Author's Note: This story is written from the perspective of the female player character in Pokémon LeafGreen. It takes place after the storyline of the game has ended. For ease of writing, the names will be the ones I gave when I played it myself. This is actually as the game avatar herself rather than the person playing, with an awareness that her purpose seems to have ended and there will be an end of days sometime soon (the game cartridge's battery running out). She's not aware that she's in a game, but regardless, she can tell something is wrong with her world. With that said, I hope you'll enjoy. I'll explain more at the end.
Leah sighs quietly, nervousness making the action shakier than usual. Her days are numbered, she knows. All her Pokémon know it, as well, though they've got a bit more of a chance than her. She tries to calm them as best as she can, but quickly runs out of reassurances.
There are only so many times you can say, "It'll be alright," before they stop believing you.
A sudden rush of memories, the past few things she's done, wash over her. It's the same ones as last time, and it's a little concerning. 'Icefall Cave, wild Pokémon, battling Veteran Dirk, Vermillion... And I'm in Fuchia. But... why do I need a reminder? I know where I am, what I've done. I think...' There's a chill that runs down her spine at those thoughts, because she doesn't know, not really. Oftentimes, she'll wake up, come to awareness, something, and she'll know she's done it before, exactly the same way. She knows all is not well. Something has been happening, and she keeps forgetting it. There's not a way to know for sure, seeing as no one reacts as if something strange has happened, but almost every time she's.. come back to herself recently, there's been a taste of something fleeting, a faint memory she holds for less than a second before it slips away.
She glances down to the side pocket of her bag, where her party is snug in their Pokéballs. Leah wants to walk around a bit, feel this world some more for as long as she can, but the nervous glances, the increasingly childlike trust in her Pokémon's eyes- that she cannot take right now.
"Safari Zone, then." She says the words out loud, knowing that while few will react as if they heard her, the sound of a voice saying something new will bring her comfort. Her voice is not dry and raspy with disuse as she knows it should be; it instead comes out as a soft and sweet alto. She's a little startled at that voice because it's not the one she remembers, not the one she started out with, not anything that it should be. Her right hand is rifling through her bag before she's aware of what she'd doing and returns a moment later with the UP-GRADE from the ITEMS pocket. A warm breath on the blank side of the disk mists it over, and she polishes it carefully with the end of her blue shirt. In the reflective surface of the disk is her own face, and she breathes a sigh of relief. But.. is the multicolored material warping her image? The UP-GRADE is quickly exchanged for a METAL COAT, and in its much clearer surface, there is no mistaking.
Whether she recognizes it much or not, she's grown up. Not all the way, by any means, but she's no longer the small, soft ten year old she started this journey as.
"How old am I?"
The question may as well have slipped away as soon as she said it, because she doubts there will be any true answer for her to hear. Her trainer card still shows her as a child, and while it shows the scale of time she's actively been doing things, she knows it's been far longer. After all, she has to have slept, eaten, rested, spent days doing nothing truly memorable but still important to life, right? Leah searches her memory and finds a few things. 'I've laid in my bed and come aware there, so I must have slept. I've spent time in restaurants and sat in front of plates of food, so I must have eaten something. I've been in places just fooling around, or had the memory flash filled with strange and obscure things. I've lived my life. Yes.'
"I've most definitely lived my life." Out loud again, this time for reassurance.
"Hello!"
She startles at the sudden voice, looking up frantically. She relaxes internally when she sees a woman behind a long counter to her right. 'Safari Zone entrance. Right,' Leah tips her hat at the woman, answering with a respectful, "Good morning, ma'am." The politeness earns her a smile and a bit more warmth in the other woman's voice.
"Would you like to visit the Safari Zone? It's only 500 Yen, and you can catch up to thirty Pokémon if you're lucky."
"I think I would like that," Leah replies, ignoring the flicker in her mind telling her that a simple YES or NO would suffice. She's been ignoring those more and more recently, and as her world becomes more and more uncertain, no one seems to mind all that much. She remembers with mild amusement one of the first times since the start of her journey she'd spoken openly without any sort of YES or NO prompting outside of shopping. The COPYCAT had mimicked her into an angry outburst and a demand she stop copying her right that very instant. The girl had laughed and clapped her hands gleefully, getting more excited when Leah's mouth dropped open.
"You didn't think you could say that, now, did you? Do you understand now?" And Leah had.
"Alright, if you'll step right this way, I'll run down the rules with you and you can pick up your things." The Safari Zone woman's voice snaps her out of her thoughts.
"Yes, ma'am." Leah walks over to the counter and takes the canvas bag, checking the pockets of Safari Balls, bait, and rocks. She doesn't allow herself to zone out again, instead listening intently to the instructions she's heard at least twenty times before.
"Okay, understand?" A nod. "Good! Have a great time! We'll call you over the PA when your time is up."
"Thank you."
Leah leaves the building through the back door, almost immediately shielding her eyes from the blinding sun. It's almost unbearably hot here; it always is, always has been. She thinks with a bit of amusement that if one thing doesn't change when the time runs out, it's the heat of the Safari Zone.
"Maybe if I stay here, I could last it." But she doesn't think she'd want to, not really. Spending the rest of her life- or forever, she's not sure what will happen- in the Safari Zone's unforgiving heat with just the wild Pokémon for company and bait and berries to eat sounds like an actual hell. And she's not sure if there'll be something else after the time runs out- perhaps it'll be better than now?
A rustling pulls her out of her thoughts again, and she adjusts the brim of her hat to keep the sun's light out of her eyes. In front of her, a small Nidoran male crawls out of the tall grass. She smiles and tosses it a bit of bait. The tiny Pokémon eats it before running off quickly. Leah doesn't mind; she hadn't come here to catch Pokémon, anyway. She's got more than enough already, she knows well enough.
The next chunk of time is spent running into and feeding Pokémon. She steps carefully, trying to keep as many steps as possible inside of the tall grass. She's figured out by now that real time has nothing to do with how long anyone spends in the Safari Zone; it's all about the steps taken, or the same distance as a step covered when it comes to Surfing. Leah has spent over an hour here one time in the same place, never taking a step and using Sweet Scent to attract Pokémon instead. It doesn't make any sense, not really.
None of her Pokémon join her out here; they never do, and it's just as well- the reason she came here, even. Most of the Pokémon here are relatively harmless. She's not been attacked as she knows she very well should have by now. 'Maybe they do something to make them less aggressive?' Of course, it's not as if she knows, or can ever really know. It's just one of those quirks of her world, she supposes, much like how wild Pokémon will wait patiently as you please for a trainer to plan out moves, look through their party, or decide which item is best. None of that makes any sense, but neither does the YES or NO prompting that flickers through her mind so often.
A Paras she finds lets her give it ten pieces of bait. It seems to like her well enough, watching her calmly with its steel blue eyes. A sad smile finds its way onto her face. A few years ago- she has to say it was years, any other space of time simply doesn't make any sense- she'd have caught this Pokémon easily, welcomed it into her partnership, introduced it to the small colony of six other Parases and one Parasect in her forest-themed box. But now... she can't stand the idea of taking on another Pokémon that won't help her toward her last remaining goal on her journey. Out here, in the wild, Pokémon seem to be innocent to the approaching end, living in their own world unaffected by such things. Leah doesn't have the desire to interrupt that, knowing she can't really offer them anything they don't have here without taking far more.
She throws rocks at the Paras until it runs away from her.
Another sigh passes over her lips. When did it become like this? When was she so torn between her love of Pokémon and her fear of hurting them that she sought out places where interaction would be superficial at best? Here she can feed them, catch them, throw rocks at them, even talk to (read: at) them if she wants. But in none of that is there time enough for a true connection. Her party isn't allowed out in here aside from using HMs; the longest they can hope to spend with her in the Safari Zone is Surfing, and even then, on their backs she's hard to look at, hard to talk to, hard to demand answers from and beg to please, tell them what to do, isn't there a way they can fix this, it can't end so easily as this.
She doesn't want to tell them it can and will. At least, for her. She did hear tell of a way to send her Pokémon away, to safety, with another trainer. Leah didn't hear the whole process, but she's heard enough to know that the situation would be almost completely out of her hands. Still, if the option ever arises, she will do it. They'll be angry, of course. She suspects she would be, too, if she discovered her Pokémon were planning to send her to safety while they stayed for the end. Which is why she's not telling them anything.
A sharp buzzing pulls her out of her reverie. She falls back, catching herself on the heels of her hands to slightly cusion her fall onto the dry, cracked earth. Standing proudly in front of her is a massive Pinsir, clacking its huge pincers together over its head. Her face breaks into a smile, and she forgets herself for a moment.
"Why, hello, lovely. Mind coming with me?" Bait is tossed in the Pokémon's direction, and it eats readily, watching her leerily. She keeps the same smile in place as she tosses a rock at the Pinsir. Needless to say, it quickly becomes angry. Leah tosses a Safari Ball at it, which shakes for a moment before bursting open again, the Pinsir fit to be tied. The smile falters as everything comes rushing back. 'Right...' She's not a child poking around the Safari Zone in search of rare Pokémon right now. She's here to clear her thoughts and her mind, at least for a bit, without the distraction of her Pokémon's distress. A few more rocks go flying, and when they fail to make the Pokémon run away, she flees herself. It doesn't give chase like she knows it very well should. They never do. A knot in the grass makes her fall front first into the dirt. When she looks up, she sees a Doduo.
"What's it like to be you guys, I wonder?" She stands and hefts a chunk of bait in her hand, waiting for an answer that will never come. The bird eyes the bait hungrily, and she rolls her eyes. "Oh, fine." She pulls back, sending the chunk flying towards the Doduo's waiting mouthes.
It never makes it to the Pokémon.
Leah's world goes black again.
Author's Note (Again): Well, that's that. I suppose I've got to explain a few things in this story. The flash of memory filled with seemingly random events are how I think the player character would experience the little "Previously on your journey" summary shown in LeafGreen and FireRed when you continue your game. Her feeling of something happening that she just can't recall is a result of the player playing the game and then not saving before turning it off; the events happened, but she has no record of them. The expectation of her voice to sound strange and the prompting are representative of how the game shows your character- a short-spoken hero/heroine whose silence is rivaled only by Link. In most cases, when the character interacts with someone, they're given a YES or NO option, if they're to talk back at all. Stores and the like are unclear, seeing as it doesn't show the character's dialogue; they could be pointing or speaking. I chose speaking in this story. Sending away her Pokemon to safety is the transferring of Pokemon from an SP game to a DS game. At the end of the story, when her world goes black, it is the SP itself running out of battery from a lack of charge. The cartridge is still fine for now, but all events of this story are lost from her memory.
The main purpose I had in writing this was because I had a question after I completed the game's storyline: What next for her? She doesn't have Gym Leaders to win badges from, an Elite Four to defeat, a villainous team to knock down. All that's left is completing the Pokédex, and to be honest, not many people are all too keen on that. Her main purpose has run out, and regardless of anything, her whole world will erase someday.