Candy

Yeah yeah I know. "You said you were restarting reading like a year ago. What happen?" I'm terrible at reading ok donut judge Luna is that u? What we gonna see, or actually, not see in that battle? Ngl I love it when these kind of things give stuff away cause even smol brain Candy can see they screwed up lol owo That's one big bad cliffhanger lol I like that you actually upped the stakes in the slums, which makes why Victoria wanted to stop Gabriel earlier make sense. He really ain't the type that could get past some gangs in one piece xP Also I want to self-congratulate myself for reading a good number of chapters on one sitting cause I can rarely do anything for this long without getting distracted lmao *bows* thank you, thank you *bows*

Glad you enjoyed the read~ When I emphasized that Vanini got ahold of a megastone, I kinda needed to make an episode where she actually got a mega bracelet :p You can expect her to use it sometime in the coming, intense af, battle(s). Afaik she has 2 pokemon that can mega-evolve so that'll be fun to change it up.

I literally foreshadowed the same thing twice (the one you mentioned and at the end of the chapter) lmao Now, it'll be disappointing af if I don't pull something shocking to justify so much overt foreshadowing I ain't tellin', but I am

From Everland to Reborn ~ Episode 89 Behold the most filler episode (actually maybe there were other episodes with more episodes... I can't remember donut judge) ever! Enjoy anyway uwu I exited Amaria’s Gym arena, and took a deep breath when the doors shut behind me. What a great deal of things had happened, and just when I’d thought I could take a break from the stressful events that happened in the desert. I wasn’t looking forward to what would come next... though I thought I couldn’t possibly be justified in complaining about it at this point. After all, in a way, I signed up for constant mental and emotional exhaustion when I got too involved with the people of this region. Great things must come with a great price tag. I sighed and started walking around the pool of water in Amaria’s living room. Julia was still rocking on the waves, but was fully alert this time. When I entered her field of vision, she called me to bring me to a halt. “Vanini! Did you battle Amy yet? How was it?” She tried shifting her position to sit up, but the float wasn’t stable enough and she went overboard with a massive splash, before I could answer either of her questions. She came back up and complained some about how cold the water was. As she swam over to the edge of this makeshift pool, I told her that I had battled Amaria and won. “That’s great, congrats!” she said, attempting to hug me while soaked head to toe, but I pushed her away. “I’m leaving for Calcenon now. I’ll ask Candy to take me there,” I said. “Oh yeah. You must be in a hurry. Your ex-lover was taken hostage, right?” The latter part of her sentence winded me but I recovered in time to correct her misunderstanding. “I am in a hurry,” I said. “But not because of that. For all I care, they can feed him to Lin’s Hydreigon. I’m in a hurry because I’ve been absent from Calcenon for too long, and don’t know how things are going there.” “Sure, sure, whatever you say, Vanini.” The grin on her face didn’t really synchronize with what she said, but I figured wasting time convincing her wasn’t going to be productive in any way. “What will you do?” I asked. “I’d love to go with you, but I’d like to keep an eye on Amy. I don’t think she’d like to be alone. So I’ll stay here. I think Rini is up there? Last time we saw each other, she said she was going there but IDK if she’s still there. Anyway do say hihi~ to her and the others for me.” I nodded, bid my farewells and went away. Pikachu and I walked over to Obsidia Ward to visit Candy’s shop. However, when we got there, the only person inside was Cookie, Candy’s husband. He greeted me politely and told me that Candy was helping DJ Arclight out, so he didn’t know when she’d come back. Apparently they were returning some pokemon that Team Meteor had stolen when they were posing as the Daycare couple. I remembered that incident rather well, since I had been the one to battle the impostors and free Candy from a warehouse so that she could return to her shop. Cookie served cookies and tea for me and told me to sit while I waited for their return. I asked him whether he didn’t have a flying pokemon that could take me up to Calcenon, but he gave me a negative. I asked him if I could borrow any such pokemon from among the ones he was taking care of as a Daycare, but he also refused because they took their safety too seriously to jeopardize it in any way. I understood, since the Daycare must’ve taken somewhat of a hit in their reputation when Team Meteor stole some of their pokemon, but that didn’t make me any less unhappy while I waited. Candy and Arclight returned about half an hour after I arrived. I was cooling off my third cup of tea, when the entrance flung open and Candy shouted that she was home, as if she even needed to announce it. “Vanilla! I’m soooo happy to see you. I was soooo worried when you left for the desert! I’m relieved that you’re well… albeit with skin peeling off here and there. The desert mustn’t have been very forgiving on your pale skin.” “Yeah, the sun was harsher than I expected.” “Did Archer and Julia return with you? They said they’d go after you, so I didn’t go fetch you myself.” “Yeah. Though, in multiple instances, I felt like your dragon friend would’ve helped us a great deal had you come with us.” “Hehe, that’s too bad. I’d have loved to have a vacation in Tourmaline Desert, but I can’t be absent from Sweet Dreams Pokehotel so often, or its dreams would be reduced to 50% sugar,” Candy laughed. “By the way, Vanilla. I have a huge favor to ask you, if you can spare an hour or so of your time.” “I’m in a hurry, to be honest. I only came here to ask that you take me to Calcenon.” “Please, please! I promise I’ll give you something super amazing, which will make the sacrifice totally worth it. Right Arc? You’d give her that?” “That? What is it?” I asked. Arclight laughed and almost told me what it was, but Candy stopped him. “We’ll tell you what it is if you complete my favor. I swear on my name that you’ll not be disappointed, since it’ll aid you in becoming a stronger trainer.” I was irritated by Candy’s roundabout shenanigans, but I couldn’t really turn a deaf ear to something that would strengthen me as a trainer. Perhaps I could spare an hour, since I had already been gone for almost 2 weeks already. What could change in an hour, realistically? “Fine. What is the favor?” Candy hopped on one leg and clapped once. “I knew you couldn’t resist. I’d like you to help us return the stolen pokemon to their trainers. We’re almost done, but any help would be most welcome. We’re all pretty exhausted from running and flying around all day. Ah! Also, Rayquaza’s going to be too tired to fly all the way to Calcenon if he doesn’t get help, me thinks?” “Sure, whatever. All I need to do is give the pokemon back to their trainers, correct? Do you know where the trainers are?” “Yep! Arc, give her some of yours.” Arclight opened his bag and took out five small ziplock bags that contained a small card and a pokeball each. “These cards each say what pokemon is contained in the pokeball and information on their trainers,” he explained. I took the bags and put them in my bag. “Alright, I’m heading out. You better be back when I’m done,” I said and ran out of the house. When I entered the Opal Ward, I stopped and sat on a bench to check the locations of the trainers I had to deliver to. “Peridot, Jasper, Apophyll, and two from Lapis,” I read aloud. “That’s all over the place. Is an hour really going to be enough to complete this? I wish I had like 5 people I could split this job with.” In any case, sitting on my ass would accomplish nothing, so I stood up from the bench. I was ready to head to Peridot, when I had an idea. If all we needed to do was deliver these to people, it really wasn’t necessary for the delivery person to be human. “Pikachu,” I called and he jolted on my shoulder. “Would you help me out on this one?” Pikachu hopped off my shoulder and looked up to me, but was silent. The disguise’s head was tilted to one side. “I have to deliver these to some people around the city. If you could take these two and deliver them for me, we could finish up quicker. One is in Peridot Ward and the other in Jasper, so they should be relatively close to each other. I’ll take the remaining three, and will start with Apophyll because that’s the farthest one.” Pikachu took the plastic bags and squeaked. I patted his head and we walked in opposite directions. It had been a long while since I had navigated the city without Vanilla, and even longer since I had done it completely alone. Fortunately, the Wards she assigned me were two of the three I knew best, since I had traveled through them even before I met Zo. Since I was walking over from Opal Ward, I decided to look for the owner of a Jigglypuff in Peridot Ward first. I asked around for clues and directions, but the pokemon in the area didn’t know of this Santiago guy. Whoever he was, he mustn’t be someone that spent much time out in the open, I presumed. I eventually found him in a dark alleyway, but I was at first hesitant to approach him. He was talking with a few others, all with shaved heads and big bodies like his, and from the few words I could understand, the topic of their conversation wasn’t very pleasant. Yet, I needed to finish my delivery so that Vanilla would be happy, so I approached them. They were startled at my sudden appearance, as expected. It didn’t bother me, since I was already used to such reactions from other humans. I took out the card with the trainer’s name from the plastic bag, and showed it to them. Before most of them could finish reading the card, though, the one I was looking for quickly snatched it from my hand and pulled me over to a corner of the alleyway. “Jigglypuff … f*ckin’ … pokemon. Don’t want … know about that … or … f*ckin’ make fun of me… Find some other person …? … I’ll go get … when we’re f*ckin’ done… Just f*ckin’ … tell me where.” The gist was that he needed someone to keep his Jigglypuff for the time being for reasons I couldn’t really understand. I thought I could do this for him, but would need it written because I doubted I could communicate his message to another person. I looked around me and found a pen on the floor, so I picked it up and gave it to him so that he could write the command on the back of the card I had. He gladly did it, though he seemed to have trouble with spelling a few words. Once I had the card back, I placed it in the ziplock bag again and left the alleyway. I thought that maybe I could ask the favor to the person in Jasper Ward, thereby killing two Pidgeys with one Geodude. This time also, I wandered the Ward without knowing where I was supposed to find my target. However, this time the wandering took much less time. Jasper Ward was smaller than Peridot, and I had acquaintances in it. When two such acquaintances, who had been talking to each other, saw me, they approached me quickly. One of them ran up to me and scooped me into her hands, while the other just jogged behind her. If my memory serves me well, they were Sandy and Maxwell, the two who helped my friends, Ynnie and Nina, reclaim part of their home. “I have seen you … Pachirisu mimikyu … Vanilla’s?” Sandy said. “I think his name is Pikachu,” said Maxwell. “Pikachu!” She twirled around twice before putting me down on the ground. “What brings you here?” she asked, sitting on the ground to be almost on eye-level with me. I took out my ziplock bags and handed her the one that I needed to deliver to someone in Jasper Ward. She read the card in it, and her face lit up. “... Looking for Lillin? I know … follow me,” she said and stood up. Without missing a beat, she started jogging. I understood that she would guide me to the person, but keeping up with her speed was challenging for a small pokemon like me. At last, we were in a building, and the trainer I needed to see was sitting in the lobby, reading a book. “Excuse me, Lillin?” “Oh no. What … Sandy?” Lillin frowned when she saw Sandy come inside, but when she saw Maxwell enter behind me, that frown disappeared in an instant. She stood up from her chair, pushed Sandy out of the way and got way too close to him. “Maxwell! How are you?” she asked. “... must be tired… Come up … coffee or tea?” “Thank you, but I’ll pass.” I pulled Sandy’s shirt to remind her what we were doing there. “Lillin, this is for you,” she said and handed her the ziplock bag. Lillin took the bag, but the frown reappeared on her face. “Oh no… Why … Loudred … Goodbye fair sleep.” Then, I handed her the other ziplock bag, with the card that had Santiago’s message written on. Lillin was confused at first, but once she read the message, she laughed maniacally. I got spooked by her sudden mood change and scurried to hide behind Sandy. “Jigglypuff is mine now,” she said. “... All the nights … precious sleep … they’re mine! Mine!” It appeared that Lillin intended to keep the Jigglypuff as her own to silence her Loudred. This, ironically, made me worry about Lillin’s safety rather than the Jigglypuff’s owner’s feelings. Santiago’s friends didn’t seem to be the understanding type… “You can’t keep … not yours,” Sandy scolded Lillin. Lillin said that she knew that, and that she didn’t actually intend to keep it, but that she wanted us to get her something that would deal with Loudred’s noise so that she could let go of Jigglypuff. I had no clue what I could do, but I instructed Lillin in signs and futile squeals to write her message on the back of the card and to give it to me. Fortunately, Maxwell was better at understanding me than the other two were, and Lillin was also much more willing to listen to him rather than to Sandy or I, so he got what I needed on my behalf. We returned to the corner that Maxwell had to keep standing in order to keep handing adverts. “What should we do?” Sandy said, biting her thumb. “Should … another pokemon?” Maxwell suggested. “Doesn’t … sing, it could be … sleep powder or grass whistle?” “For Lillin, hypnosis would do best,” Sandy giggled. As we were discussing potential pokemon to give Lillin, Vanilla showed up to check on me. She also frowned when she saw who I was with. “How did it go, Pikachu?” Since the situation had become slightly more complicated than I could explain with squeaks and jumps, Sandy and Maxwell did so on my behalf. “So you need something to put her to sleep despite Loudred’s noise?” Vanilla summarized, and stroked her chin pensively. “You know, I think I have an idea that won’t involve looking for and capturing a pokemon that can learn sleep-inducing moves. Come Pikachu, let’s finish delivering the remaining pokemon together.” Vanilla bent over so that I could run up to her shoulder. “See you in a bit, Vanilla and Pikachu,” Sandy said and waved at us. “I was able to deliver 2 out of the remaining 3,” I explained as I pedaled Archer’s bike. “The last one appears to belong to a kid who just recently got kidnapped. That’s my luck.” I passed the Peridot, Opal and Obsidia Wards. From Coral Ward, I sent out Kame to get me to Apophyll. “We’re going back to Apophyll. The girl I delivered a Makuhita to had these terrible noise-cancelling headphones. I’m thinking maybe I could buy them from her. After a year of battling in this region, money is one thing I have in surplus.” I reached the beach and quickly headed to Apophyll academy. The girl was still listening to music in her room, reading a magazine. As I expected, she didn’t react to the sound of the door being opened or to me calling her by name. Only by shaking her by the arm, did she notice that I was once again in her room. “Oh, it’s you again. What’s up?” “I’d like to buy off your headphones. How does ₱30,000 sound to you?” “What? Wait, wait. My headphones aren’t for sale. Besides, I don’t need that much money! Don’t you know we, who walk the path of zen, are minimalists?” “Then, why don’t you minimize your possessions by giving me your headphones?” The girl frowned at this, but apparently gave it some thought, because this was what she said next: “I think there’s something I’d be willing to trade them for, and I think you’d be able to get me it, realistically speaking.” She narrowed her eyes and her smile was nothing short of creepy when she said that. I wondered whether this was my cue to leave her alone and go along with Sandy and Maxwell’s plan to capture a pokemon for Lillin. “I’d like an autograph from this specimen of a man!” she said, pointing to a huge picture of Arclight which occupied two full pages of the magazine she was reading. “I tune into his show all the time. I was so psyched just from talking with him on the phone when he told me about my Makuhita, you have no idea!” She shut the magazine and jumped while holding it close to her chest. “Alright, alright. I’ll ask if he can do me that favor.” I took a couple of quick steps backward, so that I wouldn’t be within her reach. “You will? I’m so psyched! I’ll be waiting for you, while listening to a recording of his 2008 live performance.” I quickly headed back to Obsidia Ward. By then, it had already been 50 minutes since I started Candy’s task, but unfortunately I didn’t think I’d be done in the next 10 minutes. “You’re back! Are you done?” Candy asked, and I replied with a negative. “I need to sort 2 more and I’ll be done,” I said. “For now, I need Arclight’s autograph.” “What’s up with that? I didn’t know you were a fan of his?” Arclight also looked at me with a suggestive smile. I blushed at their obvious misunderstanding. “Don’t be idiots. It’s not for me, it’s for one of… ack, forget that. Just give me your autograph.” “Haha, it’s no problem at all,” Arclight said. “You don’t need to be shy, Vanilla,” Candy smirked and poked my shoulder teasingly. This is the last time I ever agree to one of Candy’s last-minute favors, I decided in my heart. I went back to Apophyll and gave the autograph to the girl. She was in so much awe that she said almost nothing to me and voluntarily handed me her headphones. Now that the headphones were disconnected from the source, the music sounded from the speakers. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration if I said that I could feel the whole room vibrating to each beat of music. I left that room with barely a semblance of eardrums, and made my way to Jasper Ward to hand the headphones to their new owner. Sandy and Maxwell were still chatting in a corner when I came back. They were glad to find that I managed to trade my time, pride and eardrums for some noise-cancelling headphones. I asked them to guide me to Lillin, and to our surprise, we found all the people and pokemon in the lobby fast asleep, while Jigglypuff sulked by herself. “Lillin, wake up,” Sandy shook her. “Mhm… Is it you, Maxwell?” Sandy and my glares intersected on Maxwell’s face. “Y-yeah, it’s me,” he said, blushing. “Just wake up, will you?” Lillin slowly woke up and smiled when she saw that he was, indeed, there. “I’ve brought noise-cancelling headphones. Now you’ll agree to return the jigglypuff back to her owner, right?” I said. Lillin laughed and said that she wasn’t going to keep jigglypuff anyways, since she wouldn’t steal a pokemon when hers had been stolen. However, she gladly accepted the headphones from me. “I’m glad everything is sorted out now,” Sandy said, taking Maxwell’s hand and forcibly highfiving it. “... I think I need to sort out one last thing,” said Lillin to Sandy, with a face that would scare the devil himself. I hurried out of the building, for I had neither the time nor the patience to get caught in the crossfire. “Now we have one more pokemon to return. Let’s find out where the little kid was kidnapped to, teach a lesson to those skinheads that kidnapped him, and give his pokemon back.” Something I said appeared to resonate with Pikachu. He hopped off my shoulder and started running, occasionally looking back at me to make sure I was following him. “Where are we going?” The place he guided me to was one of the alleyways that way back, when I had first set foot in the region, had reminded me of my secret base in the Underworld. In here, there was a group of skinheads, talking in a low voice. Without an ounce of hesitation, Pikachu walked up to one of them and pulled on his shirt. “Oh lil guy, you’re f*ckin’ back. Come ‘ere,” he said and ran over to a spot closer to the entrance where I was. He was spooked when he saw me, either because he didn’t expect anyone to be there or because he thought I was a ghost, but regained composure quickly. “What’re you doin’ here, lass? This ain’t no place for f*ckin’ kids like you.” “I’m that Mimikyu’s trainer,” I said. “Ah! Then you f*ckin’ know about Jigglypuff?” I nodded. “That changes a great f*ckin’ deal of things, don’t it? Come ‘ere too.” He waved his hand beckoning me to get closer, which I did. When I was close enough for him to hear me whisper, I told him where his Jigglypuff was. I omitted all the extra nonsense we had to deal with, since that was irrelevant for him. “You’re my hero, dawg. Tell me anythin’. What the f*ck do you need? I’ll do anything in my f*ckin’ power to help you out.” At first, I couldn’t think of anything I needed help with, but Pikachu pulled on my dress and I started to piece together the real reason he had brought me to see this man. Skinheads… Could there be such a coincidence? “I’m looking for a kidnapped boy. Do you happen to be involved, and if so, know where to find him?” “Ugh you’re lookin’ for that f*ckin’ kid? Look, it’s real complicated, but I guess I can f*ckin’ tell you where to find him so you see for yourself,” he said. “The lil’ f*cker’s held up on the roof of one of the buildings in the f*ckin’ Onyx Ward.” “What? Why? What is there to complicate about kidnapping a kid?” “Well lass, I can’t tell you or I’ll get in f*ckin’ trouble. Just be prepared to get your pokemon wrecked.” “How about I just call the cops on you all? What do you say to that?” “Oh no no, c’mon. If you bring the cops over there, you’ll just force them to f*ckin’ relocate as soon as they see ‘em comin’. Trust me. Go there alone and as undercover as possible.” Though I didn’t get a particularly good feeling about this, by this time I was tired of dealing with people’s eccentricities and was stressed by every minute that passed that I wasn’t on my way to Calcenon, so I decided to follow dude’s advice to go search for the kid alone. Fortunately, the search didn’t take long because there were a limited number of buildings with rooftops that were accessible to the public. On the third building I visited, I found what I was looking for. There were several skinheads who all collectively looked at me when I opened the door to the rooftop garden. I saw the kid sitting with hands and feet tied. For a young person his age, say about 8 or 9 years old, I commended him for looking quite collected. “Have you come to f*ckin’ pay off the ransom, lass?” one of the skinheads asked me. “No. I’ve come here to take the kid back to his home.” “Like we’d let you do that. Guys.” With that cue, a couple of skinheads stepped forward and engaged me in battle. Honestly, they weren’t very good battlers. Sure, they had large and powerful pokemon that they may or may not have stolen, but their teamwork was visibly all over the place. The pokemon sometimes didn’t obey their orders and attacked their allies. Needless to say, I won the first double battle. Two more double battles ensued, but I also won them thanks to their disorganization. When all the skinheads were out of pokemon they could use, they fell silent like they didn’t know what to say or do anymore. “You really are useless,” said a voice that at first confused me, because it seemed to be coming from in front of me, but I saw no one it could belong to. Until I realized that it was the kid speaking. “I’ll have to deal with this myself,” he said. “What are you talking about? Really, kid. I just came here looking for you so I could return something that belongs to you. But what kind of messed up business have you gotten into?” “Shut up. Your peabrain wouldn’t understand anything. Just battle me, lose and go cry somewhere else.” Without even really understanding why I had to waste even more time battling the kid, we engaged in battle. The youngster actually surprised me by having more coordination and strategy than any of the adults that surrounded him. It was evident that those pokemon were actually his, and had a solid bond between them and their trainer. What he lacked, of course, was experience, but that was only an advantage I could boast for having lived twice as long as he had. In the end, I won the battle, and the kid screamed and kicked with frustration. “Stupid adults, always trying to get in the way,” he said. “But you never do anything to actually help! You just take whatever is there to take, without a single thought to the consequences of it. I quit. I’m just gonna go home.” The kid fired everyone on the spot, and heard no complaints from the skinheads before rushing out of the rooftop garden. “Wait.” I ran after him, and caught him just before he accessed Obsidia Ward. “What do you want? Don’t you have anything better to do?” he shouted. “Thanks to you I’ve failed to make my uncle pay for convincing me to leave my precious pokemon in the SDP. My pokemon was stolen and all of it is his fault. I hate adults like him and you who think they know better, but they’re just ignorant of how dumb they are!” “Calm down, and shut up because your incessant shouting is really hurting my damaged eardrums.” Instead of explaining anything else, I handed him the ziplock bag with his pokemon. I figured, from what he was implying in all of his whining, that this pokemon getting stolen had been the cause of the drama. The kid pouted and received the ziplock bag. He read the card and immediately opened the bag to take out the pokeball and release the pokemon inside. “Vanillite! How did you…?” He looked at me with awe, but then lowered his gaze. “Uh. So some adults can do good things. Fine. I’ll see if I can be someone that does good things too.” The boy wrapped an arm around his pokemon and waved at me before running in the direction of the Lapis Ward. “Good things, huh?” I said. Finally done with all the deliveries, I returned to Candy’s shop. The whole thing took just shy of 2 hours, but the reward was arguably worth the struggle. “Thanks for your help. I hope you’ll find a good use for this,” said Arclight when he handed me a bracelet. “What is it?” I said, initially feeling scammed. “It’s a Mega-Z bracelet. If you have a mega stone or a Z crystal, you can give those to your pokemon and it’ll allow you to mega-evolve them or use the powerful Z moves in battle.” “Alright. I guess I’ll learn about it more when I use them in battle,” I said. “Candy. You’re ready to fly me to Calcenon now?” “Of course!” Candy sipped the last bit of her tea and stood up from the table. As everyone moved around the shop and Candy was about to pass me to go outside, I stopped her. There was something that wasn’t urgent to ask, but figured it was a harmless question anyway so it didn’t hurt to dissipate my curiosity. “Er, Candy. This might seem to come out of nowhere, but you wouldn’t be lying about your familial background, would you?” “What? My familial background? You mean who my parents are?” “Just tell me the truth. I swear I will not tell anyone if you’d rather maintain secrecy.” Even though I didn’t believe the contents of a mysterious book, which was supposedly written by a prophet, to be grounded in reality or to really be narrating the life of my cousin, I couldn’t deny that I wanted to confirm that the book was a sham whenever I had a chance to talk with Candy again. After all, I had to admit that Candy meeting most, if not all, of the characteristics described in that book- being a young Everish woman who traveled to Reborn, perhaps having quite a few features that resembled her father, and also having a cousin, me, who was close to her- was odd, to say the least. Candy was surprised, indeed, to be asked a question I knew the answer to, but she responded to it anyway with utmost patience. “I don’t really care to keep it a secret. I’m just surprised you’re asking me this, because I’ll have to disappoint you if you expect me to say something you don’t already know. My mother’s side of the family is Leiderhosen and my dad’s is Hatter, known for being descendants of the mad hatter. As you know, my mom is your dad’s younger sister, the youngest of 4 siblings. My dad moved to Everland, after years of feeling like he didn’t belong in his family. I mean, he is a goofball but not mad enough to mix with his siblings or close family in Wonderland. I hear my parents caused quite the controversy when they decided to marry, because a member of the Everland nobility marrying a regular foreigner from Wonderland of all places, was unheard of. I love both my mom and dad, though, so I’m really glad that they could marry despite all that.” As she had said, nothing she said was news to me, so I ventured just one last question to seal the topic: “No connection to the Queen, by any chance?” Candy laughed at this question. “My my, what’s gotten into you? Did someone spread lies about me? I’m not royalty at all! We sure are nobles politically close to the Queen, but nothing ties us to her by bloodline.” “No, no one is spreading lies. I just wanted to confirm what I already knew, that was all.” “You’re so funny, Vanilla. Shall we go to Calcenon now?” “Yeah. Thanks.” With my mind in relative peace, I exited the Daycare with Candy and climbed onto Rayquaza. Little did I know then, that my peace would soon be completely undone once I reached my destination. VANILLA RATES: REBORN CHARACTERS QUICK LINK TO NEXT EPISODE

Nope but watashi ga kita!!! how about we keep on the crystal theme and I predict Crystalrage?

Another score! but no babies thx Baumina is u there?

Yeah I think it’s illogical for these Elite af trainers to keep their mons in their cells. Heather’s salamance could’ve meteor mashed the heck out of them metal bars. I guess one can say the bars are made of unbreakable material but I think it’s just as realistic as the kidnappers keeping their hostages’ Pokémon me thinks (just that in the latter, one needs to assume they get their Pokémon back during their escape lol). Jasmin has an obsession with Vanilla because she feels capturing and getting her properly tried would make her legendary somehow (because Vanilla was the one who got away, and the police and judiciary system all turned a blind eye to her obvious crime, so she’d be accomplishing something not even her father could do). There’s also a second reason why capturing Vanilla = ending the Defiance, but I think I’ll keep that a secret for when we reach the Everland arc

He does but he got his pokemon taken away prior to being thrown into a cell (I think Team Meteor usually does that or all those Gym leaders that get captured would also bust themselves out easily ) I forgot what Majin Buu was like other than being a pink blob that becomes ripped lmao

From Everland to Reborn ~ Imprisoned Another "spin-off" before we get on with the rest of Vanilla's story. It was mentioned in passing a couple episodes back that Aladdin got taken hostage by Team Meteor, and you-know-who is already there so I figured why not have them interact in some form, right? "You know, I found something... intriguing in your apartment." Those words greeted me when I returned to my apartment in Ametrine. Jasmin waved an envelope that was clearly open, and I instantly perceived just how much trouble I was in. Yet, either she couldn’t tell what I perceived, or wanted to humiliate me regardless, because she took the letter out of the envelope and started reading it aloud. “Dear Vanilla Leiderhosen. If you’re reading this-” “Jasmin, please. I know what’s written on it. You know what’s on it. If you’ll kill me for treason, just do it. If you’d rather take me back for a proper trial, just do that.” “I don’t get tired of reading this letter,” she said and laughed. “When I realize the extent to which you betrayed me, it’s almost comical. I couldn’t stop laughing the first time I read it, even though I knew, on the back of my mind, that this was how you felt for quite some time.” She looked back down on the piece of paper, and carried on reading it. “If you’re reading this, you must’ve found my room key in Wolfie’s diary. I hope that I have fulfilled my role by then, and am no longer living. Leaving a note like this, intended to be read post-mortem, may seem pathetic, but there were some things that I needed to tell you, Vanilla, which I was too cowardly to say while I was alive.” “Stop it,” I said. I had intended to say it strongly, but instead my voice cracked. “It’s been many months now since I left Everland to chase you in Reborn, and even more since that fateful day, but I still haven’t been able to sort my feelings completely. How could doing the right thing feel so wrong? I don’t know if I’ll ever understand. But what I do know now is that I regretted involving myself in Underworld politics. I regretted being the cause that the people I once shared a meal with, died. But most importantly, I regretted betraying your trust.” I slumped down on a chair. I wanted to cover my ears but I knew that if I did that, Jasmin would only read with a louder voice to still make me listen. So I covered my face instead. Jasmin saw my action and laughed before continuing to read. “If I ever found the Genie in the lamp, I wouldn’t care to make three wishes. I’d only wish to go back in time, so that I could prevent this tragic timeline and love you honestly, as you’d deserved from the very beginning,” she read. “Yours truly, Aladdin Ababwa.” I didn’t raise my head when she was done. I heard her crushing the paper and throwing it into the trash bin. “You’re right. Leaving this note behind was pathetic,” I heard her say. “You meant to confess your love after you died? I can’t help laughing at how dumb that is. But I’ve gotten to know you fairly well the past year to be aware that being a coward isn’t anything unusual for you.” “Sure, Jasmin. Call me what you see fit. I know better than you or anyone else, who I am.” “A coward unable to make any concrete decisions, that’s what you are. Well, that’s exactly why you were useful to me all this time, though, so I wouldn’t consider it entirely bad,” she said. “Now, though, you’re useless to me.” “What are you going to do? I’m assuming you’re not going to let me walk out of here like nothing happened.” Jasmin laughed. “Of course not, silly. Now that I think about it… I lied. You’ll be useful to me one last time.” She then stretched the ribbon on her head quickly, and wrapped around my wrists first, then all around my torso, leaving me no opening at all to struggle for freedom. Not that I wanted to struggle, though. I was so drained by my own existence that I just let her wrap me like a human cocoon as she wanted. I was transported but I couldn’t see where we were headed to until Jasmin let go of me in a very grey-ish room. There were some cells, one of which was open and I was pushed inside it unceremoniously. The bars slid and locked. Jasmin was still standing in the room, alongside two people in dark grey uniforms. I hadn’t seen them in a while, but I remembered seeing some people wearing them when Vanilla came to Ametrine City. That gave me a big hint on where I currently was, but I found myself still paralyzed with disbelief. “Why are we here?” I asked Jasmin. “Since now I’m on my own searching for Vanilla, I figured it was an opportune time as ever to ask for help,” she said. “Team Meteor’s goal and mine happen to be in agreement. They want to get rid of their enemies, of which Vanilla is a big one. And I want to take Vanilla to Everland. We couldn’t get the Reborn police department to help us, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as useful as Team Meteor, anyway. I only wished I’d have known to ask them for support earlier.” “Have you lost your mind? Out of all people, I didn’t think you’d be one to ask a terrorist group for help. Don’t you see the irony? That you’re hunting a terrorist by borrowing another terrorist’s hand?” “That’s ironic, coming from you, who used a Defiance group to take out Vanilla’s. You should know, just like I do, that whether I take Vanilla to Everland alone or with their help is the same result for these terrorists. I’m neither supplying them with military equipment nor information. I’m merely speeding up the inevitable.” “But-” She cut me right there. Gone was her disparaging smile, and instead she was looking at me with deep wrinkles on her brow. “Besides,” she said. “I’ve told you before. The ends justify the means. The Defiance will end, and I’ll be the one to put an end to it, at any cost.” I gulped. Even now, when there was nothing else to lose, I still felt intimidated by her look. “I… I understand. May I ask one last question?” “What is it?” “You said I would be useful to you one last time,” I said. “But you’ve brought me here and locked me behind bars. What’s the meaning of it?” Her disparaging smile returned, and my shoulders could relax. “I’ve brought you here to give me an advantage when I meet her soon. I’m hoping that she’ll be at least somewhat discomposed if I tell her that her ex-boyfriend has been taken hostage.” “I doubt that’ll work on her,” I said. “She doesn’t care one bit about me anymore. Don't raise your expectations.” “We’ll see about that. At the very least, keeping you behind bars will ensure you don’t sabotage me anymore.” She then left the key to the guards and exited the room. I reclined my back on a wall and sighed. I thought that the natural reaction of a person who is locked behind bars like I was would be to shout to demand freedom and to shake the bars that wouldn’t budge under such minuscule force. However, I just didn’t feel like doing any of that. Even if they told me I’d have to live the rest of my life shut away from the world, I wouldn’t even try to escape that fate. You’re just glad that you no longer have to take a side, I heard the voice of my subconscious say. You can keep existing, without getting in the way of anyone, or betraying anyone, anymore. “It’s almost… comfortable.” I closed my eyes and would’ve drowned myself in thoughts and recollections, were it not for a sudden voice that didn’t come from within me. “Uh, excuse me,” the voice said. “I believe I have met you before.” “Have we?” I couldn’t quite remember whether I had heard their voice before, and I wasn’t paying attention to the neighboring cell when I was brought in. “My name is Aya. I am… was the poison type Gym leader. I believe we had a battle a while back.” The sight of a pale girl with striking purple hair scraped my memory. I had tried taking on the League Challenge as part of training up a pokemon team and searching for Vanilla, but I had quit when I wasn’t able to beat her, the poison type Gym leader. “I remember you now,” I said. “But what are you doing here? Are you held hostage by Team Meteor?” “Yeah, something like that.” “I’m sorry to hear it. I hope they haven’t treated you poorly.” “It depends on who’s on guard duty. Some guards are nastier than others. The amenities of each cell aren’t great either. The mattress we must use as a bed is hard, the sheets feel like plastic, everytime I want to go to the bathroom, I have to get a guard to escort me, and don’t expect anything from the food. It’s plain disgusting. But other than that, I wouldn’t say I’ve been treated poorly,” she said. “What about you? I overheard something about Vanilla. Are you... acquainted with her?” “Are you acquainted with her too?” I responded to her questions with a question, because I was taken aback. I didn’t expect to meet Aya here, but I also didn’t expect her to know Vanilla… though, on better thought, I should’ve expected it, since I knew she had joined forces with the Gym leaders of this region. “Yeah, we met once or twice in the past,” she said. “And you are, if the girl from earlier wasn’t bluffing, Vanilla’s ex?” I coughed. How much did I wish Jasmin had a little more filter when speaking. “I guess. It’s a long story.” “You don’t need to tell me. I’m not interested in poking my nose in people’s private affairs,” she said. “It makes no difference whether I get information about Vanilla’s lover or her enemy, since I’m not going to be able to do anything with it, as long as I’m kept behind bars.” “Thank you. I wouldn’t hesitate to tell the story, were it not because it’s not a pretty one to tell. Besides, there’s no way I could tell it without being accused of bias. If anyone has the right to tell it, it’s Vanilla.” We were silent for a while after that. I took the opportunity to move things around my cell, mainly just the mattress, because I noticed that the floor was damp underneath it. I pushed it against the wall that separated Aya’s and my cells. I sat on it and reclined against the wall again. “Have you tried escaping from here?” I whispered so that the guard couldn’t hear us. “No,” she replied. “You said you are escorted out to the bathrooms,” I said. “Have you seen what it’s like out of this room? No chance of escaping?” “Are you going to attempt escaping?” “No, I was asking, in case I could help you devise an escape plan for yourself.” “No need. I wasn’t planning on leaving either.” “What? Why? I’d judged you didn’t like being stuck in here, from what you told me.” “It’s not the best place I could be in, that’s for sure,” she said. “But at the same time, it’s the most comfortable.” I raised an eyebrow at this. I was curious to know what her reasons for feeling that way were. “I don’t know if you’re at all concerned with the politics of this region, but most Gym Leaders have united to fight off the terrorists. If I weren’t in here, I’d be fighting too.” “Yeah, though neither of us has really involved ourselves with either side- or at least I don’t think in a major way- I have been following what was happening even before coming here. I think you’re pretty even so far, but that balance could tip anytime. Either Calcenon gets destroyed beyond salvation, or the Gym Leaders find a way to get across the barrier.” “That’s right. I’ve been stuck here for so long. I didn’t even get to do anything to help, like at all,” she explained. “But the longer I thought about it, the more it became clear to me that being here was helping both the Gym Leaders and me. Realistically, what could I do to help? I’m new to pokemon battling, and all I do is be unhappy about everything. It’s a blessing, really, that they forgot I’m even here.” “You’re new to pokemon battling?” I asked. “I didn’t even notice, because I lost to you.” “That’s only because you had the disadvanta-” she cut her sentence abruptly. “Did something happen?” I asked after she remained silent for an unnatural amount of time. “No. Nothing happened, I just remembered something,” she said. “I was going to downplay my victory again, because in my mind, I won due to unfair advantage.” “Well, I had a psychic type in my team, which should’ve given me some advantage. I could’ve battled you with a full team of 6, but judged my team was complete with the 5 I had. Those are decisions I made, which impacted the result of our battle. You could always list the external things that might’ve led you to win, and downplay your judgement’s role in all of it. But the truth is, I gave what I thought was enough to win, but it wasn’t enough. You put effort into your battle, and came on top. You’re a stronger pokemon trainer than you give yourself credit for, and you have every right to take pride in your victories.” “Is that something Vanilla taught you?” “Vanilla? Why do you ask?” “Because she told me something similar. To keep giving my best, and that as long as I was giving my best, I should take pride in my accomplishments, however small.” I laughed. I should’ve known she had told her that already. She was never one to shy away from speaking her mind, whether what came out of her mouth was helpful or rude. “Vanilla hates people who do things half-heartedly. I’ve known her for years, but I’ve never seen her do something without her full determination. That’s why she hates me with all her might, and probably why I… care about her.” “Care about her? Or love her?” she asked. “Actually, never mind. You don’t need to answer that.” I didn’t answer, because she retracted her question, but also, because I hadn’t intended to answer at all. “You should leave this room and fight alongside your allies,” I said. “I must admit, I haven’t interacted with many Gym Leaders. Only 2 before I met you- Julia and Florinia- but they seemed to care about the cause greatly. I also met Heather, who I think is also fighting alongside you. She wanted to help even people she didn’t know personally. I don’t think they’re the type that would forget about an ally that got taken hostage.” “I don’t know them.” “But outside there are people who care about you, aren’t there?” Aya didn’t respond to my question, so I interpreted her silence as affirmative. “As long as there are people outside who care for you, they’ll be looking for a way to liberate you. We should also see if we can get you out of here by ourselves, in case they can’t find a way in.” “For you too, right?” I shook my head, but remembering that she wouldn’t be able to see that, I put it in words: “Sure.”

oh noes I literally come here once a blue moon ice cream and you've gott me I'ma guess Evi Crystal is next

Yeah that's a good line, I wonder why past me omitted it lol I'd actually say she feels sad herself, rather than being particularly aware of her surroundings lol Vanini gave her an executive order to stay away from the castle, basically to show how she's appreciating Julia more, and also because I didn't daydream Julia doing anything even if she stayed. Yeah I really would've liked to have the whole sequence with Amaria talking with MC underwater in my story but the physics bugged my brain a tad bit too much. I can live with people climbing longass waterfalls or not being affected by being electrocuted, even diving for more than 1 minute lol but talking under water? nahhh Julia come on you're tied 3rd place in Vanini's ratings, why do you forsake her thus T_T And great insight on Tania. I'm also a fan of flawed characters, especially those who are a hot mess despite trying to do "the right thing", of which club I'd say she's a part of lol

I expected you wouldn't care for relationship points with her But also morale of the story: always carry ice cream to sweeten peepos days uwu Nice getting lore for irl characters hehe

Lolol have y'all ever been on a float with someone and been thrown off because they started moving like a my madman? No? Well, it's p fun so y'all should try it xD I'd have time to think, "oh no, I'ma fall bois" and then really fall. Ah I miss waterparks. I feel Tania being merciless with Team Meteor and her relationship with Amaria are separate. She might be cruel for the sake of being cruel with the former, but she's an accidental antagonist in the latter me thinks. The additional AU content only amplified what was already there. Yeahhh! Crazy how time flies. What happens in canon E18 and in my story may be slightly different (there's this long part which I think I'll be shortening a tad (I say that, but then maybe I'll add extra stuff, making it longer cause that's how I roll )). Anyway, hope you get to play it too sometime~ If it wasn't clear with my selection of protagonist, I'm a fan of baddie heroes lol It's one of my favorite things in fan games, since canon games usually have all be super selfless and good and it's boworing. Tbh the more I can hate the character as a person, the more I enjoy the story xD I think Vanilla is at the same level of merciless as Titania or Saphira, but that isn't well-appreciated in the pokemon setting since you don't really have to kill someone to "win", as in-game Candy reminds us earlier on. Tania and Saphira still do it, but Vanini doesn't find incentive in putting effort when it's not necessary. This might change once the setting is moved out of Reborn, but I do plan on swinging God's hammer in, what I think, is the most cruel way ever to reward the sinners... Why am I a sadist when writing?

LOL me too but now it's back to 2 months wait The gauntlet I don't think will be as interesting as the Tourmaline saga but given a certain character is involved in it, it might have its unique charm. Yeah lol I'm proud of my babies growing to accept their differences, even if one's evidently better at it than the other xD

Yeah, when I hadn't played E17 and people were saying "Amaria tried to drown me", I actually imagined her taking us by the shoulders/neck and pushing us into the water while we struggled in vain xD but after playing, I realized the next scene with Amaria and Titania arguing about her "supposed" murder attempt doesn't work if Titania actually saw Amaria trying to drown us. The version I chose is much less dramathicc than my initial imagination, but well, Vanini did almost drown just by being pulled into the water the other time, and she was within reach distance of the pondside then

Lol I just can't imagine Titania making it in time to save Vanilla in the canon way of drowning (the thing is like a maze down there, how did Tania know protagonist was trapped down there?) so realistically speaking, she'd die which ain't what I need lmaoo The method I chose is more "visible" when Tania comes into the arena, and I did drop the hint a few chapters back that Vanini doesn't know how to swim, especially while wearing normal clothes

From Everland to Reborn ~ Episode 88 Well, usually I don't have this sort of thing but I felt this song kinda went well with this episode so I'ma link it: The inside of Fiore Mansion was full of water, just as I’d left it. Amaria was mopping the hardwood floor around the pool, somehow not bothered by the fact that the majority of the room, and practically all their wooden furniture and electronics had been destroyed by the flooding. “Tania?” She raised her head in response to us opening the door, but looked disappointed that we didn’t enter with Titania. “Hi hi~ Amy. How are you feeling?” “I’m good, thank you, Julia,” she said. “And you are… Vanilla, was it?” “Yeah.” “I see. Welcome. Please make yourselves at home,” she said dryly. “Tania will come soon,” Julia said. “Vanini made her promise that she’d come, so don’t be so gloomy.” She shook her pom-poms to cheer for her friend, but it had no effect on Amaria’s mood. Particularly, the glances she sent me made me question whether I had personally done something to piss her off. “Thanks, Julia. I’ll go for a swim, to relax myself while I wait for Tania to show up.” She propped the mop on a wall, and entered the enclosed area that housed her Gym. “She didn’t even let me ask her for a Gym battle,” I said. “Maybe you can go tell her now. You can do the battle while we wait for Tania.” That seemed like a plan I could get behind, so I changed up my team to battle a water-type leader and headed into the Gym area. The Gym area was a gigantic pool on which a few large, unstable boards floated. This much, I had expected, ever since Titania broke the floor and a tsunami of water gushed into their living room. Of course, battling in water was the most tactically logical thing for a water-type trainer: most pokemon couldn’t hold their breaths underneath water, so pulling them down would be enough to cause great damage. I waited a couple of minutes for Amaria to come back to the surface for some air, but she never did. I worried, knowing that she was prone to suicidal thoughts and behaviors, she may have gone ahead and drowned herself while I prepared my team. I sent out Kame and hopped on his back. “Let’s dive and find Amaria,” I told him. Kame growled loudly and dipped us in the water. I wouldn’t have guessed it unless I saw it, but the pool was so deep that I almost thought the entire Ametrine Mountain’s altitude could sink in it. Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but it was deep enough that I found a light show illuminating the glass floor, which was not visible from the water surface. Colors after colors of light showered us as we navigated a maze of glass-enclosed rooms. It was somewhat scary, because if one forgot where the exit was, one could be trapped down there forever. Yet, I continued my search, hoping that at the end of it, I wouldn’t have to pull up a soggy corpse. About 10 minutes elapsed. We had to go to the surface to re-oxygenate our lungs, and had just come back down to the depths when we found Amaria. She was swimming with an oxygen tank on her back. No wonder she never came up to get a breath of air, but more than anything, I was relieved that she hadn’t drowned. We couldn’t talk underneath the water, so I couldn’t directly communicate to her that I wanted a pokemon battle. She tried to carry on swimming, but I blocked her way a few times until she, probably unwillingly, understood my meaning and exited the maze with me. She took off her gear and squeezed her hair after she had pulled herself up one of the unstable boards. I also pulled myself up from the other side of the same board, so that we could keep the board somewhat balanced. The water weighed me down, especially because the bubblegum dress had soaked up a lot of it. “So you were saying? I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t like to be bothered during my swim sessions,” Amaria said. “I came for a Gym battle,” I said. “I won’t bother you anymore once we’re done with that.” “I see. So you’re a League challenger,” she said. “In that case, I really wished Ame wouldn’t have re-opened it. We were all doing just fine without it, so what’s the point?” “What’s done is done. We all have had things not go the way we want them to. There’s no point in regretting the past, if you’re not going to make an effort to move forward.” “You’re wrong. I don’t regret the past; I regret the present. I regret that you’re standing in front of me right this second, without understanding how Tania has moved farther and farther from me, ever since you appeared in our lives.” What? So her hostility… is because of that? “Your cause and effect is distorted. I had nothing to… or if I did play a role, it was a minor one. Sooner or later, the result would’ve been the same, whether I had come into your lives or not.” “You say that to escape responsibility. But that’s fine. I didn’t expect more from the antagonist of my story,” she said. “If you don’t understand it, I’ll show you… I’ll show you my pain. Then you’ll understand how it feels to be losing one’s air.” Before I could restate that I am not her antagonist, or ask what she meant by the last bit of her speech, she jumped up and landed on the same spot, making the board we were on shake vigorously. I tried balancing so as to not be thrown overboard, but she kept jumping on the opposite edge, nullifying my efforts. “Hey, stop that!” I felt myself lose balance backwards when my muscles could not hold the weight of my head, and I quickly made a decision to throw Pikachu to the board so that he would not drown with me. Amaria kept jumping, and the waves resulting from it didn’t help me because they bumped into my face and made it harder for me to keep breathing. I wasn’t sure if this was just imagination stemming from distress, but I felt as though my dress wrapped around my legs, making it even more challenging to keep kicking myself afloat. I saw Amaria’s blue silhouette approach me, but if she said something, I couldn’t hear her through the sound of splashing water. When I had drunk enough water from both mouth and nose, I felt my conscience slipping, and, though there were thoughts that could’ve been much more fitting to the situation, my last thought was whether this would be the last time I ever lost consciousness. It probably would not be, since I woke eventually, proving that I still wasn’t dead. I woke up because I heard voices arguing very loudly, and found Pikachu resting on my stomach. Then, I looked to my side and saw the pair whose voices had awoken me. One look and I assumed I understood why they were arguing… but no, I wasn’t quite right. “You f*cking tried to kill Vanilla!” Titania shouted. Really? She’s angry because Amaria tried to kill me? “I don’t know what happened,” Amaria replied. “Vanilla was standing on the board when I left her. She must’ve lost her balance by accident.” No I didn’t, but there was no time for me to interject in this heated conversation. “You were there and didn’t help her out of the water. You tried to drown her.” “No, Tania. I didn’t know! I was swimming and didn’t notice she’d fallen in.” “That’s a lie!” The conversation continued a few more seconds in that same vein, but then Amaria noticed that I was awake and listening. “Ah Vanilla, you’re awake! Thank goodness you’re okay,” she said, with a degree of hypocrisy that was almost palpable. “Your mimikyu pulled you out from the water and I gave you CPR. We’re even,” Titania said to me, then turned towards Amaria once more. “Are you really going to keep on like this even now that Vanilla is awake and listening?” “Listen,” Amaria said and tried to take one of Titania’s hands, but she slapped her hand away. Amaria bit her lips and the area around her eyes gradually turned pink. “You don’t understand either,” she said. “You pretend to listen. You pretend to care whether I live or die. But it’s all pretend for you. It hurts me, because my love is not pretend. You wouldn’t know how it feels to have one person be your entire world, and for them to only pretend to care about you.” A tear fell down Amaria’s eye, then another followed. “Tania, you’re all I have. I can’t live without you.” Amaria took a quick couple of steps towards Titania, and surrounded her in her arms. Her long turquoise hair flapped about, which for a second made me think I saw Titania’s head being engulfed by ocean waves. Titania didn’t reciprocate the embrace, but she remained immobile for a while, looking down on Amaria’s head with a look that bordered endearment and disdain. Yet, when I was just beginning to contemplate whether I should leave the room or not, Titania pushed Amaria away. “Why…” Amaria said with her eyes wide open. “For the longest time, I wanted to avoid becoming that person. No matter the cost, I just didn’t want to become her,” Titania responded in a low voice. She looked at nobody or nothing in particular, but the half of her face that wasn’t covered by hair was wrinkled in the angriest expression I had ever seen her in. “But… It’s impossible. I struggled and struggled, but I couldn’t change my fate,” she continued, and looked at Amaria. “You said you only have me, but I also only have myself. This is the end of the fairytale.” Titania said that, impulsively opened the door to their veranda, and shut the door behind her. A very awkward silence remained together with Amaria and me. “I am the worst,” Amaria said. “I am a... but it doesn’t matter what I am. She won’t come back to find out.” Then she looked at me with her bloodshot eyes. “I’m sorry about earlier. I’ll be waiting for you in the Gym.” She went down the stairs and left me alone with Pikachu. Taka’s death and now this. It’s like Arceus doesn’t want me to concentrate on my Gym battles. “I… also once had someone that… I loved dearly, who pretended to reciprocate my feelings. Even if I tried, I couldn’t stop seeing the parallels,” I said to Pikachu. “However, that person wasn’t all that I had. I still had a goal to keep pushing me forward... something that I needed to accomplish however much I suffered. Amaria might be odious, but she has it worse than I did.” I stood up, and was about to go down the stairs, when I stopped and looked at the glass door that led to the terrace. I stared at it for a while before I carried myself over there. Titania was standing outside, looking away into the distance. She heard the door open and close, and quickly turned around. On seeing that I was not Amaria, her shoulders relaxed. “Sorry you had to witness that,” she said. “But for once, I feel… refreshed. I said it, at last. I don’t know if that was the best thing to do, but I finally made a choice.” “She’s hurt, but there was no easy way out. One could say that you shouldn’t have let it get to this point. That you shouldn’t have lied to her about your feelings at all. But I guess you’re already aware of it, and don’t need a third party repeating it to you.” Titania snorted with no enthusiasm. “If one tries to avoid a mistake, one makes a different mistake. That’s the story of my life, it seems.” She sighed and faced the mountains again. We were silent for a moment, until Titania broke it with a seemingly unrelated topic. “I… had an elder brother. This much, you seem to already know, though I don’t know how,” she said. “How, you ask? I mean, I’ve met him.” Titania paused for a moment, and I thought she might get offended again like last time I mentioned her brother’s name, but she didn’t. Instead, she carried on talking. “He was 16 years older than me, and cared more about me than my own parents did. He taught me to read and write before I began to be homeschooled. He taught me pokemon battling too. He was a steel type trainer, a member of the Elite 4 to be exact.” The way she always spoke of him in the past tense was eerie, but Silver had hinted that he and Titania had had a falling-out, and thus perhaps Titania currently considered him equal to a dead person. “As a ten-year-old, he was the hero that excelled in everything he did, and I really admired him for who he was. But…” here, she sighed. “But perhaps that perfectionism and pride of his was too much, and ended up stabbing him in the… front.” “What happened?” I said and was surprised that I did. “He had a fiancée, whom he deeply loved. Yet a month before the wedding, she called it off because she realized she loved a different man. My brother couldn’t get over that and… well… the next day, my mother found him lying in his room with a fatal wound to the stomach, and Aegislash quivering with blood on his blade.” This last bit was especially hard to swallow. I had literally seen this man, the one she just implied killed himself, still moving around in her castle. I most definitely saw him and even talked with him. She and I were close a long time ago. It is not surprising if she still resents me for abandoning her. It is a long story, most of which I cannot tell you due to the nature of my existence. I remembered Silver saying that when I was leaving their castle. What could all this mean? “I deeply despised the woman who, by not making up her mind about her feelings, made my brother make a rash decision. In my mind, she should’ve stayed with my brother and married him. They had been together 3 years already, so how could it be so difficult?” Titania snorted. “But those are things that are easiest said from an outsider’s perspective. I can’t talk like that anymore, since we’re no different now.” So, that had happened. Whatever the truth was concerning Silver’s vitals, I could now understand why Titania had acted the way she did with Amaria. It made me feel a little awkward that I had always openly disdained her whenever the subject of her lie resurfaced, thinking she was the same sort of traitor like Aladdin had been. “I hadn’t told this story to anyone except Amaria, and, in retrospect, I think she was the one person I shouldn’t have told it to. I don’t think she manipulated me with it, but knowing that I wanted to save her from the same fate as my brother, at any cost, was definitely a weakness that she could rely on to keep me close.” Titania sent out a Skarmory and readied herself for flight. “Then why have you told the story to me?” She shrugged. “It’s been a while since I began to feel I was the antagonist of this story. I thought I didn’t mind it, but maybe I actually did want someone, anyone, to know that I wasn’t cruel for the sake of being cruel. That I really did the things I did with misguided compassion,” she said. “And the reason you were fitting to hear it was that… Well, you witnessed everything, and despite that, you’re still here.” Was that… a smile on her face? Yet, I couldn’t ascertain it because Titania immediately took off and looked at me from above. “Take care of the Sapphire bracelets. Or not. Do whatever you want with them. I’m freeing myself from any responsibility regarding those and Amaria.” She gave me no time to contradict her and elevated farther up into the sky. “I am exceedingly sorry you had to hear all that from her mouth and not mine.” Silver appeared right behind me without any precaution, which made me scream. “I also must leave. Wherever Aegislash goes, I must go too, for as long as he lives,” he said. “But let me thank you, Miss Vanilla, for watching over Tania in the manner I would have liked to… and would have, had I not forgotten everything I still wanted to do in that one decisive instant.” “What are you saying? I didn’t-” But before I could finish my sentence, he vanished into thin air right in front of my eyes, confirming that he had really been, all along, a ghost. I stood there in such awe that I forgot to even watch Titania disappear into the horizon. When I looked up to the sky, she had already become nothing but a speck among the clouds. I went back into the house and ran down the stairs to finally get on with the Gym battle. Julia had taken Amaria’s “make yourselves at home” quite literally and was now lying on a bright pink float in the middle of the flooded living room. She had shades and headphones on, so I wasn’t sure she was even awake. All she’d have needed was someone to bring her a pina colada to complete the picture of laid-back carefreeness. I went into the Gym arena without being noticed by Julia. Amaria was standing on the floating board from which she had shaken me off earlier in the day. I wasn’t dumb enough to possibly repeat the same mistake, and opted to stand on a different board from hers. “Sorry again for earlier. I think I let my emotions get out of control, and I almost committed something I would’ve regretted,” she said. “But I did end up cutting the last thread of hope that tied me to Tania in the process. It really is the end, in more ways than one.” “You relied too much on one person to guide your life. That was your mistake.” “For people like me, who inherently don’t have motivation to do anything, relying on her was the only way I could get out of bed every morning, and nourish myself so that I could live one more day alongside her,” she said, looking at her hands. “I’m back to my original self.” How would I describe it… She wasn’t crying or anything, but something about the way that she swayed in the unstable board, or the abundant blue waters that surrounded us, made me feel as though her whole being turned into grief itself. She was above water, but sunk in an all-consuming sadness, just because her purpose of living was snatched away from her. I must, at all costs, prevent that from happening to me, I thought with utmost conviction. “You’re here for a Gym badge, though. Not to hear me crying over spilt water,” Amaria said. “Shall we get on with it?” Amaria sent two pokemon into the water, signaling to me that this would be a double battle. There was a part of me who hesitated to take a pokeball in hand, but I pushed those feelings down and sent my first two fighters into the water as well. This battle was difficult, even though I was prepared to fight on water. Fighting against water pokemon in an arena that was vastly prepared in their favor, felt like an impossible battle to me, and it went without saying that I was in a pretty bad position during the first third of the fight. She supposedly lost her memory, but I didn’t think her fighting skills were harmed in any way. I cannot lose like this, being drowned totally one-sidedly, I thought. I desperately tried to think of a strategy on the spot, because just adding both water types in my team wasn’t cutting it. Realizing that one of the remaining pokemon in my team was Elsa (A-ninetales), I remembered something Archer mentioned in passing during our train ride here. However, now I like the water type due to their versatility. Just like it is both necessary for survival and is potentially deadly, the pokemon can make use of the water’s softness or literally turn it into icicles to attack hard. But what if, instead of turning water into icicles to attack, we froze the water to battle on top of ice? I wasn’t sure that change alone could throw the balance of the match overboard. Even then, I had to try it. I sent out Elsa and ordered her to freeze the water in the arena. Amaria did not give us unlimited time to work on that, but at least she was able to create a thin sheet of ice to cover the area we were fighting in. This prevented Amaria’s pokemon from diving and taking my pokemon with them to the depths of the pool, but it did increase the power of ice-type moves, which wasn’t totally helpful considering I had grass pokemon in my team. Yet, the balance, though not thrown overboard, was at least leveled between the two of us now. In the end, the remaining pokemon in my team managed to pull through when it mattered most, and- not without a lot of struggle and mental math- were able to faint all of Amaria’s pokemon. “Misery loves company just as I love her,” she said when she had lost. “That’s why we’re alone from now on.” She jumped from her white board to the one I was standing on, almost knocking me over again. With quick steps she approached me, and I raised my fists to prepare for a possible fight. I wouldn’t be caught off-guard twice in the same day. Yet, instead of trying to push me overboard, she extended her hand towards me. In it was the Torrent badge. She also gave me the TM Scald, which I thought would be a better move than Surf on some occasions. “Now go,” she said. “I set you free. Both you and her.” I nodded and started to leave the place. “And if anything happens to me, know that I’ll finally be at peace.” I stopped walking and turned around. “I can’t tell you what to do, since I’m nothing but a third party in all of this. Do what you must, to the extent that you’re satisfied,” I said. “But also remember that there was someone willing to jump a waterfall and nearly starve for your sake... to save that life you so under-appreciate.” Amaria said nothing in reply, and I left the arena behind. VANILLA RATES: REBORN CHARACTERS TEAM RECAP QUICK DIVE TO NEXT EPISODE

There are like a few folkloric tales which are told over and over when you're a Japanese child. Urashimataro's story is just one of them so when stuff happens where things changed drastically while I was away, I instinctively remember that story lol It's not so important but for consistency's sake, Vanilla had a fren who went away when she was young so her remembering this tale should be in-character. Very good point, but Vanilla doesn't know the concept of mental health, really. To her, if she wasn't able to achieve something, it's her fault for not being strong enough. If her mind can't take it, it's because it's weak. That's just one of the examples in which her black-or-white thinking doesn't help her. But she's only like 19, and that's all she's thought so far. Something would have to happen that makes her realize the flaw in her thought process. Strength in Vanilla's mind is very loosely defined. It's like this magical thing that if she obtains, all her problems will go away. Wolfie wouldn't have died, she would've been able to save Taka, and she would be able to defeat the Queen and her allies to emancipate the Underworld citizens. It's also probably true that Vanilla still underestimates the power of strategy (though she's slowly improved from the days when she just punched everything in her way because she is learning to use her brains more through pokemon battling) because she thinks she can overcome the lack of good strategy (her strats buddy, Wolfie is dead after all) with excessive strength. Yep, totally impossible to do, but Vanilla thinks that if she thinks the way you and I are, that's just making excuses when her weakness is actually to blame. She's conflicted because she feels she had enough time to one-up Lin (Taka was standing there while Lin spoke, and Vanilla was there just watching the armor while it "spoke") but also doesn't want to lament the past, and also she knows Lin is "stronger" than her, so she always has the upper hand in the end. Tl;dr she's confused and doesn't know what to think. Silver being a terrible quitter is pretty much why he's a ghost instead of going to the afterlife. He has several regrets, one of which is that he wanted to keep studying his books, and another, well, I don't know if it'll be clear enough in the next episode but at least it's hinted at. At this point, it's great that you've sensed something fishy going on. I love dropping hints that really mess with my readers' minds as they try to piece everything together As for Fiore, it'll be quite dramathicc or at least one can hope it is when reading it lol

Yep lol I tried not to change the fields too much to keep the challenge so far, but I just couldn't win without freezing Amaria's field

From Everland to Reborn ~ Episode 87 While I told Julia and Archer about all that related to Taka and his demise, Julia gasped a few times, but neither of them spoke a word until I was done. And once I was done, too, they were silent for a minute. “I was here the whole time,” Archer said at last. “He went to sleep, and I helped Stethoscope in mapping the exact location of the cave that contains a water source. That took us shy of half an hour, but when I came back into our train car, he was gone. I thought he might’ve gone for a walk nearby… I never expected…” “I can’t believe it. How could Lin… How could anyone do such a thing,” Julia said. “Next time I see her, I’ll boom her face. No one messes with my friends, and this went way beyond mere messing.” “If we charge without a plan, this’ll happen,” I said, and then remembered Devon. “And if we plan something, she’ll have a strategy to still get the upper hand.” I clenched my skirt and bit my lip. “I couldn’t save… yet another person. When will I ever be strong enough?” We had dinner with the rest of the town. Then, at night, when I thought all our moods were good enough to talk again, I told Julia that Titania indirectly agreed to pay Amaria a visit soon. “Ehh? She’s not gonna join us on the way back then?” “No,” I said, trying to hide my honest relief. “Bummer! But I guess she also needs some alone time. You know, after what she did, albeit accidentally.” I nodded, but didn’t comment on the degree at which Titania regretted Taka’s death. It wasn’t my place to do so. We all went to sleep, and as was always the case, Julia was knocked out in a few seconds after lying on her train seat. I couldn’t sleep as quickly or as peacefully as her, however, so I stayed awake with my eyes closed. An hour must’ve elapsed, when Archer suddenly spoke up. “You can’t sleep?” I couldn’t see in the dark, but I assumed, from the direction his voice was coming, that he was talking while still resting on his seat. “Yeah. You can’t either?” “Sometimes I get insomnia, even on regular nights, but today I have a reason to get it,” he said. “I’m unable to switch my brain off easily, unlike Julia.” Though we were talking in a rather audible volume, Julia didn’t seem bothered by it one bit. “It was a short acquaintance, but it’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that a person who was with us only yesterday, is gone today.” “Yeah.” “But, in your case-” he started, but took a pause too long for me not to inquire after. “In my case, what?” “It’s just a gut feeling so I may be wrong. I think you’re quite easy to read, but even then.” “If you’re going to say something, say it right away.” “My bad,” he said, and took a deep breath before continuing. “I felt there was something more, an additional layer to your mourning. You seemed upset not just because of his death, but by the fact that you couldn’t save him.” “... Yes, what about it?” “This is something that I- as one of the few people who truly know what you are- can tell you,” he said. “You can’t expect to be The Savior all the time. The nature of the path you’ve chosen, both in Everland and Reborn, forbids you from it.” “I already know that.” “You do?” I felt annoyed that he replied as though he expected me to be an ignorant idiot, to whom he had to teach even the most basic of concepts in my own life. “Who do you think I am? You might remember that we killed many of your comrades, but we didn’t always escape unscathed either. Over the years, I’ve lost many whom I esteemed more than I did Taka.” I fell silent. Unsurprisingly, this talk had resurfaced my memory of the person I had esteemed the most, Wolfie. “All their deaths have one thing in common: they died due to my ineptitude.” That was right. When I heard from Wolfie that our base had been raided, my mind went blank. I was the leader. I should’ve foreseen something like that and planned ahead, but I had not. All I could do was blindly run after Wolfie, hoping that she could save my fatal mistake. But even with her quick wits, it had been too fatal a blow for a comeback. The officer did deal her the deadly shot, but really, the one who killed her was I. I killed her, because I wasn’t a strong enough leader. “The present me is no different. Had I reacted faster, had I realized Lin’s trap, Taka would be alive right now. He died in front of my eyes, and all I did was kneel on the ground and watch,” I said. “His death is unfortunate, and I feel it, but it is nothing compared to how angry I feel at my own incompetence.” “I won’t say you shouldn’t feel that way, but really, you shouldn’t forget you’re human in the end. It’s not so much about incompetence, but more the limits of being a mere mortal.” “With what authority do you tell me this? Have you ever even tried to surpass the said limits you think exist?” “Why, of course not, but I don’t need to test its existence. It’s all basic physics,” he said and laughed from his nose. “Say, if two people were about to get killed at the same time in different places, there’s no way you could save both at the same time, since you can’t divide yourself.” “You’re wrong. I could still save them, if I had enough foresight to prevent such a scenario from happening in the first place.” That shut him up for the time being. “I came to Reborn because I had to leave Everland, but I’ve tried to make the most out of it by training every day. The day must come when I’ll become both an unstoppable sword and an impenetrable shield, and if that means breaking through the limits of my humanity, I’ll do it. I will save all who need saving, and defeat all that stand in my way.” Archer said nothing in response, and we both maintained civil silence. Whether he fell asleep soon after the conversation, or took long hours to do so like I did, I couldn’t tell. Yet, at some point we must’ve slept, for, at least in my case, I dreamt. Even in my dream, the events from Titania’s enchanted palace, combined with the events from my last day in the Underworld, flashed in my imagination. Needless to say that they cooperated to nullify any prospect of my feeling refreshed from the few hours of sleep. The next morning, as I expected, I felt so tired that it was as if I hadn’t gotten any sleep at all. I sat on my train seat to let the blood rush down from my head. “You don’t seem to have had a good night’s sleep,” I heard a voice in my mind say sarcastically. “I know the seats aren’t the most comfortable things, but I’d say they’re much softer than the ground.” I looked over my shoulder, to the seat on which Taka used to sleep. It was, of course, empty. I sighed. My mind appeared to still be wishing to drag things from the previous day. “Come on. Forget it,” I said to myself. Pikachu growled softly next to me. I placed a hand on his disguise’s head. “Don’t worry. I’ve lost people that were more important to me before, and this won’t be the last time either, I presume. By now, I should be used to this sort of thing.” I laughed through my nose. “Wishing I could change the past is a waste of time. All I can do is try to become stronger, so that one day I can boast about not having a next time to regret.” Pikachu climbed on my shoulder, I grabbed my bag and left the train car. Outside, Archer and Julia, along with everyone from Train Town, were gathered. “Thanks so much for your hospitality,” Archer said. “The ones who are grateful are us,” Bill said. “Thanks to you, we can live much more comfortably.” “Yeah. Brenda and you guys have all been such a blessing, ain’t that right, Al?” Europa said, and Al nodded next to her. Stethoscope didn’t say anything, but bobbed her head when she locked eyes with me. “And we’re really sorry about… well, ya know, you friend,” Europa added. There was a moment of awkward silence, which Archer then broke. “Well, we should be going now. Thanks again, and best of luck to you.” “The same to you.” “Bye-bye!” Julia waved, as she made her way out. Unlike how it went on the way to Train Town, the way back was rather quiet and uneventful. Julia refused to drink half the amount of coffee she usually drank, and even on the days that we had to spend half of the day in each other’s company due to a sand storm, she didn’t ask us to play games. Archer noticed this, and went out of his way to ask her if she didn’t want to play chopsticks, and her reply was that there were too few players to make it fun. We boarded the train on the way back. When the giant walls that separated the city from the desert became visible, I felt as though I was returning after spending ages in the desert. It was almost surreal that I had lived through so much, and yet nothing in the city really marked the passage of time. I guess it could be called a reverse-Urashima-Taro* experience. I wondered how the Gym leaders were doing. Enough time had passed between when I left Calcenon and now, that I was curious to know whether they had been able to decipher the source of the sleeping signal, or found a way to bypass the barrier between Calcenon and Labradorra. Perhaps the latter was least likely, given that I knew Team Meteor was still operating, and I assumed they wouldn’t be able to if they weren’t so well-guarded by the barrier. In either case, Florinia had joined the group in Calcenon last I was there, and if she really was as great a technician as people said, I hoped she could be of some use in that front. I was set on paying the Fiore Mansion a visit, as I had told Titania I would do, to get a badge from Amaria, but to be honest, I just wanted to return to Calcenon as soon as I could. Sure, I was completing my objective of getting stronger by fighting the Gym leaders, but this was doing very little to help liberate the region from the terrorists. On the contrary, every minute I spent away from the battle front, the enemy could be snatching our allies or whoever they thought held bargaining value. They did us a number by capturing Aya, and, unless things didn’t change dramatically in the last few weeks, it wasn’t farfetched to suppose they also had Charlotte’s sister, who had gone missing for days. Then, they chose him as their next target, which, really, I couldn’t fathom what arts Jasmin could’ve used to sell that one as a useful hostage, but they did take him in. Perhaps their strategy wasn’t to bargain with us using hostages, but instead to cage all of us up one by one, until we had lost everyone who could fight. Maybe even now, as I thought from the comfort of this train car, they were capturing Charlotte, Cain, or even Shelly. I have to hurry up. “What will you do now, when you return to the city?” Archer asked Julia, bringing me back from a nightmarish daydream. “I’ll go check on Amy, and reassure her that Tania’s coming to visit her. Poor thing lost her memory, and all she asks for is her company.” “Must be rough for her.” And for Titania, perhaps. “What about you, Vanilla?” “I’ll head there with Julia. Amaria is the next Gym leader I need to battle.” “Oh, so ‘Amy’ is a Gym leader. Water type, if I understood correctly?” “Yep~ Her gym is a large pool. We went swimming on it often, but I don’t think Vanini would like to swim in there,” she said, surely remembering the time she almost drowned me. “And you should be careful, too, if your pokemon don’t like swimming. If you aren’t careful, Amy could be like one of those mermaids that lure you into the water and drown you.” Julia laughed at this, but the imagery wasn’t all that cheerful to me. “Well, as you know, I’m fond of water. At first, it was because I was chasing and fighting the Magma gang, so having pokemon with type advantage against Ground and Fire was strategic. However, now I like the water type due to their versatility. Just like it is both necessary for survival and is potentially deadly, the pokemon can make use of the water’s softness or literally turn it into icicles to attack hard.” “Well, electric types are also versatile,” Julia argued. “They can both provide light and make things go kaboom!” “There’s no arguing with that, if you qualify that as being versatile,” laughed Archer. “What about you, Archie? Where are you headed to once you return to the city?” Archer glanced at me, for some reason, before answering. “As you know, my gang has been dismantled, and Vanilla and Candy, with your cooperation too, of course, have helped them reintegrate into society,” he said. “I think it’s time I attempted doing that myself.” Archer explained to Julia that when he had come to Reborn City over a year ago, he had struggled to find a job in the profession he had in Everland. As she had overheard, he had been exiled from his hometown, and so didn’t have the cleanest record to apply for a position in law enforcement. “Yet, for better or worse, the situation has dramatically changed since then. A great number of police officers lost their lives due to Team Meteor’s attacks, and I think that means they’ll be recruiting more than usual. Perhaps they’ll be too desperate to care about my background. I’ll return home, and apply to as many positions as I can.” “When you say home, do you refer to…?” I said. “Yes. Hazel’s. It’s the only home I have, now that our base has been renovated into a small park.” Hazel’s home didn’t bring me any pleasant memories. Perhaps my feelings showed on my face, and in a different time, Archer might have teased me about it. Instead, he went ahead and talked at length about Hazel and her family to Julia, who knew nothing of them, but never dropped a hint about the young man and his Articuno, who temporarily stayed at their place. The train finally came to a full stop in Grandview station and the people aboard the train, most of whom had boarded from regions far away, exited with us. Perhaps it was due to word getting out about the renovated city, but there were more visitors and returning citizens than I expected there to be. Since Hazel’s home was at the base of Ametrine mountain and Fiore Mansion was on the way, we walked together until we had to part ways. “This is where we say goodbye,” Archer said. “Even though it was a wild roller coaster ride, from how it started until how it ended, I’m glad I got to go traveling the desert.” “But we’ll keep in touch, right?” Julia asked, and when Archer didn’t reply at once, repeated her question. “Yeah. Sure. You can visit me anytime. I’m unlikely to get a job very quickly. The house is located just through the Celestine Cave, and it’s pretty much the only one in the area.” Archer sent out a Sharpedo into the river and jumped on top of it. “In the end, we couldn’t understand each other completely,” he said looking at me. “But I think, if we compare to where we stood just a couple of weeks ago, we made progress. At least, on my side of things. Farewell.” He waved at us, as his pokemon carried him into the cave. Julia waved her pom-poms until he was out of sight. “It’s such a shame,” she said, still looking where Archer disappeared to. “I felt as though I was a character in an adventure book, exploring the desert with 3 friends. ‘Through hardships and collective effort, they get to know each other better and become closer, and then they finally return to their homes as changed people’. That’s how I thought the story would go, but…” Julia turned around and smiled, but there was a hint of gloom in her expression. “I’m kind of salty that we couldn’t get a happy ending, all four of us together.” “I agree, it’s a shame.” “But! I mustn’t be such a downer for long. It’d be more shameful if a cheerleader couldn’t cheer herself up!” she said and moved her pom-poms up and down. “Being sad when an acquaintance dies… I think that’s normal for anyone,” I said. “Even cheerleaders are human, after all.” Julia stopped her cheer dance, batted her eyes in a way that made me question if she understood what I said, but then nodded deeply. “Yeah. That’s true!” “Now, let’s go up this hill,” I said, bobbing my head in the direction of Fiore Mansion. VANILLA RATES: REBORN CHARACTERS By this point, y'all shouldn't be surprised when I promise something for next episode and it isn't in the next episode I did finish writing the Gym Battle, but the theme in that part and this part didn't really match, so I opted to upload them as separate episodes lol I do think I'm kinda on a roll here, updating "regularly" in my standards lol *Urashima Taro is a forkloric tale of a man who goes to a kingdom under the sea, passes a night with them, then returns back to the surface, only to find that decades had passed while he was gone. This is a very minor detail, but Vanilla's friend, nicknamed Kame, is a descendant of this dude and is off on a pilgrimage to the kingdom under the sea, and won't be back until decades later. QUICK LINK TO NEXT EPISODE

Berry good thinking since it was berry much the case Magearna is like Pikachu pre-catching. She doesn't have a pokeball because she's a family fren/helper rather than a pokemon to be caught and trained. It's not a custom :p When you choose the Reshiram route, the battle sprites are different from when it's Zekrom route. Amaria's afaik is also gonna be different~ No worries, the real reveal in a more direct way was coming prolly in the next episode, for those who missed the passive aggressive hints lol Yep he was immortal, but died because he got slashed... I guess outside of battle? lol uwu melts He's still eccentric, but the parts where he refuses to touch stuff isn't eccentricity and more that he doesn't want to reveal his inability to do so. Vanini would've flipped if she'd understood the hints lmao I actually planned to reveal what he was in the very beginning of their acquaintance, but thought "that ain't fun enough" so I scrapped it. Here you can have another AU bit that got cut (starts when he asks Vanini all these questions about her family to see if she's the princess in the book, but is disappointed, and in the version that made it into the episode, there's an earthquake that prevents Silver from finishing his sentence which doesn't happen in this): No worritos, I don't write stuff without a plan (most of the time xD)

Berry good observation, me fren that was actually a (personally) crucial point so I'm glad it was noticed~ It really gotta be gut-wrenching sometimes I planned to have an epic fight-off where Vanini would lose- actually, why don't I just copy paste it here lol This is in an alternative timeline where I didn't think this was a boring bit that should be cut (it happens instead of Silver pranking Vanini): As for Magearna, she lives in the castle and really takes care of Silver's room, (minor spoilers for Idk next chapter? it was already aggressively implied though, me thinks) Magearna, like all other pokemon in my story, is immortal unless fatally wounded, so she's been living with the Andersens for centuries. The setting which I don't think I'll get to tell in-story is that she moved with the family when they emigrated from Alola (I guess, given her dex entry) to Everland, and has been family since then. Her loyalty has mostly been to the first-born, in this case, Silver. Titania knows Magearna lives with them, but doesn't particularly engage with her since Magearna is slightly terrified of her (due to her resting b*tchface lol).

Even Vanini, who really knew him for like 1 week, is a little hurt by his demise. I really hope he comes back when the world is renewed(?) in E19 I thought I'd reveal it in this episode, but it felt too hasty. Maybe in the next episode, since Amaria will be there too :p