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Brendan is red.
Red is heat. In the blazing vermilion heat of battle, Brendan shouts command after command to his Sceptile. Passion ignites in his chest as he becomes swept up in the sheer adrenaline of it. Maxie moves like lava, slowly and carefully. The Red Orb in his hands, like an ember both in color and temperature, fills his breast with a sort of passion. Maxie is, generally, not a passionate person. He plays his cards carefully, chooses his words wisely, a tactician and logician rather than a magician. This, however, is different. The iridescent stone embedded in Brendan’s Mega Bracelet glows like a live coal, sanguine fervor coursing through both Trainer and Pokémon. Deific frenzy grips Maxie, squeezes the blood from his veins and the words from his brain until his self-control blazes on a funeral pyre and religion burns through his mortal body like molten rock. He has found his God.
Red is war, flame and blood. Red is an angry warning. The sun beats down on Brendan furiously. Each beam of light from above feels like a wound, bleeding deep crimson and searing heat on the weary world below. Brendan’s arms eventually become sunburnt, pain throbbing through him as he looks up at the parched atmosphere. The sun held in the sky against its will, held prisoner by a wrathful force of nature, pierces Brendan’s pupils as they reflect the searing flame-coloured spiral of a solar flare. Maxie curses the name of his enemy, again and again and again until his throat is burning and his eyes are bloodshot. Anger is what has been motivating him all this time. Anger at the world, anger at the state of technology, anger at those who’ve wronged him in the past. Anger at himself, for being so foolish as to love someone, someone so incompatible with him, anger at the way he thinks (hopes?) that he still loves him. Maxie’s death grip on the Red Orb grows tighter as red markings bleed onto his body and tint his burning gaze wine-red.
Red is love, red is romance. Red is the kind of love that makes your chest all warm and your face burn up, rushing blushing first love with roses and strawberries, lipstick and milkshakes and long deep kisses at sunset. Maxie’s cheeks go red as his hand brushes against Archie’s. Not red from fury, like he’d usually expect, but red from something else. Archie orbits Maxie’s thoughts like the Earth around the Sun, hazy recollections of sharp-toothed grins and deep kisses from before their fallout. Brendan watches the sky fall, piece by piece as shooting stars twinkle in May’s eyes. The war is over, the hero lays down her bloodstained weapons and the navigator gently tends to her ruby wounds. She reaches for his hand, clumsily intertwining her fingers with his and squeezing like she’ll never let go. Brendan feels his face go warm, his usually medium brown skin flushed with the deep russet shade of raw carnelian.
Wally is green.
Green is sickness. Wally has never left his house. His veins run almost green under his frail wrists. A princess in a tower, his only window to the outside world has been fairytales and storybooks for almost more than a decade. Zinnia was weaned on the lore and legends of her people from the time she was small, which she decided has made her quite sick. Bile rises to the top of her throat when she hears of what happened to her beloved Aster. As she clutches a half-burnt cape (the only remnant of Aster left behind), she feels sick, sick with grief. She wishes to cast her earthly form into the heavens and dissolve into stardust, to cease being, to disappear. Wally decides to disappear, pulling up the young roots of home and running away like a leaf on the wind, challenging the local Gyms in an attempt to make a name for himself in the League Challenge. Ralts was supposed to be a service Pokémon, a companion instead of a fellow fighter, never to evolve into a Kirlia. Nevertheless, fantastic illusions of enormous flowers and crumbling vine-covered castles trail behind the Trainer-and-Pokémon duo’s every step. Paradise, perhaps.
Green is jealous. Jealousy is a type of sickness. Wally looks at Hoenn’s hero and champion, soother of wild whales and tamer of sky gods, with nothing but utmost admiration, at least he says. Truthfully, it is admiration, albeit tinged with green, green envy. An emerald-scaled serpent coils around Wally’s ribs, hissing and spitting venom. Poison-tipped fangs sink into his lungs, lacing his breath with virescent acid. Zinnia looks up to the greenish glow of the stars, the last chapter of her sacrificial story torn away by cruel fate. She was never supposed to live this long. She’s not the hero, and Wally isn’t either. The stellar suicide mission’s rejected martyr and the blossoming boy-knight made of porcelain both aspire for greater things, only to be squashed under the heel of the narrative like little green beetles. She tries not to be jealous. He tries not to be jealous. Despite her efforts, despite his efforts, the green-eyed monster eats its victims whole.
Green is growth, nurturing. Wally plants his soul in a painted terracotta pot, covering it in a blanket of warm soil. Three days later, a tiny green sprout forms. He sings to the plant like a mother singing to a child. He is learning to be kind to himself. Zinnia also learns to be kinder to herself, leaving her own roots behind to walk the earth and give herself time to grow, time to write the rest of her story. Maybe one day, when Wally’s older, he’ll travel the world too, rich verdant life from all corners of the globe flooding his gaze and tinting his memories with the color of their leaves. Flowers bloom in the chambers of his heart. Flowers bloom on the other side of Nirvana. Flowers are still blooming on Victory Road.
May is blue.
Blue is sadness. Tears pool in May’s eyes as she looks up at the clear azure sky. She’s never lost a battle until now. The fact that she lost to her father only adds salt to the wound. Where did she go wrong? Archie isn’t usually the type of person to cry, but no one notices the regretful mist in his eyes amongst the heavy downpour. He should’ve foreseen the consequences of his actions, he knows, but sapphire-blue divinity and promises of a natural tabula rasa clouded his vision and corrupted his mind. Failure, like a sudden punch to the stomach, a deep blue bruise on her solar plexus leaves May winded and gasping for air between guttural choked sobs.
Blue is depth. Clutching the body of the massive Legendary Pokémon like it’s the end of the world (which, technically, it is), May descends into the cerulean depths of the cave, into the belly of the Beast. Archie navigates further into the depths, his single-minded goal of capturing the gargantuan sea creature eating him alive. The captain’s gone off the deep end, his subordinates say, but what do they know about hunting the white whale? The Beast’s teeth sink into the soft folds of Archie’s brain, rich blue blood streams down his face like rain racing down a window pane as he descends further into divine madness. May descends into her psyche, drowning in her mindscape and rupturing the surface of her memory. She’s only a kid, and yet she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. A little blue marble from space feels like an immeasurably heavy ball and chain. She has to save everyone, even if she doesn’t want to. Atlas never buckled under pressure. Then again, Atlas was not twelve years old when he was sentenced to hold the Earth aloft for the rest of time.
Blue is calm, the calm before and after the raging tempest. Blue is breath, moving in and out like the ocean’s tides. May finds herself headed to the seaside to cool the singed ends of her nerves more nowadays. She feels the familiar grit of the sand in her toes and the salty breeze in her tawny hair. She screams at the ocean until she’s blue in the face. She lays down in the space between the sea and the shore, azure waves lapping near her face and dampening her clothes. For the first time in what seems like eons, May feels like she has a semblance of control over her life. Forced into a role she struggled to handle, the necessity of the narrative had pushed her around like ocean currents. She was drowning in the region’s expectations of her, drowning in her father’s expectations of her. Drowning in herself. Right now, May breaches the ultramarine depths and fresh oxygen graces her waterlogged lungs. The pale blue hue of the heavens holds her, cradles her like a mother. She’s just where she needs to be.