DISCLAIMER: I do not own Pokemon!
ATTENTION: This story has a strong theme of self-loathe/self-depreciation, parental abuse, and disordered eating! There is also displays of internalized fatphobia and colorism! Proceed with caution, and remember that the moral of the story is that people can change!
Appearances had always been a part of Elesa's life. Her parents were socialites and narcissists of the highest degree, and the moment that their daughter could understand more complex things about life, they did not hesitate to drill their most important lesson inside of her little head.
The idea was simple in its own right. "The reality is that nothing matters more than looks." They said this with a serious expression, and stared down the young girl with apprehensive eyes. "People can pretend to care about other things, like personality or sympathy, but in the end all they care about is how someone looks like. Even if they don't want to admit it, they really judge people based on their image. They'll judge you based off of your image."
In Elesa's case, she felt lucky that she inherited sleek golden hair and shining blue eyes from her parents. She already had a good start when it came to physical appearance, but the maintenance of such an appearance would become her bane. Her parents were strict in teaching her lessons about food and exercise. She was not allowed to eat anything that she couldn't burn off easily, and sugary treats and fatty foods were banned from the very beginning.
This was all because of her parents' doing. By their standards, the thinner someone was, the healthier and prettier they become. They told her that ugly or fat children (or some sorry mix of the two) were not sought after, and no one would think twice if Elesa was a pound or two overweight.
Image was everything, they taught her, and it was fatal to think otherwise. It was the basis of a long ingrained lesson that would stick with her for years to come. At the time of her youth, Elesa thought nothing of these words, and sought only to please her beloved Mommy and Daddy. She had no idea just how badly those poisonous lies would affect her, in due time.
Past the initial years of infancy and childhood, Elesa's life routine and model changed drastically. Everything was chosen by her parents. They gave her designer clothes to wear and super healthy (and not as nutritional as they thought) food to eat. Her friends were carefully chosen, and were usually similar in Elesa's general appearance, or fitting the lowest standard of beauty permissible by her parents.
Even Elesa's pokemon were perfectly tailored to herself. To cut down on costs and time, her parents were insistent that she have a single partner throughout her younger days. As a future trainer or adolescent, they could rely on Elesa to catch whatever creature she wanted—but as a young girl growing up in their strict household, she had to have something that was just as striking as she was.
So her parents paid perfectly good money to buy a top-grade pokemon egg from stupidly expensive breeders. The egg had multiple lighting bolt patterns on its shell, so they were excited in lieu for a popular pikachu-line pokemon, or another electric lookalike that would garner the attention through its cuteness anyway.
It hatched after a short time, and inside the egg came out a blitzle. The small zebra was attractive in its own way, which was a relief to the parents bearing witness to the birth. Bordering the "cool" side of pokemon more than the cute, its fur was aligned with white electric bolt patterns, and a dull, newly formed hum of electricity could be seen coursing through its slate-colored coat. It stared up at the humans with wide, dewy eyes as it pondered the mystery of life unfolding before its eyes.
Elesa fell in love with it immediately, and insisted on pampering it for the first years of its life. From the newfound pride gained in obtaining a pokemon, her parents agreed, and the zebra was met with a comfortable year or so of its first life. It was raised differently from most others of its kind, since its trainer believed in its outward appearance and charm, more so than its actual combat prowess and battle skill. And soon after this realization, the pokemon fell into a routine much more similar to its trainer.
They shared the same punishments when scolded. They shared the same satisfaction when praised. They played together often, and often pretended they were top coordinators or musical actors taking the stage. They cried together whenever they got yelled at, and often cheered themselves up by looking at fashion magazines, or going for walks in the nearby park. Their fears and anxiety started up at the same triggers—their success and acknowledgement rode on the same coattails.
Their relationship altered to a greater extent at some point. The girl's mentality started to worsen in some ways, and outside of her parents' already strict regimen, she began to punish herself. Mistakes that her parents left unnoticed were caught by Elesa, and she berated herself for it. Blitzle followed suit. When moments of destruction and hatred filled Elesa, she hurt herself with or without meaning too. Blitzle did the same.
When the child starved herself because her parents noticed her putting on a little weight (impossible, she thought to herself), so did her blitzle. These punishments were taken right away, because if Elesa did not stop herself, then her mother certainly would. And although Elesa was the trainer, she felt absolutely powerless whenever her blitzle glanced up hungrily in her direction. In some occasions, she gave into its sadness, and fed it an extra helping of berries and such when it gave her such a sorry look. But even then, her father made a point of keeping a personal inventory of their pantry stock, and he would know immediately that something was off whenever she broke protocol like that.
Considering punishment, the two never physically laid a hand on the girl, not once thinking to inflict bodily pain in any manner. Instead, they gave looks of disapproval and nasty glares that sent a signal that was equally disheartening. Her mother's angry shouts and bitter lectures were sufficient enough, and so were her father's empty stares and towering figure. In response to any of this, Elesa would hang her head in shame, and blitzle would whine as it felt a mixture of guilt and sorrow. It was guilty for getting her in trouble in the first place, and sorrowful because it knew that its food portions would remain unsatisfactory even after all that grief had transpired.
As a pokemon that was human-raised since birth, it knew not how to care for itself without Elesa, and seeing Elesa fail in these small ways meant failure for it, as well.
And as unnecessary as it was, the zebra pokemon was forced to have an image, much like its trainer. It was known to the world as Elesa's stunning blitzle, who was brighter and slimmer and faster than any of the other blitzles out there. This contradictory mix of self-loathing and pride warped the pokemon in its own right. Its heart began to twist and turn in ways that matched its owner step by step.
And by the time Elesa started attending trainer school, both her and her partner knew what they had to do in order to succeed. In order to make their parents happy, and save themselves that awful spite, they would have to more than just step it up. They would have to dominate. And they needed an early start more than anything, because ss they got older, their looks would become everything. Until that point, however they had to impress anyone and everyone, and they had to make sure that no one else was better than they were.
They had to make sure that no one was even close to that idea. And for that short-sighted goal, Elesa knew that she would give up everything and more to make it become real. She had to give her blood, sweat, and tears. She had to.
...
On the first day of school, Elesa and blitzle met another girl and her pidove, a duo who seemed insignificant at the time. But for some reason, Elesa could not take her eyes off of her. For starters, she had never seen anyone like her before. All the children she associated with were similar to her in appearance—lightly colored hair and perfectly soft skin, with thin frames and skinny arms.
This stranger was not like that at all. Her hair was vibrantly red, and reminiscent of the sky on a sweltering summer day. It was thick and held loosely in a ponytail at the time, but Elesa had a feeling that the other girl's red hair was stunningly rich in any style, up or down and in between.
And then there were her eyes. They were blue like Elesa's eyes, but an entirely different shade as they appeared to be deep, warm, and inviting. They were like the ocean waves on a warm afternoon, inviting and thoughtful all at once. They were nothing like Elesa's irises, which were bright in color but as cold and thin as glacier caps. The mere differences in things like hair and eye color were already enough to differentiate the two.
But those differences didn't stop there. Even her skin was different and darker than Elesa's, although Elesa could admit that it was hard to outmatch her own paleness. The blonde beauty looked like she had lived indoors all her life (which was mostly true), while the redhead cutie appeared to be a lovely dark shade, browned by living in the sun all year long. Her mocha skin told stories of love and warmth, and her eyes recounted tales of sunny days and windy nights.
In comparison, Elesa's image was cold, unloving, but beautiful. She wove elegant tales about despair, emptiness, stagnation, and distance. It was a stark contrast to the rustic, energetic child in front of her—so stark that Elesa felt uncomfortable at the thought of it and shifted in her seat awkwardly. She wanted to look away. She wanted to ignore this girl that was so insignificant yet so noticeable.
Perhaps it was her size that made her stand out. No doubt that children ranged from quite thin to quite large, and Skyla laid in the middle of that spectrum, if not leaning towards fat. There was obvious chubbiness in her body, and it showed through chunky legs that stuck together at all times, round cheeks that were suited to being full of food, and a thick neck that trembled when she spoke. It was much different from Elesa's thin, almost model-like frame which was severe yet attractive, for a child.
So the fact that this fatter, darker, and—by association of such traits—uglier girl was in Elesa's class did not shock her too much. There were plenty of rounder, overweight children in school. What really changed her world, though, was the fact that this girl was smiling, and that she seemed happier than the whole class combined. She appeared cheerful, bright, and unyielding, even when her image was so distasteful. And when it was her turn to introduce herself, she started off with a joke that had everyone laughing off their seats like they had never heard something so funny before.
It irked Elesa to no end.
She was as unamused as they come, and that lack of enthusiasm quickly morphed into disdain as Skyla laughed along with the others, reveling in the amusement she caused. Once everyone calmed down she rubbed the back of her head, grinning like a fool in front of the whole class.
"Nice to meet you, everyone!" She greeted. "My name is Skyla! And this here's my pidove. Isn't he a cutie?" The pidove in question cooed, and showed off a trick or two with its gray wings. This was a function of the trainer school itself. Everyone in class was allowed to have a single partner (which Elesa was already used to since her parents were so strict), and yet Skyla was the only one who had the utterly common choice of pidove. The other students were more like Elesa in the sense that they wanted their partner to stand out. Only three kids had some common partners like purrloin, eevee, or lillipup. Most students chose one of the basic three elemental starters of Unova, or one of the elemental monkey pokemon. There was one kid whose rich relative in Johto snagged him a snubbull, and another who had a tropius from his home region of Hoenn. Still, uncommon partners were ironically more common, and there were even a couple of kids that had out-of-this-world stuff, like a cryogonal or a grimer.
Despite this, Elesa was the only electric user in the class, so she felt triumph in that sense. And yet the star of the whole show was neither the regionally foreign pokemon, nor the striking blitzle of hers, but Skyla's startlingly normal pidove—a pidove whose appearance was nothing to sneeze at, and whose tricks were nothing astonishing, but there was something in the technicality and tenacity of it all that charmed everyone there. Even the instructor gave a clap, a cheer, a hoot in response to this tomfoolery.
Elesa hated it. She wanted no more of it. She stood up and called out arrogantly to the teacher, hoping to stop this charade. "I thought we were supposed to just introduce ourselves and our partners, not show off!"
She made sure to tone down on the obvious dislike in her voice, and made sure that none of her words were too pronounced, lest the other kids ridicule her for it. She had an image to keep, after all! And it was an image that was more sacred to her than life itself.
It held up well for now, and a few of the weaker-willed kids shouted in agreement with her. They shared Elesa's apparent mindset, but they did not know her motives. With the right words of charisma, Elesa could have those kids do anything she wanted. She would keep an eye on them for sure.
Still, the teacher decided to cut Skyla and her pidove short, and said that they can "show off" once the whole class had been introduced. The redhead was not distraught by this in the least, and agreed at once. Then, one by one, the rest of the class introduced themselves. Elesa had been paying half attention to it all, and was nearly caught off guard when it came to her time to introduce herself.
When her turn had come, however,, she stood up at full attention, and stared at everyone with an indifferent yet calculated expression. Her eyes came across Skyla's visage, and her countenance seemed to stiffen somewhat. She corrected this as much as she could, and gave the most sophisticated introduction she could—her dull but airy voice filling up the room like a light.
"My name is Elesa," she said, "and I'm going to be a star."