Chapter 17
The Meeting

The next morning, I was groggy and sluggish from not getting much sleep, but as school goes, too bad, class will start with or without you. I got dressed and ate a simple breakfast of cereal and milk while mom and Vicky had bacon and eggs, and again. Vicky was still unsure if I was telling the truth yesterday at dinner. Again, that morning, things were peaceful again, and we didn't fight or argue at all.

I could tell from the look in Vicky's eyes that she still was very curious to know what exactly caused such a change in me, and she wasn't liking the fact I was still hiding it. I could tell she was hoping I would have revealed it by now, and I knew there was no way I could do that. But in the meantime, the thoughts were constantly stabbing at my mind, and it was impossible to hide it.

Once I got to school, I barely paid attention in class, now unable to get my mind off of just trying to meet Randy when we were let out. Four long classes of math, history, science, and literature simply went all over my head as my mind was focused on other things. I got called on twice by the teacher and didn't even respond. I knew I couldn't keep this up, or else they would start thinking I was clinically depressed or had learning disabilities.

But when school was done, I knew I needed to get to Randy. Before, I didn't want to have anything to do with him, but yesterday, after letting Latias out of her Pokémon and discovering the cold, hard truth about all this, I needed to know from him as well. As a result, I dashed out the back exit as soon as the bell rang. I couldn’t wait another second to get it out.

“Man, aren’t you in a hurry…” I heard a familiar voice say right behind me.

I turned around and looked back into the stairway to see Alex with his long, black hair, his black Zenith Death metal band t-shirt, and his blue jeans. He seemed a bit shocked at the mess I had become.

"Dude, you're okay, right?" He asked me, really wondering what was going on.

I gave him that look that said "yeah, it's about what you think it is." He nodded and knew the exact incident I was talking about, but he didn't know anything about Juno or Latias. I wasn't ready to tell him about that either...

"I need to straighten things out with Randy," I told him, finally being the first out of the three of us willing to confront him about the whole incident a week ago. "Something about it still bothers me."

"No kidding, it's been making you act strange," Alex told me, not realizing there was a whole other level to that. "Look, let me come with you. David's off at the after school debate club, but we'll be fine on our own."

I nodded, and then he followed me out the back exit. Things seemed normal for now, and most of the other students leaving for the day didn't suspect anything. I was sure maybe a few of them were a bit surprised we weren't bothering people like we used to, but to them, it wasn't that significant of an issue for them to even think long and hard about.

When we stepped outside, we looked across the busy parking lot and found Randy in the one place where he always hung out after school: on a black, metal bench completely by himself. His frizzy orange hair and his orange shorts were definitely easy to spot. I wasn't sure who or what he was waiting for, but the rumor was he was often here for an hour just waiting for his dad to pick him up.

The two of us approached him, and he looked up at us with hesitation and anxiety in his eyes. I could tell he had noticed we had changed, but it would be the first time we've confronted him about this since the actual incident itself.

“Randy, we need to talk,” Alex said firmly to him. “We could really use some answers.”

Randy had already known what Alex was talking about, and he didn’t look like he wanted to fight about it. Everything had gotten awkwardly silent about all this. Only we knew about the "incident" that happened a week ago, but to us, it was a pretty big deal. He looked a little bit anxiously at Alex, and then just wanted to avoid eye contact.

“Look, let’s go some place where no one is going to see or hear us, okay?” Randy asked Alex, already knowing what this was about. “I don’t want this to go floating around. I... I already feel terrible about it.”

“Fine, Randy,” Alex agreed, still keeping it quiet. “How about we talk in one of those dugouts in that old baseball field?”

Only about a half a mile away was an old baseball field that hadn’t been used in nearly a decade. After Randy had agreed, we simply walked our way over there, totally out of sight by anyone. Randy walked in anxious manner, seeming like he was very uncomfortable at the moment and might have been thinking we were about to beat him up over what happened. I knew he didn’t want to talk about this but if I didn’t say anything about it, it would haunt me for months to come.

When we had arrived, we stepped inside one of the concrete dugouts and sat down on the old, wooden bench inside. Meanwhile, Alex sat down on the concrete stairs leading out into the dusty field so that he could face Randy.

"So... what is it that you wanted to know?" Randy asked, looking like he just wanted to get out of there.

“You know what happened last week,” Alex told him seriously, not wasting another second. “Randy, you gave us the nightmare of our lives. You had a power trip and we barely got out of there.”

“I... I know what I did was wrong,” Randy replied sheepishly while squirming in his seat. "I'm sorry. Please, don't hurt me over this. You don't know what it's like to be bad at almost everything."

Well... we did during that whole incident...

"I hope you learned something from that," I told Randy as I looked into his eyes, hoping to reinforce the whole idea of why I really came after him. "Raising Pokémon is something that takes time, there's no quick way about it. To me, it was like your dream world was sending all the wrong messages about how it's really done."

"I know, you're right," Randy flushed, backing up a bit until he had his back up against the concrete wall. "I'm not good at raising Pokémon and it's one of those things I probably should have asked for help with instead of... doing something like that."

"I don't even get how it ended either," Alex continued, wanting to know more. "You clobbered all three of us, constantly win your own tournaments against trainers that I swear would give the Elite Four a run for their money, and it's a Pikachu named Juno that nails you? What the hell, man, it doesn't make sense."

I was silent, and felt incredibly sick at that moment. I already perfectly knew the answer to that one, but I didn’t want to say anything at all. Neither of them knew it was me, and I still didn't want to speak up about it.

“I really don’t know,” Randy muttered, trying to fight off the pressure. “I couldn’t understand his commands, he gave his Pokémon and himself strange and powerful attacks, and after he decided to enter the fight himself, he just never seemed to go down despite the serious beating I gave him. I hit him with everything I could, but nothing ever stopped him. I just don’t know how Juno was able to do it…”

“No, really, Randy,” Alex cornered him, believing there was more than just that. “It was your world, you should have had him butchered in a heartbeat."

Randy looked at Alex for an instant, and then started to look toward the ground by his feet.

“I always wanted a Pikachu,” Randy said sadly, totally avoiding any eye contact with either of us. “Juno is the name I would have given him if I ever caught one. And I’ll admit, I imagined him to be way more powerful, nice, and selfless than a normal Pikachu would ever be. Juno was a side of me that was a burden that wouldn’t go away no matter how hard I tried. It wasn’t any surprise he decided to battle me and he was the one who won. It seemed like he was always doing that in some way. I was always losing against him. Could never catch him, could never trade for him, could never get him as a gift. It's... so overwhelming.”

Interesting. I never thought of it that way. I was just about to say something when…

“What a lovely story…” I heard a cold voice say sarcastically out of nowhere.

Recommended Listening: Fallout 1 OST- Acolytes of a New God

Randy and I had looked up in complete shock, and Alex frantically turned around to see who had snuck up on us. In a feral instinct of paranoia, I suddenly became very defensive. Before us stood a pale-skilled, brown haired man in black cloak, who seemingly just came out of nowhere. He was wearing sandals, and had a very stiff and aggressive look on his face, as if he was ready to fight at any second. He spoke very quickly and aggressively.

“Who the hell are you!?” Alex shouted at the cloaked figure in surprise.

“I want to know who the three of you are, first,” The pale-skinned man replied firmly. “I had been tracking that necklace for ages, and once I felt it's power being used, I headed toward the signal as soon as I could. And yet, I come here only to find it has been completely destroyed…”

I don’t know how it ended up breaking, but there was something else I really wanted to know. Still, how was he able to track us down, and even get here in the first place? Just where did this guy come from?

“You’re Quista, that Kavaskian sorcerer?” I asked the man. "You're the original owner of that necklace!?"

He started snickering, and at that moment, I felt like I had said something extremely stupid.

“So that’s who they think I am?” He asked mockingly. “Amazing what lengths people will go to in order to fill in the gaps. My real name is Zander. I’m not Kavaskian either, or whatever that drivel is supposed to mean. Someone had stolen that necklace from me thousands of years ago, and I never got the chance to use it.”

“Thousands of years ago...?" Randy recited as he became very tense. “…how could you still be alive…?”

Was this Zander person even human? I really didn't get how any of this was possible, or how someone like him even becomes a sorcerer in the first place. If he really was human, he should have been dead a long time ago, so what was he really?

“I don’t care about that right now,” Zander replied with a cold stare, looking right back at Randy. “One of you used that necklace, and created your own world from it with all the things you could ever desire and imagine." He then looked furious at the three of us, drawing closer. "That necklace was meant for me! My long search for it has ended with it being hopelessly destroyed, and I want to know who’s responsible!”

It was strange to think that as Jake Kossak, I would have gladly fingered Randy. But, as Juno inside, I refused to throw him under the bus like that. In fact, if a fight were to break out, I knew I would be the first one out of my seat to stand before him.

“So who was it!?” Zander shouted angrily.

We were still silent. Randy was quivering, but Alex and I were within a heartbeat of attacking him both at once, ready to summon whatever Pokémon we needed to take him out.

"Hmp," Zander scoffed. "Fine, don't bother, because I already know what happened anyway. You don't think I do?"

I was quiet, figuring this would be a real test of his power.

"You, Randy," Zander spoke harshly, pointing his finger directly at him, "became frustrated at your own failures enough to use it in the first place. You wasted it just to get a taste of what it was like to win all the time at Pokémon battling... wrongfully!"

“Stop it, please…” Randy begged, finding out the hard way this guy already knew the truth about us.

“You couldn’t tolerate your companions’ endless defeats, so you created your own companions and made yourself a champion,” Zander growled at Randy. “Can you possibly fathom how much of a waste you made of that necklace!? You used it as a tool to make up for your own incompetence!"

Randy was shaking his head. He didn’t want to believe this was actually happening.

“I couldn’t stand losing all the time at Pokémon battling,” Randy complained. “I needed something to help me win for once.”

"The whole reason why I went through the utter hell of creating it in the first place was so I could use it for what it was really meant for!" Zander shouted angrily.

I wanted to stay quiet, but something inside of me pushed me to speak up.

"You wanted to create impossible things using your imagination and then pull those things into reality," I spoke up, knowing I was the only one that could have known that.

Randy and Alex looked at me strangely while Zander just sneered a grizzly grin.

"Ha, ha, figures you would be the one to know that!" Zander laughed with a dark smile. "And yes, Randy here was so dejected about being defeated in his own dream world that he abandoned and erased everything!"

So that's what happened to Randy's legendaries. Randy gave them all up simply because they didn’t win that last fight for him. Meanwhile, Jeff, Alex, David, and Frank didn’t look like they managed to pull anything out of Randy’s dream world either. It seemed like I was the only one that uncovered this secret unintentionally.

"Endless wealth, power, empires, and grandeur were at your fingertips, and you wasted all of it!" Zander shouted at Randy. "That was all meant for me. Your purpose for using it was meaningless and you gained nothing form it! It took me nearly a lifetime to craft that necklace!”

I sighed, now knowing what the story behind that necklace was. How Zander became a sorcerer was still beyond me, but at least I knew why he made that thing in the first place. Compared to what could have really been created from it, I could see where Zander was furious. And on the flip side, maybe it was a good thing it was gone now so this strange and agitated sorcerer couldn't ever use it for dark reasons.

“You…” Zander spat harshly, now facing me. “You're the only one that discovered it's dark secret. You wanted to free yourself from this maggot’s world by defeating him. And the only way to do it was to hide yourself.”

Now Randy was looking at me in curiosity. As I gritted my teeth from the realization of this all, I knew Randy was going to find out everything in a matter of moments. I really didn’t want it to turn out this way, but I didn't have any choice about it.

“You disguised yourself from this maggot by turning yourself into his own, living, childhood desire,” Zander snarled with a hint of cynical laughter in his tone. “So you soulbound yourself to become this Pikachu named Juno, and you defeated this maggot with the help of a Latias that you life-bonded with. Do you have any idea what you did to yourself by doing that!?"

"No, I honestly don't," I told him, telling him the truth.

"Unbelievable!" Zander laughed, making it sound like I made a grave mistake by doing that. "I don't know which one of you two I hate more."

I wasn't too concerned with how he thought of me for what I did. In my defense, I didn't know becoming Juno would do that, and I didn't see too many other options when it came to finding a way out of Randy's dream world. Honestly, deep inside, becoming Juno was making me a better person, although still shaken and uncertain of what kind of future this would entail.

“Jake... you were actually Juno!?” Randy asked me in complete shock.

I just looked at him from the corner of my eye, and then looked away, never directly answering that, but he took that as a "yes, but I really don't want to talk about it." In Zander's eyes, we had totally wasted the true potential of what that necklace could have been used for in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing with it.

I also didn't entirely know what it meant to be soulbound, but according to both Latias and Zander, who seemed to know way more about this than I did, I was essentially a dream Pikachu just in a human body now.

In the end, that was really only just the beginning to a whole other undertaking...