.
“Ah, well… it’s an old story, but I don’t think it’s mine to tell,” he replies, tying his hair back with a knotted leather strap.
Odétte turns her head toward Louka, and whispers. “Anything you can tell me, ghost boy?”
Louka starts to open his mouth, then looks down with a branch on his chin. “I dunno, it’s always been that way. This place gives me the creeps too. Valko goes in once a year, then comes back out with an armful of fruit. Won’t say why.”
Almost everyone seems to have forgotten that part of Valko’s story so many years ago, but not old Laurie Lumierre. And as the sun starts to spill past the rocky mountain peaks, nobody notices as she quietly slips through the wall of vines, just in time to dodge her family’s watchful eyes. Just long enough to say her thanks to the people who’d left Valko there for them to find.
It’s hard for an old woman to play at a child’s game. A dense growth like this is a castle to any herd of kids. But she makes her way through, eventually discovering a cleverly-disguised path, tenderly trimmed and cut to maintain easy passage through the massive thicket wall.
She bursts from the brush, covered in leaves and berry mush, to a garden. It is clear, lit in rays of amber sunlight filtering through the canopy top, carefully maintained even as an old cabin rots into oblivion behind her. As if her coming was foretold, one such column of light shines at a sharp angle, illuminating a spot at the base of a thorny old citrusberry tree.
Berry vines are a copper-clip a dozen. Children are permitted to feed on them when supper is not yet done, as they do not spoil the appetites of men. Berry trees though are rare just about anywhere, and to find one grown in the middle of that veritable monster metropolis is a miracle to behold.
There, glowing in a pool of morning light… It’s almost impossible to see, given away by a ring of talonflame feathers stabbed into the soil and in varying states of decay. A corroded leaf-shaped clump of bronze, coated in subtle sheets of verdigris fuzz; the head of a spear, made in the old sort of way that the last Emperor’s armies had forged by the million, attached to a heavy shovel’s handle.
They’re everywhere in Kalos, scattered across the land like empty acorn caps.
…but this one is here, isn’t it?
““Merci. Merci beaucoup,” Mère says, knelt with her fingers on the ground.
She waits like that, leaving only when she feels it in her bones that she’s been properly dismissed.
Behind her, beside the feathers and the bronze, is a single, shining, silver kalanc.
Nobody ever notices the dusty old woman going on about their business, do they?
Good. She doesn’t need the trouble.
“Let us be going,” Bataille says as he looks around, counting his family out. “We should make it to the cliffs by dawn if we hasten our pace.”
“Rightly. Let’s go, kitty-cat,” Mère says, with the caravan left none-the-wiser.
The marching crowd grows, little by little, until warm-blooded monsters start to flee at the sight instead and bugs scramble as they feel the shaking of their feet in the ground.
When they arrive, cresting a barely-manageable ledge, they are met by an army equal to their own.
Ampharos is there, spiraling with incredible rings of rising lightning force. His surging voltaic voice echoes up from the bottom of a great grassy depression. A herd of pink-furred flaffy dot his wall of sparking, golden, mareepwool fuzz. Their bolts of power dance around the herd, threatening to burst any speck of enemy dust that strays too close.
They alone stand between the sudden rumbling invasion coming for their sacred mountain glade.
Behind the defenders is a vast sea of white and green, wooloo herds as far as the eyes can see. They begin to form defensive clumps, each armed with a phalanx of dubwool horns. At the center of the verdant mountain-top crater is a glistening sapphire lake, stretched before the base of a sheer, towering cliff.
Pikachu leaps from Bataille’s tired shoulders, sliding down a slope of clovers and moss, and waves to Ampharos with a blissful enthusiastic smile. “Cha-aaaaaaaaa!”
Ampharos’ shoulders slump and the stormherd’s fury goes out with a whimpering flash. “Faaa?”
Pikachu runs forward, leaps onto his leg, and gives her father a warm snuggling hug. “Chiuuu~”
He scoffs with a defeated stare into the clouds and pats her on the head. “Baaa…”
Most of the monsters that joined the throng have never dared to encroach upon the foot of Valko’s den. The sight of Ampharos alone fills most of them with mortal dread, and the idea of angering the herd is a nightmare of apocalyptic proportions. To be welcomed in with open, albeit cajoled arms is a real treat. Less for any sort of material comfort or gain, but more for the bragging rights when they make their ways back home.
Pikachu and Vivienne chatter with him for a long time as their company of visitors marches in and mingles amongst the flock. Not much longer after that, huge winged beasts flutter around the natural stone monolith. Talonflame three, spraying menacing gouts of flame as they land and eye the newcomers Ampharos has willingly let by.
“Well well well.” The familiar, distinguished sound of Valko’s voice startles even Louka as the man slides out from a wall of leaves surrounding the glade. “I must say, your caravan has grown indeed, fine merchant,” he says, sporting argent strings in the fading blaze of his mane as he abandons his favorite sitting rock.
Usmar anxiously coughs as Valko arrives, same as he always does at the man’s mercurial entrances. “W-well, we thought it only right to arrive with the entire family, dear woolherd.”
Valko smiles at those wonderful words and embraces Usmar, clapping backs as Lailla swoops down from the nape of the canopy line. “It is an unexpected surprise finding you all here. You could have simply sent a messenger and we would have flown at a moment's notice.”
Ulphia waves from Poppy’s back. “After all the trips you’ve made on our behalf? This time we sought fit to save you the journey. For once, at least.”
Valko spots Odétte’s disgruntled star-struck face. “A pleasure to see Lumierre’s finest flower again. What’s on your mind, my dear?”
Mère hugs her granddaughter tight from behind as the girl simply cannot find the right words. “She’s just a little jealous, is all.”
“Oh? What ever for, mademoiselle?”
Odétte shifts her boots around. “I want to speak with monsters too.”
He pauses a moment, looking like he’s stunned with surprise, then bellows, holding his stomach with laughter as his partner roosts her massive claws around his shoulders. “Is that so? Very well…”
He leans over her in a rare display of his imposing height and muscular bulk, paired with Lailla’s looming predatory gaze. “How many years can you stand sleeping in a cave, my dear?”
She glances back at Bataille’s massacred skin and huffs, looking off into nowhere fast. “Pass.”
He chuckles. “If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me.”
Bataille approaches Valko with Pikachu and Emeline in tow, looking up at the man with clerical reverence. “You wished to see us, Master?”
Valko nods, his honey-colored eyes looking around at the mess of monsters spilling down into the valley. “Yes, but I wasn’t expecting so much company. Not that I am at all surprised.”
“Shoot.” The boy holds the side of his head with a tilt in his own quirky way. “Nothing ever catches you off guard.”
His master chuckles, and gestures for them to follow him down the valley “Come, everyone. I have something for Bataille.”
Valko stops by Ampharos and Vivienne. “Tell our guests they are free to visit until dawn.”
Ampharos looks around, seeing the population he’s responsible for has nearly doubled in number. “Phaaaaaa.”
“Worry not, old boy. I’ll make it worth your while,” he says and touches Ampharos’ paw with a smart zap of his finger.
Bataille moves beside Valko, gazing up the cliffs in a mirrored pondering stance. “Flying will be difficult for Mother and Mère both, Master.” He smiles, gesturing to a string of ropes dangling from a wooden beam above. “Shall I take them the slow way?”
Valko pats the boy’s back. “Let it be so,” he says as Lailla reaches over to preen through Bataille’s hair.
The walk is a glorious scenic display. The temperature is warm, the water-softened air cradles the skin, and the endless fields of wildflower grass give the place a difficult-to-define, nautical, floral aroma. It is a well-protected paradise, nestled at the top of the world. The only world he cares to know, anyway.
The cliffs are a dozen-times taller when standing at the foot of their height. The longer they stare, the more it feels as though the mountain might lift its leg and stomp them like a dandelion patch. Poppy delivers Mère and Ulphia, bowing as he steps away with his ears folded back.
While everyone else is stuck gawking up, wondering if Valko fibbed about his ascent, Bataille dashes to a copper-reinforced log platform. “Come, everyone. Let me show you what I’ve made!”
The family tips their toes aboard, looking up at the hundred-meter drop, and the silken line disappearing into the sky.
“This looks… dangerous, son.” Usmar clutches the clasp of his cloak, trying to settle the quivering in his voice. “Not that I am at all concerned.”
Bataille nods, squinting up as he tugs at the lines with his goggles on. “As long as you stay seated everything’s safe as a mudbray ride.”
When their butts find the floor, he makes a sharp whistling chime that echoes up the line. “Hey Golem!”
A round chonky head peeks over the ledge. “Grah?”
“Wanna put your weight to work?”
The rocky ball missing its chain lumbers over to a smaller platform, near a sturdy array of copper pulleys at the top end of the system. “Roll-goll!”
He tugs an activating line and, with a jerk and a pop, he drops as their passengers safely ascend the height.
Ulphia gasps as she watches the ground slowly disappear. “Ah! My goodness. It seems those years at the academy never went to waste,” she says, waving to Golem as they pass him half-way down.
“Quite the maker, isn’t he?” Valko asks with his back laid flat upon its great timber weight.
Usmar refuses to look, keeping his eyes locked onto the rockface side as the platform sways in the wind. “Ooh, I’m feeling a bit queasy, son.”
“That’s called vertigo. Pretty incredible, huh?” Bataille laughs out into the dawnlit sky. “It always gives me the feeling that I should jump. Isn’t that funny?”
His father swallows the apricorn budding in his throat, and coughs it right back up as they reach the top and the platform stops with a harsh downward bounce. Everyone that doesn’t inhabit a cave scrambles off with a skip of the heart as their feet finally find solid ground again.
Valko’s home is… unexpected. They weren’t sure what to expect, really, but they were sure it was going to be far grander than this. The walls are lined in basic brown sacks hung from strings and sealed pots that trace the corners of the floor. All of it uniform, clean, bereft of meaning. Besides that, the tunnel looks like any old bird-monster cave, with an impressively clean floor to boot.
Odétte’s eyes scan the spartan troglodyte home. It is lit with fist-sized shiny-stone beads, strung and hung from the ceiling; incredibly rare and valuable crystals traded amongst the Lumiose elite for lanterns and military signals. That Valko has so much of such a luxury while living like a frontier hermit speaks volumes.
The rest is silently said as they enter the antechamber. A single grassy nest piled in the corner and a simple fieldstone firepit welcome them in. Unlike the entrance, this place is littered with tools, trinkets, toys, bits, bobs, and a-thousand useless odds-and-ends; each wildly-different than the last.
Some are priceless treasures, made by master hands to please the eye in function and form. Others are priceless treasures, clumsily whittled with the roughened edges of a novice at work. Even more are priceless treasures too, being nothing but bright bits of color, meant to catch the eye and remind. Each is a heartfelt gift, given from every skill and walk of life.
He takes only what he needs, and everything kept in Valko’s innermost space is far from un-necessary.
The family recognizes their obsidian-glass cup they forgot so long ago sitting beside a dry bottle of sherry, an empty confectionary box stuffed with waxen wrappers, and a lacquered lock-box chest.
As they move beyond the threshold, a trio of Talonflame come down with a landing-thud to walk in behind them. Cloaks flutter in the wingswept air as they trot inside with tiny talon-clacks. No turning back.
“Everyone, this is Baya, Elaia, and Aquila,” Valko says, gesturing to his girls in red and gray. “Lailla’s kids.”
Bataille spews an unintelligible pellet of monsterspeech gunk and whips around on his heels, leaping against the fluffy, immolating bust of just one of the three peregrine queens. He’s smashed into a burning ball of affection spitting sparks in all directions as the caravan leaps back in terror.
All except Louka, who dances on the tips of his roots. “This is so awesome!” he cries, standing precisely where he means to, cheering even under the threat of a stray flame lighting him up like a desert haystack.
Lailla screeches with fury at her girls and they stop that very instant, looking up at her in terror, slowly backing away from Bataille who has survived totally unscathed. Save a head of ruffled hair and his goggles shoved askew.
The scraping shuffling sound of a shell sloshing with brew, Petri the shuckle wobbles between their legs with an excited face. But he frowns as he settles down, finding his someone special in particular isn't there.
Valko stomps out a smoldering remnant of flame with a trailworn rawhide boot. “Mind yourselves, girls. Our guests are still learning.”
One of them, with a slightly more vacant stare than the other two, squawks with an inquisitive tone and a long tilt of the head.
“Oh, but of course!” he says, Lailla’s head bobbing with agreement. “This is an important occasion.”
All three turn, heads rocking as they move back into the light. The party nearly falls to their knees from the absolute ear-crushing symphony of screeches bouncing around the cave.
Usmar’s brain shakes, vision swirling as he props himself up on a wall. “Blaziken blight on a coffer!”
After a while, Ulphia finally uncovers her ears. “What is that?” she asks with a raised brow.
“What is what, Mama?” Bataille asks, adjusting his eyewear.
“That! It’s like trees rustling in the rains,” Ulphia says, tempted further into Valko’s den by the promise of a good sit-down.
“Oh,” Bataille chuckles. “Thats just the babies.”
“The wha—”
The light of the sun outside is blotted out and the air of Valko’s home is whisked into a squawking, squeaking, chirping storm of feathers and screaming guests.
Valko hoots and hollers at the ruckus, arms splayed out to seat a dozen fletchling and fletchinder kin. “Hello! Hello, my little coals.” He gives a few of the nearest gentle pecks of the beak. “That was fast. They must have seen the commotion you all stirred up the trail.”
Odétte smiles as something finally comes to her. “It always ruffled my feathers that you never finished that story,” she says, petting the head of an affectionate fiery chick, “but I think I know how the ending goes.”
Valko nuzzles his worries away against the brow of his partner’s head. “I did say she’s great with kids.”
Bataille greets each and every one, stumbling over himself as he sprays monster words all around. “It’s been months since I’ve seen them all in one place. What a wonderful day,” he says with his eyes trailing off in a subtle despondent display.
Valko notices the flicker in his pupil’s unwavering brightness and pounces. “What is wrong, little bird?”
“I wish my Pépé could be here with us today.”
A less astute man would stumble over the implications. Valko however, catches that memento mori hanging in the air and rushes to the boy’s side in an instant, squeezing him up in a rib-cracking hold.
The falcons follow suit, bulldozing Bataille’s family into the fray with chitters of commiseration and concern, empathetically preening through human hair. Shouting in shock, his human kin learn first hand what a comfort huddle is really all about.
“He was a great man,” Valko says and lifts his head to gaze at the rest of his guests, “from a house of great people.”
“Shuck?” Petri says, ever the silent type, heart broken out from his quiet resin-sealed shell.
Mère looks down, smiling as her one final item of business has finally wandered by. “Mærwine wanted me to bring you a message,” she says, kneeling down as her hands reach into a hidden pocket of her blouse.
She uncorks the top of a burnished silver bottle, bearing the Sun of Kalos, and brings it to his little lips.
The last lonely drink of an old sinner’s flask.
Mère forces a familiar sweet and sour smirk across her face. “ ‘Gotcha, you boozy little bastard.’ ”
Hot, overpowering, nothing but ether and the solitary taste of copper-boiled rye humping his tongue.
The finest sip of liquor he’s ever had.
She sees his shuddering wince turn to a tearful grin and gives him a gangly nod of approval.
Bataille wipes bitter, happy tears from his eyes. “Ha. Well. I know he’s happy and healthy with Arceus now. Said he’d see me a Sage before he’d feel Giratina’s icy grip. Not that Distortion would rest a day, long as he’s there.”
The old Sage chuckles at that, ruffling tender work-hardened hands through his student’s hair. He looks into those bright, beautiful, hopeful eyes; still so full of love, curiosity, and ambition. “Well, I think Giratina’s got himself a problem then… has been for a while. Should probably tend to that.”
Bataille leans on his crook, snuggling Emeline around his neck and Pikachu in his arms. “What do you mean? There is so much more left for me to do before I could ever match your level of mastery.”
Valko shakes his head, pointing to the rising light outside. “Who but a Sage could move a mountain of monsters with but a word of his passing?”
Everyone behind Bataille is stunned silent, clawing their hearts with surprise.
“Wait, but, when? How did you know? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I live knowing the strongest never stop reaching for the sky.” He clamps Bataille’s shoulders up in those massive roughed-up talons of his. “Then one day I found myself flying higher because of you.”
The old hermit moves to the table and grabs that jingling dust-choked chest.
“A title is a word, granted by the lips of an untold number of others,” he says, speaking in a rare solemn tone as he turns a key around the lock with cranky grinding gears. “I accepted from the beginning that I may never know when you would be ready. No one ever did see the exact moment you evolved, but the world has felt its weight each and every day since… Oh, and I just remembered.”
Valko opens the box, unveiling an untouched trove of gold and silver coins.
Everyone feels their chins smacking against the floor as Bataille stares into the glittering pile of wealth.
“Your Pépé dropped this a while ago. I think he’d want you to have it now.” He pauses with a wink. “Considering the circumstances.”
The pupil meets his master’s eyes as he takes the fortune of cash, falling to his knees as he feels its incredible weight in his heart. “Thank you, Master. For everything.”
“If you insist, my friend, though… just Valko will suffice.”
The Merchands and the Lumierres revel with the Shayminites in a glorious week of economic camaraderie; one that looks a whole lot more like love and charity. This stay only, rock bottom prices, everything must go, profit be damned when family and friends are on the bottom-line.
And besides, in the light of separatist elements skulking about, a lighter load makes a swifter wagon train. His and Her Majesty would be very interested in learning that Lumios’ younger greedier nobility have gone sour on the standing economic treaties, too.
The villagers need this short sweet stretch of time. Bataille, though they know him well, is a mysterious flower who’d been growing in the back of Valko’s garden, finally budding on display for all to see the bloom. The chance to sit with him, ask him, get to know the man their beloved little boy has become.
When the smallest scrap of pemmican is hocked, the last bolt of cloth is swapped, their final barrel of rum is rolled away, the time finally comes to say, ‘Goodbye, my friends, we’ll see you all another day!’
But one person, one monster in particular, grows antsier and antsier as the final fateful morning comes.
“Chiuuu…” Pikachu hums with a troubled look as Bataille helps his father fold and pack the pavilion for the first time in five-long-years.
“Chu?” Bataille chirps back, still acclimating to anthrocentric speech, and the itchy plain-linen fatigues his family had in stock to replace his comfortable, unwashed, monsterman rags. Itching all the more since his family dragged him into the river to scour his smelly-arse clean.
She twists herself into silent knots, looking back at her mother, her father, and that loving community she’s known since the day her nose broke through the shell.
The village walls are packed shoulder-to-shoulder with monster well-wishers come to give them a long bon voyage; all of Bataille's closest and furthest friends, family, and acquaintances seeing them off. So many in fact that Tauron has resorted to tapping the emergency stores to keep the hordes watered and fed.
Monet would have been there, but the poor little guy just can’t bear to watch his favorite person leave, having emblazoned Bataille’s staff with the colors of his people in his own absence. Yellow wood, striped in brown and black, copper coated red to never forget the nest awaiting his eventual return.
Her home has always been beautiful, magical, safe, so unlike any other place she knows exists beyond this little mountain pass. But it all feels so different now.
So many friends. So much family. So fondly held the memories.
…So little to look forward to in life.
“I’m going to miss you most of all, you know.”
Pikachu snaps back to consciousness with the face of her beloved, batty, big-brained boy smiling straight through her defenses, right onto her soul. “Chiii?” she says, choking up with a wobbly smirk. She points to herself in a pathetic attempt at summoning her signature stoic smokescreen.
He nods, rubbing her in all the right spots, just behind her cheeks. “I shall read every census I can lay my hands upon. You’ll have a name by this time next year, sure as Shaymin sprouts!”
“Chah?” she asks, like she’s seeing the young man in a dream, speaking with muddied meaning alone.
“Well, yeah. I’ve got so much catching up and settling down to do when I return to our house in Lumiose. Next spring is the soonest I can promise.”
He jumps to speak again as her expression turns a darker shade of blue. “B-but I know it's going to make our eventual reunion all the sweeter.”
Pikachu stares, empty with shock, like the bard just dropped a dirge at her own wedding.
“Brutus and Smokey are bridled proper-tight, Uncle,” Merle says as he rounds the side of the biggest wagon with the wobbly tree-point gait of a decorated crutch. He’s dressed in a spoiled colorful wardrobe. Cut and sewn to perfectly match his proportions, with a little left to grow into for later. Sheathed at the hip are his Bleeding Wings, whose scarlet leather scabbards shine proudly on display.
Louka and his mother run beside him. “Now don’t you go breaking yerself with too hard-a-workday, young man!” Gretta commands, flexing the muscles of her shoulder-setting arms against her hips.
“Mama’s right, the bones are glued back together now, but they’ll snap like a twig with a real nasty hit,” Louka adds, wishing nothing more than to be needed, wanted, and useful.
“Yes, Madame…” Merle moans with a grateful smile. “I’ll be extra worthless, just for you,” he says, looking into Louka’s big, red eye with only a tiny quiver in his gut.
“Save a slouch for me too, Merlinus dear,” Estelle coos, nuzzling his cheeks with a lovely, motherly, smotherly hug. “And you’d better eat a feast of red meat. Can’t have my little warrior shriveling up!”
“Yes, Madame…” he responds with a face running red as raspberry wine, Odétte giving him the cheekiest side-est of eyes.
“You’re about to export a lot of trouble to the capital, you know,” Tauron says, looking Usmar square in the eyes. “I hope you’re ready for many-a difficult conversation.”
Usmar waves his hand with a swirl of his cloak. “I’m no stranger to a tough sell.” He plucks his lower lip, squinting the mayor’s way. “Say, what of those fellows we traveled here with?”
“Pardon?” Tauron asks, without a single hitch in the pitch of his voice. “What fellows?”
A thankful chill tumbles down Usmar’s spine. “Rightly. Be well, my friend. My associates will be with you before the summer rains wash the lowland routes. Can I count on warm bunks for their stay?”
“Of the warmest sort.” Tauron claps Usmar’s shoulder and lumbers off with Estelle hung around his arm. “Anything at all for a Merchand.”
The crowd shifts around Valko as he comes to see his student for the last time in a long, long while. “You know, you can always stay here. You need not leave just because the old man and I shook hands.”
Bataille shakes his head with a stern, determined jaw. “As much as I loathe to leave my nest behind, the rest of the world needs to see the valley’s light!” He looks right through Valko’s face, on into the clouds. “I want every place in Kalos to look like Shaymin’s Pass one day. It’s the only way I can possibly think to properly thank you for everything you’ve taught me.”
“Mind your own mayhem, son.” Valko hugs the young Sage and turns away with a snappy, two-fingered salute. “Just spare a thought for this old, Woolherd’s flock.”
“A lofty goal for a lofty soul,” Usmar says, choking down a throat full of happy bitter pride as that old insane druid is clutched up by the shoulders and carried off into the sky. “My only regret is that I cannot guide you where your light shines in the dark, son.”
Bataille’s head quirks aside. “You weren’t meant to be my master.” He wraps the man into a hug that flings Usmar back to a day when he watched his little boy battling monsters in the yard with wooden swords. “You’re meant to be my Father, and I’m not the only one who’s said you’re doing Arceus proud.”
Usmar refuses to say a gods-damned thing, for fear of breaking down before Arceus and everyone else. He wraps an arm around his son and then runs for the reins as ‘something’ is stuck in his eyes.
“Rai!” Vivienne chimes with Ampharos in tow, startling her daughter from behind. “Pikachu. Kai rai pichai.”
Bataille, Sage of the Silver Lanes, picks Pikachu up. With a squeak and a kiss of her cheeks in that old kalosian way, he readily accepts the second-degree burns she’ll inevitably reward him with.
But the punishment never comes, and he sets her down. Petting Emeline behind the ears for comfort, his tiny timid friend clings to the neat, kalosian braid they’d salvaged from his ratted mess of a mane.
“Thank you for everything. I love you, Denmother, Denfather…”
Then that twisted monster of a man can’t help but blind her with his beautiful eyes one last time. “...and especially you, Pikachu.”
Emeline sees her rival, partner, friend suffering from shock for the first time in her life. “Ma… ga,” she peeps with a cordial empathetic wave goodbye.
“All on the train!” Usmar shouts back from the front. “We go!”
Pikachu watches in horror as Dialga slows the moment down, just for her.
He turns, leaping to the topmost rung of the backmost ladder, and sits with his legs hung down, watching his final childhood years fading away behind him. “I shall return! Goodbye, everyone!”
She stands there, squirming with her parents’ paws upon her shoulders and her heart begins to race with anxious fangs biting her lips. “Chuuu… Chuuu…” she moans, wanting to fold over and puke as he grows more and more distant by the second.
Vivienne tells her that everything is alright, that Bataille will be back in no time at all while she’s busy guarding the flocks. Ampharos adds nothing but a curt affirmative grunt. Distraction through work is his standard operating procedure, no need to sulk when there’s so many things needing done.
“Chuuu.” Pikachu’s head shakes as she’s trapped there, clawing at her own cheeks, watching her gods-damned nerd flying the coop without her.
Valko’s cheeks curl into an expectant smile from the top of a great, venerable, southern pine, far away. “What will you do, trailblazer?” he says to himself in hushed tones with Lailla watching from a crooked sideways gaze.
Pikachu’s paws step against her own will, feeling the catch of her mother’s claws snatching her back by the scruff. “Chuuu!”
“Why are you so worried? What’s the hangup? Didn’t he embarrass you to no end Now you don’t have to worry about him dying, right You’re a free ‘chu Now you and Monet have something in common Here, let’s getyourmindoffitallandgoovertheplansforthewesternherd’smo—”
“Piiiiii KA!”
The crowd scatters as the air snaps apart and the ground around her shatters into a thousand, miserable pieces, blinding everyone with the sunlight-flare of her cheeks as she strikes her parents’ arms away.
Bataille blinks, rubbing the afterimages from his eyes to see Pikachu dashing down the road, Vivienne and Ampharos in hot pursuit. “Uhhh…”
“CHUUU!” A gaggle of villagers scrambles away, screaming as she drops trails of pulsing thunder-well traps in the road to slow her parents down.
“Pikachu, wha–” he stops with a breathless grunt as she tackles him into the back of the cart.
Vivenne zigs and zags around, dodging the clumsy braindead obstacles as Ampharos crashes through every single one, gritting his teeth as each of his daughter’s powerful techniques test his mettle head on.
“WHOA! WHOOOA!! WHOOOOOOA!!!” Usmar and Merle boom in perfect unison as the bulls sense the energies surging behind them, panicking with elevated breath and stomping hooves.
Vivienne flashes to a stop behind the wagon, snarling with ear-splitting buzzing sounds.
Pikachu digs her claws down into the lacquer-slathered wood, teeth bared as she spits verbal fire right back down.
“What in Distortion is burning back here?!” Usmar roars with the rest of the caravan behind him at a run. And then they all dash the other way the very instant they spot a couple of prime, alpha boltbringer-does half-a-hair from lighting the air on fire.
“What’s going on?!” Ulphia cries as a static wind whips the hem of her dress like a flag. “What’s wrong?”
Bataille scrambles up behind his friend, feeling his hands tremble and clench at the power pounding his muscles and nerves into submission. “She says she can’t stay, she wants to go with us.”
Vivenne spits, gesturing for Pikachu to get back down from there and come with her.
The booming flash of a bolt of lightning strikes between the ends of their eyes and a crowd of curious onlookers skitters like bugs in the grass.
Emeline shrieks in horror and desperately grabs Pikachu’s ears to soak as much of the chus’ immense, natural power as she can, and even she starts to writhe and scream.
He gasps as the pain rolls up his limbs and into his shoulders, clenching her against his palpitating chest. “Gnnnaah! I knnnow she doesnnn’t have a nnname. She hasn’t even c-come-of-shape.”
He stutters and hangs on his words in pain. “B-but I don’t care. I’mmm tak-king her with me!”
“Batty, she’s HURTING you!” Odétte shouts from the canopy top. “Let her go!”
“Ch-ch-chiaaah—” He gives a jerky, stubborn shake of the head with his eyes clenched shut. “Nnno!”
“BAH!”
Ampharos’ monumental booming voice smacks the stupid out of everyone, sucking everyone’s power from the air like a tub of water with the bottom fallen out. Both Vivienne and Pikachu gasp as every last ounce of reserve is ripped away from them, stuck staring with powerless animosity at one another.
He doesn’t raise his voice often, but when Ampharos barks everyone knows to shut the fuck up.
He stands between his mate and their first-hatched child with a grumpy furrowed brow, wagging his stubby flappy arms as he gives her a piece of his mind. Everyone bears witness to the rare vision of Vivienne stuck beneath someone else’s tongue, slumping with humiliation at her own rash behavior.
He gives her a series of stern questioning bleats and Vivienne replies with a slow resigned nod.
When he’s done with her, he wobbles around, and gives Pikachu one long monotone command with a single, final, authoritative stare.
“What’s he saying?”
“Hah… he says Vivienne is being overbearing and unreasonable, and that she isn’t seeing the forest for the trees.” Bataille pants with exhaustion, laying his head upon Pikachu’s brow now the suffering has subsided. “He told Pikachu that she has been far too stubborn about this for far too long…”
Ampharos points to Bataille next, growling with irritation.
“...and if she means to leave, then she needs to pick a name.” He reaches into his pocket, and brings the weathered thunderstone he’s been trusted with out into the light. “Then, when she’s come-of-shape, she can wander with the blessing of the nest.”
“Well, get on with it, you idiot!” Odétte jeers.
With everyone’s eyes on him, and the memory of his Pépé burning in his heart, he smiles and says, “how about… Æthelwine?”
Pikachu looks up at him with a tilt of the head. She doesn’t understand it at first, having never heard such a word, spoken in a dialect her Bataille most likely read in one of those dusty old book-caves he told her about. But then, as she remembers the source and import of Emeline’s name, her face lights up with a tearful nod. “Chu!”
“Ethel, for short,” Odétte peeps.
Pikachu leaps into Bataille’s arms, tingling his face with an ecstatic chirp as Emeline churls in cheer.
“Isn’t that a man’s name?” Usmar mumbles, and grunts as Ulphia socks him in the stomach.
Vivienne groans, dragging her cheeks down as she comes to a cold hard realization.
“If I may venture a guess,” Mère says as she slinks beside Vivienne like a dusty gray shadow, “she’s become everything you ever wanted her to be?”
Vivienne grumbles with a nod, wiping away the only tears that have escaped her control in years.
Bataille sets his third-half down with their thunderstone rolling around his fingertips.
Her partner straightens his shoulders, ready to recite the rites of changing.
“Pikachu, from this moment forth, as long as the earth is wide, from the skies to the bottom of the sea, you shall be known amongst men as Æthelwine…” He pauses a moment, knowing every ceremony he’d seen before permits a bit of creative flair. “Warrior of Thunderfleece Nest. Guardian of the Shaymin way. My beloved partner.”
Ethel closes her eyes, knowing that when she opens them again, she will never look the same. She locks on to the image of her own reflection she’s seen every day at the water’s edge, wondering if Bataille will like the way she looks in the end.
She definitely won’t miss that big, nasty scar on her shoulder, though.
The spot where it touches her brow burns, like a red-hot coal pressed into the flesh…
The sensations are so breathtakingly difficult to describe.
That warmth spreads like a hundred years of moss, the world falls silent, and your senses numb away. Every bit of your body is unwound and your sense of self shatters in a bright blinding instant. Brittle, broken, drifting in a darkness second only to death, all that your primordial-remnant of a mind knows is the feeling of a body busy being woven back together again.
Then, slowly but surely, your conscious mind revives, awakened from the deepest sort of restful sleep.
She blinks, looking down at the bigger, darker, stronger paws clenching her long whip-like tail in a bone-crushing grip. She feels… vacant. Not like she’s been emptied out, but as if everything she was inside has been poured into a vast unfilled vessel.
“Rrr… Rrraaai?” she says, and gasps at the unfamiliar timbre and tone of her voice.
Ethel’s body is restored… refined… reborn. Barely recognizable from the one she’s left behind.
She’d thought Bataille could see the soul behind her eyes, but now she knows for sure as he swoops her up for a happy sappy cry.
Ethel is a raichu now, a grown woman in the eyes of her people, ready to accept responsibility befitting her wisdoms, talents, and skills. But what and how would she do that when she’s gone so far from the nest?
In times like these, Mother, more than any other, knows best.
Vivienne lays a paw on their eldest-child’s forehead. She is humble, despite the difficulty letting go, and blesses Æthelwine with the heaviest burden she’s ever rested upon another’s shoulders.
She is to travel with Bataille, to be the grounding force of his soaring mind, to defend him and his righteous mission from all that would do them harm…. and then, when the world finally shines like home, she’ll guide him safely back to the nest, right where he belongs.
Everyone watches as that good merchant’s train drives up the valley, vanishing behind the hilltop crest.
“Little bird, little bird…” Valko rests against the trees, far from the nearest living breathing thing as Lailla lays her head upon his shoulder. “What sort of mischief will you make?”
A family changed forever finally meets their prodigal son again, but five years is a long, long time when a million things are happening in the blink of an eye.
How will they handle bearing witness to all the ways he has altered the world, or all the ways the world has altered him?
How will they react as they watch their bright-eyed fair-skinned boy lay down the silver-and-scales to take up the crook and walk his path as man?
