Insurmountable Gray [TEEN]

[Giratina]

Hello everyone! o/ Welcome to my new fanfiction. It's been a... um, a long time since I've written anything like this, and I'm still kind of miserably out of practice. So I really hope you guys don't mind if I use Crossroads to re-learn. n_n' Anyway, as for the story itself... it's rated teen. Some characters do curse, but the stronger curses are censored -- for example, 'word' would become 'w**d'.

That's about it. The chapter's quite long, so I'll keep this short... here's Insurmountable Gray.

POKÉMON: INSURMOUNTABLE GRAY.

CHAPTER ONE.
METEORFALL.

Flora Charbonneau stepped out of Nuvema Mart with a bag full of groceries, a face full of sunset, and not an awful lot else.

The streets in the rural town of Nuvema were long, cracked, and barren. When night fell in a few hours, she would be able to climb onto the roof of her house with a lantern and some snacks and have a Meteor Party.

All alone.

By herself.

The Druddigon Shower passed around Unova once every five years. The last time Flora had seen it, she was twelve, and she sat on her roof and watched just the way she was going to tonight; but when she was twelve, she’d had friends. Actual friends. And now they were gone, and Flora was literally the only person in Nuvema who was still in high school. (The other kids were Hugh, a middle-schooler, Delilah, a second-grader, and about six or seven kindergarteners.)

Needless to say, Nuvema life was incredibly lonely, and climbing up to the roof to watch meteors without her friends around almost seemed self-destructive. It was like rubbing salt in her wounds.

But the alternative was taking another run through the countryside, and Flora was still kind of sore from the one she did this morning.

The girl turned off the main drag onto a side road, made of packed dirt, and soon enough found herself standing in front of the large but worn-down building she called her home.

Flora bypassed her mother Lucy on the way in; she dropped most of her bags on their kitchen table, but kept one for herself – that was her snack bag for later tonight, filled with all her favourite goodies (and some of Bianca and Cheren’s, when she found that she couldn’t resist buying them as well).

“Thanks,” her mother said, immediately hovering over to peck through the bags. “What’d the total come to?”

Without answering, Flora handed her the remaining Poké from the shopping excursion (her own contributions having been spent on candy). Lucy didn’t especially care how Flora presented the money to her, as long as she wasn’t stealing anything from the total amount – and the two of them were much too close for one to even imagine stealing from the other.

Even if Flora hadn’t been talking as much lately.

She assisted her mother quickly with putting away the groceries, and then took her own bag to her bedroom. At the very end of the hall was a sign, hanging from knobs in the door; it said FLORA in large letters, a memento from her younger years that the girl never really had the heart to take down.

Flora’s room, much like her door, hadn’t changed a lot since the two of them moved here when Flora was nothing but a little girl. The ceiling was still very low; it was getting to the point where she couldn’t help but notice how close her head was to the top. The furniture, also, had not changed, though it had been repainted so that the pink and purple flowers had turned into a nice, calm black. It wasn’t the world’s classiest bedroom – nor was it the world’s classiest house – but it functioned.

Flora dropped the bag of goodies on her desk thoughtlessly as she walked in, and did not bother to stop walking once she made it inside; instead, she continued trooping right along, allowing herself to finally fall face first onto her bed at the opposite end of the room.

It was the night of the Meteor Party, and while before she was so eager to go to her roof and set up, it was now gone. The whole affair was just so… disheartening.

Flora, Cheren, Bianca. The three of them were inseparable. Best friends, from the day they met to the day they left. Cheren was a Gym Leader in Aspertia now, Bianca was halfway through her high-school career at the newly-founded Unity Tower Academy for Pokémon Science, they were both national heroes for their work in the Team Plasma Investigation of two years previous, and the two of them were ready to live life to the fullest… and then there was Flora. Flora, who – at the bold young age of seventeen – was still watching meteors on her rooftop.

Her mother needed her, though. To take care of the farm. And bear a child to someone. Who would also take care of the farm. And, presumably, that child would find another person who they didn’t actually love – and their children, too, would grow up in the glamorous lifestyle of… taking care of the farm.

Flora rolled around rather lamely on her mattress. She could see a neat pile in the corner of all the things she was going to need for the Meteor Party, not counting food; she had organized the whole event several days ago. There was a blanket, because things fell on rooftops that you did not want to sit on. There was a lantern, for when you had to come down and you might not be able to see your way. There was a pack of matches, for lighting said lantern. And... well, in reality that was all you actually needed for a Meteor Party, because it was kind of hard to play games or do anything of that nature when you could barely see and there were massive rocks flying through the sky.

Idly, Flora reached onto her bedside table and groped around for her X-transceiver, which she then threw on top of the pile. Her aim was perfect, and it landed harmlessly on the soft, squishy blanket. Maybe, she thought idly, Cheren or Bianca would call her tonight. Not that they’d done so at any other point in the past two years, but… well, tonight was special, wasn’t it? It was the night of the Meteor Party. They can’t forget the Meteor Party.

She hoped against hope that they wouldn’t forget the goddamn Meteor Party, and continued to do this for about twenty minutes, until her mother called her down for dinner.

And after dinner, of course, was when she climbed to the roof.

The ladder was old and rusted in some parts; it had come attached to the house, and that was what made Flora’s place the Meteor Party destination. All of the moms had felt somewhat safer knowing that Flora’s roof was designed for people to get up on it. Flora put her items in a backpack, and scaled the ladder alone with it on her back; once up there, she set out the blanket and a few rocks to keep the edges from flying off, which she had to climb back down to get – it would have been much harder in the darkness.

The girl looked up. As it was, shadows were falling fast, so she set herself on the blanket. It was a really cute one, with Mareeps leaping along on countless rolling hills. The thing was old, extremely old, which was why Flora was allowed to put it on the roof; but design-wise, it remained one of the family favourites.

So Flora settled down, ripped open a fresh bag of ruffle chips, and waited.

And then, it began.

The first one was small. Unremarkable, as far as meteors went; it could have been some piece of starstuff, or a space Pokémon floating aimlessly across the sky, for all the average viewer cared. But then there was another one, slightly larger. And another one, slightly larger than that. Soon enough, the night sky was full to bursting with a ceaseless rain of meteors.

Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, Flora was taken back in time. She was no closer to the meteorfall than she was at twelve years old, but her mind had changed so much in the past five years that the memories, in their burning intensity, were beginning to singe her skin. Underneath these meteors, all three of them had daydreamed about what they would do when they turned fourteen and were finally allowed to enter the world they really wanted to be in – the world of Pokémon. She still remembered their aspirations, individually.

Bianca, as usual, wanted to be the friend to all living things, but beyond that she didn’t have much of an idea. Cheren, on the other hand, wanted to be the Champion of the Pokémon League, an honor which no one in Nuvema ever doubted he could achieve if he put his mind to it. And Flora herself was a wild girl at heart; she was happiest when she was up and moving and out in nature, exploring uncharted lands with a team of very powerful friends. Those were their dreams, their lives; they ate, slept, and breathed Pokémon, because the time when they could really have one of their own was so close, and yet so far away.

It almost felt as if Flora was regressing, back to a time where she was allowed to dream of Pokémon – where she could look forward to doing something with her life, anything, that amounted to more than the title of Senior S**t-Shoveler at the Charbonneau Farm. It was such an empowering feeling.

On a whim, she sat up and grabbed her X-transceiver, and punched in Cheren’s number; she had it memorized.

The machine had hardly rung once before Flora was greeted with the visage of a friend she hadn’t seen in two years, and the smile on her face didn’t do a great job of hiding that emotional punch in the gut.

He was growing his hair out, and it was styled differently – it made his face look much better, Flora noticed without intending to. But that wasn’t the only thing; he was wearing what appeared to be a freshly-pressed button up shirt, and behind him was a big old Pokémon League logo, plastered on the wall. He was in his Gym.

“Flora!” he asked, eyebrows rising. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“H-hey,” she said, after several failed attempts. Her larynx felt like it was starting a rebellion.

Cheren faltered. This was obviously awkward for him – of course it was awkward for him, Flora couldn’t think of why it wouldn’t be, and she really wasn’t helping. “Flora?” he asked. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” she responded weakly. “Doing okay. You know, the meteors are out tonight… got nostalgic…” And then, without knowing where it came from: “…Sorry. I’m bothering you.”

“No you’re not,” Cheren responded, far too quickly for it to be a genuine answer. Obviously his stint as a Gym Leader had taught him a lot about how to be insincere in order for others to feel better. “You’re not bothering me, I promise – as a matter of fact, I was just thinking of you. The meteors are out here too, you know.”

Flora felt an electric power, rising through her spine. There was hope. He was thinking about her—

“I know the League Challenge takes a long time, but I had been wondering when you would get here. Where are you watching them now? In Aspetia it’s foggy tonight, but wherever you are it seems clear.”

The electricity solidified, and turned to lead.

Flora sat there with her mouth slightly open, the meteors falling unceremoniously to earth behind her. It was hard to look at Cheren, all professional and grown-up – he was a real adult now, running his own Gym, one of the youngest Gym Leaders in Unova history. (Probably had the whole damn town swooning over him.) Bianca was the same way. She was probably in a classy, cute outfit somewhere, riding on a glass-bottom boat in the middle of a cerulean ocean to look at the Water Pokémon in their natural habitats.

“Flora?”

She pressed a small button on the side of the X-transceiver, cutting the call and turning off the machine in one fluid motion. He didn’t even know her situation. He thought she was out traveling Unova like she had wanted to do all her life. Ha.

Flora became suddenly aware of a car driving down the highway.

She threw her X-transceiver into the street, hoping it would get crushed beneath the tires. And that was the end of that.

Slowly, Flora reached over and turned off the lantern she had set aside for light. She snuggled up within her oversized hoodie, shoving her hands in the pockets, and laid down for the long haul. From this position she was staring directly at the sky, with the meteors still streaking across her vision in a million points of light. She could feel the air getting colder as she breathed it in – night had fallen now, and nights in Nuvema were about as cold as the days were warm.

Despite herself, she had to admit: it was nostalgic and beautiful.

At some point, Flora must have fallen asleep. She knew this because the next sensation she felt was waking very suddenly, in reaction to a crushing weight on her chest.

Her blue eyes shot wide open. In the darkness, it was hard to see what was on top of her, but it was moving – so it must have been a Pokémon or something, running across the rooftops… a very big Pokémon. She made a move to grab whatever was pushing on her, but it apparently reacted first, and it was at that moment Flora realized that the thing on top of her was a human. But what was a human doing on her roof?

The boy moved quickly, pulling back into a crouch. It took Flora a few moments to regain her bearings, but once she did, she was moving just as fast as the other guy was. She grabbed onto his hand just as he was standing up.

“Hold it,” she said. “Who are you?”

He slipped his hand deftly out of her grip, leaving her floundering to snatch anything that she could. She wouldn’t give up, though – there was no way she was going to let him run free. He could be a thief trying to rob their house! However, the first solid body part that she managed to grab turned out to be his leg, as he was jumping over her, causing the boy (for the second time that night) to face-plant into the shingles.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Flora growled, slowly getting to her knees while still keeping a hand on his leg. “At least, not until you tell me what’s going on.”

From this position in the moonlight, she could get a better image of the person, though she was only looking at his back. He clearly had a large messenger bag slung around his shoulder, indicating heavily towards the possibility that he was a thief. e was wearing a charcoal-coloured beanie, but a few strands of silver hair spilled out from underneath – peculiar, since silver wasn’t exactly a common hair colour in Unova. He was wearing a shirt with ripped short sleeves, and had some kind of strange… coat? Kilt? Something attached to a belt, which was presently draped over his upper legs.

…oh.

The assailant rolled around to face up at her, grimacing darkly, and Flora realized quite suddenly that ‘he’ had breasts.

“Not much to say,” the person grunted, and their voice confirmed it – this was a female.

“For one thing,” Flora said firmly, “I’d like to know why you were sprinting across my roof.”

“It’s part of my job,” she explained. “I’m a courier. I use rooftops.”

“Yeah right.” Flora snorted angrily. “Real couriers don’t do all that ninja parkour stuff. And they don’t dress like someone out of a video game, either. They just walk along the road like everyone else.”

“And what the hell would you know about couriers?” she responded.

Realizing that she didn’t actually know an awful lot about couriers, Flora shifted the subject to something else. “Look, you could just as easily be a thief trying to pull the wool over my eyes because I caught you. Prove you’re a courier and I’ll let you go.”

“With pleasure.” She pushed herself to a sitting position, moaning in pain as she did so. “I’ll show you the package I’m delivering. You’d better pray to your hick-town gods that it’s not damaged.” Flora felt her anger surge at the ‘hick-town gods’ comment, but she knew that if she tried to start something now, it would do her no good – so she let the girl reach into her messenger bag, and to Flora’s surprise, a package was actually what came out.

“It’s addressed to Flora CHAR-bonno. You know her?”

“It’s pronounced Shar-bon-NOU,” Flora responded, almost automatically.

“Look, I really don’t care how it’s pronounced.” The girl pulled her package back. “But you obviously know this Flora person. Where’s she live?”

“If you’re a courier you should already know.”

The girl snorted. “You really know nothing about couriers.”

“Well, I’m Flora Charbonneau.” Flora flipped her curly brown hair behind her back. “So I don’t know why you have a package for me, but you’d better hand it over and go before I call the cops.”

“What cops?” the girl asked as she stood up, grimacing at the further pain in her joints from the fall. “I sincerely doubt there’s enough people in this town for a whole police force. Anyway, if you’re Flora, you’ve gotta sign for it, and specific instructions from the sender dictate that I’ve gotta be here until it’s opened. There’s yet more instructions inside for the both of us, apparently.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a small clipboard with a pen attached. When she next spoke, her voice was venomous – “Dotted line, please.”

Flora skimmed briefly over the paper, went cross-eyed, and signed. “Here – but what I don’t get is why I’m supposed to open the package with you around.”

“That makes two of us.” The girl took her clipboard back and placed her item in Flora’s waiting hands. “Just open it now so I can scram.”

Flora didn’t need to be told twice. She sat down on her blanket again, turned on the lantern for more light, and looked at the front of the package. Sure enough, it was addressed to Flora Charbonneau – with a small word in the corner, “GREY”.

“What’s ‘grey’ mean?” she asked.

“It’s the name of the person who delivered it,” the girl responded drily. “I’m Grey.”

“That’s your real name?”

“It’s my name,” she repeated, as if that was the end of the matter. “Now, I thought you were going to open that thing?”

“I am, I am.” Flora ripped apart the nondescript brown paper surrounding the package. Inside was a letter and a… Pokéball…

“What in the world…?” she muttered.

Grey looked up at her. “Yeah,” she said, in a tone that might have been sympathetic if it had been spoken by someone who wasn’t Grey. “I did get told that you might not know what it was immediately.”

“Am I supposed to recognize it afterward?”

“He never said. Go ahead, open the letter – I’m guessing our special instructions are going to be inside.”

Flora did so, and settled herself in for what she expected would be a baffling reading experience. She was not disappointed.

“Dearest Flora,

I know this must come as something of a shock to you, and for that I apologise. My name is N, and you do not know me, because I’ve never met you before. But I know a lot about you. I know that you live at 14 Juniper Street, Nuvema Town, Unova – which, by the way, is very impressive, you should feel honoured, I really like Professor Juniper, she and her father are very smart and they have published a lot of great papers on the topic of Pokémon. But you really can’t stay at 14 Juniper Street, Nuvema Town, Unova much longer, because it’s about to be taken over. There’s a very suspicious group called Team Plasma about, and they are looking for you. I know you know about the Team Plasma Investigation two years ago because of your friends Cheren and Bianca, and yes, it’s kind of the same Team Plasma, but only a bit, because of reasons. But they’re very dangerous and they’re taking Unova politically by storm. And soon they may actually take Unova literally by storm – that is to say, generate a giant snowstorm and freeze the entire Region solid – but that is really just speculation, I made it up just now as a means of conveying how dreadfully serious they are. They’re very serious.

Not that freezing all of Unova would actually work. It’s kind of a stupid plan. But I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly what Team Plasma are doing here.

Anyway, it’s going to be hard to stop them, and you and I are the only ones who can do it, Flora. And also some other people. There is a sizable group of people dedicated to stopping them, because they are filthy backstabbing bad people. One member of that group should be with you right now (your courier), unless of course they ran away, in which case they didn’t listen to my instructions and they’re actually not a very good courier. I’m in cahoots with this group. Actually, I guess you could say I lead this group, though I don’t really like the term ‘leader’. So if your courier is still there and they happen to read this, they’re probably not very insulted. Anyway, I really can’t say much right now because this letter could be intercepted by Team Plasma at any time, but you need to come back to me at our base. The courier will be able to take you back. Courier, these are your instructions. Take Flora back.

Also, I sent you a Pokémon, Flora. He’s yours. Keep him. Presents endear people to people, and I want to be your friend, and we sort of need to save the world together so friendship is a very valuable asset. Also, I don’t know if you have any Pokémon you could spare from your farm. They’re your friends, I know, and I wouldn’t want to put them in danger.

Best regards, N.”

For Grey’s benefit, she read it aloud, pausing at some points to make out the awful handwriting – it was written erratically, as if this N person was trying to get down his thoughts as fast as possible.

“Well,” Flora began. She didn’t get much farther than that, because – she had to face it – she had no idea where to begin.

“Certified lunatic,” said Grey casually. “One of our lot is a psychologist by trade. They’re pretty sure he should be put in a mental institution, but when he’s not spouting nonsense about the hero dragon spirits of ancient Unova, his degree of ability is impressive. I doubt you trust him too much right now, though.”

“I, uh,” Flora stammered, trying to find the right words to say ‘he sounds like the kid who grows up to be a serial killer’ in polite conversation. Failing this, she tried something else. “…I get the feeling he doesn’t… talk to people, much.”

“If you didn’t, then I would be concerned. Come on.” Grey stood up. “How athletic are you, Flora?”

She glanced around uncertainly. “I’m athletic. Why?”

“How do you feel about camping?”

“I love camping.”

“Then this is going to be slightly less painful than it could have been,” Grey said casually, gathering her stuff. “You got one hour to say your goodbyes. Then we leave.”

Flora stared at her uncomprehendingly.

Grey stared back; compassion found no place in her eyes. “Better get runnin’.”

[Caite-chan]

I'm not one for reading long chapters on my laptop because my eyes are bad and I just lose interest after awhile but this...I couldn't stop reading this. I loved this a lot. I was even reading this early this morning when I woke up. So you need to hurry up and post the next Chapter because I can't wait to see what happens next. :D

[FedoraChar]

Huzzah! Giratina is here! :D And your writing is as clever and witty as ever! ^^ (so don't worry 'bout it, hun ;) PXR will be more than happy to have your works here!)

I noticed one small typo when I read this a while back... but now I can't find it Dx It was a place where you left out the "H" in e, and it was at the beginning of a sentence somewhere... Argh, well, I'll find it xD But besides that, I really enjoyed reading! ^^ Now, is this story kind of your perspective on what the "gray" version of black and white would have been? I just thought it was interesting that it sounds a little like it's from Black and White 2, but starting off in Nuvema? Seriously, I'm really intrigued. Lookin' forward to seeing how this unfolds! ^^