Chapter Text
From the highest peak of Navel Rock I sat, pristine and proud, watching my subjects as they flew beneath me. They flew choppy, uneven -- like blundering Geodude with Pidgey wings grafted to their shoulders. The light grin that graced my golden beak grew like a smothering wildfire that I had vengefully spread.
Rays of luminescent sunlight rained down from behind me and I raised my wings high, watching with a gleam in my eyes as the light refracted and a powerful rainbow spread from my wings. I would have to bestow upon my flying subjects a gift of my beauty before I departed for the Hall of Origin for several torturous days were the God of life itself would overshadow me. If only just.
Peering up into the sky I saw that the sun was close to reaching its zenith, when Arceus had told us to arrive, and I refused to be late. Being late was for the imperfect. (I didn't believe in being fashionably late).
I stirred up detritus and grains of sand and my wings pumped instinctively to gain altitude while a rainbow radiated out from behind me in a shower of glittering golden particles.
I could feel a twang of something in the back of my mind as I flew, something wrong, something forgotten. My wings flared out in full as I stopped dead in my tracks, I had forgotten her. That unkempt, dingy, and purely disgusting dolt of a moon goddess.
Remembering the last time I had saw her, I quaked. Her now uninhabited cave at the Whirl Islands was filled with debris from her fights with trainers that she was too lazy to clear away, and it had smelled of dampness and mold. Her once white-edged-with-silver feathers were dun from dirt and grime that she was too lackadaisical to clean. I could have easily compared her to a Snorlax that had just eaten it's fill in food.
With a resigned frown plastered on my beak, I flew back to Navel Rock to retrieve her.
The gold stone walls of the almost unnaturally perfect cave soon melded into a silver tone; the path became steep and the air became damp. Soon enough, the sound of the gushing ocean reached my ears along with the pungent, but somehow still calming, smell of the sea.
Sand squeezed and squelched up in between my claws drawing me deeper into the muck as the constricting cave opened into a grand hall-like chamber. A raised silvern platform of land jutted out from the center drifted down to meet the churning ocean that came in through an underwater cave. Sounds of waves crashing against their stone barriers roared into my ears, the smells and sounds of the ocean were nearly overwhelming, almost like their minder.
She was there, curled into a tight spiral on the platform of silver-hued marble. I walked up to her with a deep, disapproving frown locked onto my beak. Her water-resistant feathers were coated in a filthy grime. Her breaths were deep, punctuated by the occasional rude snore.
I inhaled, and with the deepest breath I could muster, produced a sound that even Yvetal would have been proud of. I waited, but other then a light stirring, she gave no reaction.
Not wanting my wings to so much as graze her, I reared back my muck-drenched claw and slammed it into her ribcage.
I watched with a smug grin as she jolted up unceremoniously, her grimy feathers ruffled every which way. Her wide eyes narrowed into a malignant glare as they settled on me as I preened. She snorted,
"What the hell are you doing here, damn overgrown Pidgey."
"Lugia, my dear, what has become of your vocabulary? It seems to have come from a Castelia street-dweller instead of a legendary."
"What the fuck does my vocabulary have to do with you waking me up?"
"Nothing really, my counterpart. However, we do have a meeting today."
Her eyes widened,
"Well why didn't you fucking say so‽"
She attempted to run past me, almost slamming into my wing. I decided that it would be easy to wash off a bit of grime from my wing, should she slam into it, but my pride would be damaged beyond repair if I was seen with her in her present filthy state.
"I refuse to let you come with me while you are like that, Lugia."
She peered down at her form with a questioning gaze,
"Like what?"
"You are covered in dirt."
"Dirt?"
"Yes," I said with a sigh, "grime, filth."
"I don't see anything wrong."
"I suggest you clean yourself, as I doubt that you remember the way to the Hall of Origin with your horrid memory. I refuse to wait forever and be tardy because of your laziness."
Her light frown transformed into a grimace but she complied with little more than her trademark scowl and an annoyed grunt. I looked on with a victorious grin as she pivoted around to jump into the sea. I stepped closer as she launched herself eloquently off of the silvern platform with a spin and peering over the edge, I watched as the water barely even rippled as she penetrated its surface.
Her sleek form was distorted by the water's churning surface but I watched as she spun in detailed, hypnotizing patters, teasing the tides and water currents to converge about her. Her control over the tides was as absolute as mine was over the air currents. She could have easily been close to my level, if she had tried. Perhaps one day becoming a worthy counterpart to yours truly. Alas, she couldn't care less. A miniature whirlpool formed on the surface just over where her form could be seen performing its mesmerizing underwater dances. She sprang from the epicenter of the swirling water sending a shower of glittering droplets asunder. Her wings opened to their full, staggering width and her head held high, she called the wind with her authority over the air currents, which I still found to be deeply unfair. Arceus saw fit to gift her with control over both the tides and air currents along with formidable psychic talent, yet I only reigned over air currents with her! Completely uncalled for! It wasn't like I wanted control over water-- damp and full of algae and disagreeable slimy Pokémon. The air entangled around her formed a cyclone that faded from the top down in gusting ribbons while I brooded.
With an almost inaudible tap she landed, her silver-tipped feathers clean and shining. The rippling royal blue scales of her mask gleamed with reflected light, highlighting her luminous eyes that looked nowhere in particular.
"Good enough for you, Your Highness?"
I looked over her form, her feathers no longer carried a collected layer of filth and were all in perfect order, except, perhaps, for one on her forehead which stood straight up.
She must have seen it too because her long, pink tongue slipped out to smooth it down before I had to fix it. I huffed at something that would have expected from a newly hatched Torchic and stepped over to save her from herself. She sighed, dejected, at her fruitless attempts and bowed her head to let me have a better look. It was just a tiny feather from her downy undercoat, and I pinched it with my beak and plucked it out, tossing it to the side. She winced lightly as I preened her forehead and the skin on her cheeks beneath her gleaming feathers took on a light scarlet hue at my actions. My own cheeks, for some disgusting reason, wished to replicate hers, but I refused to let it happen. It was her pride being destroyed, not mine.
I pulled away with a tinge of reluctance, could I have made her look any better? I shook my head, we didn't have the time and I doubted that Dialga was going to give us any.
"Come now, Lugia, I don't wish be late. Let Raikou take Arceus's wrath for being tardy."
Responding with a subdued nod, she followed behind me, her tail slashing semi-circles in the sandy cave path as she walked. I stopped with a huff,
"Lugia, hold your tail up, it is not a broom."
She gave a weak sigh and lifted it up high off the ground, it did look a bit uncomfortable, but sacrifices had to be made. Her blundering steps on land were nothing like the elegance that her actions and movements held underwater. She waddled like a Ducklett when she walked, and the broad slabs of her hand-like wings hung useless at her side.
The cave opened up onto the plain surface of the island whose dirt was not a glittering gold or a shimmering silver, but a dusty, lackluster grey. Sprigs of dried grass sprouted here and there in the shade of any sizable rock while the sun beat down with unrelenting harshness.
I sprang up into the stifling air and pumped my wings, watching from the sky as she, too, jumped up into the sky.
The muscles beneath her waterproof feathers rippled with restrained strength, and the harsh sunlight made her feathers shimmer. Her wings lifted her eloquent form from the parched earth and the whisper of air that she dispersed with her wings became overwhelming surges that spun fragments of dull stone and billowing clouds of fine dirt into the arid atmosphere.
Once she attained a decent amount of height, she shot up silhouetted by the sun. Like a cocoon, she had her wings wrapped tightly around herself as she spun upwards. Sharply, she shot out her wings and drifted along on an air current and I realized that I was still only ten or so feet from the ground while she, now only an avian-shaped speck in the sky, was at least two hundred. Flapping rapidly, I gained altitude and rested just beside her on the same air current. With my wings flared out in full, I watched the rainbow spill from my feathers and drift towards the island which was now barely a smudge on the horizon.
The constantly churning ocean was losing my attention and I peered over the only other interesting thing within a hundred-foot range.
The sun was diagonally behind her and it's rays shone off her feathers, not harsh, but gentle- a smooth gradient of warm light. Her sleek form seemed to shear the air as if friction decided it wasn't worth it to mess with her, and she glided almost like had done in the water. She just lay on the air current, lazily and relaxed, but not slouching. My eyes traced up to her head, every scale of her cobalt mask glinted like a perfect sapphire, the detail of it enchanting the simple monochrome of her intelligent eyes. She was the perfect Moon Goddess, sleek and eloquent, intelligent but laid back, just going with the flow of the tides. I was unashamedly staring at her with such force that when she noticed she said,
"Trying to kill me by burning a hole in the side of my head?"
She grinned smugly before flicking her tail and performed an aileron roll, flipping stomach-up, letting the warmth of the sun's rays soak into her underside.
I felt perfect, stunning-the waning sun making the fading vestiges of light glint off my prismatic feathers and a rainbow cape trailed behind me. It shortened while the sun set, the great golden disc disappearing as if it were a large biscuit being devoured by Sharpedo. A golden trail formed on the water and as we banked towards Sinnoh and it seemed for all the world as if we were riding upon it, a golden road laid out just for us.
I liked the sound of that.