Were you a trainer? I was a trainer, of course. I mean, in Alola, you can’t get a license until you’re at least ten, but it’s perfectly legal to be given a Pokémon by someone else before then, or to battle casually. You just can’t buy balls, take the island challenge, or battle for money.
Is Hoenn like that too? I mean, you don’t have an island challenge, but you have the gym leaders, right?
…
Yeah, that makes sense.
I was a prodigy, you know. I was incredible. I mean, I was just okay at academics and athletics and stuff, but in terms of battling, I was the best in my whole school — and it wasn’t exactly a small school, either.
What are you giving me that look for? Do you seriously not believe me?
Look, just because I was good at training Pokémon and coming up with battle strategies on the fly, that doesn’t automatically make me good at actually fighting as a Pokémon. It’s a lot harder to think up strategies while you’re getting pounded. That’s why trainers and Pokémon work so well together. The trainer thinks, the Pokémon fights. It’s a partnership. But I guess you already knew that.
What sort of Pokémon did you use?
Don’t you think they miss you? To them, it’s like you were there one day, and then you just…
…abandoned them.
…
I had Gardevoir for almost six years. I first got her when I was maybe four-and-a-half, and she was just an egg. One of my neighbors, a grumpy old man, was a breeder. Not an officially recognized breeder; he was one of those backyard breeders trying to make a quick buck. He had a Gardevoir and a Gallade, and so he always had a steady stream of Ralts eggs to sell. The eggs were usually overpriced, but one fateful day, he gave me a discount on a certain egg. It wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart, or because he liked me — he just thought the egg wouldn’t hatch, since it was a bit cracked. Even then, I had to give him all of the allowance I’d been saving. He probably thought I was just a gullible kid, but I knew what was going on. I also knew that he was wrong about the egg. From the moment I first held it, I could feel that something was alive inside.
I don’t really know how to describe it. I just knew that the egg would hatch, and that I needed to have it. Perhaps Gardevoir was already calling out to me, even then…
My dad didn’t think the egg would hatch. He wanted to go make the neighbor give me a full refund, but I convinced him to wait two weeks, and eight days later, the egg hatched. You ever heard the phrase eating Murkrow? It’s about having to swallow your pride and admit that you were wrong. Suffice to say both my dad and my neighbor ate Murkrow that day.
From the moment the egg hatched, Gardevoir — well, she was Ralts back then — and I were inseparable. We would play together, explore together, even take notes on every battle we watched. I mean, Ralts’s “notes” were just scribbles, but I was little, so mine weren’t that much better.
It wasn’t long before we started battling. When I started kindergarten, I’d bring Ralts with me — Pokémon were allowed at school as long as they stayed in their balls during class — and every recess, we would battle all the other kids who brought their Pokémon. We had these unofficial tournaments and everything.
I struggled a bit — just a bit — at first, but then it was like something clicked in my brain, and then everything became clear to me. I beat all the wannabe trainers in my class, and then the ones in the other kindergarten classes, too. After a while, they stopped wanting to battle me, because they knew they’d lose.
Okay, okay, maybe I was getting a little cocky. Just a bit.
I wasn’t really bothered, though. I just went and started battling the first graders instead. Things went on like that until, by the time I was done with third grade, everyone knew I was the best trainer-to-be at Garden Heights Elementary.
My parents were proud, my teachers were proud, even my neighbors — yes, including the backyard breeder — were proud. Everyone fed me praise, telling me that I was a prodigy, a battling genius. They encouraged me to take the island challenge right after I turned ten. They said that if I continued growing at my then-current rate, I could become a Trial Captain, or even be chosen as a Kahuna.
And I believed them. Of course I did. Twice the pride, double the fall.
Oh, Ralts? She was a Kirlia by then.
Yeah, I guess they should’ve praised her just as much as they praised me. We were partners, after all. I…
Wait. You’re just trying to get me to say some sappy crap, aren’t you?
Well, you won’t get anything like that from me, so shut up and walk.
at Gardevoir having that background. She really did draw the short stick with the humans in her life, huh?