Ranger: 2B

Light. The magical manifestation of materialization.

There was nothing more powerful, awe inspiring, or God damn annoying in the entire world.

Sebastian winked an eye against the blinding sparkle. That stupid light would kill him one day, lead him straight off of the edge of a cliff and into the bottom of the mountain valleys. He sneered through the black bubbles of blindness floating across his vision and lifted his head. As the light dimmed, color took its place. Sapphire blue to be specific. If it wasn't for the clouds he would have thought it was the ocean and not the sky.

Tch, that color was even more annoying than the light.

Sebastian dropped his gaze. A green and brown wall of trees rose up in front of him. Those indecisive bastards couldn't make up their mind whether they wanted to be closer to heaven or to earth. Their leaves rustled with the breeze. They danced and waved even though they knew fully well what awaited them at the end of the season. Sebastian scoffed.

Pathetic.

He turned his head lightly to the side but his gaze lingered on the leafy performance.

Now that he thought about it: In just a few short months, those shimmering emeralds would be nothing but brittle scrapes of worm jerky. Time would throw them away when the weather broke. Thousands of treasures would be lost without a smidgen of regret.

But what did he care? It's not like he was a fan of the woods. Everything crunched and crackled under his feet loud enough to wake the dead. One could barely take a nap through all of the stream gurgling, bird twittering, and leaf rustling. And talk about work. Taking care of the trees alone wasted hours upon hours of his precious relaxation time. They had no sense of self-preservation and were the biggest bunch of crybabies he had ever seen. A little storm and they fall right over with enough moaning and groaning to star in a bad soap opera. Then there was the complaining: "Oh, a caterpie's on my bark~. The rain tore off some of my leaves~. This weed is pushing me!~"

Always so damn dramatic.

But today, they didn't seem as obnoxious as usual.

Odd.

Suspicion pinched Sebastian's glare. The tree caught at the end of it flinched to attention with a shudder of its canopy. He stomped closer to the wood line, stopped next to the trunk, and looked up into the Mountain's umbrella. The light twinkled at him through the leaves. It teased and giggled behind the safety of the canopy.

Sebastian dropped his head. He looked at the trunk next to him and placed his hand upon it: furrowed muted gray bark, flaky crisp plates, and five lobed leaves without the balls to arm themselves with any teeth: it had to be a Sugar Maple. He closed his eyes. His horns tilted lightly to the side as if trying to catch the motivation behind a musical note.

250, no, 270 years old.

Sebastian opened his eyes. He carefully squeezed the tree so that the tip of a claw punctured the phloem. The bark crackled lightly with surprise but generously unloaded some of its burden. A drop of sap pooled on the tip of the aggron's claw. The light gave it a sandy beige tint. A high gloss content made it shine like polished stone. It even had the scent of a winter morning breakfast. Sebastian lifted his head into the branches again.

272 years old.

No wonder the trees were so calm: This old geezer had them beat by nearly two centuries.

Something much younger than the tree tickled the aggron's ear. He turned his head to the side. The sound had the pestering shudder of a whimper but the soft resonance of a giggle. It sounded like . . . No, it couldn't be. This was a dream, just another memory to keep the solitude of his confinement at bay. There was no way Aria was here.

"Sebi," she called again.

Sebastian's body stiffened. The heat of his prevalent rage cooled and hardened his metal armor so quickly that it turned him into a statue. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe.

Surely, it was a mistake. He was confined for so long that his dreams had become hallucinations.

Sebastian whirled around. His tail slashed through the grass so fast that it chopped the blades in half. Vegetative confetti exploded into the air. The valley wind quickly picked up the pieces and tossed them across the clearing. They tugged at the ranger's pants as she walked away from a stone pillar.

"I'm glad you haven't forgotten them, the trees I mean," she said. "They missed you."

Aria quickly wiped the tear stains from her freckles, sniffled back a chuckle, and lowered her arms.

"Welcome home, Sebastian . . ."

The earth suddenly fell out from beneath the aggron's feet. He dropped onto all fours and squeezed the dirt in his claws. He opened his mouth in a heavy pant. His pupils dilated and his arms shook underneath the weight of his metal. Did he get hit with a pokemon attack? Was there an enemy nearby? There had to be. There was no other explanation for such a sudden loss in strength.

Aria sucked in a sharp gasp. She rushed across the clearing, knelt down in front of the aggron, and placed her hands on his shoulders.

"What's wrong, Sebi?" she cried. "Are you hurt? Show me, tell me, anything! Just let me help!"

Help? Since when did he need any help? There wasn't a pokemon alive that could stop him, but God was it getting hard to breathe. Was the air on the mountain always this heavy? His head went dizzy with the mere huff of it.

Sebastian grunted. He tried to push himself up from the ground but his hand slipped in the grass. Aria scooted underneath him, slid her hands down his jawline, and raised his head.

"It's alright, boy. I'm here," she explained. "You're safe now. You don't have to fight anymore."

The world was getting foggy. It darkened at the edges. Where was that annoying light when you needed it? Sebastian flicked a drowsy eye into the chestnut colored hair brushing his helmet. It caught the light better than the branches of the old maple tree.

Oh, there it was.

He almost didn't recognize Aria by the way the light haloed her face. Summer had freckled her cheeks again, as usual, but her eyes were different than he remembered. They gleamed and flickered with the iridescence of a soul as hard as the unforged diamonds in the mountain. And then there were her hands: Since when did she become strong enough to hold his steel keg of a head as if it were a crystal ball?

Sebastian's eyelids dropped a little lower. A small smirk curled into the corner of his mouth.

That frail pitiful thing he found shaking in the tunnels under the mountain covered in dirt, chocolate, and fantasies, didn't need him to protect her anymore. He could finally let her go off into the world without having to worry about a scraped knee, bruised toe, or whiney tug against his arm.

The aggron with blue eyes and white steel closed his eyes with a sigh.

Little Aria Wicket had finally learned how to take care of herself.

It was about damn time.

Sebastian collapsed in the grass and Aria dropped with him. She fell backwards, pushed away the loose pieces of hair, and quickly sat up. The heavy head of an aggron filled her lap. It anchored her to the mountain so that she couldn't run away no matter what business, curiosity, or obligation came her way. Aria gladly accepted the shackles. She gently leaned in and kissed him on the head. He purred from deep within his throat.

Aria laughed despite the tears falling from her eyes and stroked his smooth helmet.

"Sebastian Jacobie Wicket," she exclaimed, "you are completely helpless."

THE END