守りたい

[insectopedia]

The locker room was empty. Vianca had been among the last to finish the ten-mile run in P.E. class, and so, she hobbled into the girl's changing room with only a scant trace of breath left in her, no one following behind. Although she was surely late for lunch period, there were benefits to being slower and less athletic than the rest of the students: no one occupied the same space as she did while she got undressed. A dingy, chamber-like room with metal cubbies lining nearly every space was her sanctuary for now. It was only a mild discomfort she faced every week, but a discomfort nonetheless, and she found relief in the sole sounds echoing off the walls belonging only to her. The desirable solitude might only last for but a short while; some students had a bad habit of leaving personal articles behind, like wallets or ID cards or books. Vianca wasn't one to plunder the spoils, so she would probably send them to the lost and found if whoever was in charge of the place was trustworthy enough. Keeping this in mind, she slid her t-shirt over her head. In the midst of this action, something small and with wing beats quick as a propeller dive-bombed her unexpectedly, and she squeaked a little because it came out of nowhere and while she was exposing herself. In a hasty move to protect her body she yanked her shirt back down for coverage and scanned the room. Her search was met with a large-eared grape-colored bat that kept itself aloft above her locker with frenzied wing beats, but that image soon became a thing of the past when it abruptly transformed into a girl her size, with freckles and thick bangs that covered her eyes. The girl fell on top of the locker in an automatic cross-legged sit, and upon making contact with her makeshift chair, slammed Vianca's locker shut with her outstretched legs in one finalizing swing. "We need to talk." The white pikmin stared, as bewildered as her historically unexpressive face would allow. The response to such a question was easy to find, but for some reason or another, she always had difficulty squeezing them out into the audible world around them. For that reason, it came out small. "... <small>About what?</small>" Small was no problem for ears like hers. Batty girl uncrossed her arms and propped her palms on top of the locker, staring Vianca right back with her eyeless face. "About my stolen property. Give it back." As if to confirm whether she was truly in mistaken possession of anything that was not hers at the moment, Vianca looked down, at the floor in front of her locker, then around. Concluding that she did not have any such thing, she looked back up at the impatient girl ahead of her. "<small>I don't have anything of yours.</small>" The skinny girl scoffed. "Not with you. I mean in the library." Vianca just stared. "Lemme give you a refresher. Remember when I was kicking back and playing my guitar, minding nobody's business but my own? I wasn't even playing it that loud. Remember when some rude tin snowball with a stupid accent complained about my music and got it confiscated from me? Yeah. I want it back." Right. This girl's name was Izzy. Vianca didn't like that it was coming down to a confrontation like this in the locker room of all places. Alone. Her feelings of relishment in the peaceful lack of company from earlier contrasted deeply to her feelings now. She wanted a room full of people, people who would stand behind her and make her less of a stark target. She wanted to become a ghostly white Pikmin and hide in a bed of flowers blanketed in snowfall. Or that she at least had something solid she could clutch to her chest, like a book or a clipboard, to ease her anxiety some. "I can't give it back right now. <small>Please go see the library assistant about it.</small>" "But he won't stop lying. He knows where it is but he just won't tell me straight up where it is. Won't even be decent enough to give it back. So that's why it's up to you. You know where it is." "I can't." Izzy leaned in even more. "You can't? Why not?" Vianca swallowed. "I don't know where it is." She wrinkled her nose. "Liar." Vianca shook her head. "No. <small>I really don't.</small>" The Zubat scoffed, impatience and vexation rising. "How come I have to ask the librarian's assistant where my guitar is? If anyone actually knows anything around here, it should be the librarian. So fess up. Where's. My. Guitar." All she could do was peel her eyes away and keep shaking her head. "Wrong answer!" Before Vianca understood what was happening, she found herself in a mysterious chokehold. Izzy laughed into her sleeve and hopped down from the tall red column of lockers to stare(?) the nervous Pikmin girl in the eyes. If Izzy wasn't constricting her like that, then who was? Vianca didn't have the mobility of her head to find out. "We could have done things the easy way or the hard way. Looks like you're one signature short of signing up for the hard way. Now I'm gonna give you one last chance." She slung her arms akimbo and came so close she could smell her breath. "Where did you stash my guitar?" Speaking up became even more of a trial. The arresting fear that seized her pulse also seized her lungs, her brain, everything she needed to utter a simple word. It must have been due to her pervading silence that the force behind her clamped on tighter. "Not gonna talk, eh?" Izzy stood up straight again. Then, her mouth spread into a toothy grin. "If you can't talk, you can always show us where you're hiding my stuff. And before you think of running away like a sissy, you should remember two things: one, I'm really good at hearing where you are. Two: Milimili here is a ghost. You know, the kind that slip through walls and dissappear and shit? You've probably read enough ghost stories to know what you're up against." The ghost behind her cackled in the most shrill and deafening notes conjurable. "You'd better give her the guitar! Or else. I might curse you." Another voice broke the tension between the three girls. It was sharp, whetted from fury and spat in hisses. "What the fuck isssss going on here?" All three heads whipped around to face the origin. It was Eli, a face of rage firmly carved onto her face. Vianca could feel the pressure on her throat and abdomen vaporize along with the relief that graced her being at Eli's intervention. As suddenly as Izzy's transformation had been, the tall girl in the purple pullover turned into an even taller cobra, and this cobra was TO'ed something unholy. With a flash of her vibrant markings and a coarse hiss, she flung herself at Izzy, body coiling around the wiry little troublemaker for a life-stealing squeeze. It all happened in such a snap that Vianca stumbled backwards, tripping over the bench and falling flat on her back. What should have been Izzy was nothing but false air. Added to the commotion was a screeching bat flitting to and fro above the toxic snake as if to taunt her failure. Eli discovered nothing between her tight skin and flicked her head over to face Izzy's direction. That was Izzy's ticket. Out from her mouth came a series of high-pitched wavelengths that hammered straight into the Arbok's senses and caused her head to spin. Mentally debilitated, Eli swung her upper body around to latch her fangs onto the pesky little Zubat, but instead launched into her own flesh. The cobra Pokemon retracted away from the bite wound and out of her spindle pose, hissing in the pain she didn't expect, droplets of her own blood seasoning her tongue. Vianca's own head stopped spinning from her brief collapse just then. Watching Eli tear at her own flesh lathered a thick layer of disorientation in her skull and her mind felt like a whirling top that had been brought to an abrupt halt only to be spun in motion again like a plaything. Not understanding where this self-effacement came from, she backed up into the lockers behind her to edge away from this senseless violence she did not wish to be a part of. She longed desperately for a way to help Eli, because Eli had gotten herself mixed into this mess for her sake. Izzy took her next move and dove for her own piece of Eli, sinking her teeth into the back of her head. Meanwhile, her ghostly partner-in-crime materialized to sock the snake a punch charged full of hazy shadow matter, and when it landed dead on, Eli sailed across the lockers and slammed headfirst into the wall. When brick met skull, the snake toppled limply to the floor without resisting the call of gravity. The terror of the moment carved a hole in Vianca's heart; a fear wormed inside that Eli might not rise after such an impact. She didn't. The pair of victorious airborne Pokemon watched and waited. Satisfied with their opponent's lifelessness, they turned to Vianca. Milimili was the first to revert to her human form, a perpetually barefoot girl who never seemed to wear anything but rags on her body. She snickered with perverse glee. "Guess your friend couldn't save you after all!" she goaded with the same delight. "That's what happens when you make friends and think you can rely on them. Especially weak friends." Izzy too morphed back into the twiggy girl from before. "You know what you'd better start doing! March!" Milimili dove for Vianca's arm and brusquely lifted her from the ground, not bothering to be delicate at all, and Izzy yanked at the remaining arm to hoist her up. The terrorized Pikmin girl winced at all this rough manhandling as she got dragged off, never having even a glimmer of the chance to change out of her t-shirt and bloomers, which were actually kind of embarrassing for her to wear, especially if it was to be out-of-place in the middle of the library or wherever she was being hauled off to. She gave the fallen form of Eli one last dimly dejected look. Her intent was to send a silent apology for her trouble, but she didn't have to be so crestfallen about it. Eli rose. In fierce vengeance, the giant snake struck again, this time taking the Banette girl down with a venomous bite pinned to the shoulder. Eli judged this opponent to be the one she should be worried about most. She pierced her soft human flesh easily with razor sharp fangs. Milimili shrieked with her jaw dropped grotesquely far and flailed, dropping hold of Vianca. This gave Vianca the chance to wriggle away from Izzy's grasp, which had grown slackened by the surprise of Eli's quick recovery. The ghost Pokemon's face drew down in woe as she was reduced to her knees, Eli's dagger-like teeth still pushed deep into her veins. "Hey! Get offa her!" cried Izzy, pounding her head with her fists. This did nothing but make Eli blink every time her knuckles made contact. Now was the moment for Vianca to take a chance at helping Eli. She looped her arms around Izzy's waist and fought to wrestle her away from Eli. It worked, but only by a hair, since Vianca was not exactly a professional body builder. Instead of batting Eli around, Izzy took to fending Vianca off. Vianca was anything but a fighter, and so she was easy to push into the bench again for a pummeling. Noticing Vianca's plight, Eli released her chomp and felt more determination sear through her to end her opponents mercilessly. Although Milimili had flinched momentarily, she poofed back into her natural form and floated away, clutching the shoulder she'd bitten in agony. Humans were far more soft than Pokemon, and so the bite was far more effective. To escape from whatever else Eli had to dish out, Izzy converted to her Zubat self and flew up to the ceiling, darting left and right and downwards and upwards and basically anywhere she could propel herself in hopes of evading long enough to find another opportunity to confuse her. However, it wasn't enough to keep Eli from whacking her out of the air with a sweeping Poison Jab. Now it was Izzy's turn to go splat against the wall. The two versus one match burned on. Milimili made a comeback when Izzy was briefly out of commission, and while she was a more experienced battler than her partner, she was not resistant to Eli's Bite attack and an eventual KO due to poison's nasty grip. Izzy was far easier to overwhelm, hardly being any more of a fly to swat than your everyday Zubat in a cave. After the bullies were eliminated, Eli reintroduced her attention to Vianca. She didn't want to seem scary to the Pikmin, so she reverted back to her human guise. That way, speaking would be easier, too. "Are... you hurt?" It would be a lie to say no. Vianca stared ahead at the locker, more rattled by the impromptu battle than her face would let on. She didn't need words or facial cues to get through to Eli. The violet-haired student weaved around the bench and sat down next to her scrawny friend. Nothing was exchanged between the two of them for a while. They sat there in silence, barely moving, but all the same, they didn't need a conversation to understand each other. Finally, it was Vianca's turn to talk. "...Thank you." "Don't. They had it coming." Vianca nodded ever so slightly. Then, she moved to peer up at Eli's face. Noticing the discrepancy, Eli peered back down. Vianca stretched her body up and reached out her palm to place it on her cheek. Confused by this gesture at first, Eli came to a final decision to allow it and twisted her neck around with the direction her palm was talking her. It made her a degree hotter to feel her eyes on her like that. "I could take care of your wounds." Eli thought for a moment. Then, she smiled a bit. The heat she was feeling cooled down not to her regular cold, standoffish attitude, but something surprisingly warm. On a casual basis, this warm sensation hardly got the chance to stir within her toughened defenses against feelings of closeness to others, her immediate response always to deflect the warmth once it tried to seep in for fear of it finding a weakness or two. Perhaps, then, the newness of the experience was the reason it was so potent for her. She found herself wrapping the snowy-haired girl in an embrace, and the way she did it was almost as though her impulse was to wrap her entire body around Vianca. Her response was one of astonishment, but as she settled into the smothering folds of Eli's hoodie, Vianca held on back, even if it was a meek and unsure hug. Eli felt proud that she had enough strength to protect Vianca this time. Maybe it was her drive to protect her that had instilled such an unstoppable force within. Friends were usually stupid and only got in the way, but she guessed that if she ever had to call anyone a friend, it would be Vianca.