Lucas woke up to the sound of his alarm crying out like a baby; bells dinging so loudly that he wanted to rip his heart out through his ears.
The more it rang, the more rage stirred in his soul. The whole ordeal had him wondering why on Earth he had set his alarm’s noise to a fricking bell of all things. As he reached for his phone (which was going uncharacteristically ballistic), he began to wonder if he even needed the alarm; why couldn’t he wake himself up? This chiming time bomb certainly wasn’t worth all the mind-numbing noise.
But when he finally terminated all the ludicrous beeping, the truth of the situation splashed him with a wake-up slap that shook off all sense of drowsiness.
“No… no no no…”
Twelve times.
Twelve times the device had squeezed its lungs in a helpless attempt to wake him up; to help him; and now, in all its brutal honesty, the numbers paralyzed him with a deep glare.
9:02 AM.
“Damn it! What the hell?” Lucas threw himself out of his covers, stubbing his toe against one of the solid wooden legs of his bed. “Ffffrick! How the fudge did I sleep through my alarm—I slept earlier than usual!”
All the turmoil was dialed up to twelve when the tempest in his mind met the tempest outside. Through the square lens of his bedroom window, he saw it: wet drops free-falling from the sky, a storming symphony pattering against the roof as the rain showered freely. The day was completely under its thumb, and with the inexplicable passage of a lone bronzong floating by, distorting the air around it in a hypnotic haze, his heart spasmed.
No time.
There was no time!
Frantically, he opened his phone to find a flash flood of messages, none of which did anything to decrease his rising heart rate.
“You’re late.”
“Are you nearby?”
“Where are you?”
“Are you even awake?”
How could he waste another person’s time like that? He snatched his jean jacket from the floor, scrambling to find his running shoes, one of which had somehow sprinted off to who the hell knows where—and he could’ve sworn his bag was right on his desk, right where he left it after unpacking it last night! There was just nothing coming together; but most importantly—where was his scarf? White and woolly, where? Where?
He swung open his door to find—
“How did my shoe even… what the hell?” Lucas almost stumbled down the stairs as he snatched his missing shoe, which had somehow wound up on the staircase leading downstairs… along with everything else. Like breadcrumbs to lure in a Psyduck trailing down the stairs. There his backpack was, thrown on one step, all the sprays and bottles he’d bought yesterday littered across the ground; one step below that—
“Azure!”
He jumped down the last few stairs in a moment of mindless panic. On the floor, broken and split in two with no shining light, a poké ball; dead and empty, covered in fluffy blue plumage… and strangely enough, shadowy navy feathers that looked more like avian knives than quills, along with black ashy burns on and around the Poké Ball.
“Azure, where are you? Don’t tell me you ran off!” his voice burst through the house.
Why?
Why was it so cold all of a sudden?
Lucas turned to find the living room door gaping open—in the middle of a rainstorm; a loud and uncharacteristic downpour. Strangely enough, however, all the drumming and trampling of the rain was drowned.
Drowned out.
Muffled out by a deafening noise that grew louder and louder.
It was a voice; organized ramblings coming from the living room, and like a Dustox to a Chandelure, he followed. The closer he got, the more coherent the words became; the more coherent the voice, formal and feminine.
“I’m here at the crime scene… reported… robbery… Pokémon… crime group… Galactic… unfortunate incident… Police investigating…”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
There it was.
His scarf; strewn across the floor right in front of the TV, marred by dirt as if someone had tossed it away. And that wasn’t the only thing out of place—the entire living room: sofas, carpet, vases, and tables tossed upside down.
“Who did all this?” Lucas squeezed the dirty scarf in his palm, currents of panic washing over his mind in an anxious rinse; but when he gazed at the TV (which was playing at the highest volume), the screen was in chromatic disarray, pixels frozen in confused static.
It was then that Lucas noticed how severely cold it had become—unreasonably cold, the wind from outside invading the inside, and yet it lacked the unpleasant moisture of a torrential downpour; rather, it was frigid and frosty.
Ice cold.
That was when the door banged, drawing Lucas to the white storm of frost outside—a white storm that, in no way, had any relationship with logic, accompanied by a sweet arctic howl that called him into the snowscape.
Dragged by a need to know, he ran outside into the freezing cold, greeted by snowfall to see it in the middle of the blizzard; cold and blue with frigid cerulean fur…
BEEEEEEEEEEEP!!
Lucas woke up to the sound of his alarm crying out like a lost infant; the incessant beeping noise making him want to wring his own brain. The more it pinged and buzzed, vibrating on his nightside with no remorse or care for his prolonged exhaustion—the more it pinged and buzzed, the more confused he became!
What on Earth had just happened?
The acuteness of reality became very apparent, everything from the way his eyes felt uncomfortable as he adjusted to the orange light coming in from outside, to how his duvet brushed against his skin told him that whatever he’d seen was a fickle of his imagination.
No.
The lighting was off. The sky wasn't the regular blue he was anticipaing. The cries of Starlies outside were not the rude awakenings he was used to—they sounded conclusive. As did the orange light entering through his window… which was wide open; and upon seeing the inexplicable passage of a lone Bronzong hovering by in a thin veil of psychic energy—
“No! Are you fricking serious? Why is this happening to me?” He cried in a fit of anguish and distress, flinging his phone against his mattress as he pulled his hair.
The numbers never lied. Never; and in all their heartless honesty, they froze him with a cruel and icy punch to the gut when he checked his phone.
17:06 PM.
“This is literally impossible, what the hell—what the heck is going on? There’s no way I slept for that long!”
He snatched his phone, flying to his wardrobe as he browsed through his very real messages from hours ago, almost cursing as he crushed his thumb closing the closet too frantically.
“Five minutes extra is all you have.”
“I’m leaving.”
No. Not like this. Not like this. In a blur of fingers, he dialed the numbers.
Beep-beep… beep-beep… beep-beep… beep—
…
“Dawn! Listen, I’m so sorry, I—”
“Wow, a whole how many hours, Toffee? Oh, right—nine hours after our agreed meeting time you suddenly wake up and remember we had something important.”
“I’m sorry, I seriously overslept—”
“Overslept? Oh, Lucas. ‘Over’ sleeping is waking up thirty minutes—maybe even an hour later than you’re supposed to wake up; which should still be long before you rendezvous. I don’t know what to call whatever you’re on about, if you’re even telling the truth. Sharp means sharp."
“Dawn, please listen—it’s not my fault—I don’t know what happened! This has never happened before! I swear I set an alarm for half-past seven; I never wake up late regardless, I promise you this wasn’t on me.”
…
“Dawn…?”
…
“I’m still in Jubilife. The Professor gave me a job to do out of the blue this morning.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Then use your brain and get here before I leave. The library closes at seven, and I’ll be done here by six. I’m busy the rest of the week so…”
“Thank you so much, Dawn! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine. But you’ll be really sorry if you let it get dark. Sharpedo, Lucas.”
*Cut*
Before the line began to cut, Lucas blitzed through everything in his room, scraping his running shoes (which had somehow wound up under his bed) and grabbing his jacket from the chair by his PC, which he’d somehow left on all night stuck on several Bulbapedia tabs on a so-called “Lustrous Orb.”
Unfortunately for him, this was no time for curious exploits. He had neither the space nor time for either. Pulling his scarf from under his pillow, he burst out of his bedroom, flying down the stairs something at Mach speed—something like a Garchomp.
No time.
There was no time for a proper breakfast, so he grabbed the last three Rage Candy Bars from the box, unceremoniously leaving it on the counter next to a pile of unwashed bowls. Skipping over a sleeping Eevee, which remained calm through all the ruckus, he nabbed a Nanab Berry—and his backpack which he’d thrown on the table before taking a shower last night before grabbing the handle and…
Before he shut it completely, he checked the pockets of his jacket for… there it was; once he felt the poké ball in his pocket, ease eased itself into his jittering psyche. Azure was still with him, he hadn't lost him.
Whatever had happened in that weird dream, the type he’d been having far too many times in the past few days, was nothing but nonsensical fathomings.
But something else seized his thoughts at that moment.
An idea.
Soon after, he shut the door and began trekking—running. Sprinting out of his hometown, past lines of pine trees and through tall grass with time dwindling away.
