Lull
Some things are not as simple as they appear

(Psst. I know a good number of you crazy Fortuneshippers are only here for the Lucas/Dawn tag. They don't enter the story until chapter four, with a brief appearance in chapter three. Stick around. =P)

Rated: T (PG-14+) for explicit language, sexual innuendo, and violence
Genre: Fantasy/Friendship
World: Game
Verse: Generation IV, D/P

Synopsis: Lane Eldritch likes dragon pokémon cards. So much so that he would do almost anything for them, even Francis's stupid dare about entering the old, supposedly haunted, Harbor Inn. Then something weird happens the next day; Lane won't wake up, and his worried parents have no idea why. A sullen Lucas, Sinnoh's latest poké mon champion and Rowan's renowned apprentice, is forced to help solve this mystery by cheerful co-researcher Dawn. It's not easy trying to fight someone else's demons when you have your own you're trying to bury.

Lull is an expansion of the cresselia event that takes place in the Diamond & Pearl games, though it also touches on other events in the games. If you cannot remember what that event is about, it is pretty much: 1) Player character goes to Canalave and finds that Eldritch, the sailor that earlier took him/her to Iron Island, has a problem involving his son; 2) Eldritch asks player character to help him by going to Fullmoon Island and retrieving a Lunar Wing. I realized that a whole helluva lot could be done with this plot, especially on Eldritch's side of things. Characterizations, specifically Lucas's, were influenced by the other events in the game, specifically the Team Galactic plot.

This is currently my fan fiction baby that drives me nuts and makes me giggly at the same time. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it. =) Thanks for reading.

Myth: sacred narrative used to explain the view of a people.

Cynthia likes myths. I don't. They're essentially stories weaved by the naïve who, in a desperate attempt for truth, pass it along to their people until this myth becomes a reality in their minds. It doesn't work like that. Somewhere is an answer, a solid truth, that can be analyzed, defined, and contextualized.

No, I'm not a fan of myth. I blame myth for the current state of the Sinnoh championship, the state of our region–why I had to concern with issues bigger than me. That should have been Cynthia's job, not mine. I was only a kid. She left the region–no, the world–to me, gave me a few words of advice, and pushed me forward. I was pissed.

I digress. It doesn't matter. It's my rule now. She can loll about in Fairy Tale Land for all I care. I like to stick to what is true. Solid fact.

...

It's a girl.

Chapter One

Once upon a time in a not far off place lived a boy. Let's call him Lane. He was your average kid, a height of four feet, four and a half inches (the exact amount matters when you're eight and a half), and relatively thin of frame.

The boy also had ears. They were big and stuck out, like airplane wings. Zoom! But they were big, pointy ears – and don't you dare say elf-shaped. He had a strange dislike of elves ever two Christmases ago where a group of elves made him DANCE (the horror!), and he missed his chance with Santa – and darn, all he really wanted to do was ask him for a new set of toy cars (which he would begrudgingly mention he did not get by the way), and everyone laughed, making him aware of the huge stature of his ears, and – well, the main point is not to associate Lane with elves. But that's for another time. Right now it's time to focus on the current issue: running. Quickly, too, otherwise that would be jogging.

Lane was good at running, believe it. He liked to run everywhere. Up the street to school. Down the street to the library. To the left for the docks. To the right for more docks. Running and docks and sea and school and friends and pokémon were all he knew. He liked running across the drawbridge, his sneakers making funny noises as they slapped against the wooden planks. Every time he had to walk across the bridge, he made sure to stop in the middle where the bridge would separate in two and stare out toward the sea. He gripped the metal railing with sticky hands and pulled himself up, his feet dangling in the air. The salty wind whipped his hair around.

This was Canalave, Lane's home for eight-and-a-half-years, and he liked it lots because it was all he knew. The sunsets were always orange and yellow and pink, brighter at the horizon where the sun was beginning to set and darker the further up he looked. In class, they learned how to draw sunsets–you need at least five colors, preferably in order from bright to dark–because that's what Canalave is known for: the pretty sunsets that made the ocean look like it was on fire.

Or was it the docks? Canalave wasn't much of a tourist attraction despite its pretty sunsets and coastlines, but people from other regions used the city as a port, a place to drop off and load goods from all over the world.

Or maybe it was the ships. Lane couldn't remember. History was awfully boring.

"Get off the bridge, kid!" he heard one of the workers yell. "A ship is going out!"

Right. It was definitely the ships.

He laughed and scampered off the bridge back onto the concrete sidewalk on the other side, continuing toward his destination: the local pokémart. It was a part of a chain of markets with its trademark blue roof, though Canalave tried to separate its market from the pack by embedding its walls with the local sand and seashells. He could make out the figure of a girl picking at the wall with her fingernail while another boy stood next to her, fiddling with something in his hands. He saw the girl turn her head.

"Laney!" she squealed loudly, causing the boy next to her to look up. "You're here!"

"Hurry it up, Dumbo!" yelled the other friend. "We've been waiting forever!"

Lane gasped for breath, something rattling inside one of the pockets of his dirty jeans. "Guys!" he shouted, his right hand reaching for the item inside his pocket and pulling it out with a few quick tugs. He finally reached the group after running up the store's ramp, wiping a light sweat off his brow. "Look! My dad gave me these!" Lane excitedly opened the palm of his hand, revealing a small canvas bag. He pulled on the strings and opened the bag to reveal marbles the size and shape of his irises. Besides the generic cat's eyes marbles, a few marbles with red tops and white bottoms glinted in the sunlight.

"Your dad gave you pokéballs?" the girl questioned excitedly. "Wow!"

"What? No," Lane muttered, quickly pulling the bag away. He pulled one of the shiny spheres out. "It's just a marble. But it totally looks like one, doesn't it?"

The older boy slapped the bag, making the glass marbles rattle. "Who cares about your stupid marbles?" Lane looked up from his marble and glared. "Especially when I got this beauty?" The other boy held up the group of cards in his hands and plucked one of them out, kissing it.

Lane threw the marble back in the bag, holding back a sigh at the lackluster reaction. "What is it?"

"This, baby!" After giving his oily, blond hair a cocky flick, the boy revealed the front of the card to Lane's curious eyes. On the card was a picture of a dragonite, a metallic sheen behind it. "Beautiful, ain't it?"

"You got another dragonite card?" Lane asked in disbelief. "And a metallic one, too!"

"Well, Laney Boy," at this, the boy wiped the front of the card on his mustard-stained polo to rid it of fingerprints, "I'll gladly trade you this card ... for the right price."

Immediately, Lane's free hand jumped to the back pocket of his jeans where he kept his collection of pokémon cards. He patted it and felt nothing. Well, crud. He forgot his collection. He could run home and get them – no, that wouldn't work. His friends wouldn't wait for him again, and the pudgy boy wasn't the most reasonable of people either.

Looking back and forth between his friends and his back pocket, Lane feebly pulled up his bag of marbles and sheepishly murmured, "I'll trade you your card for my marbles."

His friend laughed, fingers wiping at his nose. "Pathetic," he said, snorting. He plucked out a card from the stack and flung it at Lane. "But here, Midget. Since I'm such a nice guy and all, I'll let you keep this one." The boy scampered down the ramp, the girl following him, leaving Lane behind and staring at the fallen card. Big, wide eyes embedded in a tiny, blob-like body stared back up at him. A castform. It was nothing special, and he had a few of them at home, too. He didn't know why he bothered to pick it up and pocket it. A card was a card was a card, he supposed.

Still, he couldn't help but whine as he chased after his friends heading toward the railing that served as a barrier between the land and sea. They were watching a ship leave the Canalave docks, blowing its horn as the drawbridge raised to let it out. He hopped on the curb and grabbed at the cold railing, leaning back. "C'mon, Francis," he begged. "You already have that card! You know how bad I want it!"

"Heck no!" argued Francis, his eyes cast forward toward the docks. Waves crash into the docks' wooden pillars. Boats that bobbed in the water reflected the sun.

"C'mon!" Lane whined again. "I'll do anything!" He should have stopped there. No good would come from this.

Sure enough, Francis's eyes rolled toward the side. "Anything, huh?" the bigger boy sneered.

Lane gulped but nodded anyway.

"Okay, then." Francis hopped off the curb. He clapped the smaller Lane on the back, making him choke on saliva, and urged him forward. Shoes scuffing on dry concrete sounded. That one girl followed behind, annoyingly asking–in that annoying, high-pitched voice that only girls had–where they were going. Of course she was ignored, making her whine more.

The walk wasn't long. Francis stopped them in front of an old, rickety building, its shingle roof in shambles and its lawn unkempt. The fence–or what remained of it–surrounding the building was weather-worn, the wood splotched and splintered. One of the front windows was cracked and smudged while the other window was nothing more than a gaping hole, letting in whistling sea wind that pushed back dusty, red curtains.

"I dare you to open the door."

The old Harbor Inn, as Lane recalled. His dad told him that years ago, even before Lane was born, the Inn was a thriving, popular building which gave home to sailors stopped in town. But something happened to the old man who ran it (died, Lane figured), and ever since, the Inn had been shut down. People have tried to revive the building back to its lively state but rumor had that the building was haunted. Or maybe no one cared. Something like that.

"No way!" protested Lane, his voice almost squeaking. He jumped a bit at the sound of creaky hinges, marbles rattling in his pocket, and he quickly snapped his head to find the source. It was the old Harbor Inn sign that hung above the doorway of the building, the white paint flecked and bits of it resting in the grooves of the letters.

"Yeah, Francis!" begged the girl. "Don't make him do that! It's dangerous in there!"

"Quit your worryin', Julie." Francis glared at the girl before turning his attention toward Lane, a glint in his eye. "Do you want this or not?" He pulled out the dragonite card from his pocket and waved it back and forth in front of Lane's eyes.

"Don't do it, Laney!" pleaded Julie, brown pigtails waving wildly in the ocean's gusts. "The ghosts will get you!"

Francis snorted. "Ghosts, Julie? Please."

Julie huffed, blowing up the bangs that teased her forehead. She crossed her arms, a slight wrinkle in her nose. "They exist, I swear! How can you explain why there's sometimes a light on inside there?" She let out another frantic gasp of breath, wild greens turning toward Lane. "Don't do it, Laney!" she repeated in a shrill voice, making Lane cringe. Small fingers wrapped around Lane's upper arm again, making him cringe again. "I won't let you!"

"For Arceus's sake, Julie. Get off him." Lane felt the girl's nails dig into his upper arm, which made him wrinkle his nose, as she desperately fought against Francis' grasp. His arm was getting more sweaty. Then cool air – she let go. Francis turned toward him and gave him a look that clearly said, "Go. Unless you're a chicken." If only his facial expression read, "Let's get pie!" He did enjoy pie.

Not wanting to displease or look like he was scared out of his mind (which he was, but whatever), Lane ignored the pleas of Julie and walked past the broken fence and up the cracked pathway toward Harbor Inn's porch, stepping over a trail of ants. The rickety door and its imperfections became clearer the closer he walked. He noted the cracks, jagged lines that zigzagged across the wood in no coherent pattern, and another chipped paint job, red flakes peeling off and revealing old oak. The doorknob was rusted, its keyhole scratched at like someone before him dared, or was stupid enough, to enter the supposedly haunted building.

Another gust of wind – he wasn't sure if he shivered because of that or the butterfree that flew restlessly in his stomach. It was an emotion that suppressed the current dislike he had for Francis's dare, but all Lane could do was channel that nervous, jumpy energy to another physical source: the door.

His feet rested on the first concrete step leading to the old inn's porch, and he turned his head, looking at his friends. Francis was edging him on and smirking – but that wasn't anything new. Julie, meanwhile, was watching him bug-eyed, biting at her pink nail-polished fingernails. Lane turned back toward the door and breathlessly pushed his legs up onto the porch, resting both feet firmly on the ground.

No ghosts. No motion. Nothing. He could do this.

Shaky hands and trembling fingers reached for the rusted doorknob. He jiggled it. Nothing ... again. The door remained locked and stood that way even after several years of neglect. A harder jiggle. Still locked. Two hands now? Nope. What if he leaned all his weight on the knob? Negative. Kicking? Kicking always worked. ... Nope.

Lane gave the door a final annoyed kick, leaving a footprint on it, before turning around and shrugging toward his friends. "It won't open!"

"Try harder!" Francis yelled back, waving the dragonite card tauntingly.

Determined to get that card out of Francis' stubby, sausage-like fingers (sausage-like fingers that were surely smudging the glossy sheen of the card), Lane turned around, spat on his hands, rubbed them together and attacked the doorknob again with vigor, eyebrows furrowed. He rammed into the door with his shoulder, the pound hurting more than helping the cause, but he continued to push into the solid wood anyway, hands still twisting at the knob. He focused on the broken window ahead, red curtains fluttering outside the frame in the sea breeze.

Then eyes. Sharp ones–blue ones–that peeked out at him from the corner of the broken window. Curtains fell back and eyes were gone.

Before he could register what the heck that was, a sharp pain shocked the hand holding the doorknob and ran through his arm, and he jumped back, yelping, sucking at dirty fingers–thump!–something kicked from inside the inn, but that was impossible as nothing actually lived inside the inn, right?–thump! There! The door! He was sure of it this time!

Lane turned toward the door and knocked. More power, Lane. Weak knocks never get answered. Maybe if you knock repeatedly. Use the palm of your hand – no, the side of your fist. Knuckles will get you nowhere in life and neither will weak knocks. Your foot – kicking! Kicking is always the solution! ... Still nothing.

"There's someone in there!" Lane turned around, waving frantically to get his friends' attention, curiosity overwhelming his nervousness. "I think I saw someone through the window!"

"See!" Julie squealed, tugging at her pigtails. "I told you there were ghosts!"

Francis tuned out the high-pitched squeaks that poured out of Julie's mouth and focused on Lane who still stood on the ancient porch. "I swear to Arceus, Lane. If you go in there now, I will give you all the dragon pokémon cards I have."

All of them? Francis, known for his pokémon card collection at school, was bound to have all the good dragon pokémon cards. He craved them. He wanted them – badly. And he was already here anyway.

Since the door was locked and his frame was too weak to push it down, the only way in would be through the broken window. Running a hand through his black locks, Lane jumped off the concrete porch back onto the unkempt lawn, some of the weeds reaching up to his knees. He brushed past them, amusedly thinking he was an explorer in the heart of the jungle as he kicked the weeds down, squishing them under his feet. He was tall, too, in this adventure and grew into his jumbo ears. Crunch, crunch. Broken glass littered in the weeds, maybe?

He sneezed as another puff of wind blew. He felt the old velvet, his fingers picking up dust and making him sneeze again. He peeled the heavy curtain back, peering inside.

The eyes again, a deep blue embedded in ... nothing? No, it had a shape, sort of. Blob-like but tall, kind of fat. Dark – or was it because it was in the shadows? They stared at him–the eyes he meant–but the figure cowered in the corner of the dusty room. Clammy sweat. Piercing ... heart racing. Then a thought, a whisper – was it out loud? No, it was in his head.

I am watching you – wait. Why would he think that?

I know who you are. Know what?

I am coming for–

"Lane Eldritch! What in the world do you think you're doing?"

Last edited April 26, 2011