[Rebirth drabble] Go go Pokemon Go

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . . ───

I wrote this back in 2016, at the height of me playing Pokemon Go. So have this short and fluff drabble of Rebirth that I've kept in the dust for long time!

Also no beta, we die like Noah's suicidal tendency.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . . ───

Noah was taking his usual medicine in the living room when suddenly his second son came bursting in through the door and jumped on his back, almost making him choked on the pill and dropped his glass of water if Li wasn’t there and reacted just in time.

“Papa, let’s go out today!” The blond boy chirped with the brightest smile on his lips, sky blue eyes glittered up with excitement.

“... what is the occasion?” Putting down the glass of water in his hand, Noah let out a small sigh. How many times would he have to remind this hyper active kid to stop jumping on him out of nowhere? 

As if she could read his mind, Li nodded her head at the young boy and said in a calm voice, “Young master, you should refrain from surprising the master like that, it’s not good for his health.”

At the reminder, Abel looked up at the choker wrapping tightly around his father’s neck, when he spotted a tint of yellow light flaring in the midst of blue, he quickly said, “I’m sorry...”

He put on his puppy face as he held onto Noah’s arms. If it was before, the man would have already picked him up and told him everything would be fine and forgave him for whatever wrong thing he had done. But strangely enough, this time, Noah only looked deep into his eyes. When he met the other’s calm eyes, Abel cowered backward, almost wanting to divert his eyes away.

“It’s fine.” A pat on the head before the larger hand pushed his tiny arms away. Abel looked as Noah stood up, there was a tiny bit of anger rushed through his eyes but he quickly hid it away as fast as he could when the man once again looked at him, “So what is the occasion?”

“Uhm...” Abel fidgeted his fingers before pulling out the cellphone from his pocket, “There is a new game that just came out! E-Everyone is playing it. The kids at school all have their parents taking them out to play on the weekends, so I thought... we can...” He tilted his head down, acting all shy and embarrassed at his own suggestion.

“Is that so?” Noah exclaimed, but then realized how cold his voice was, he quickly corrected himself, “So you want me to take you outside to play the game too?” 

Abel was taken back by Noah’s indifferent tone, but then quickly brushed it off and nodded his head, “I-If you are not busy. That’s it!” 

Noah stopped for a bit to ponder to himself before smiling and said, “Sure, we can go.” But then he turned around to tell Li, “Call Neo down here. Tell him we are going out.”

Li politely bent down and quickly took off with his command.

“N-Neo? Why do we have to call him?” Abel couldn’t help but pouted, his small fingers gripped at the cellphone in his hands.

The older male bent down to face the blond, and with a smile he said, “Don’t you want to spend more time with your older brother too? This sure will be a fun family hangout.”

With that he walked off to find his jacket, leaving the blond child standing there in frustration. 

It was supposed to be only them. It was supposed to be! What has gone wrong? Ever since the day before, his father had been acting very strange... it almost like he was trying to avoid him?

Noah, avoid Abel? Even in his dream he would never think the father that’d always adored and spoiled him rotten would start acting so nonchalantly toward him. What happened? The day before that Noah was still the same... so what had gone wrong? 

“Abel, are you going out with papa?” Abel’s mother, Parish, came out from the kitchen. When she was about to touch Abel’s head, the child suddenly glared at her and slapped her hand away, “Don’t touch me, I’m not happy right now.” With that he walked off, fingers still gripping tightly around the mobile device almost as if he wanted to crush it with his bare hand.

-0-

“So we have to physically walk around until a monster pop up on the screen and then we can catch it?” The raven haired man tapped on his phone where his male avatar was standing there all casually.

Sitting beside him in the car was a very excited blond child along with a gloomy black hair kid. They both share a few similar traits in their facial features that even though the vibe they gave off were completely different, one could still somehow tell that they were related.

“Ah yes, just like how you catch that Squirtle just now. When a pokemon pops up on your screen, you just gotta tap it and it will allow you to capture it!” Abel excitedly said as he demonstrated his throwing ball skill on an unfortunate Pidgey that just wandered past their car. 

Noah watched as his second son skillfully got an excellent from capturing the poor digital bird before looking back down at his own screen. He tapped on the avatar of the bird, the screen changed to show a pixelated creature spreading its wings on the screen. He mimicked what Abel did and threw the red and white ball. Unfortunately his aim was bad, the ball went straight over the head of the pixelated creature.

“Try it again, swipe your finger straight across the screen like this.” Abel enthusiastically demonstrated the action for his father to see.

Noah did it once more. This time the ball hit the poor creature and with a flash of light, the creature disappeared into the weirdly colored ball. One shake, two shake, by the third shake the ball suddenly burst open and the pixelated bird once again spreading its wings proudly on the screen along with a little mini subtitle underneath saying: the creature broke free. 

Without waiting for Noah to throw the 3rd pokeball, however, the bird quickly slid off the screen in a puff of smoke, the only thing left on the screen now was another subtitle that read: The Pokemon escaped.

Noah: “...”

“Wah, that’s the first time I saw a CP 10 Pidgey successfully escape...” Abel said in awe.

Noah however wasn’t that disappointed in it. He felt like he was too old for this kind of kid game and rather, he turned his head over to see what Neo was doing. 

The black haired child actually wasn’t even looking at his screen where the newly downloaded Pokemon Go game was still open, instead he was boredly shifting his eyes left and right, observing people walking on the street through the window of the car. 

Not wanting to let Neo out of this whole shenanigan, Noah tilted his body over, scooting ever so slightly closer to his first son before opening his lips to ask, “Not playing? It looks pretty fun. Do you want Abel to give you a quick walkthrough?”

At the man’s voice, Neo looked over before letting out a small huff, “You are such a child, Noah.” 

The sudden insult came and before Noah could even react, Abel had already jumped right on the opportunity to lash back at his older brother, “Don’t call papa by his name, that is disrespectful!” 

Neo didn’t even bother to look at the blond kid and instead, he just looked back out the window. This action only further agitated Abel and if Noah wasn’t sitting in between the two of them, a fight would have already broken out. Probably.

“Sir, are you sure you want to walk out there? The heat can get pretty high today.” Li, who had been staying completely quiet on the other side of the limousine, suddenly opened her mouth after watching the sky outside for a while.

Noah gave the weather a quick check before shrugging, “It’ll be fine. I won’t be out for too long.”

With that, the three, father and sons, finally got out of the car and with their cellphones in hand, started their Pokemon journey. 

The game had been a big phenomenon, even though Noah had never played it, he still knew about it through the news. Just walking around in the central town alone, there were already at least a dozen more others doing the exact same thing as them. Cell phone in hand, face down, walking aimlessly across the street in hope of catching some invisible, pixelated monster on their screen.

Strange how just a few days ago he woke up and thought to himself that an apocalypse would happen... he didn’t even know if he should feel happy that it did not happen or what. Everything that he had been through the past 6 years felt like a dream. Death, blood, undead, monster, betrayal... just like that, disappeared in a blink of an eye. Has everything actually happened? Or was it simply just a dream he had? A very, very long and vivid dream...

Even until now he still couldn’t get over the memory of the past 6 years that he spent in that apocalyptic world. And he would be lying if he said he could easily drop them like it was nothing. He couldn’t face his wife the same way, not even his second son nor anyone in his family... Every time he looked at them, the distorted face of their disgusting and selfish future self immediately appeared, overlapping one another, making it hard for him to even distinguish the past from the present.

“Papa, there is a Pokemon right there, tap on it!” Abel’s voice interrupted Noah’s thought and pulled him back to reality. He looked down at his phone and saw a tiny little purple rat standing right next to his character. Quickly tapping on it, he threw a Pokeball at it to catch the thing.

This time though, was a lot more successful than the last time he tried on that cursed bird.

“Did you get it, Neo?” Noah looked over at Neo. He knew the boy wanted him to forget about his existence, but there was no way Noah could do that ever again. Even though those 6 years that he’d been through could as well be a dream, they felt very true, very true to the point it seemed like if things actually went down that road, that would be how everything unfolded. And so with that, the guilt he felt when Neo got captured was still lingering in the back of his mind, hurting every time he looked at the boy, reminding him of the mistake he had made in the past.

Neo didn’t deserve any of that unfair treatment... He was right. Noah was acting like a child. He was acting way too irresponsible.

Neo didn’t say anything and instead just raised his phone up for Noah to see. The picture of the rat was on the screen, saying clearly that it had been successfully captured.

“That’s great!” Noah smiled and they continued walking down the road.

Abel tapped his finger on the screen, occasionally glaring over at the dark haired kid. How annoying. Just seeing how much attention his father gave to that unworthy brother of his was enough to make his blood boil.

What was suddenly so good about that trash anyway? Why did his father suddenly care for him? Did he say something to his father that made him change his mind? 

“Do you guys want any ice creams?” Noticing an ice cream truck not too far ahead of them, Noah suggested. Kids probably like ice creams right? Maybe enjoying some ice creams together could mellow down the tension he was feeling between them...

“I do!” Abel chirped happily while Neo, as usual, said nothing in return. Though Noah took his silence for a yes, “You guys wait right here.” He smiled after gesturing to the group of bodyguards along with Li who were standing afar to keep an eye on the kids before going off to buy the ice creams.

With Noah gone, the smile on Abel’s face quickly disappeared, “What did you tell him?” He asked the taller kid in a threatening voice, “Why did he suddenly care so much for you? Who even wanted you to tag along with us anyway? Go back to your hole!”

Neo didn’t even bash an eye at Abel’s tantrum and just casually tapped on his phone, catching another unfortunately pixelated monster that popped up on his screen, “Maybe because he saw right through your bad acting and rather spend his time with a kid he hates than with someone that is as fake as you.”

“You!” Abel growled, looking almost as if he wanted to punch the living out of his older brother. But since Noah was on his way back, he could do nothing but glaring at Neo and quickly put back on his happy mask.

“Here, one for you and one for you.” He handed over the ice creams to the kids, “Matcha flavor, this time I remember.” Noah said to Neo with a sheepish laugh. Neo took the ice cream before diverting his eyes over to see a very unhappy and clearly jealous Abel. 

They began to wander around the central town, collecting things from stops and catching more random Pokemon. At one point Abel heard a crowd of people yelling out some rare pokemon’s name and ended up running off to catch it, making a group of bodyguards have to run after him. Noah was excused from the chase and so he just stood back with Neo under the shade of the tree.

Noah looked down at his screen before looking back up at the crowd of people running after some invisible monster, he then tilted his head to look over at the younger after a few minutes of contemplating, “Would you like it if I spent more time with you... just like today?”

Neo took his eyes off of the screen to look back up at Noah. The man thought the boy was waiting for some clarification, so he continued, “Maybe we can go out again tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow...” Neo went over the word once again, saying in an almost mocking tone as if it was something very amusing to him, “Are you sure tomorrow will be another peaceful day like today?” He then picked his head up, looking at Noah straight in the eyes. 

“Are you sure there will be a tomorrow?”