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The television comes to life in the dark, snowy signal noise painting Gemma’s face with its pins-and-needles light, loud static crackling from the speakers. The light and sound might as well be a blaring siren in the living room, and she has to shake herself out of her momentary panic to mash the volume-down button until the crackling is just audible.
She should be tucked into bed right now, fast asleep. If her father saw her out here at this hour watching TV… She doesn’t even want to think about it.
Dad smiled a lot once, and sometimes still does—he loves mago berry sorbet, and no one ever looks so at peace as he does when he's petting his cat Mars. But he's gone so much these days, sometimes for weeks at a time, and when he's home he seems to be in a bad mood all the time. Things he had ignored once anger him now, and she doesn't always understand why. The one thing she has learned, sure as anything, is not to push her limits.
Watching the TV is not something she would normally risk provoking him over. But this isn't just any old TV show. This matters. Unfortunately, she has no idea how to find it. She’s never watched TV on her own, doesn’t know the channels—it’s always him with the remote, leaned back in his leather chair with his legs crossed. Gemma’s only option is to surf until she finds what she wants.
Each time she changes the channel, the screen fuzzes and hisses for a moment before the picture comes in. First it’s a cooking show. No thanks. Zygarde Warriors. Pass. An advertisement for the all-new Super Rod, twice the strength for the price you love. Next. A reporter blathering about disaster relief in Hoenn. Boring!
Click.
The screen becomes an overhead portal to a stadium, and an announcer’s voice comes through the speaker. “Indigo League Champion Red defends his title against challenger Branson in this championship match,” he booms to the delight of the screaming crowd. A sea of fans and flashing cameras like stars surround the battlefield, a green pitch under spotlight. On one end is a a young man bouncing on his heels, and on the other…
“Red,” Gemma whispers to herself. It must be a rerun, then. The former Indigo League Champion is plainly dressed and standing there cool as a pyukumuku, maybe even a little impatiently, like he’s waiting in line at the PokéMart. This guy was the strongest trainer in the region? Gemma’s heard of him from the awed chatter of the kids at the park she likes to hang out at. The best ever to do it, they said, til’ he relinquished his title last year to go find himself on Mount Silver—just gave his title away, they’d said breathlessly. No one had ever done that before. That’s how wicked strong Red is.
She had to see what the fuss was about. That’s why she was out here in the middle of the night, straining her eyes against the light of the television. She’d expected someone bombastic, a figure pulled from legend. But the man on the screen unclipping a poké ball from his belt was just some guy.
“The defender will send out his pokémon first, as always,” the commentator says. “Lately Red has had a habit of starting with his Venusaur, but our analysts predict that for a higher-stakes fight like this, he might choose—”
His words are cut short by a flash of white on the battlefield. The camera cuts to a pokémon—huge and orange, stocky arms rippling with muscles, massive teal wings unfurling. Gleaming ivory teeth peek from its huge jaws, big enough to wrap comfortably around a human head. The creature fixes its eyes on the camera—its reptilian gaze is cold and unnerving, like it’s peering at Gemma herself and assessing whether her flesh would be worth its effort. A chill runs down her spine.
“Champion Red leads with his charizard! What a treat we’re in for tonight folks, what a treat indeed!”
Right, a charizard. She’s heard that name.
The challenger sends out some kind of rock monster the commentator calls a “rhydon.” It’s got a big horn on its face, and its whole body is clad in stony armor. It looks slow, but the commentator seems to think it’s threatening enough. Something technical about type advantages and defense factors—it all flies right over Gemma’s head. Right when she’s thinking the blathering has gone on too long, the charizard leaps into action, and the battle starts.
The dragon flies low to the ground, its wings flared out and smoke streaming from its nostrils. The rhydon plants its feet and beats its boulder-like fists into the turf, cracking it into pieces. It hefts one of the pieces up, revealing a stony underside, and pitches it at the charizard so fast it becomes a blur. But the charizard lazily tilts a wing just a hair and the rock sails right past it, exploding against the forcefield protecting the trainers from the battle.
Letting out a snort of irritation but otherwise unperturbed, the rhydon hurls another boulder at the charizard. This time the charizard doesn’t move, and Gemma recoils, expecting to see the dragon go flying back from the impact—but suddenly Charizard’s feet are flat on the ground and the boulder is halted. It caught it.
The charizard throws its head back, thick white smoke pouring from its face, then lunges its head back forward and unhinges its jaw. A pure-blue jet of flame shoots from its throat like a laser and drills against the rock, sapphire embers flying from the collision. At first nothing happens, except the rhydon paws anxiously at the ground, but the charizard persists until the rock glows red hot and then melts, running through its hands like sludge and pooling on the ground.
“What a display of strength from Red’s charizard, I think that was a flamethrower, and a pretty nasty one at that, maybe a little hotter than regulation there—”
Gemma’s eyes are dinner plates. She’s seen the kids at the playground spar with their little pokémon before, and once dad even took her to watch a minor league match with some bigger pokémon, but nothing like that, never anything like that—
“What are you doing?” a voice hisses. A real one, definitely not the announcer. For the second time tonight Gemma leaps out of her skin. She reflexively smashes her thumb into the television’s power button, feeling sick with panic as she whips her head around.
Oh. It’s just Ariana standing there with her hands on her hips. Gemma’s twin sister—older just by a few minutes, though she acts like it's years. She’s visible in the light of the TV for a moment before it whines into blackness. Her ruby-red hair is a wild nest, and her expression is a mixture of surprise and disapproval and sleepiness and… interest.
“Quiet,” Gemma hisses back, but motions for her to sit down. “You scared the crap out of me. Jeez. I’m just watching a battle. It’s Red. You know him?”
“Of course I know him,” Ariana says as she sits on the floor by Gemma’s side. “You really shouldn’t be watching this. You know what Dad said…” Despite her words, she’s looking pleadingly at the television.
“That’s why we’re watching it in the middle of the night, stupidhead,” Gemma mumbles, switching the television back on.
It’s a closeup shot of Charizard. It stomps a foot and snorts, flames popping out of its nostrils.
“—the fastest solar beam warmup I’ve ever seen! And the rhydon was no match for it,” the announcer booms. The camera cuts back to the challenger, who’s scowling as he unclips a poké ball from his belt and withdraws his rhydon.
“Hey, want to know something?” Ariana says. Then, without waiting for an answer: “I think Dad used to be a Gym Leader.”
Gemma snorts and rolls her eyes.
“Seriously,” Ariana insists. “I been in his office. He’s got all these medals and poké balls, pictures with important people… And think about it. Where did he go for all those years? And plus he doesn’t like us watching battles on TV without him. I think he doesn’t want us to find out and see him on there. That’s why we can’t—”
Something pads across the floor. Both girls’ heads jerk toward the sound. Gemma sees just the tip of Mars’s tail as he slinks into the hallway.
The sisters look at each other. Ariana looks like she’s seen a ghost. Gemma shakes herself out of her fear-induced paralysis and springs into action. “Crap. Crap. Crap,” she mutters, fumbling for the remote and shutting the television back off. “We need to get back to bed.” Ariana’s just staring straight ahead, breathing shallowly—Gemma grabs her wrist and feels her hands shaking. “Ariana, come on, we have to—”
The lights come on. Gemma strains her eyes against the sudden bright and sees him standing at the mouth of the hallway. Button-up satin top, matching pants, even a pair of socks—it’s as close to a suit as pajamas get. The deep fold between his eyebrows is a canyon, his black eyes unblinking. Mars stands at his ankles, wiry tail wrapped around his master’s leg, one ear twitching, his smug gaze fixed on the girls.
“What,” Father says, almost a whisper, “are you two doing awake.” There’s a quiet fury simmering behind the almost calm delivery of the question.
“I—,” Gemma sputters, but Ariana is there first like always, talking a thousand miles a minute.
“Gemma woke me up sneaking out,” she blurts out. Gemma’s throat constricts. She gives Ariana the nastiest look she can possibly muster, not that it counts for much now. “I just came out here to see what was—”
“Liar,” Father says, approaching them. Ariana turns away, but Father takes her face in his hand, squishing her cheeks. Tears well up in her eyes. “Do you think you can lie to me? Do you think I’m some imbecile, to be manipulated by a child?” He lets go of her forcefully and she stumbles backward, back to the wall. There are red marks on her skin where his fingers were.
Gemma is frozen, petrified that his attention will return to her next. But he looks right past her, at the TV. “Let’s see what was so important for you to watch that you had to break the rules and then lie to me,” he commands. “Gemma. The remote.” It takes a piercing glare from him to pull Gemma back to her senses. She abruptly falls to her knees and fumbles for the remote. Her hands are shaking as she offers it to him.
Gemma doesn’t watch but hears as he turns the television on. The click of the button, the momentary whine of the TV as it whirs back into life, the tinny voice of the announcer.
“A League battle?” Father scoffs. “So you disrespected me, disobeyed the rules, and snuck into the night like rats to watch a League battle.” He takes a deep breath, jaw clenched. “We’ve spoken about this. What did I tell you about watching this garbage? What did I tell you?”
The girls just look at him. Gemma wishes she could speak or move or do anything right now, but she’s locked in her body.
The announcer on the TV breaks the silence. “It’s an easy 3-0 victory for defending champion Red of Pallet Town—”
Something about that pushes Father over the edge. The cool, composed, deliberate facade slips away, and all thats left is fury. Pure fury, white hot.
Gemma’s only seen him this way once before. Just before he left. He’d been angry with someone on the phone, and she’d interrupted him to ask for a snack.
Not her best memory.
Father grips the remote with a shaking, white-knuckled hand and pitches it at the TV. Gemma recoils at the sound. The remote explodes against the screen, batteries flying.
She watches in silence as Father advances to the TV, pulls his leg back, and drives his foot into the screen. It shatters, glass flying past his ankles, but he doesn’t care.
He kicks it again, and again. And again. There’s a loud bang each time, and the TV slides along the carpet, smacks into the wall. Father’s breaths come heavy, forced through gritted teeth, and he grunts loudly with each kick.
Gemma eventually manages to pry her eyes away, and she looks to Ariana. Her back is still to the wall, and she’s pulling her legs tight to her as she unblinkingly watches their father’s rampage. Gemma could go to her, steal her away into their bedroom or out the front door or something, but images flash through her mind of Father turning his attention to her, grabbing her by the wrist—no.
She disappears into her bedroom alone. The banging continues. She can hear his breaths, quick and ragged.
She wants to run away, so badly, to run away and find her own pokémon and start her own life and never come to this place again. But she’s too scared to do that, right now or ever. She just hides under her blankets, holds her pillow over her head, shudders. She can’t make herself cry. Or sleep. The sounds of anger and breaking things don’t stop. She’s just praying over and over that Father doesn’t get bored of the TV, that he spends all his rage before the thought crosses his mind to come in here to her bedroom.
He never does. Neither does Ariana.
Eventually things go quiet.
She’s awake long enough to hear Father leave for work in the morning. She stays in bed with her eyes wide open for an hour after that, then finally pries herself out from the sheets and creeps into the living room.
It’s exactly how it was the day before, before anything had happened. It’s like it never happened at all. The television looks brand new. The only thing that’s off is the smell of paint; she notices after a moment that there are patches of the wall that have been freshly painted over.
thank you for the speedy review on this! it’ll be awesome to get some feedback from someone who has read the original one-shot; definitely will be good to know which changes are good and which i can draw out more.
I'm reading this having read the oneshot first, so unless things shift hugely I have some sense of where this is going. On this read, I paid a lot of attention to Gemma and Ariana's different reactions to Giovanni. I was interested in the fact that Ariana freezes and doesn't seem able to react quickly physically when Giovanni comes, but she's far faster than Gemma at trying to defuse the situation by speaking. Ariana's the older sister, but at this point in time, Gemma comes off as the more assertive one and Ariana the younger one--so and so made me do it seems like the natural defense of the younger sibling. I do think Ariana's freezing reaction and her general lack of boldness compared to Gemma might speak to the fact that she's faced scary behavior from Giovanni more often and has had more disobedience beaten out of her at this point. From this encounter, at least, it seems like Giovanni might hold the older sibling accountable for the younger's behavior, but not so much so that Gemma's would consider her acting out as putting Ariana at risk. I found the moment where Gemma thinks about whether she should grab her frozen sister and pull her out of there, but doesn't, compelling in light of the turn their relationship ultimately takes.
this is a really interesting analysis and gives me a lot to think about. thanks for writing it out. i have to admit that i’m an eldest sibling and my own experience may be leaking in here where it shouldn’t be. but i think your observations are mostly true to what i was going for, which is reassuring. i actually didn’t think much about the older/younger sibling dynamics and was thinking more about the golden child/scapegoat dynamic as well as ariana’s tendency towards cruelty/mimicking her father and gemma’s (current) aversion to both. but i think gemma’s unrequited desire for ariana’s approval and solidarity as the older sibling is something really interesting that i could draw more out of—thank you for highlighting it! will have to chew on this.
The battle scene was a lot of fun. Announcer's are a great tool for dropping exposition about how battling works without it feeling out-of-place and that worked well here. I'm interested in the portrayal of Red as 'just some guy' since a theme of the story is telegraphed to be the extent to which you can make it to the top without wealth and support. Red from the games seems like a pretty classic nothing to something story, but maybe in your verse he has more advantages.
very pleased you thought this worked! battles are not my forte, but there are a lot of them in this fic, so it’s great to get feedback on that front. as for red—i think johto existing in the shadow of red’s actions is pretty interesting and silver’s idolization of him is something i largely had to cut out of the contest version of the story for word count purposes, but i’d definitely like to develop it further here. glad his characterization caught your eye!
I'm quite curious what Gio's up to at this point in time, though since the next chapter is in three year's, maybe we won't find out exactly. This is post defeat by Red, post disbanding of Team Rocket. It's interesting to me that Gio kept being a gym leader in particular a secret from them--or maybe it's just that he'd be easy to find once you know to look up gym leader's? I was finding myself curious about some of the day-to-day logistics of Gemma's life. I doubt they're being sent to normal school. She's meeting other kids at the park, so not totally cut-off. I normally don't hanker too much for environmental description, but I'm curious whether they live in a large house, a small one? Are they mostly cared for by a nanny, if Gio is gone most of the time?
these are great questions. i may edit the chapter to provide some answers for them. as for what gio is up to exactly—it’s a bit tricky to provide specifics in the chapter because i really don’t want the kids to know about his rocket affiliation this early on. in general he’s very secretive toward them. but it might be interesting to flesh out their conversation about him to better convey what they (think) they know about him.
good questions. to some extent the lack of clarity is intentional—gemma doesn’t know exactly where ariana has gone. but i don’t want it to be actively confusing. it would be less punchy but it could be interesting to have a sentence or two about what happens when she returns… might go with that if it’s too ambiguous as is.
thanks for the line edits—i’ll make the corrections ASAP. and thank you again for the review!
Mar. 1999
“Well done. Very well done.”
He’s talking to Ariana, of course. He never sounds so proud when he’s talking to Gemma.
Ariana was a good battler, to be fair, but Gemma hadn’t watched her fight. Couldn’t. The pidgey that Ariana’s oddish had defeated is an indistinct pile of claws and feathers on the ground. Its plumage is dusted with stun spores that glimmer in the halogen light, giving the twitching body a golden sheen.
Ariana only needed to win the battle, but 100% is never good enough for her. She always needs to go... a little further.
Wings aren’t supposed to bend like that, are they?
“You’ve done more than enough to prove your competence as a trainer, Ariana,” Dad says. “I will be proud to sponsor your journey.”
The sponsorship. The stupid sponsorship.
Ever since the calamity in Hoenn, aspiring young trainers can’t just up and leave on a journey because they feel like it. She's heard Dad grumble about it—how times have changed, what a disaster the mass production of the poké ball has been. Too many sleeping gods prodded by too-strong children. Too dangerous. There’s government paperwork required for a journey now, signatures to get from parents, physical and psychological exams to pass, the whole nine yards. For Gemma’s friends, getting their parents to sign off was the easiest part of the process. But of course nothing came for free with Dad. Of course she has to pass a test first, prove herself.
She always has to prove herself.
When Dad speaks again, her stomach is all knots.
“Gemma. Your turn.”
She wills herself forward. Ariana only has a smug look to offer as they pass each other by. She’s the picture of a bright young trainer, red hair shiny and brushed, outfit pressed and fashionable. Even though they're twins, Ariana's just a little taller—maybe it's the way she stands, carries herself.
Gemma blows a strand of bushy hair out of her face and pushes past her sister, baggy clothes swishing. Then she’s standing within the white-tape lines of the trainer box, poké ball resting in her sweaty palm.
With a flash of light, she sends out her pokémon. Mr. Hisser lets out a hiss of excitement and shakes his rattle as he materializes. He's a coiled length of scaly purple hose, looking back at her with trusting golden eyes.
Ekans is a good pokémon, Gemma thinks. Red trained with an arbok for years and it was one of his strongest pokémon. And Mr. Hisser is a loyal, obedient pokémon. She trusts him fully to do his half, to fight to the end. And in turn he trusts her to think clearly and lead him to victory.
She only hopes to live up to that.
They’ve trained together for this moment for years now, so he knows as well as she does how important this battle is. She wants to call to him, offer some encouragement, but she can’t even bring herself to say his name. Mr. Hisser. It had seemed cute and funny at the time, but suddenly it feels so juvenile and stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“This is a one-on-one battle…,” the referee begins, but Gemma’s tuning him out. She knows the spiel. Her eyes are fixed on the other trainer instead. Some hireling. He’s sent out his pokémon too, a pichu. Ekans prey on pichu in the wild, so this should be a breeze.
Should be. Except…
“Begin.”
“Wrap it!” Gemma cries out. The ekans darts forward, body undulating.
Pichu, she thinks as her pokémon closes the gap between him and his foe. Pichu. What does she know about pichu. They’re small. Agile. But weak control over their electricity. Still, if emotionally provoked, they can be powerful—
Mr. Hisser lunges. The pichu leaps out of the way, but he still manages to whip its face with a snap of his rattle-tipped tail—a move she’d practiced with Mr. Hisser after seeing Red’s arbok do it. The pichu yelps in pain, tiny sparks flying from its fur.
Right. Sparks. Ranged attacks. Pichu wants distance. So close the gap. Keep it closed.
“Stay close!” she cries. “C’mon, wrap it! Don’t let it get away!”
The ekans darts towards the pichu again, and again he just misses. Once he lands he starts sidewinding towards it, sticks out his neck and gears up for a bite—and misses again. This time when the pichu leaps out of the way, a small bolt of electricity arcs off its tail and zaps Mr. Hisser in the snout. He hisses in irritation, tail rattling.
“Don’t let it scare you! If you get in close it’ll be helpless!” Gemma is bouncing in place now, fists clenched. They can do this!
Mr. Hisser snaps his tail again. It whiffs air again, but the loud rattling sound catches the pichu’s attention, distracting it from his real weapon...
“Do it!”
The ekans seizes the moment and lunges forward, fangs bared. This time he hits his mark. Before the pichu can wise up and dart away, Mr. Hisser wraps his body around the little mouse and constricts.
It struggles. But no matter how it squirms, the pichu can’t escape the ekans’ tight bind. It squeals in frustration, eyes screwed shut, but it can only muster a few static sparks that dissipate uselessly in the air.
Trapped. It can’t move. The battle is in Gemma’s hands now. Just one decisive move from victory.
This is the part she hates.
Her hands are shaking. She hears Dad: “Well? Do something.”
Is it really him saying it, or is it just a memory ringing in her ears? It doesn’t matter. It feels real. The way she’s freezing up right now, unable to issue another command, that’s real.
All she needs to do is win the battle. Thousands of battles are won every day. She can do this. She's done it before, even.
The memory of it swells up in her. The sentret's ragged breaths, the poison seeping from its wound, the distant gaze of its trainer. Yes, she'd won that one. Is that how victory feels? Like something crawling down your back?
Mr. Hisser looks back at her, waiting. The pichu is struggling in his coil. Panicking. It must think it’s going to die. How many of its wild cousins spent their last moments this way? Sputtering for breath, choking in the binds of a monster, skin tightening, throat burning until everything goes black? She knows what to do. Constrict it tighter, bite it, fill its bloodstream with venom, wait until it passes out, something. Probably Mr. Hisser is fighting every animal impulse in his brain not to do it unbidden. That’s how you end a battle, after all. That’s how you win. You fight until someone can’t.
But it’s so small. She imagines its delicate little head in her hand, resting, snoozing, its breaths so tiny. She imagines clenching her fist. Its squeaks of pain, betrayal, fear, confusion. The pouring of blood through her fingers, the crushing of bone, the squishing of gore.
“Finish it, Gemma. Now.”
She only needs to say a word. One word to begin her journey, to do her part for her pokémon, to make Dad proud. One word. There’s nothing easier.
She turns away, trembling.
She feels her hairs prick up and stand on end, and she can feel the flash of light even through her wrenched-shut eyelids. With a shallow breath she pries one open.
Mr. Hisser is twitching on the ground upside-down. The pichu has run far away from him, safe but still trembling. The battle is over.
No one says anything at first. Gemma stands on the pitch, feeling full of stone, feeling every eye on her. She fixes her gaze on the ground.
This was it. This was her chance, and she blew it. Distantly she knows this. She won’t be going on a journey. Her friends and her sister will leave her behind to go on life-changing adventures in the sun, free of their parents, free to live their lives, and here she will remain. Alone. With him.
Distantly, she knows this. But she can’t even think of that now. She just sees herself frozen in place there, as if observing herself from the outside. She can only be too-aware of all the eyes burning into her back as hot tears run down her face. Crying. When did she start crying?
“Disappointing,” Dad says at last. It’s a mild word, but it’s coated in acid. “You could have won easily, and yet you wavered. Not a mistake. A choice. You chose weakness.”
Gemma can’t face this right now. She wishes she could disappear, but she just shuts her eyes again instead. The world disappears for her, but she can still feel his eyes on her like daggers, vivisecting her on display.
“Withdraw your pokémon,” he orders. It only takes the press of a button, so she manages it. “Good. Now give me the poké ball.”
Her eyes fly open. “What?”
Dad’s face is gravely serious. He’s holding out an open hand, waiting, fingertips twitching.
“This ekans is a good and capable pokémon. Its attacks are strong. When you gave an order, it obeyed. Yet it was led to failure. I’m not a cruel man, Gemma. I will not keep this pokémon locked indoors with a weak, incompetent trainer and deny it the thrill and adventure that every pokémon desires. It deserves more. It has earned it. Your sister will bring it along with her on her journey.”
Gemma just stares at him. His cold eyes bore into her. She heard his words, but they won’t stick in her brain.
“Oh, thank you, Daddy!” A huge smile splits Ariana’s pretty face. This is exactly what she wanted, wasn’t it? Why shouldn’t she get what she wants, just like always?
The competent one. The beautiful one. The obedient one. The loved one. She’s like a perfected version of Gemma herself—the same face, the same hair, but with all the rough edges polished out, capable where Gemma lagged, feminine where Gemma was dowdy, gleaming where Gemma was dull. She should have been everything Gemma aspired to. But it’s not jealousy clawing at her heart, nor desire to follow in her footsteps. Just nausea. And hate.
“The ball, Gemma,” Dad says. “Now.”
“I… I…”
“Now.”
She wants to rebel, to hold onto what is hers, but Dad’s eyes flash and any impulse of rebellion inside her vanishes. Instead she’s walking forward without even realizing it, feeling the smooth texture of the ball beneath her fingers one more time.
Mr. Hisser will always remember her like this, she realizes. Looking away, tears in her eyes, as he’s fried into unconsciousness by a creature that his wild cousins consider a snack.
He’s right. Mr. Hisser deserves so much better.
Why is it that she ruins everything she touches?
The ball falls out of her hand. Ariana’s now. And just like that, Gemma is completely, totally alone in the world.
She plays that scene over and over in her head as she lies in bed, her room painted blue by the sunlight filtering through cerulean curtains.
I was a bit confused why the battle trials are happening at the same time for the two of them--wouldn't Ariana's have already happened, if she's older? But it certainly helps you set up your parallel.
you’re not the only one to mention this. to be honest this wasn’t something i was thinking about, but you’re right that it doesn’t make sense. i decided it made the most sense to make the pair of them twins and edited accordingly. to be honest i think it kind of works better anyway, and definitely draws the parallel out more explicitly.
Gio making his kids prove they can murder small pokemon before he'll unleash them on the world certainly checks out. With the worldbuilding last chapter about there being regulations in pokemon battling, even at the highest level, I was unsure how Gio's 'battles should be murder' approach works out.
i actually didn’t intend for it to come across like giovanni wanted his kids to murder the other pokémon, although it certainly doesn’t bother him. ariana is just kind of extra like that, but all he really wants them to do is simply win a battle. i’ve made some changes that hopefully convey this a little better.
he’s not a cruel man after all, didn’t you hear him?
thanks for the line edits—i’ve incorporated them all, i think.
hey, thanks for checking out the fic! it’s honestly really neat to have a couple readers who are looking at this for the second time, and i’ve been really enjoying your insights so far.
One way or another, knowing who he is definitely takes the tension up a notch here--like bad enough when Gemma's watching TV without approval, but then when it turns out to be a battle with Red it's just like OH NO, oh no, I know exactly how this is going to go.
hahaha, i’m glad this came through! i definitely wanted to place that hint but didn’t want it to beat you over the head with it, so it’s good to know it was clearer on re-read; that was my hope.
You get the sense of how much the relationship between these two must be warped by the presence of their father, where trying to appease him will sometimes cause them to be cruel to one another.
bless! i really like the idea that these two sisters have more in common than they do apart, and should be sticking up for each other, but giovanni is just to scary and drives a wedge that grows and grows with time until they’re radically different people.
it’s that sort of fic, lowkey. hoping to make some changes so it’s not just OOF OOF OOF compliation, but yeah, the beginning just kinda has to be sort of rough. i thought about sprinkling some bonus stuff to break it up, but i think the more time we spend with gemma the more evident it becomes who she is, and i do still want that to surprise at least some proportion of my readers, even though i haven’t been able to shut my trap about writing a silver fic lolol.
It makes me a little curious about what the ages of the sisters are; the first section made me think of them as both around 6-8 or so, which would potentially make Gemma quite young to be starting as a trainer at this point. Extra unfair that Gemma's being judged at the same standard as her older sister, who's presumably had more time to work with her pokémon, or if not would be expected to be at least mildly more mature.
i fully did not think about the age difference being weird here, but every reviewer has noticed it. :p i actually went ahead and made some edits so they’re twins now, which makes this less weird and i think also works better to contrast them anyway.
The bit of worldbuilding about the league instituting all these new regulations after the Hoenn Weather Crisis is a little surprising to me, since I usually don't think of that as something that would in any way prevented/improved by having older trainers? Did things become too dangerous for kids in Hoenn with Aqua/Magma running around beating people up or something? Were loads of young, undocumented trainers specifically getting recruited into Aqua/Magma? The titans awakening in Hoenn seemed like it kind of just sucked for everybody rather than trainers specifically, so I'm wondering what problem the new regulations are supposed to address
these are great questions! i went ahead and edited in a tidbit that hopefully elucidates it a little. my thinking is more or less that the mass production of the poké ball is somewhat recent, and it really blew the roof off what pokémon training can be by removing a lot of the practical limitations on it. overall the scale has increased wildly on basically everything, and it’s a spike that nobody was quite ready for, and one that almost ended the world. the new layers of bureaucracy are a reaction to that shock and an attempt to sort of get a handle on things. ultimately you’re right though, it’s sorta just a passing detail that needs to exist so that gemma needs parental consent to journey. :p i could just say so i guess but i liked tying it into “recent events.”
(Also, I missed it earlier, but Dragonfree's review reminded me... the whole "I won't be manipulated by a child" thing, oh boy, Gemma's dad would have a bit of a complex about being shown up by a kid, wouldn't he?)
It's kind of interesting to me how little Gemma knows and understands about Pokémon - she's heard of a Charizard once or twice but never seen one, talk about type advantages is technical and way over her head. It sounds like Giovanni doesn't want them to watch battles specifically - he implies he's spoken to them before about watching this garbage which suggests it was about that in particular. I wonder what's behind that - not wanting them to become trainers and get out from under his thumb?
to some degree, yeah. most of all, giovanni is trying to stay under the radar right now following his defeat by red, and he doesn’t trust his children not to blab, so the less they know, the better. unfortunately for him he’s basically a celebrity, so it requires quite a bit of control to pull the wool over their eyes.
Ariana as Silver's sister (rather than mother) is something I'm not sure I've seen before but it makes a lot of sense, and oh boy, looking forward to where that sibling dynamic might go.
The brutality of the 'test' is awful; I'm not even sure if Giovanni cares that they're capable of killing so much as he wants to humiliate Gemma for not managing it. Choosing weakness, indeed.
i actually did not intend to convey that giovanni was requiring them to make a kill, specifically, but you’re not the only one who read it that way and i can definitely see why it would come off as such; in reality they just need to win the battle, and ariana is just extra as hell and took it further because she’s Like That. i’ve made some edits that hopefully make this a bit more clear. still i think your analysis is correct; it is a situation giovanni engineered to exert control, particularly in that way.
One thing I'm a bit fuzzy on right now are their ages. The fact they're being tested simultaneously for trainer sponsorship makes them sound close together in age, but I wouldn't have thought so based on the games, and in the first chapter I was picturing Ariana as a fair bit older. Unsure if it'd be easy to make it clearer... We have these years but no obvious way to place when either of them was born.
here’s another thing that tripped everyone up! i wasn’t thinking much about this, just nebulously that ariana is older, but again it doesn’t make sense for them to embark on their journeys at the same time if that’s the case. i’ve made some edits to make them twins; ariana is still technically older, but only just. it is a liiiittle weird given canon, but i think it works better for this scene and in general for this story.
thanks for checking out the story, and hope to see you back!!
There's a running theme of trying to attain validation from your superiors while trying to rebel against them. It seems contradictory on the outside, to try to both conform and rebel, but it's a very real phenomenon that happens abusive or dysfunctional relationships, speaking from research and personal experience.
so glad this came through! being a kid and having horrible parents is rough. no matter how bad they are, it can be really hard not to love them and crave their approval, especially when it’s hard to come by.
I just... really vibe with this story a lot. Canon characters, cycles of abuse, dysfunctional families, trans themes... this is my shit. And splitting it up into chapters both makes it a lot easier (for me, at least) to read and allows more room to expand on the good stuff.
i thought it might be a little bit up your alley. :p it’s different from my usual stuff, but i’m really glad you’re enjoying! thanks for giving it a look!
Aug. 1999
Gemma’s nose is bleeding, elbowed by a police officer when she’d tried to squirm out of his grip. Her back hurts from sleeping outside. Shoulder hurts where the cop’s hand is digging into it, pushing her into the professor’s office. She grunts as he shoves her into a chair.
“And don’t even think about running,” the cop growls. Gemma makes a face at him, but he ignores it and leaves her alone there, a growlithe at his heels, slamming the door behind him.
There's a sour taste in her mouth as she sits there in silence for a while, just staring at her hands. Feeling hollow. This is the first moment of respite she’s had in hours.
No matter what comes next, she can’t let them find out who she is. She’ll serve any punishment gladly so long as Dad never hears a word about it. Not like he’d find out unless they tell him; she ran away months ago, and it didn’t seem like he’d tried particularly hard to find her.
She wasn’t even afraid he’d be angry. Not anymore. She’d seen so much of that, borne so much of his wrath, that the threat of it barely made her feel anything now. Now what she feared was something worse. She feared that if he heard what happened, what she’d done, he would—for the first time in her life—actually be proud of her.
The professor shuffles into the room. There’s an aura of chaos around him; a crumpled piece of paper falls from his pocket, corners all bent. He sits down at his desk with a huff, facing Gemma, but doesn’t look at her until he’s done shuffling around what seems like a thousand sheets of paper on the desktop. It looks no more organized when he’s done.
As he leans back in his chair, he retrieves something from his coat pocket and sets it gingerly on the desk. A poké ball.
Gemma's heart flutters.
“Right,” the professor grumbles, and finally his beady eyes look up at her from behind his thin-wired glasses. She doesn’t look away. “Professor Elm, pokémon researcher, yadda yadda. So you’re the delinquent, uh. I’m supposed to give a speech about responsibility. Right? Or wait. Are you just some trainer looking for orientation? Sorry, afraid you’re a bit late if that’s the case, but—”
Fully aware of how easy it would be to lie to this scatter-brained man and weasel her way out of trouble, Gemma just stares back at the professor unflinchingly. Lying is what Ariana would do. What Dad would do.
I'm not like them.
“Okay. Delinquent. Right.” He sighs and moves some papers around seemingly at random. “Listen. I don’t know what your story is, but you don’t have to steal. Really. Almost anything you want in this world is at your fingertips if you put in a little work. Seriously, I mean that. You want a starter pokémon? Okay. You need a sponsorship for that here, yes, but we have programs. Programs for kids who don’t have the money, you know? Do a little fieldwork and we’ll get you on your feet. That’s a service we offer. There’s no shame in it at all. That’s how Red got his start, did you know that?”
That piques her interest. She didn’t know that. Red was such a prodigy, she always assumed he’d had the full force of the league behind him, but… if he started from nothing, maybe there’s a chance for her…
She must have shown her excitement plainly, because Elm’s face lifts a little. “Yes, really! I can get you started today, see? You don’t need to break the law or push people around, we can help you. You just gotta play nice. Now, I’ll remind you, it does require work, and it is real work. But you’ll get a sponsorship for free at the end. And—you know what, maybe this is bad, but—this pokémon," he says, tapping the capsule on the desk. Gemma becomes very aware of her heartbeat. "You've taken a little bit of a shining to it, haven't you? I figure the little guy's taken a bit of a liking to you, too. They kinda imprint like that. So look... If you’ve bonded with this pokémon, I can set it aside and look after it, and when you finish your work, I’ll make sure it comes back to you. But you do have to earn it. Understand? How does that sound?”
She takes a deep breath, considering it, trying not to let her excitement show. She'd considered the pokémon as good as gone; after all, she'd stolen it, and she'd gotten caught. Mr. Hisser's amber eyes flash in her mind, and she realizes this is one fact she knows well: if you want to keep something, you must be able to defend it, and she has failed.
What Elm is offering her is seems impossibly good—it’s everything she wanted, in fact. A chance to do this for real, to keep her pokémon, to become an honest-to-god trainer. All on her own, just like Red did it.
Except… Yes, she still needs Dad’s permission, doesn’t she? Maybe she can find another way to fund her journey, but he still needs to approve it. Her heart sinks. Unless… could there be another way?
“Look, you think about it for a second, and I’ll get some paperwork started for you. I’m sure I have one of those forms around here somewhere…” The desk becomes a tempest of papers, but he finds it eventually. “Right. Okay, first thing’s first. Name. What did you say your name was?”
Her heart skips. Name. She can’t tell him the truth, of course. Her last name would be a dead giveaway. And how many Gemmas are there at her age in this part of the country, anyway? No, she’ll have to come up with… something else.
To her own surprise, her heart soars at the thought.
A new name.
She’s always hated the one she has. So old-fashioned, so girly. It doesn’t suit who she is inside at all. And now she can pick a new one of her very own, a cool name befitting a pokémon master.
Silver, second best to gold. It stings, but it feels good in a way, too. Feels right.
“Silver,” Elm repeats. “Silver. Okay. Got it. Now… I’m going to need your parent’s gear number. I don’t have to tell them about what you did, but we’re going to need their consent to enroll you in our program, naturally.”
Gemma’s—no, Silver’s—heart sinks. Of course. It couldn’t have been so easy to escape Dad. She hadn’t expected otherwise, not really, but she had let herself hope. Stupid.
Elm’s face becomes deathly serious. “Silver,” he says again. “Are you… safe at home? You can trust me. The lab can help you.”
“Um.” She shifts in her seat. “Yes. It’s fine. And it’s none of your business, so just butt out of it, okay?”
He furrows his brows, and she knows this isn’t going to work. She balls her hands into fists, eyes flitting to the window. She could definitely outrun this man if need be, just bust through the window and be on her way if it came to that.
But the look Elm gives her isn’t anger. It’s… pity. She shrinks into herself. It’s not the first time she’s gotten that look in the last couple months, and there’s nothing she hates more. She doesn’t want to be pitied. She wants to be free.
“You can tell me the truth, Silver,” he says, like he’s talking to a baby. “We can send someone to check things out and get you out of there. You just need to trust me.”
Send someone? Oh no, oh no no no. She’d only run away at his mercy. She knew that if he wanted her found, she would be found within the hour. With the resources he had, it wasn’t a question. And if someone came poking around in his business out of nowhere… No. She’d be dead. Actually dead. Probably Elm, too, and everyone else in this building.
Her eyes flit to the window again, and she sees trees swaying in the breeze.
“Forrest,” she says. “Forrest Jones. That’s my dad’s name.”
Elm exhales slowly out of his nose, giving her the saddest look. Then he shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay. Okay. Forrest Jones. I’ll write that down. Look, stay put right here, alright? I’m going to step outside and talk with the nice police officer out there for just a moment, and then I’ll come back and get this paperwork finished up, okay? I’ll sign for you, and then you can get started. Just stay right here.”
He gets up and shuffles out, closing the door quietly.
The poké ball remains on the desk.
Silver waits until she can’t hear the clicking of his shoes anymore. Then she springs out of her chair, lunges for the ball, throws herself over the professor’s desk, drives a foot through the window, and clambers through it. The broken glass slices through her hands and knees, but she doesn’t care.
The shell of the poké ball—her poké ball—is cool in her hand.
All that matters now is putting as much distance as possible between herself and this laboratory as fast as she can.
If she gets far enough, maybe they’ll stop looking for her.
Loved Professor Elm; he's so genuinely good, just wants to help this obviously troubled kid and give her a second chance, and he's observant enough to pick up what's going on in Silver's head - that she lights up at the idea of getting to officially go on a journey, that her face falls when he brings up parental consent. He tries so hard to get this kid some help.
i’m glad elm comes across so well! he’s a very nostalgic character for me and i feel like he doesn’t get enough love. such a keen, good-hearted guy who is also just a wreck.
i always thought it was kinda funny that the gen 2 games—unlike other generations where the version names are essentially equal to one another—are called silver and gold, where one takes obvious cultural precedence over the other. and within those games, the name “gold” is associated with the player character, and “silver” is the rival. i doubt it’s intentional but it’s always stood out to me. two things that are precious but definitely not equally valued.
thanks for checking out the chapter!
hey jackie! thanks for checking this fic out. i really appreciated this thorough review and your insights.
I really enjoy the way common knowledge to readers plays out in this – the way watching Red on TV is what sends Giovanni into a rage, even if Gemma can't know that's what the problem is.
pleased you caught this! i definitely tried to write the opening chapter in such a way that it still stands up if you don’t catch onto who the characters are, but makes a lot more sense if you do. of course this authoritarian control freak seeing his daughters flagrantly disobeying his rules to watch the twerp who destroyed his organization is, like, the perfect storm for giovanni.
Clearly the man's a power-drunk monster, though. That TV destruction is terrifying, as is the way no specific, directed consequence ever comes for Gemma. The TV is replaced instantly, because he's loaded and cares about appearances. Ariana disappears for a week with no explanation. The anticipation is awful.
thanks. i’m glad this worked. i think the end of the chapter is a bit confusing for some, but i kind of like it that way. there’s not a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the sisters’ actions and giovanni’s, and it’s not even really clear what the punishment is. you just know something bad is happening, and it could be anything. and you’re in trouble too, and for you the other shoe is yet to drop, and could at any minute. i find the dread induced by that absence of action scarier than any particular action giovanni could have committed here.
I think the cruelest part of this is the way he frames his cruelty as him not being cruel, as a favour to Mr Hisser, as if Giovanni could possibly care about a pokémon's wellbeing when he's literally just demanded brutal put-downs of other pokémon.
i feel like one of the hardest parts about being a kid is that part of parenting is discipline, and you have to kind of trust that your parent knows what they’re doing and is acting in your best interests when they say they are. if they go too far there’s often not really any way for you to know… maybe you just accept that you deserve it.
What's sad about this moment is that it's nearly good. But there's that sticking point, about a legal guardian. Silver can't be free. He has to do what he does, because there isn't a better option for him. He lost the chance for Gio's approval, and so he lost the chance to do things legit.
thanks. i’m glad to hear you say this. this is one of the main things i’d like to drive home with this fic. sometimes you want to do things the right way, and even have people within the system on your side, but it doesn’t matter.
i can’t say this chapter is all great vibes, but i do hope it’s a bit less emotionally punishing overall. thank you again for checking this fic out and sharing your thoughts! i benefited a lot from this review.
thanks! this has always been a little hc of mine. in the games the professor gives you the pokédex because they think you’re cool and ask you to kind of fill it out at your leisure. but i like to imagine it’s sort of a trade-off for getting a free starter and getting to go out on a journey. like ok, i’ll help you do this, but i’m gonna need you to do a bit of fieldwork while you’re out.
Wait, isn't Silver trying to not steal? Granted, here it's done out of desperation, but maybe it would help to have some sort of internal monologue something about Silver going against his beliefs and doing what Giovanni would have done, but going against his desire to not do what Giovanni would do out of desperation to not get CPS called on Giovanni and cause problems for everyone involved.
i don’t think silver is against stealing, particularly, or law-breaking generally—indeed going on a journey and training pokémon at all without a license is illegal. but to her mind, the things she’s doing don’t actually hurt anyone, so it’s ok. unlike her family, who actively profit from the misfortunes of others.
I really like how you wrote the canon stuff—Elm being a bubbling, scattered-brain disaster with a genuine care for others, the interpretation you went with the scene in the games where Silver steals the Pokémon—like always. I love your interpretations of canon. They're really refreshing, unique, and interesting. And did I mention how much I love your interpretation of Elm? Oh my gosh he's such a complex, well-developed, likeable character here. I love how he's absent-minded and disorganized but not incompetent. Ahhhh I hope Silver gets a good parental figure again. Can't wait to see where Silver's story goes.
thanks so much, i’m really glad you enjoy the story so far! canon characters are a bit foreign to me and this is my first real shake at writing them, so it’s great to get feedback on what does and doesn’t work. i really appreciate your review and hope to see you back again!
hey phoenixsong, thanks so much for checking this out!
negrek’s got the foolish oddish… i guess i’ve got the ghoulish one. i originally wrote out the actual action scene here but ended up cutting it for contest wordcounts and left it cut because it didn’t add much… let’s just say there were vines involved.
in my mind RSE is the first, like, apocalyptic type thing to happen, but i’m sure the government is none too pleased about random kiddos coming into possession of articuno/zapdos/moltres/mewtwo either.
The picture of a "bright young trainer", but also, perhaps, the picture of someone who's more comfortable feeling feminine than Gemma and her "baggy clothes".
I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of this as it's posted, and as we begin to see more of how that previous life with Giovanni and his sister and all those expectations begins to color how Silver interacts with pokémon and with others going forward. Heavier stuff isn't normally my jam, but this is a really affecting read in spite of how gut-wrenchingly awful their childhood is, and if nothing else it's really gripping—you just have to see how Silver manages to get himself out of these bad situations and then stumble right back into them when he can't escape the cycle. And, well *gestures vaguely at current forum avatar* I am a bit of a sucker for rival backstories, so. Will definitely be following the rest of this!
thanks so much! this is for sure a heavier story but i think it gets a bit less dire as time passes. i really appreciate you taking the time to read this and share your thoughts—you’ve given me quite a few ideas for some later scenes!
My heart hit the fucking flood when he caught them, and just based on the context clues, I was like.........is that.......Giovanni???? Which segues into how absolutely fucking braindead I am.
hahahaha. not at all! i tried to be sparing with the clues in this first chapter for sure. i’m glad you were able to pick up on it though, and also that the general vibes of their home life came through clearly before he showed up.
Once it dawned on me this their dad was Giovanni, I was like OH OKAY I know who Ariana is she's a Rocket Admin........but then I was like......who the actual fuck is Gemma?? I was trying to do some research to figure it out because my knowledge on Gen 1/2/3 is very limited so I was trying to at least supplement my reading with a better understanding of what was going on here, but I COULD NOT FIND ANYTHING ABOUT A FUCKING GEMMA. And then I got to the third chapter and saw "Silver" and it all dawned on me, "OHHHHHHHHHH THIS IS A SILVER TRANS FIC OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" and then it dawned on me EVEN FUCKING MORE WHY IT'S CALLED TARNISHING, BECAUSE SILVER FUCKING TARNISHES HAHAHAHAHAHAHA yeah tl;dr Sind's a slow asf braindead chimpanzee.
honestly love to hear this. i definitely tried my best to set up an “oh shit” moment in the second chapter there, and was a bit afraid of giving away the game before that point. you may have noticed i’m still slightly vague in the way i talk about this fic in chat, because i’m trying to preserve that oh shit moment for as many people as possible.
Also, it seems Pokemon battling is a little more deadly in this world, huh? Like, a won battle could mean a dead opponent, judging by the state Ariana's opponent pidgey was left in and how it seemed to be implied that Gemma was supposed to have the opponent pichu killed by her ekans. That certainly raises the stakes and I'm looking forward to see how that ends up playing out throughout the course of the story.
quite a few people got this impression, but i actually didn’t intend for this—pokémon battles are a bit more dangerous than in, say, the anime, but it’s still a huge deal if a pokémon ends up dead or even seriously injured. giovanni is just a sicko. but i can definitely see how it comes across in a confusing way considering the very first battles we see in this fic involve either ariana’s brutality or gemma’s panic spiraling; i tried to tweak the original chapter a bit to make this more clear.
That… is shockingly fitting as a name for Gio’s Persian. Like one step further would be to make it the name of some sort of rocket, but it’s not bad. Though I presume that this is happening in the backdrop of things going to pot for Team Rocket during the events of Gen 1, huh?
Wait, are those canonically things in the anime now? Or is that your workaround for how sport matches don’t casually murder dozens of people out of existence with each match?
yeah. not too different from human combat sports to be fair—you can definitely do some damage if you’re not taking the proper precautions, and sometimes even if you are. but you would still be in serious hot water if you killed or even seriously injured an opposing pokémon; it’s definitely not commonplace.
Huh. I never realized that Charizard could learn Solar Beam by TM. Guess Gamefreak really does just hate the other Kanto starters since that must’ve been fun to deal with in Gen 6 with Megazard-Y.
i think you’d be surprised how easy it is to dictate what your children do and don’t know if you’re solely responsible for their education and have near total dominion over their interactions with the outside world. even if they heard about team rocket etc generally—and i’m sure they have—they wouldn’t piece together that it’s their dad.
thanks for checking out this story! i’m glad you think it works so far. i’m definitely playing a bit fast-and-loose with canon here, but hopefully the story will still be recognizable by the end. :p i appreciated your line reacts—hope to see you back again in the future!
I want to also give credit where it's due to Red. We don't even see him, and he's a protagonist that can be hard to characterize but I feel even he reads strongly here as a character. I like how he has a distinct feel that comes from him just giving up his title and leaving, and how that contributes to the in-world 'mythos' surrounding him. This guy has possibly never been beaten. I like how this, in turn, can help contextualize Giovanni, especially when we see the challenger using a member of his team. (Because it's title defence I feel like it's probably not Giovanni himself? He was in hiding by then, right?)
thanks so much! i definitely agree that red is a difficult character, and he’s also one that has so, so much fanon surrounding him and his characterization already, so i was a bit cautious going in and am glad to hear that you think he worked. i definitely like to think of him as first and foremost a larger-than-life sports figure that all the grade schoolers are idolizing, lolol. and good catch with the giovanni connection! you are correct that it’s not him and that he’s currently in hiding.
spot on. it’s ok for them to hear about team rocket and even about its leader from random kids at the park or whatever—plenty of plausible deniability there still. but if they see him on tv it’s over.
At least Ariana actually uses it, judging by me looking up her canon team. I wonder if they'll meet again later, have to battle. I wonder if either of the two will recognize Silver...
You're really good at ending these chapters, too. I wonder what this was like as a oneshot... I'm glad these pieces are all getting their chance to stand as their own pieces.
thank you!! it was actually almost exactly like this (so far)—the “chapters” were just slightly shorter, with the dates serving as dividers rather than chapter titles.
hahaha. lots of people have remarked on the cop being shitty… maybe the Q leaked into that one a bit. it was just hard to imagine silver getting treated any other way there. and i think it underscored his rapscallion/miscreant/ne’erdowell/etc vibes a bit.
pretty much just that. i went back and forth on exploring it more explicitly and ultimately decided against—the answer is that the pokémon center offers lodging and food free of charge. homelessness solved with this one easy trick! don’t ask me how taxation works in the pokémon world i don’t know
QUOTE="Shiny Phantump, post: 64013, member: 250"]
But I feel like I can't quite like him either. He seems naive, entrenched in this faith in institutions to do the right thing in a way that's just not realistic. I mean, Silver's dad is Giovanni for one thing, but honestly I think Elm would still be wrong if Silver's dad was just Some Dude Named Frank.
[/QUOTE] i like this insight a lot! i think it’s true. i don’t think of the pokémon world as quite so police-dependent as ours, but i think you run into some of the same problems as we do when a guy in a labcoat whose degree is in biology suddenly charged with investigating child welfare.
thanks so much for checking this story out—i’m super pleased that you seem to have liked it! i really enjoyed this review and hope future chapters don’t disappoint!
Sep. 1999
“Don’t let up, Riptide! You have the type advantage! Use water gun!”
No water gun comes.
It’s nothing like the fights on TV. Silver can’t quite tell where the totodile ends and the cyndaquil begins as the pokémon roll over the crunchy brown grass, a writhing, biting, swiping, squeaking mass of scale and fur and tooth and claw.
Silver’s fingernails are digging into her palms, but the other trainer—a young girl with dun brown hair and overalls—watches the battle with half-lidded eyes, a sharply-dressed chaperone looming behind her.
“You can do it!” Silver cries out again. She thinks Riptide fights just a little harder at the sound of her voice.
Then there’s a flash of white, and heat washes over Silver’s face. Riptide croaks and disengages from the cyndaquil, embers flying from the space between them. The cyndaquil blasts him with another lick of flame, and Riptide disappears into the grass with a growl, smoke rising from his scales.
“Don’t give up! Water gun!” Silver commands, but Riptide just whines softly and lowers himself to the ground, panting. The cyndaquil paws at the grass inquisitively, and after a moment Silver realizes the fight is over.
“Uh, is that it?” the other trainer says eventually.
“I guess,” Silver grumbles. Her totodile looks up at her from the grass with inscrutable crimson eyes. She rubs the smooth dome of his poké ball, glowering.
That fight should have been easy for them, and she had given good orders. But Riptide had still gotten hurt. Why?
The answer echoes in Silver’s head. She pushes it away.
“That’s five hundred yen,” the chaperone says, looking up from his pokégear.
Silver exhales through her nose and sucks Riptide back into his ball. “I don’t have that much.”
“Well, you should probably win more battles then,” the other trainer retorts. The chaperone just presses his lips into a line. “Okay, fine. Just give me what you have.”
Silver grinds her teeth. It had taken her a whole day’s worth of fights against kids and their stupid rattata to rack up even this much. She opens her mouth to protest, but the chaperone’s dark eyes flash, and suddenly she feels too small to resist. With one last huff, she pulls the money from her pocket and forces it into the trainer’s hands.
“Happy now?”
“Yep, thanks!” the trainer chirps, recalling her cyndaquil. Something about her chipper tone of voice makes the small of Silver’s back itch with fury.
“Brats like you really piss me off,” Silver blurts out, barely aware of the words until they’ve left her mouth.
The girl just frowns and looks up to her chaperone. “That’s quite enough,” is all he says. “Come along now, Lyra. Falkner is expecting us.”
Silver watches, stewing silently, as they walk away. From behind, the chaperone’s crisp uniform and cropped black hair remind her of someone else, and her anger is quickly replaced with vertigo. She hates herself for how long it takes her to calm down.
A bell jingles overhead as Silver steps into the Pokémon Center.
“Welcome to the Pokémon Center,” the nurse on duty says cheerily from behind the counter. “We’ll help you right over here when you’re ready.”
Silver takes a moment to look around. She’s spent the last few nights at the hostels conjoined to the Pokémon Center, but this is her first time in the actual clinic. There’s been no cause to enter it before now, but the burns are something Riptide can’t just shake off.
She’s seen Pokémon Centers in pictures before, and they've always looked so inviting with their warm colors and wood furnishings. But what doesn’t come through in the photos is the eerie incandescence of the lights overhead, and the overpowering scent of disinfectant. The overall effect is more sterile and severe than she imagined.
Finally she finally makes her way to the counter. The nurse sets down her book and looks up at Silver, smiling. She’s pretty, dark brown hair tied into a tight bun at the nape of her neck.
“How many today?”
“What?”
“Pokémon, dear. How many pokémon need treatment?”
“Oh.” Duh. “Just one.”
“Great. Just set your ball on the counter here then.”
Silver unclips the ball from her belt, then hesitates. What if they find out he’s stolen, somehow? It doesn’t feel right to leave him with someone else. They wouldn’t understand. And Riptide would be so confused and scared if they took him away.
“Is this your first time here?” the nurse says.
Silver swallows. “That obvious, huh?”
The nurse smiles a little, not mockingly.
“That’s okay. Everything has to have a first time, right? I’ll explain to you how this works, then. You leave your pokémon with us and show us your trainer ID. Then when you come to pick your little darling back up, you’ll show us your ID again, and then we’ll know it’s really you, and you’ll get your pokémon back. That helps us make sure the right mons get back to the right people. Make sense?”
“Yes,” Silver says instantly, trying desperately to hide her panic.
She doesn’t have a trainer ID. You need to be a trainer for that. A real one.
When was anything just easy?
A terrible thought jabs at her unexpectedly, a blurred memory of a dark room, an empty space where Mr. Hisser’s cage used to be. Words her father had said to her. She couldn’t take care of Mr. Hisser, couldn’t give him the life every pokémon deserves. Now she can’t even heal Riptide from the injuries she inflicted on him. Was Dad right about her?
“I think I left my ID at home,” she blurts out suddenly. “Sorry. I guess I’ll go get it and come back.”
“No problem, dear,” the nurse says, picking her book back up.
Silver clips the ball back to her belt and tries not to walk outside too quickly.
No, she thinks. Her dad was wrong. She is a pokémon trainer, a real one with her very own pokémon. Better than he thinks, better than that brat from before. Maybe it’s harder for her than it is for everyone else, but that will just make her even stronger. She won’t let something this small stop her.
Like everything else, she’ll just have to do it another way.
Four awkward conversations with strangers, three hours of searching through the woods, and one aching neck later, Silver finds a rawst berry bush nestled between the roots of an old cedar.
She falls to her knees with a groan of relief, legs burning, and pulls her sweatshirt into a makeshift basket. The leaves of the bush are unexpectedly fuzzy against her hand as she plucks the plump, navy-blue fruits from their stems. Once she has enough, she retrieves a mostly-finished bag of trail mix from her backpack, empties its remaining contents onto the forest floor, then dumps her berries inside, adding a squishy oran she scavenged earlier, then seals up the top. Then she smooshes them up the best she can. Their dark, teardrop-shaped seeds and blue innards press against the bag’s transparent siding, and the sweet smell makes her mouth water.
It doesn’t make much, maybe half a handful, but it’s enough. Once she’s satisfied with the consistency, she sets the bag down, then pulls a pocket knife from her backpack and lifts her sweatshirt to reveal a baggy white undershirt. She pulls it away from her skin and carefully cuts it away from her body, then into strips.
Finally, she releases Riptide with a flash of light. He lets out a low rattle and lowers his belly to the grass again, curling his tail. The scales are burned away where the embers hit him, revealing shining pink skin. Silver winces at the sight of it.
“Okay, buddy, listen,” she says softly. “I know you’re hurting right now. I’m sorry. What I’m about to do might hurt a little bit too, but I need to do it for you to feel better. I need you to trust me. Okay?” She’s not sure the words mean anything to him, but she hopes the sound of her voice—low and gentle—is soothing to him. He doesn’t move at all, but his crimson eyes are trained on her.
She takes a deep breath.
“Okay.”
She dips her hand into the bag of berry paste and collects some on her fingertips. It’s cool to the touch. Riptide’s eyes dart at the sound of plastic crinkling. Silver steels herself and tries to control her breaths as she removes her hand from the bag and slowly moves it towards Riptide, trying her best not to look at his bone-white teeth and blood-red eyes.
Riptide flinches when Silver’s fingers make contact with him. Silver’s heart skips a beat, but that’s all that happens. The burn is surprisingly warm to the touch.
“Good boy,” she says. Slowly, gently, she rubs the ointment into the burn. Transparent lids slide over the totodile’s eyes as he watches her. It’s an ancient and predatory gaze, intent but expressionless. Somehow Silver thinks she sees trust in it. “Thank you for being so good.”
The whole burn is coated in a thin layer of the paste now, a bright pool of blue against his dull cyan scales. Satisfied, she pulls her hand back and collects the rest of the paste from the bag, treating the second burn similarly.
“I need to bandage you up now, okay?” She holds up the strip of torn t-shirt. Riptide chirps softly. Screwing up her face with concentration, Silver wraps the t-shirt around Riptide’s body, careful to cover the burns as best she can.
Riptide abruptly struggles. A startled breath is still hitching in Silver’s throat when she registers the white-hot pain in her left hand, like a giant metal stake has been driven through her palm. She bites off a cry of pain, letting out a gravelly wheeze instead, and forces her eyes downward.
The totodile’s jaws are latched onto her hand, his cold red eyes still pointed up. Not devouring. No anger, no fear, no regret. Just looking, jaw clamped.
“Riptide,” Silver says through gritted teeth. She flexes her fingers and can’t help but groan at the pain—she feels the muscles deep in her hand sliding and snagging. It feels so hot and so cold at the same time. She feels her heartbeat in her eyeballs.
It’s everything she has not to scream, but she doesn’t want to scare Riptide any further, so she keeps it inside, hot tears streaming.
“Riptide,” she says again. “You’re biting me. It hurts. I need to help you. Please.”
He doesn’t resist, doesn’t budge. Silver draws a shaky breath through her nose. She doesn’t know what to do because she can’t think of anything but her hand, the pain that’s lancing all the way up to her elbow by now. Every minuscule movement is agony, so her entire existence becomes perfect stillness, almost meditative, as she fights against the screaming impulse to run, scream, kick, do something.
It feels like a lifetime of pain passes before Riptide moves again. Silver cries out as the totodile unlatches his jaw, and cold air rushes in to replace his teeth, bringing a fresh kind of pain—like holding her hand in front of an ice beam. She pulls her hand in and cradles it, hunching over. She can’t force herself to look at it, but she can hear her blood dripping onto the leaves.
Her throat burns. She looks to Riptide. He’s sprawled out on the ground, belly-down. There’s a streak of red smearing this snout.
She isn’t sure what she feels, looking at him. It’s not anger, or fear, or revulsion, or betrayal. It’s not quite sadness, either, but it’s closer to that. How can she blame him? He’s a pokémon. When a pokémon is afraid, or feels backed into a corner, it attacks. That’s why they’re useful.
“That hurt,” she croaks eventually. He doesn’t budge as she scoots towards him. She ignores the pounding in her chest as she reaches out again and takes the cloth in hand. It’s tricker to wrap him up with just one hand, but he doesn’t struggle again.
She bandages him thoroughly enough that there’s only a tatter left over, just enough to wrap her hand once. She tries not to look as she does it, tying it around her palm as tightly as she can. It doesn’t take long before the cloth is all red and uncomfortably wet—but she’ll find a replacement later. The important thing is that Riptide is covered.
Exhausted, Silver falls backward and looks up through the branches at the clouds. The lilac sky and radiant orange clouds tell her that night is fast approaching, but the ground is oddly comfortable, and she can’t find the willpower to get up and navigate her way back to civilization right now.
When the first few stars come to life in the sky, she hears the crunching of leaves, and eventually the little breaths of her pokémon. He nudges her ribs gently with his snout, and she reaches out with her good hand and pats his cool scales.
“I know. I’ll get up in a minute.”
Riptide lets out a low chirp, and a few moments pass in silence.
“I’m sorry you got burned. I know it hurts. But you’ll feel better soon, and we’ll get stronger together. I’ll become a better trainer, and you’ll become a more powerful battler, and this won’t ever happen again. I promise.”
She becomes aware of the throbbing in her hand again. Riptide makes a low growl and then crawls onto Silver’s stomach and curls up there. He’s heavy enough that it makes it harder for her to breathe, but not so heavy as to crush her.
She opens her mouth to say more, then stops. What’s the use? Riptide can’t understand her. She hadn’t been talking for his benefit.
But there is a language they both understand. It’s in the way he lays on her stomach, eyes closed, purring contentedly. It’s in the way that she place her hand on his back and rubs him gently, still trusting him, still loving him. It’s in the way that she feels more at home, somehow, beneath the trees and stars with a monster that just hurt her than she does in a warm bed among other humans. It’s a language that only says three things, the only three sentences a pokémon and its trainer can ever really exchange:
