The Stream of Time Carries Memories; Farther and Farther Away [Closed-Join With Permission]

Evangeline sat back, content on the beach. The warm sand beneath her bare feet made her feel more at ease while she watched the waves gently lap the shore, bringing in new life as it takes the old back out into its caress. She felt calm for once, after her ordeal with Dark and the others, it felt good to be at ease- even for just that moment she allowed herself to be. Dark had taught her not to be ashamed of what she was, and because of this, her snowy white wings shifted gently with the breeze, creating a cool contrast to the warm pebbles of sand.

Nev sat close by, burying himself in the sand. He giggled and laughed as he scooped a pile up with his tail until the weight of it made it impossible for him to move any more. "Hey Angie," he said with a grin, "Mind doing the rest of me?"

Rolling her eyes, Evangeline turned toward Nev and finished piling the sand onto her enthusiastic companion. "I didn't know you knew Dig," she said wryly, "and don't call me Angie or you'll be burying yourself into that ocean." Nev's muffled laugh was his only response, and Evangeline rolled her eyes before looking to Dark. She and he had left their other companions and departed to Olivine, where they currently were.

"So," she said, her gaze turning back into an admiring view of the ocean, "what do you think of this view?" she asked, "I've never seen anything like it. It makes me feel so small in comparison, the ocean being that vast. It's so surreal, but so perfect."

[Nice introduction post to the split o3o]
[Writing as such a dark character gives me chills sometimes o3o]

Dark had watched as Evangeline had buried her little friend. It wasn't like he got along with him that much, Dark staying silent despite the fact he and Evangeline cared about each other. His mind was fogged with various issues, two of which he had recently expressed concern over. First was the issue of his parent, him wanting to rid the planet of his mother after what she had done to him. The second was of him constantly wanting to take someone's life to feed his dark aura, him sometimes escaping from Evangeline's grasp to chomp down on someone pure.

He gave the ocean another look before he turned his head down a bit, him snarling a bit. He had unknowingly refused to respond to Evangeline's question, him continuing to think on the issues, which only stressed him further.

"She sees water with the rest of the others," he thought to himself. "So why do I see red? Why can I see only a thirst towards others' lives and aura?" He stood up, his ears tilting a bit under their covering. He gave another snarl to the ocean before he turned, gazing towards the building they had found themselves staying in. His face was beginning to burn under the light, him not letting Evangeline know because he knew she would express worry.

"I hate the ocean," he finally responded, knowing that if he could see it as a bright blue, his opinion would differ from its current state. "I see no water." He then started moving towards their room, wanting to get out of the sunlight before he melted; or at least, what he assumed would be melting. Even after so long, he was still learning about the abilities he had inherited, and why he could be cruel. It was showing partially with his snarling, him not seeming to notice like all the other times. It showed even farther when he ended up scaring a complete stranger away, him clenching his fists together to avoid chasing after the individual as prey.

"Maybe it just can't be trained like we thought [it could]... Perhaps it's just nature I be a cruel, ruthless monster that kills others as prey..." Just before he walked through the door, he ended up putting a hole in the wall beside the frame, snarling even louder temporarily. He could tell he was about to lose his mind again, it giving him more reason to hurry onwards to the room.

[I put it could so if you want to know what he was really saying, the bracketed words would help complete it with a bit more detail]

"Dark..." Evangeline started, her uneasy gaze turning toward him, but he had already turned and left, heading back to their room. Shaking her head, she rose to her feet, and a sand covered Nev did too, his wide eyes were focused on the man who had ran from Dark.

"Uh," he said, "I think that guy's calling the police. Your description isn't that hard to miss," he flicked an ear toward her arching white wings, "I think it's about time we should lie low for a while." Reluctantly, Evangeline nodded, finding wisdom in Nev's words for once. I'm not the only one who's grown in this last month, she observed to herself, but was all of it for the better? Her thoughts turned toward Dark, and she followed his path to their hotel.

She noticed the punched hole immediately, and her heartbeat grew steadily faster, now more of a flutter than a steady beating. That wasn't a good sign. "Dark..." she said cautiously, "are you in here?" she looked around for him, a slight fear building that he was once again slipping into his other, heartless self.

"What's up?" Nev asked from his perch atop Evangeline's shoulder. He too was a little scared, and his voice waivered in his question. His grip tightened and pinched his companion's skin, but she didn't flinch or object to it, knowing the tighter grip would leave the young Pikachu more comfortable.

Dark didn't really give out a response when Evangeline entered the hotel. Things seemed to be alright in the lobby; that had been where Dark's slipping began. He was in an aisle which branched from another, Dark finding himself accidentally bumped into by another person. He didn't really hear the apology, his head turned with teeth bared whilst he snarled loudly. It echoed down the thin halls, the man who had bumped into him deciding to run. The guy eventually ran into Evangeline after the snarl had passed through the halls, him bumping into her whilst he fell back.

"G, get away from the monster," he yelled at her, not seeming to notice her wings. He immediately got up, him running around her to escape. Dark had left a couple of holes in the walls of the aisle, him continuing towards the room since it seemed no one was going to get in his way.

"Just a bit further," he thought to himself. "Then I could possibly keep myself sane." He slowly stopped, his mind nearly lost while he began contemplating mauling an innocent. "I'm really hungry," he told himself. He shook his head in attempt to get the thought away, but he soon began thinking of how normal food didn't taste like aura. "M... Maybe just one innocent... I am hungry, and it couldn't hurt after a week of waiting... Besides, who would notice" He prepared his claws for a kill at that, him grinning slightly.

Evangeline lifted Nev off of her shoulder and set him onto the floor. "Stay here," she ordered, the tone of her voice caused him to hold back the protest that rose in his throat. The young Pikachu nodded, and stepped back, his gaze catching sight of the many holes Dark had left on his path.

"Uh, Angie," he said, tilting his head at the holes, "that can't be good..." Evangeline only grimly nodded and walked cautiously into the hall in pursuit of Dark.

"Whatever you're doing Dark," Evangeline began as she stepped farther and farther into the hall Dark had gone, "don't. You're going to regret it later. Letting go of humanity will drive you insane. I know how you feel, but you shouldn't take it out on innocent people. Please, just stop. We can leave here and find a better place. If the ocean is so bad, we can go far away from it. Maybe even the mountains..." she kept talking, trying to both distract him from his murderous intentions and snap him out of whatever dark thoughts were gripping him.

Dark heard Evangeline, him turning around looking down the hall. He gave a snarl, watching while he waited. "You think it's nice being called a monster," he asked her in snarl. "You say letting go of humanity would drive me insane; maybe it's what people want me to be!" He ripped claws through the wall, him turning whilst he headed towards a window. It wasn't like the building was more than one story up; he could survive a jump out. "I'm hungry anyway! One innocent won't be much!"

"Land there." Jonathon said, pointing at the familiar cabin on the beach. The braviary stepped down and lowered it's back, allowing the trainer to step off. "Thank you." He said, recalling the bird pokemon. He knew that he had been told not to try and find Summer and Magnus again, but after meeting Uxie, Jonathon realized he wasn't ready to let go yet. Knocking on the door it swung open, revealing the empty space. Jonathon assumed it would be like that. If Magnus and Summer wanted to disappear, they wouldn't come to a place Jonathon had been too before. Leaving the house and walking down the beach, he let Mist and Dawn out of their pokeballs to travel along side him. Dawn seemed to enjoy the sand and Mist just minded her own business, floating about. Jonathon was still wrapped in thought. He paused twice in his walk. Once when he stood at the spot where he saw his first dead body and the note and gun from Elrich. He paused again quite a ways later when he heard the sound of breaking glass, then saw some sort of strange wolf human hybrid jump from a window.

"That idiot," Evangeline muttered before springing into action. Running quickly to the window, she wrapped her heavy jacket around her hand and used it as a protective cushion while she cleared away the shattered glass. Throwing the now glass covered jacket to the floor, all that was left of the window was a glassless hole in the wall. Her central power grew within the core of her body, and her breath suddenly became a cloud of icy perspiration. Spreading her wings, she glanced down. Please don't let me be too late...

Evangeline forced her way through the window, struggling to get her massive wing span through after her body. After one final heave, she was through, and glanced furiously around to see where Dark had gone. Seeing nothing, she dashed forward, and listened closely. He had lost her for now, but any minute now and someone would scream. That would be her cue to where he had gone...

Dark was running quickly, hunting a target so he could feed his aura. He ran about until he sensed someone of curiosity nearby, him turning his feet. "Strangely, it's stronger than other's," he thought to himself, him charging towards a complete stranger [Jonathan]. "Maybe it'll be more filling than others too..." He clearly wasn't human, his jacket coming off with the bandana covering his ears. With claws prepared for a swing, he charged without thinking; another clear sign of his dark aura driving his mind.

Jonathon began to frantically curse as the wolf man began to charge him. His pokemon began to cower behind him and he fumbled through his pockets. Finding the chunk of metal and plastic given to him by a dead man, he pulled it out and aimed in the general direction of the charging creature. Then pulled the trigger. Thankfully for dark, Jonathon wasn't much of a shot with the hand gun yet. There was still a bang, but the bullet buried it self in the sand just to the right of the wolf. "Stop! Or I'll shoot you again!" He shouted, his voice quivering as he held the gun shakily, hoping the warning would stop the beast from eating his face, and then his pokemon.

"F**k!" Evangeline exclaimed after a loud gunshot echoed through the area. Within moments, several people were running from the beach with panicked looks and phones: no doubt-able calling the cops. I knew he'd bite off more than he could chew! Who the hell has a gun around here though?! she thought to herself as she took off in full speed toward where the others had run from.

With her wings spread now threateningly in their full span, making her look taller and more dominant, she finally caught up to Dark, to see the sight of him snarling at a man with a gun drawn. Focusing on her ability, the area around all of them grew suddenly colder and chilled, and a crystal of ice began slowly consuming the gun Jonathon held, more of an attention grabber than anything that could stop him from firing it. "Now," she said loudly, hoping that both would lose focus on the other and turn their attention to her, "there's no more need for violence. Dark, if you attack him, I'm not going to stop him from shooting you. Maybe that'll teach you to learn to control yourself. You," she said, pointing to Jonathon, "fire that at my friend without him making a move and you'll be dead within the moment. It's amazing how much some cold can do to a human body..." She hated making threats, but if it pinned her as the treat and not Dark, then there was less of a chance that he'd be shot. The temperature continued to plummet, though still not as much so to do harm.

Dark was frozen where he was, him looking down to see the sand with a hole in it. His snarling was slowly subsiding, it eventually fading whilst the last of his aura faded off. He began shaking lightly, him looking up to stare at Jonathan. He looked specifically to the gun, him noticing then that his jacket and bandana were gone, exposing his tail and ears to the guy. Seeing the ice that was forming around the gun, he turned his head to Evangeline with a few tears starting to form in his eyes. "Evangeline," he asked, unaware of what had happened. It was another lapse in his memory wince the aura had faded. "What happened Evangeline? I don't understand..." He heard his stomach give a growl itself, him understanding what had happened a bit more. "I tried to attack someone, didn't I? I couldn't stand the thought of being a monster... I don't see water like others, I see blood."

Jonathon, as would be expected of someone who, not only had to face down a banished legendary, watch someone die because of it, and then try to come to something comparable to home and almost get mauled by some sort of were wolf and confronted by an angel, was kind of thrown off guard. When the gun started to freeze, he panicked and dropped it, taking a step back and tripping over dawn. Apologizing to his eevee he looked up at the winged girl, then at the wolf boy, then back to the winged girl. He slowly raised his hands to surrender. "Please don't hurt me. I was just walking along the beach and your...friend...charged me. I panicked, he's alright though...I think." Jonathon didn't notice any blood on the boy's body or the sand, so he figured his shot really did miss.

Breathing a sigh of relief at Dark's sudden recovery, Evangeline relaxed and folded her wings to her back. The temperature suddenly rose to its proper place, and exhaustion pounded through her body. "Yeah," she sighed, "he's fine now." Smiling toward Dark, she nodded, "apparently you did. Lucky he had a gun, or he probably would have been your lunch." Concern rose over his last statement, but she didn't want to press.

Turning back toward Jonathon, she held out her hand. "Sorry 'bout that, I won't hurt you. Much." The expression on her face signified the last word as a joke, "I'm Evangeline, and no, I'm not from Heaven sent down by the great Arceus to live among mortal men. If you want to think of me as such, go for it, but don't expect me to act holy." She didn't offer up any true information of her origins to the stranger.

While awaiting a handshake from the startled Jonathon, she glanced back toward Dark. "You okay now?" she asked after realizing she hadn't before.

Dark shook a bit, him walking towards his jacket and bandana whilst Evangeline helped Jonathan. He thought to himself a moment, trying to recall the very recent events. "Why can't I remember," he mumbled to himself, picking up his things. He tied his ears up and put his jacket on, him turning and heading back to the duo. He stood still a few moments, feeling the breeze on his face whilst he stared to the red water he saw for an ocean. He then heard Evangeline's question.

"I'm not okay," he told her. "I've never been okay. Over this past month I've become more a monster than a normal person with abilities..." He turned away, him shivering a bit since it was still a bit cold from Evangeline's little manuver. "I sensed something in him that I can't feel right now with my aura all drained," he thought to himself.

"Something like when I first attacked my father..." He put his hands on his head and shook it. "Why is my dark aura so violent... Why did he have a presence like my father," he growled to himself aloud. He was clearly frustrated and upset over what had happened, him tilting his head down. "Why am I such a monster and a clutz! Why did I have to want to learn about this aura!"

As the air began to warm Jonathon grabbed the gun as it thawed out. Once it was free of it's icy prison, he got all the excess water off before stuffing it into his pocket. Standing up and brushing himself off, noticing he was also still in position of all his blood and limbs. He shook the angel girl's hand and forced a smile. "I'm Jonathon, and these are Dawn and Mist." He motioned to his two pokemon. However, one thing was currently setting off a few alarms in her mind. Her name Evangaline, like the absol he'd come to know so well. Was it a coincidence, it had to be. Then he heard the wolf boy say something about aura. "Wait...did you say aura?" He said, keeping Evangaline between the two of them. "What do you know about aura. I know that I can see it and sort of use it, but I have so many questions, so much I don't understand about it. Please, could you just answer a few questions I have about it?"

At the mention of aura, Evangeline was lost in the conversation. Turning away from the two, she headed back to the hotel. The mention of Jonathon's Pokemon made her remember Nev was still waiting. "I'll be right back," she called over her shoulder, "try not to kill each other while I'm gone." The walk back from the beach didn't heed to anything exciting, but upon entering the hotel, she was met with the sight of the desk clerk giving a statement to an officer and motioning toward the many jagged holes within the walls. Crap! Evangeline thought before ducking behind a column before the clerk could glance up and see her.

"The Police?" A familiar voice called from beside her, "Angie, what did you do to get the police here?"

"Don't call me Angie," was all that she said on the matter, "let's head out of here." Nev nodded and jumped onto Evangeline's shoulder. Carefully making their way out of the hotel without being spotted, they both made their way back to the beach, Evangeline hoping that the two she had left were talking like civilized people and not tearing the other's throat out like Prehistoric Pokemon were said to once do.

Dark was confused about Jonathan. He didn't even know the guy, and he was asking him to teach him something that he wanted to forget. "It's not like it would help," it told him. "If you're like me, then it's not a good thing." He then turned towards the hotel. "I know some, if not a lot, about aura, but it hasn't done me good..." He wanted to stop talking then, but he knew that he needed to explain his reason. "I started practicing and ended up hurting someone that was close to me..."

"Specifically, my father," he thought to himself afterwards. He remembered how bad his father had screeched when he had been angry, him putting his hands over his head and shook it. He didn't want to remember, him already tearing up. "I don't want to talk about it... It's never done me good, and I doubt it ever will... I even assume it's the reason I lose my mind, the reason I attack people." He clearly thought of the other personality he had as himself, and he feared it.

"If you make me remember and talk about it, it'll happen at some point... My aura is drained for now, but it'll happen..." "Evangeline's done so well to protect me," he thought to himself. "If I lost control without her around, I don't know what I'd be doing right now..." He sat down with legs crossed, him hoping Jonathan wouldn't push him further for the moment with his reasoning.

"Oh..." Jonathon said, in response to the strange boys suspicious response. "Uh...I'm gonna go check on your friend...see if she needs help." He said, recalling his pokemon and heading to the hotel. He actually bumped into her on the way back, literally. "Oh...Sorry...Didn't see you there. Uh...hi." Jonathon said, still kind of off kilter due to everything happen. "You're Evangaline, right?"

Evangeline hadn't been paying much attention to where she was going, instead preoccupied with thoughts of Dark and the newcomer. Because of this she accidentally ran into someone. Glancing back up and preparing a quick apology, she recognized his face, and gave a small smile. "Yes, and you're Jonathon," she replied after he spoke.

"And I'm Nev! Don't mind me, though, I'm only the coolest Pokemon in Johto," Nev said, waving from atop her shoulder with a wagging tail. Evangeline rolled her eyes at him, Always there to kill my mysterious mood she joked to herself.

"Anything I can help you with?" Evangeline asked, making her way back to Dark. "I'm at a blank with any of the aura stuff, but if you need anything else, I may be able to comply."

[Revised my post to have a thought for Dark... It just kept bugging me, but I swear I changed nothing else in it.]

Dark looked up to Evangeline when he noticed she was approaching. "I didn't want to attack anyone," he told her with a few tears still in his eyes. "I really didn't... It... It's just really hard to resist now Evangeline." He was shaking a bit terribly, him putting his hands down into his lap carefully from his head. "I feel like I'm a monster, and there's nothing that can be done about it..." He then turned his head away and looked to the bloody water he saw. "All because I wanted to know what this aura was when i was a child... I killed my own father over it Evangeline; I'm terrified." "Keep thinking that," his aura made him think, even if it was drained. "You aren't a monster. You're strong; strong enough to kill an aura master. Just let your aura help you accept that... Take your personalities and mix them..."

"I don't really have any questions...but, uh, does the name Magnus mean anything to you?" He asked. Maybe there was a connection between this Evangaline and the absol. Then the boy showed up and said something unsettling. "Wait...what. You killed your father because of aura?" He said, looking at his own hands, then at Dark. "I...I'm sorry I asked about it. It's just that whenever I try to do anything with my aura, it just sort of...sits there, not doing anything."

"I'm sorry," Evangeline answered to Jonathon, "that name means nothing to me." Upon reuniting with Dark, she listened to his words with growing concern, but remained silent until he finished. "There's nothing to fear now, Dark, what's the past is the past," she replied to him, "and all we have to look forward to is the future. And if you turn nasty and make evil plans again, I'll be sure to freeze you solid until you calm down," a wry smile crossed her face. Jonathon's reaction to Dark was intriguing, but Evangeline drew a blank. Aura was foreign to her, and she couldn't follow the conversation. Well, Ice is a lot cooler than aura, she thought, so I have that going for me.

[Alright, officially putting chills down my spine with my writing o3o]

Dark listened to Evangeline, him taking a few moments to register mentally what she was saying to him. He used one of his sleeves and rubbed his eyes, him looking up to her with a slight smile. "I'm just glad you're here to keep it from happening," he told her. "If you weren't here, I'd be a monster already..." "Or worse," he thought to himself. He stood up, took Evangeline's hand, and remembered the promise she made about keeping him out of trouble.

He took a few moments to settle down further before he decided to address Jonathan. As much as he didn't want to talk about his past, he knew that he couldn't let him get a bad wrap about aura. He looked to him. "There are two different auras; normal and dark aura. My father was an aura master, my mother a dark aura master..." He swallowed a bit roughly to keep going. "They hid that I was like my mother from me. I eventually found out, and being a child, was curious... I experimented, and this resulted in my tail and ears..." Getting into the deeper part of his history, he started shaking.

"I... I was so angry with it, I presume I attacked. I never saw my father afterwards, and I can't remember what happened that night. My mother treated me differently, and made me take therapy and listen to psychologists." He started remembering the things the psychologists had told him, and when it started looping he cried. "It didn't work, and she... She threw me out. She swore I wasn't her son, and... And..."

He then remembered his mother's final words to him. "You aren't my son," he remembered, his mother's voice showing she was slightly upset as she choked up a bit. "I'm not your mother. Leave me alone you monster!" He remembered seeing the path leading from his home outwards, and his rage began growing. Even with his aura drained, he was growing angrier, much so to the point that he swung in a half-circular motion, hitting nothing but thin air whilst he watched the hallucination of his mother disappear.

As if it weren't enough, his rage made him outburst. "I'll kill you mom," he screamed in hatred. "I'll drain you like father!" He let Evangeline's hand go at that and started swinging at the fading image his other personality had him seeing, it an attempt to make him lose his mind again. "Abandoning me!"

Jonathon gulped for striking such a nerve. He hadn't intended to upset Dark this much. Stepping back to put Evangeline between them, he subconsciously reached for the weapon. He blinked and saw Dark's aura, and his name didn't betray it. The aura was a deep red color, almost black at times. There was a small hint of light Jonathon could make out in there though. So there was some hope for Dark, as far as Jonathon could tell, Jonathon was still scared though.