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Blaze Finds Hope! (For Lucky~9~Lives) |
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The reason Blaze grew up believing in the power of fire was because of his scorching, red hair. This was also the reason he wore black T-shirts, a red jacket, and black pants that bore a flame motif. It was also the reason he changed his name to something more powerful-sounding that complimented his new sense of fashion. His clothes fit him quite well, because, although he was weak as a child, as he grew up, he developed a hot-headed attitude and became a fire-Pokemon trainer to prove to everyone that he had changed.
Rules did not apply to Blaze. The searing memories of his numerous failures in practice battles against his closest friends had scarred his ego and made him a vulnerable target for the higher-ups. The higher-ups were infamous for their definition as the higher-level Pokemon trainers who were just looking for chances to level up their Pokemon with no regard for who they hurt as long as it was not themselves.
Now, as he stands at the entrance to the legendary Ilex Forest, his clenched fists at his sides, he feels the excitement of his Pokemon, who, in their Pokeballs, are attached to his leather belt. Numerous rumors constantly revolve around this bug-inhabited maze of trees, but only one of them is said to be true. This universal truth was even genuinely confirmed by the guardian of the forest himself, who ensures that no one enters the forest unnoticed - a man known as the Ilex Warden.
Many of the same kids who bullied him when he was little were afraid of the rumor that declared that the mystic Celebi apparently inhabited the shrine that is the center, the heart, of Ilex Forest. Blaze finds this very frustrating. A mere rumor was more terrifying than him?
The spheric homes of Blaze’s Pokemon wiggle against their clutch on his belt. They must really be excited at the threat of danger, huh...? Blaze thinks. Maybe they don’t believe in such a silly rumor, either...
He takes a determined step, then another, confidence never faltering. Though excess leftovers of confidence do seem to slide off his skin in the form of nervous sweat. His first step on the forest floor of Ilex Forest seems to beg him to unleash one of his Pokemon from the Pokeball. The Pokemon of choice is his Arcanine, selected using basic battle information and statistics based on weaknesses and strengths of different Pokemon types.
The mighty, ferocious dog Pokemon leaps out of the Pokeball and immediately sets to its owner’s commands - destroy as many bug Pokemon as possible! Its angled, black zig zags blur as an enormous blast of flames erupt from its mouth. The scene reminds Blaze of how leaf blowers let out a flurry of air and pollute the environment by doing so. The two scenarios, in Blaze’s mind, seem to relate pretty well to each other, but instead of polluting the environment, Arcanine pollutes the bug Pokemon by corrupting their short-lived lives.
One of the main annoyances for Pokemon trainers is that when a single attack is focused on one individual Pokemon, hundreds more of that same Pokemon species will assemble around you to try to exact revenge on the trainer that had weakened their comrade. Today is odd, though, because that wasn’t happening. After Blaze’s Arcanine wiped out a small group of Caterpie, Blaze expected more to come out of the forest’s gloomy, moist shadows, but no more of them appeared.
Right after Blaze’s thought of Maybe they’re all too afraid of me already...! a sudden tinge of weakness strikes his legs and leaves them paralyzed. By the time he grasps the situation and realizes that he must have been poisoned by the Beedrill that have a proclivity to fly around, flapping their poison-scattered wings in an arbitrary pattern, the weakness had already spread to his gloved hands.
Ah... Poison lowers stamina... I forgot... What a mistake... on my part... His voice follows a downwards crescendo as a sweet, flowing melody tickles his ears and caresses his body. He recognizes the song as the famous chant of the legendary Pokemon known as Celebi. Suddenly, the realization that this might be the perfect chance to claim Celebi as his causes Blaze to he pull himself to his feet and yell, “Arcanine, use flamethrower!”
The only sense of returned acknowledgement is a puppy-like bark, weak and undeveloped. The devolved Pokemon lets loose a scratch attack instead of the commanded move, for, included in the effects of Celebi’s time reversal move, all previously-known moves become non existent. With a sickening sensation coming to life within his stomach, Blaze’s face turns red with annoyance and anger towards Celebi, who he now realizes he will be unable to capture.
“Come on, Arcanine! I know you’re in there somewhere! Go get Celebi!”
Blaze’s words of encouragement fall flat, though, and he seems to be the only one who hears them. Refusing to give up, even though he knows defeat is inevitable, he discharges another Pokeball and sends it spiraling into the air before it lands with a soft plop! on the overgrown grass and foliage.
The emerging Pokemon appears to have devolved as well. Just as Blaze doesn’t recognize the new Pokemon, the new Pokemon doesn’t recognize Blaze, and therefore doesn’t follow his order. Blaze, confused that this feeling is mutual, looks down at himself and realizes that the length his gaze has always spanned has shortened. He lets out a quiet murmur of bewilderment, which only adds to his overall surprise, for his voice now sounds like an inchoate little boy’s whining. To make it worse, his crimson red jacket slides off his shoulders and his motif-bearing pants sink to his knees, then onto the forest floor.
During his seemingly lasting situation, Blaze’s face deepens into a variation of the red color that now symbolizes him. What a wrong usage of my signature color... he thinks smugly in shameful embarrassment, glancing over at his two degenerated Pokemon. He then pulls up his pants and secures them with his red jacket by tying it as tight against his shrunken waist as his weakened muscles can handle.
“Let’s go, Charmander, Growlithe. It’s no use now,” he says, as he can longer see any sign of the graceful, legendary Celebi. He bows his head as a grim state of mind overtakes him, making it feel like his face has been obscured by tens of thousands of Gastly.
Just like that nursery rhyme about that child who only had his starter Pokemon as a friend... Blaze thinks nostalgically, remembering the nursery rhyme of the area he had grown up in. It told the story of an isolated youth who had too high of morals because of his immeasurable quantity of defeats and his pitiful ratio of wins to losses. It was told to teach every beginning Pokemon trainer just how important wins and losses were. Blaze finds it nerve-wracking that even trainers who have gone way past the basic graduation level still can’t grasp the idea that winning and losing does not amount to their whole existence.
Then again, Blaze thinks subconsciously, maybe I should listen to my own rambling complaints...
A slight headbutt to the small of his back prods him out of his reverie of ideation and self-pity. Turning his head, he catches a very narrow glimpse of one of his devolved Pokemon as it paints a streak of red and orange fur against the dark night of the eerie forest.
Along with this gust of presence, Blaze hears a slight yip! by his right ear. Attempting to turn even farther around by twisting his bulky neck, he finds that such a flexible, gymnastic movement is virtually impossible for a new adolescent, such as himself, to accomplish. As a result, he totters back and forth like a semi-collapsing building and flails his arms like a sun dried Magikarp failing to use its infamous splash attack.
Once his balance is completely lost, Blaze plummets backwards, only to land in the fluffy, fulvous scruff of his Growlithe’s neck. Nearby, his regressed Charmander giggles, its four stubbed baby teeth visible due to its mockingly wide mouth.
Oh, please, Charizard... Like you’re not one to talk! Blaze innerly jabs at his ignorant Pokemon companion. What ever happened to those great wings of yours, huh? he adds in for a few extra measures to get back at him even more.
After his inhospitable argument with his starter Pokemon that now had a returned sense of immaturity from its earlier days with him, Blaze feels more and more irritated at what Celebi had done to him and his Pokemon. Celebi had reduced them to cast members of a kindergarten version play of the Three Musketeers. After working so hard to become more able-bodied and secure, Blaze now finds himself clueless as to how to get out of this maze of events that seem to be leading to his new self’s demise.
When he stands up, his dilemma-provoked feelings rush to his head like a bubbly, carbonated drink. Before they overflow and drown him, he’s allowed a fleeting look at the lush, thick layer of grass and other herbage to calm himself down using their tenebrous beauty.
So impermanent is this moment that when he hears heavy, crunching footsteps approaching, their point of entrance being the encircling trees, Blaze automatically wishes that he could snatch back the interval of time that had opened its doors for him. He has acknowledged the fact that in his littler state he functions much too similarly to a twerpy child than he prefers. He thirsts for any contingency that he might be able to clear his head in order to function more like his real self, with actual sensible suggestions and input rather than nothing but callow tantrums.
“Excuse me, son. I saw you when you entered the forest. You seemed to be rather indecisive about entering or not. My opinion is that you should have chosen the latter.”
Blaze whirls his head around, an expression of complete awe scrambling his facial features into that of a child who has been caught in the act of doing something unsuitable. What his dark eyes witness is the Ilex Warden. The man who guards Celebi’s wooden, leafy abode is now towering above Blaze, who had previously made an audacious endeavor to casually slip past him in the dark of night. His efforts seem to have been in vain, though, because he was spotted and tracked down anyway.
The Ilex Warden was known for being a kind, semi-old man that had the honesty of truth forever in his eyes, especially when he talked about his early days as a youngster. All of the older and more understanding Pokemon trainers found his stories intriguing and inspiring. The tales of the Ilex Warden’s allegiance to the forest told of an early, misguided Pokemon trainer who had clear, vivid reveries about “evolving” into the watchperson of the landmark that meant so much to him.
These daydreams replaced the more commonplace goals that most of the other juveniles hoped to achieve. The first and foremost goal a great number of young trainers wanted to achieve was to become an important, contributing, strong, and plucky high-ranking Pokemon owner. While the Ilex Warden’s dream was to become the guardian of the forest he was so attracted to, many other kids his age held inside them a strong ambition to evolve their Pokemon in order for them to reach the highest evolution level.
Despite his obvious differences from the other trainers, the Ilex Warden grew up successfully, always chasing after his dreams with a positive mindset. He was relatively easy-going when it came to rules and instruction. The reasoning behind his slight awareness of moral discipline is that he himself had once trespassed on the soil of Ilex Forest as a child in order to satisfy his curiosity.
When the Warden at that time caught him sleeping propped up against the rotting, wooden shrine with notebooks filled with observations surrounding him, he cut off the remaining penalties of trespassing. He was stricken with a sense of severe respect for the boy, who had studied the ancient forest so much he had fallen asleep under the weight of knowledge he must have obtained. Because of the kindness the previous caretaker displayed to him, the new Warden was influenced enough to lead that kindness into a new generation.
“You do realize now I’ll have to bring you back to the entrance. From there, you’ll go to the Pokecenter, where you can use those gym badges of yours as safety-pins to aid you with your diaper-duty,” he says, chuckling in a teasing manner, knowing that it must have been Celebi who cast its powers upon him.
The Warden gently grabs Blaze’s small, pudgy hand and makes a beeline for the forest entrance. He doesn’t even say a word of discipline to him on their way there. When they come to stand upon the firm, untouched earth of the forest opening, the Warden stops for a moment and turns all the way around, his worn tennis shoes scuffing the ground as he lifts them up, to whisper to Blaze in a low tone.
“Would you like to go back to see Celebi?”
Blaze almost bursts out of his skin with held-in anticipation. His little kid nerves buzz with excitement, but he manages to avoid rocketing back to Celebi himself. The mind of a child that had been unwantedly returned to him speeds ahead and ponders all the different things he could do when he found Celebi. Speaking to the man who will show him the legendary Pokemon that trainers all over have sought for makes Blaze’s voice tremble with bliss, and it seems to dance as he speaks up to return with his sure answer.
“Yes, I would!”
Yawning, the Warden briefly swipes his rough, aged hand over his face, as if there is something stuck in his eye, and says, “Sadly, son, I don’t believe that’s possible. Celebi has a stubborn habit of only showing herself only when she isn’t wanted. She doesn’t reply to requests...”
This statement shatters Blaze’s wave of excitement and clamps down its teeth on his imaginings that had been brought to life by his first glimpse of Celebi. It hadn’t dawned on him how much his consciousness craved to see her again. Now how will we get back to our original bodies...? Blaze desperately wonders, a feeling of hopelessness overcoming him as he looks down at the forest floor, eyes blurry with newly-formed tears.
“Aw, don’t be so down about it, kid!” the Ilex Warden says, clapping him on the back in an attempt to cheer his rapidly falling mood. “When I was your age, or.... the age you are now, I got disappointed over things that I thought, at the time, were serious and would never get better. But as I got older, I looked back on those things and laughed. See, look! Even she’s laughing at you!”
The faint yet distinguishable silhouette of Celebi fades into the dark of night just before Blaze turns his head to look where the Warden is pointing. The silky moon shines through the trees and seems to cast the final spotlight on Blaze’s trio, signaling the end of the Three Musketeers’ performance.
 bakamonogatari · Wed Apr 03, 2013 @ 12:21am · 0 Comments |
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