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MY LEGS STUMBLE, STUMBLE AS I WALK

When you are young, you are your father's son and your mother's ticket out of poverty.[break][break]

It's not a very positive outlook on life, you know – you've heard it enough from your aforementioned paternal figure and just about every other adult figure in your life to figure it out that most children don't think that way – but even your youth can't blind you from the truth. She's not very transparent about all of it, either; the way she gushes on and on about all of the possibilities you have that she never did, speaks of how wonderful you'll all[ be off when you go off into the world and make millions for your family name. Not like you can really blame her for it, though. You imagine that you'd cling to your offspring like a lifeline, too, should you ever end up in her shoes later in life. It takes four jobs, none of them ideal, to keep your leaky apartment under the Carmody name, and exhaustion hangs so thickly around both parent that you'd swear it hung in the air even when they were gone and became contagious, a threat to any and all who dared to tred through that creaky old door. The weight of the world, or more accurately expectations beyond that of most children of a household, settle themselves on your shoulder and become a familiar companion over the course of your early life. A reminder. A burden. There are big shoes being set before you to be filled, and if everyone had their way, they'd be as snug a fit as could be attained.[break][break]

The unfortunate truth, however, is that you're nothing spectacular in any given area of expertise. This isn't to say that you're stupid or talentless – classes are rarely a struggle, and you make your way through your sports and your fine arts. Disappointment lies deep in the fact that, while you're not necessarily bad at any of these things, you certainly don't stand above the rest at anything, either. Being a jack of all trades is something that most would claim to be fortunate; personally, you find it more of an annoyance than anything. You graduate from schooling as a “B” average student, full of acquaintances and no friends, full of aspirations and no means of which to make them a reality. They offer you a janitorial job at the largest news station in town, and you think your already minuscule amounts of self worth would do better without the constant complaints from Mommy and Pappy back home speaking of all of the things that could have been. (“Fix your own problems,” you don't tell them, words always catching in the back of your throat where they can only be heard by you, can't threaten to cut the only people you really have in your life out of it. “I can't juggle my life and yours at the same time.”) Home becomes a grubby little apartment that reminds you too much of the one your parents live in. Work becomes a tiresome chore, injecting an ache in your bones that doesn't go away in the one free day allotted to you over the week. Life, itself, becomes monotonous. How long can you stand to live like this, you can't help but wonder, before you finally crack?[break][break]

YET ANOTHER MEANINGLESS DAY FLOWS BY TODAY

Love and the romantic pursuits have always been a concept lost on you, and one that you've subconsciously assumed would remain forever in the void, as unknown and foreign to you as the day you were five years old and turning down playground marriage proposals over the fear of contracting “cooties”. Had you sat down and considered your ideal significant other – and you haven't, you swear, but if you had – you might liken her to be a beautiful, red-haired wonder with a brain like a calculator and a smile brighter than a lens flare in the eye. She'd be shorter than you, of course, and laugh at anything and everything, because for as dull and cruel as the world could be, she'd only ever be able to see the good in it. An old friend, maybe, one sitting right under your nose for years, perhaps lost in the gaping hole that you've come to label as the years between high school's end and the present, right up until she reappeared in your life and brought long-lost happiness back to your deserted wasteland of an existence. Suffice to say (much like every expectation you've ever had in your life prior to this), these are not the conditions under which Cupid decides to strike you with his hateful arrow. Instead, it happens like this:[break][break]

You're on your way back from the cheapest, nearest coffee shop you could find tucked away on the route between home and work when the duo catches your attention, and while you've never claimed to be much of a “people watcher” before and know better than to look a touch too long at any one person (or, you suppose, in this case, two people), you can't help but find yourself trapped in a stare. To your credit, the periphery of your vision tells you you're one of few, but not the only one. In truth, you don't exactly notice anything about the taller of the two beyond the fact that she's there. No, no, instead, all eyes fall on the one in front: blonde-haired, blue-eyed, towering over all around her all while sporting what many would consider a humbling height. It's silly, you know, but some part of you fears that she'll shoot lasers from her eyes if you're unlucky enough to make eye contact, and if there were ever a person in time and space to be able to kill a man just by saying the word “die”, you wouldn't at all be surprised to discover it was her. Unfortunately, you're so caught up on the morbid image that you find yourself forgetting to watch for the other one, much less where your own clumsy feet are going – and that's when it hits you. Quite literally. Coffee takes flight, and it's only by four parts maneuvering and six parts luck that only a bit of it, not the whole cup, splashes on you. Not that that stops what did land on you from hurting. Ouch.[break][break]

“Oh, Arceus, I – S-sorry, I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking.”[break][break]

But it's fine, really, because if anyone here is to blame, it's obviously you. And you mean to tell her that, you really do, but the words get caught in the back of your throat when you look up from what looks like a wet spot that (thankfully) won't develop into a stain and into the blue of Stranger B's eyes. There shouldn't be anything special there. She's not the human equivalent of a Milotic walking on land, nor is she some heinous-looking beast. She's tall, sure, taller than you if you had to guess, but that's never been much of a feat. Hair – normal. Posture – average. Impression – a wallflower developing a razor edge. It's not, however, anything about her looks that take your lungs in hand and squeeze until you can't breathe. It's the look she's giving you. (No one's ever, ever looked at you like that before.[break][break]

(It takes all of ten seconds to realize that you're smitten already.)[break][break]

“Don't bother, Lorelei,” Terror in Heels is saying, not even bothering to look back as she waves a hand dismissively and continues terrifying passerbys on her way down the street. “He's not worth our time.”[break][break]

“... Yes, of course.” She – Lorelei, a name, something too elaborate for someone who looks so plain – nods as though the person she's nodding to can see and moves to leave, but not before sparing you another glance that looks almost... apologetic. Whatever it is, it has your heart doing cartwheels in your chest. (Maybe you watch their backs just a little too long as they make their departure.) The rest of the walk to work seems dull by comparison, a thoughtless path carried out more by muscle memory than conscious thought, and your mind can't help but go back in time to run the whole thing over again and again. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of your life. Shouldn't, rather. And yet you spend the rest of your morning, the rest of your shift day dreaming of a woman who could topple a mountain with a look and one who's already toppled you with just the same gesture.[break][break]

FOR ME, LOVES OCCURS BETWEEN OTHER PEOPLE

You're not supposed to hear about it, that much is clear. The revelation hits you like a sucker punch to the face – or, rather, it tags along with a literal sucker punch to the face – and sends you crashing butt-first into piles of garbage, the likes of which smell only mildly worse than the apartment you call home. Truthfully, you've dealt with worse, your nose no stranger to being broken or bleeding, but the split-second, violent reaction of one of the two “goons” in front of you stirs up trouble immediately. “Don't just hit people!” the burlier one is saying, and your glad that he wasn't the one that threw a punch your way for a crime you're not even sure you committed. “He probably doesn't even know what we were talking about, anyway.”[break][break]

Unfortunately, you do. Well, “know” might be too strong a word to describe your level of knowledge, but you did overhear what they were talking about, long enough to understand that they're would-be members of some group named “Imum”. What it is, you haven't a clue, and why these two are being so hush-hush about it, you're even more clueless about. (It sends a suspicion gurgling up your throat, but you swallow it down like a morning pill.) You haven't said a word, having spent your whole time gathering yourself to your feet and cradling your now-aching jaw, when the two collectively seem to decide that they're done with you, turned on their heel and muttering cryptically amongst themselves about whatever they need to do and wherever they need to go for some kind of “orientation”. You've half a mind to pay them back what they owe, and you really would have (or maybe not, considering how the more level-headed of the duo might become just a little less level-headed if you go seeking revenge on his partner) had it not been for the sound of a name you haven't heard outside your own head in months: “Don't you remember what that Lorelei chick told us? Don't show up if you -”[break][break]

“Wait, wait, wait, did you just say Lorelei?”[break][break]

The second you interrupt is the second you wish you'd turned tail and fled the moment they lost interest in your eavesdropping. For one thing, they've been giving you a bad vibe from the very get-go, a persisting feeling of caution that you've typically been good at avoiding but have somehow, in this moment, forgotten completely how to not get involved anymore than need be. For another, there could be a dozen Loreleis – er, maybe half a dozen, or even just a couple, you can't imagine it's a very popular name – here in the city, and the chances of the Lorelei they speak of now being the one you met by chance (haven't stopped thinking about since) are lower than... well, something with a very low chance! The way they look at you now, too, incredulity mixing with something you can't help but label awe has you near trembling in your shoes, and you strongly consider walking away and pretending you hadn't said or heard a thing. Too late, though. You and your big mouth. “... You know her?”[break][break]

“Well, uh -” Oh, sweet Arceus, you've never been good with your words. If only one of the legendaries would have mercy on you now. “Yeah, I mean... We talk.” Talked, you mean to say, once, but that incredulity you saw stirring in their faces has melted away completely, and now they're both looking at you like you're some messiah descended straight from the heavens. (That's a bit extreme, but you'll exaggerate this one instance for the sake of your crippled, dying ego.) And just like that, they're begging you to come with them, to give them some edge in getting hired on from the very start. A friend of the boss, after all, will slip them in a good word, and they're so sorry about that bruise blossoming on the bottom of your face. Whatever an “Imum” is, it sounds like a job – but you think back on your smelly little hole in the wall and the ever-growing chasm you've unwittingly cut between you and your impoverished mother, and perhaps you could do with a new line of work. “Hey, this Imum you guys are talking about -” you start, and immediately their eyes are honed on you, gaze sharp as a hawk's. “... Does it pay well?”[break][break]

THERE'S NEVER REASON FOR MY HEART TO BEAT FAST

You understand little of what you're being asked to do, but the basic principal is pretty obvious. There are shows running all over the air, on televisions or the PokeNav, of brave Pokemon lovers rushing headfirst into dangerous territories for the sake of saving injured and abused Pokemon from negligent or brutal trainers, breeders, and pure, straight bad guys. You've never really heard of a massive group getting together to systematically do just the same, albeit without the camera crew tagging along and the flair of television dramatics, but when you're issued your badge and your title, they do tell you to keep your new job quiet, so it all clicks together in the end. It's a pain, having to hide your real occupation from your always expectant mother, but even if you have to waffle around the specifics, she's still elated to hear that you've finally moved up a bit in the world, out of that horrible janitorial work and into a job that puts a little more cash in your pocket. Even if you've come to find yourself mindlessly following the crowd with no solid idea of what you're actually accomplishing, you think that you're pretty proud of yourself, too. Hardly any time has passed before you get the chance to move into a better apartment building (even better is that it doesn't reek of rotten Magikarp all the time), and you finally have the pocket cash to buy little things here and there – that watch you've been eyeballing, a laptop that doesn't scream at you whenever you turn it on, and, heck, even a day at the ice skating rink, even if you did end up on your butt more often than the skates. You may be blissfully unaware of the finer workings of this new calling, but the truth of the matter is that you're blissful. That's more than you can say for the majority of your life prior.[break][break]

Nothing about your newly acquired job, however, quite compares to the fact that you are now officially the co-worker of Lorelei Ackermann, miraculously the very same woman you'd bumped into what seems like an eternity ago. Perhaps it isn't the most healthy thing to do, watching her from afar as you do, but it's not because you're a creep, you swear! The universe just has it out for you: butting in when you get close, filling your throat with anxiety when you try to gather your nerves to speak with her, pulling her away when you manage to break through. Everything you learn about her makes you like her all the more, from the way we misuses words you know she's struggling hard to learn to the way she takes punishments for those beneath her. There's a certain... hardness growing there (in her, not you, it's not likethat) that you wish wasn't so, but when you look at your leader and employer, the one who had terrified you that same day you met the woman you've fallen head over heels for, you imagine someone would have be hard to keep going. Nymah Valkyrie could conquer regions, topple empires, claim dominance over the world if she wanted to.[break][break]

Nothing you've ever experienced before and nothing you ever could experience can compare to the bone shaking fear she instills in each and every one of you. Terror embodied, evil incarnate – all for the sake of the “greater good”.[break][break]

THE MAYFLIES, MOCKING ME, FLY FAR AWAY

Time passes, and you learn that you were horribly, terribly wrong. Imum is not cut from the clothe of television personalities, chasing after heroic ideals and sowing justice in their wake. They do no save, do not protect – they only exist to destroy, to take, to redefine reality until all is written as they will it to be. You'd thought you'd known fear in its truest form when looking upon the face of your boss (your ruler), but now, everything is so much more clear. She's terror embodied, perhaps, but there's something more horrific than even that: the fact that you willingly aided in their plans for global genocide. When you were young, you were a disappointment, and then you were a freeloader. Now, you're worse than the two combined: you're a criminal. A traitor. They could put your head on the chopping block, and maybe – maybe you wouldn't even blame them. Whatever the universe has in store for you as punishment, though, it can wait. All that matters now is that you find the one right way in ten thousand wrongs to escape from this misery factory and the iron grip it has on you and every other member in its bloodied ranks. Salvation has become prison; you'd wanted nothing more than to get in, and now you can't find a way out that doesn't involve your blood on their hands.[break][break]

And then you meet her again.[break][break]

For months now, you've been walking in circles around each other, never close enough to touch, never brave enough to collide, but now she comes to you, missions on her lips, work on her mind. (Does she know what she's doing? Or has she been oblivious all this time like you? Something in you is afraid to know the answer.) You'd do well to listen to her now – she's higher up in the hierarchy, her orders given from higher up still, and failure to comply could mean a brutal beating at worst – but you can't, you never could, your mind too caught up in the fact that this meeting, the one you've been wishing and hoping for for so long will likely be your last. “I can't do this anymore,” you tell her, stupidly, honestly. She looks at you with that same look as the day you'd met (it steals your breath away just the same; she'll never know how much you've loved her from afar), and it gives you the power to press on. “I – I can't keep doing this. I need a way out. Wh... What should I do?”[break][break]

“Leaving is treason,” she tells you quickly. It's a flash of teeth, a bark in the mouth of any others, but the words hold no weight and they won't break your skin. And you see it now for what it is: understanding painted all over her face, slipping through a mask she's been building piece by piece since before you'd ever donned the Imum insignia. Have others come to her before with this same question, you wonder, to make her look at you that way? Or has the question lingered in her own mind for a second too long, words of a traitor that she's tried long and hard to bury? It seems like a long time, too long, before she finally continues, “... Why did you come here in the first place? You're not – You don't look like the type of person to – who would join a cause like...” Her words trail off into obscurity, but you understand what's being asked of you just fine. She wants an answer (your story, the whole lot of it). You give it to her.[break][break]

It takes time. Ten minutes becomes thirty, half an hour because a whole, then doubles, then doubles again, and soon, you're lying on your back as you talk about anything and everything. Friends aren't something you have, even after your latest change in occupation, and laying your heart bare on your sleeve has never been something you've been allowed to do. Not until now, anyway. It's... liberating. Something you can't stop once you've started, like hiccups or instinctive vomit. You're practically vomiting up thoughts to her now, useless, string of conscious nonsense, but she takes it all in with a thoughtful nod of the head and dutiful silence. You burn out like a star after what be a small eternity – thoughtless, throat sore, jaw tired. There's nothing more to say. This, she must understand. No more than a minute has passed before she stands from where she, too, had settled, and when she looks at you now, there is no false harshness, no hesitation. “Go,” Lorelei tells you simply. “Far away. Keep going until you think you can't go any further, and then keep going still. I'll... I'll cover your tracks. Master won't know you were ever here.”[break][break]

What about you you want to say – almost do – but she's pulled you to your feet and pushed you away, built an invisible barrier that tells you that there is no more to be done, no more to be said. The ticket out is in your hands. All you have to do is take it.[break][break]

(In another world, maybe, you ask her to come with you, hand in hand, off into the sunset, free from Imum and its corrupted will. If she accepted, would millions have been spared? Would Lyeant have come out unscathed? “I can't,” she'd tell you, though, defeated in her countenance, and maybe deeper still. Debts are owed, apathy stronger by the day. In another world, maybe you would've known what made her stay behind, and you would have known her for the monster she would become – fit to a mold that Nymah had forced around her.)[break][break]

You don't say another word. Freedom is out there; you leave your love behind.[break][break]

THE EARTH, MOCKING ME, KEEPS TURNING

There's evil in your world: real, tangible, thirsting for the blood of innocents. It's the stuff of nightmares, of stories. You know, the ones where heroes rise up from farmlands or small towns and topple an evil emperor with their party of loyal, courageous Pokemon. The problem is that there is no hero in waiting, armed to the teeth with Lady Luck's grace and the power of friendship. The only one in the world who knows about Imum, not counting the ones who make it up, is you: jobless, talentless, alone. If you told the League, they'd think you mad. Corrupt organizations bent on overthrowing the region never stay this quiet for this long, after all, and none since Lance and his Elite Four have ever gone so far as eradication of the human race. People learn from history. (No they don't.) Your words are that of a man gone insane. Your prophecies are hollow, and even if you know what fate might have in store for all of Lyeant, and maybe even the world beyond, who would be there to listen? Fortune is on your side because Imum is far from making their first major move, giving you plenty of time to... well, do something. If no one will believe the Reagan Carmody of now, then you'll just have to use that time to become the Reagan Carmody that they will believe.[break][break]

It's amazing what a single goal and a shot of determination can do for a man. (The police uniform suits you, you think as you admire yourself in the mirror, and you're glad for it. You'll be wearing it for quite some time -[break][break]

(Wearing it until the day you become a hero fit for saving the world.)

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