KALMA


For what seemed like a rare occurrence, the Pachirisu named Kalma found himself alone in Eterna Forest. It had seemed he had managed to earn himself some alone time, which he hadn't had for a while. Trying to break away from the attention of other Pokémon wasn't quite so easy. It seemed like no matter where he went, he ran into another Pokémon here or there.

He could tell the forest hadn't seen better days than they did now. The large birch, oak, maple, and other coniferous trees were doing quite well, full of fresh, green leaves, healthy bark, and the grass and shrubby was more bright and vibrant than any other. Flower beds were in bloom and Pokémon seemed happier and healthier than before. It just seemed difficult for Kalma to be happy. He tried to keep it hidden, because he knew if he kept getting caught looking downcast, other Pokémon might think it was some kind of depression lapse and they'd try too hard to cheer him back up. He definitely didn't want that.

In appearance, Kalma was like any other Pachirisu of his kind, a little more disheveled than the others, with his composure a little more slouched, his large, bushy white and cyan-colored tail a bit dragged down, and his eyes looking downcast with droopy eyelids, looking as if he had been up too late and woken up too early. He also couldn't remember the last time he had ever smiled from real happiness. Regardless, he tried his best not to show it.

"Hey Kalma!" A playful Sentret called out to the electric squirrel.

The sudden call from the bushy tailed, pudgy, rabbit-eared scout Pokémon made Kalma suddenly snap to attention, knowing he shouldn't be wearing his crestfallen composure when around others. Despite the fact Kalma wasn't quite in the mood for hide and seek with Farren the Sentret and his friends, or any of the other games that Farren and the others liked to play, he tried to put on a friendly composure anyway. Something just seemed wrong with them and how they acted, even though Kalma couldn't really put his paw on what bothered him the most about them.

"Heya, Farren," Kalma replied, trying to wear a quick, mirthless and improvised smile, still trying to be friendly. "How's it going?"

"Oh, just perfect!" Farren replied, suspending himself upward by the means of his thick, bushy tail. "It's a beautiful day!"

And soon enough, he was joined by Narro the Shinx, Maple the Buneary, and Opal the Minccino, all of whom were also Farren's friends. Technically, they were Kalma's friends as well, but he just didn't seem as connected to them as Farren was. Narro the Shinx seemed especially playful this morning, proud of his clean and rich black and cyan-colored fur as the cat-like Pokémon couldn't wait to enjoy the morning outdoors. Meanwhile, Maple had done her best to see that her brown and beige fur was especially clean and extra fluffy this morning, also looking forward to today's games and activities. And Opal was looking on with a smile as the gray chinchilla Pokémon was getting impatient to head off and play, tapping her foot and trying to get the others to head off and join in on the fun already.

"So guys, hide and seek in Eternia City?" Farren asked, looking delighted.

"Yes!" Opal cheered, jumping to lead the pack. "Come on, come on!"

"You... sure?" Kalma asked, honestly hoping their idea of fun could be somewhere else for once. "I mean, it's been a while since we've used Eternia Forest as the area."

To be truthful, Kalma just didn't want to head in the city, but he realized the others didn't even hear him out before Opal was rushing toward the road that led to Eternia. He figured if he didn't follow, they'd nag him about it again and he really didn't want to have all that get started. The last thing he wanted was suspicion about them thinking he had a mental condition. He just decided to follow and leave it at that. In truth, he was just hoping they'd get bored quickly.

He ran quickly to catch up with the other Pokémon, and eventually he managed to reach them just before they headed into Eternia City by Route 211. Thankfully, the road was still visible, but weeds, plants, and other small shrubs had been growing out of the stone path, making it slightly difficult to see, but there was enough of road to see where it was going. He didn't really want to head into Eternia City, but he followed Opal and Farren, who were leading the pack of Pokémon as they headed down the road and into the quiet metropolis. He trailed slightly behind Maple and Harro, running further into the city itself.

"Okay, who should be 'it?'" Farren asked with a playful smile, stepping around what was a pile of bleached, skeletal remains. "I know! Not it!"

"Not it!" Opal cheered.

"Not it!" Maple laughed.

"Not it, not it!" The others chimed in.

And that left Kalma as the only one who didn't feel up to replying. He just smiled sheepishly, lightly rocking his large, squirrel tail as the other Pokémon pointed and laughed, prancing around him.

"Come on, I know you're faster than that, Kalma!" Farren laughed, skipping besides the burnt remains of a car. "Looks like you're it! Guess you wanted to be 'it,' huh?"

"Ooh, that's good, because I'm not good at being 'it'!" Maple taunted him, hopping and skipping over a fallen traffic light. "Glad you volunteered!"

"Yeah, I like it," Kalma lied with a fake smile, trying to just roll along with the game everyone wanted to play but him. "I like to see you all run!"

"Ha ha!" Narro laughed, quickly scurrying away through the broken windows of the Pokémon Center. "Who ya gonna catch first!?"

Kalma was quite convinced they were quick, and he gave them a short while to run and hide. Given, if he really wanted to, he could catch them easily without a hitch, but it was cheating in his eyes. He didn't want to do that. Instead, he closed his eyes and began a countdown starting from fifty. It was much higher than the usual countdown they used, but the others easily interpreted it as Kalma wanting to add onto the challenge. But, in truth, he'd rather stall the game a little longer. Maybe by the time the countdown was done, he'd actually feel like playing. In the meantime, he couldn't see anything, but he could still hear and feel the light wind, blowing dust through the quiet, empty city.

39... 38... 37...

He could hear them in the distance, giggling and taunting, likely trying to find the perfect spot in the piles of rubble or in the shelled-out buildings that were still standing. As he drew closer to the end of the countdown, he didn't hear them at all, likely having found the ideal hiding spot they wanted to use. In truth, he knew the easiest one to find would be Narro, as his cyan-colored fur gave him away very easily. But, while being easy to find, he was very quick, so he wasn't always the best target to go after. Farren could easily blend in with the broken wood piles and rubble with his brown fur, although the white O ring on his belly could be a giveaway if he wasn't careful about keeping it hidden. Maple was often hiding in the same kinds of places, but she didn't have the kind of giveaway mark that Farren had. And lastly, Opal was the most difficult, as she was gray and could easily blend in just about anywhere in the city. If she hid herself quietly in the dust or rubble piles, any of the other Pokémon could be right in front of her and would never know she was there. Very, very rarely did she ever end up as the one being "it" for these reasons.

3... 2... 1...

"Ready or not, here I come!" Kalma shouted, almost sounding like all of a sudden, he really did want to play.

He opened his eyes again and the sudden flash of sunlight almost blinded him, as his eyes had gotten to accustomed to the darkness of being covered. After getting his bearings back, he slowly walked along the cracked and ruined streets of Eternia, stepping around the burnt and rusted remains of a bicycle and the nearby skeleton of the boy it belonged to. As he gazed around from the weedy streets, searching the burnt out remains of buildings for any kind of sound or movement, a few crumbled newspapers blew past him, carried by the soft wind that carried it and a few dust clouds down the street. A crushed soda pop can soon joined them, rattling and scraping along the ruined streets before getting stuck in a drainage ditch that had been clogged with other similar garbage, including a few bones.

Trying to find them with a countdown of fifty would be difficult. It gave them the potential to escape at least five city blocks into any number of the high-rise building shells that were around the city. And if he searched the wrong one, it gave them that much more time and distance to hide elsewhere.

The electric squirrel relied on his hearing, trying to listen to their breathing and heartbeats while checking for any signs of movement. Every sound was important if he wanted to get out of being "it" sometime this morning. Of course, a nearby rusted store sign that was swinging and squeaking from the wind wasn't helping, so he quickly walked around it and past a ruined van lying on its side. But in all, there weren't many sounds in the city. And any kind of snapping of wood, dropping of rubble pieces, or even the slightest of giggles could give their position away as long as he remained vigilant. With everything quiet, some sounds could even echo through the streets.

The slight rolling of a few concrete pieces quickly caught Kalma's attention, but he realized it was just the natural weathering of the office building they once belonged to, as there was no way any of those Pokémon could have reached tenth floor already. He kept his ears open, but still, no sounds.

As he turned right down another road where a pile-up of ten ruined cars had been, he could have sworn he heard Maple giggling. He knew she was often careless like that, and got carried away with watching whoever was 'it' clumsily walk right by whoever was hiding. But in truth, after looking up and waiting a few seconds, he didn't hear any sign of her breathing or her giggles. She just wasn't there, period.

Could have just been something in the wind.

In truth, the more he walked around, trying to listen for noises from the others, the more he just didn't feel like playing this game. Fifty seconds for a countdown was way too hard for anyone who was "it" and he was really regretting having decided to make a countdown like that. He decided to let them have one more minute of fun, but that was it. Otherwise he'd be there all day trying to search for them and that would just get boring.

He headed down another street matted with dust and weeds. The blown-out storefronts and three-story apartment buildings here were definitely not the best places to hide and seek, and he knew they probably wouldn't be here. He tried to listen again as he climbed over another pile of overturn and broken stone sidewalk slabs, but he still didn't hear anything. He knew by now they could be anywhere in the city. Not only did he give them tons of time to work with, but he also was likely heading in the wrong direction. He was just plain getting tired of this.

The wind picked up a bit, blowing a few more dust clouds through the vacant city streets. Visibility had gotten worse, as now he couldn't look down three city blocks before everything faded into gray. The wind also shook the wood piles, rolled stones around, and caused other sounds to be created, which made it even more difficult to hear what could have been the other Pokémon hiding. The wind could last for another hour for all he knew, and while it was blowing, there was no chance he'd be able to use his hearing or his eyesight to help him find the others. Now he'd totally have to rely on luck.

Screw it...

He shut his eyes again, and with deep, powerful concentration, he saw Farren was on the fifth floor of the AxelTech office building, hiding in a pile of destroyed cubicles. Narro was tucked quietly under the seats of a burnt-out bus on sixteenth street, just smiling and being extra careful not to take peeks out of the rickety, broken bus doors. Maple was peeking out of one of the seventh floor broken windows of an apartment complex, knowing her giggles couldn't be heard way up there. And last but not least, Opal was cleverly tucked away in a pile of dust that was part of the collapsed roof of the Maxwell office building, impossible to see, but had a great view of the rest of the ruined city. With hiding places like those, he knew it would have been an eternity before he found even just one of them if he hadn't... "cheated."

He decided to tag Farren. He hadn't felt like playing this game of hind and seek to begin with, so he figured he might as well make the one who suggested it in the first place pay for it. In a flash of an instant, Kalma blurred through the city and had tapped his paw right on Farren's back, suddenly right behind him, standing on the broken piles of cubicle walls on the fifth floor of the AxelTech building.

"Tag, you're it!" Kalma shouted with a grin.

"Hey... WHOA!" Farren jumped, totally shocked to see the white and blue squirrel behind him. "Geez Kalma, you... how did you ever find... wait a minute... you didn't cheat, did you?"

For a minute, there was only silence from Kalma as Farren stared the squirrel down among the piles of cubicles, foam ceiling tiles, broken desks, and piles of paper and other debris. In truth, Kalma knew Farren could have been hiding anywhere on this floor and he still wouldn't have found him.

"I..." Kalma began to say.

"Kalma, we told you not to cheat like that!" Farren shouted back at him with a scowl, standing up out of his hiding spot with an angry look on his Sentret face. "It's not fair!"

Kalma didn't know what to say. He knew he never would have found any of the four if he played by the rules, but then he would have been out there, walking around for hours playing a game he really didn't feel like participating in, especially here in this fallen city. He could have been out there until it got late in the afternoon, and dusk would have made what was already a difficult challenge even harder.

"I know, I know, I shouldn't have counted from fifty," Kalma confessed. "That was too much time and it got too hard. And I'll be honest, I just didn't feel like playing today. I still-"

"Shut up, there's no excuses!" Farren shouted, shoving Kalma in his anger, casing the electric squirrel to stumble and roll back over his giant, spiked tail. "When we play hide and seek, we play by my rules!"

"Fine, I'll stop playing with you guys," Kalma spat back at him, getting up off of his rear. "Your rules make it too hard for the person who's 'it.' There's too many places to hide here!"

"No, you just suck at being 'it,' Kalma!" Farren laughed, shoving the electric squirrel again, causing him to stumble over a broken desk drawer and bump his head painfully against a broken computer tower.

"Ow, stop it!" Kalma shouted in shock from the spike of pain. "Farren, you're going too far!"

Farren then stood over Kalma, and then struck him in the face with one of his paws, right in his tiny nose. For Kalma, it hurt much more than he thought it would.

"Nobody likes you, Kalma!" Farren shouted, striking him in the face again. "Nobody!"

"AGGH!" Kalma shouted, unable to contain himself.

Kalma then threw his paws forward into Farren, and in a flash of fiery light, Farren the Sentret was suddenly lit ablaze and thrown upward toward the broken ceiling like a rocket. His flaming body was suddenly affixed to the ceiling, all the while Farren's screams were incredibly high-pitched, echoing throughout the city. It hung up there for almost have a minute, all the while the flames were wrapping around Farren's body, burning higher and brighter.

And then, they just stopped, and soon Farren's body, now nothing more than a burnt, smoldering husk, just fell softly from the ruined ceiling to the floor and the piles of office debris. As it fell upon a dilapidated office desk, what was once Farren's arm and leg crumbled off from the rest of the burnt body and rolled away.

"FARREN!" Maple screamed right behind Kalma. "WHAT... WHAT HAPPENED!?"

"I..." Kalma turned to Maple the Buneary and struggled to speak as a trickle of blood ran down his nose.

"KALMA, WHAT DID YOU DO!?" Opal shouted at him before looking back at the burnt body of the Sentret. "Oh my... Farren...! FARREN!!"

Kalma didn't even want to look at them panicking over Farren's incinerated remains. He turned and also saw Harro the Shinx had come up as well, totally in shock and speechless at what had transpired before him. It seemed the fight between him and Farren had created enough noise for the others to step out of their hiding spots to see what exactly that happened. Meanwhile, Kalma was still in pain, his nose aching and the back of his head stinging. No one seemed to remember that Farren, if allowed to continue, could have potentially killed Kalma if he had not resisted.

"I... he hit me and I lost control!" Kalma shouted, trying to defend himself. "He pushed me twice and punched me twice in the face also! I banged my head on that desk over there when-"

"That was no reason to kill him!" Opal shouted at the squirrel. "You're unbelievable, Kalma! You're a monster!"

"I... I didn't mean it!" Kalma shouted, beginning to tremble. "Please... I'll go and I'll never come back, okay!? You never have to see me again, ever!"

But his offer was only met with the tearful sobs of Opal and Maple crying over Farren's burnt remains, while Harro gave him a look that spoke no words but gave Kalma the feeling he should be horribly ashamed of himself. Regretful, Kalma looked over his shoulder one last time, and then just headed down the stairs and back out into the ruined streets of Eternia City again.

Even as he walked down those broken streets, he could still hear Opal and Maple crying over the whole incident, echoing through the quiet city. Without a doubt, Kalma vowed he never wanted to see this place again, but in truth, reminders of it all everywhere around him.

It was hard to forget he killed everyone.