A faint sound of howling winter wind from behind a window. An audible sigh.
"Why did we have to move here? There's no one for miles."
"That isn't true, Jasper. There's plenty of people here. It's a tight-knit community up in the mountains, you'll see."
The wind dies down as a door slams shut.
"Our neighbours were kind enough to give us some firewood. Wasn't that nice of them?"
"We didn't need firewood where we came from."
"I know. I know, Jasper, I'm just asking you to bear with me."
1
The corner of a cardboard box jabbed uncomfortably into East's back as he lay draped over it in the darkness of the moving van. He tried shifting his shoulders to see if that would ease the painful feeling, but unfortunately, that only made him lose the friction that had held him there. His heart jumped as he slid down, the back of his head clunking against the floor of the moving van. He could feel the vibration of the hard floor, the inadequate suspension of the rickety vehicle bouncing subtly from the rough dirt road East could only assume had been frequented by horse-drawn carriages for the past however many years up to the present.
He braced his hands against the metal floor and dragged himself to a sitting position, looking up blearily at the wavy roof above him. It'd taken him a good while to get used to the darkness of the truck, but here he was. In a car. And it was dark. And he was moving to Hoenn.
An angry crunch of cardboard boxes giving way under East's weight filled the van as he fell back with a dense, drawn-out sigh. He'd been perfectly happy in Johto. He'd been perfectly happy staying there, in his room, with his earbuds in and his mind wandering. But his dad was in a position of power over both his family and some stupid Pokémon League thing in Hoenn, so here he was, his homelife uprooted to move out into the boonies of the boonies of the boonies.
He'd lost his data connection as soon as he'd gotten on the plane. It was like a symbol, he realized, as he looked down at the PokéGear softly glowing in his hands. He'd tried to download as much stuff as he could onto it for the years and years of offline life he'd be forced to endure in Hoenn, but there was only so much it could fit. He'd been listening to a bit of it on the plane ride here, but he wasn't sure he wanted to use up all of the entertainment value it had yet. This place was Hoenn. He was going to be living in a straw hut where the closest thing to 'online' would be what the locals catch from the disease-ridden river to eat for breakfast. Raw, probably.
His dad had sounded so excited when he found out that Mom had finally given in. Of course, he would. They'd both been lobbying for this stupid tirade to get underway for years. They just had to wait until it was convenient. That was what all of those vacations were about, East thought. That vacation to Unova? That vacation to Kalos? Both of them were to check out whether East was ready to get an elemental monster thrust into his arms, a pre-packaged common destiny thrust into his mind, and a defenceless young boy thrust out the door.
He supposed that Kalos had been the one to do it. That time, they'd gone to see the professor. Guy looked like he'd be better on a runway than a lab from the way he did his hair. But Professor Sycamore-Showoff showed East three Pokémon; three elementally charged creatures that could slice, roast, and incinerate a helpless twelve-year-old boy or two. Great work there, Professor. Nice violation of health codes you've got there. At least, that's what East figured. Maybe they made up their own rules on what constituted as health codes. He wouldn't put it past the guy. He was way too fashionable to be the kind of guy cooped up in a lab. East had grown up a few cities away from Professor Elm; he was pretty sure he knew how a nerd was supposed to look.
They'd defeated East. He'd been sussed out, and this time they had figured East was ready. So his mom had packed up their home in Olivine, sold it off, and dropped everything to move to Littleroot Town in Hoenn.
"Littleroot Town," East repeated to himself, easing himself into a prone position on the cold, unfeeling floor of the moving van. The word brought a palpable distaste to his tongue. Littleroot Town. That was where Professor Birch was. That was where he would get his first Pokémon. That was if he was going to get it at all. After all, this was Hoenn. At best they'd invite him into the straw hut next door and talk for two hours about how much of a technological marvel the Poké Ball was before giving him his Pokémon. At worst, they'd hand him an Apricorn and tell him to make his own damn Poké Ball and catch his first Pokémon himself, as a rite of passage. In their own tribal language, probably.
He had heard so much in the airport and on the plane of how beautiful Hoenn was supposed to be. How it really 'connected you with nature' and 'gave you a real breath of fresh air.' So of course, to be spiteful, East had opted to sit in the back of the moving van while Mom drove in the front. He was starting to regret that. There was a genuine risk of boredom back here, and East was starting to feel it gnaw at the back of his mind. He had to occupy himself with something other than sulking. But then again, he still had a week-long grace period of sulking before he'd start to be considered a jackass by his family. And he was going to milk that grace period for all he was worth.
For now, though, he began to think about the three Hoenn starter Pokémon that was supposed to be available to him. The Pokémon with which he would sign away his life.
Not that his life was going to amount to much on his own, anyway.
Light filtered into the darkness, causing East to squint his eyes and bring his hand up to shield them. He expected to see Mom's face first thing but frowned deeply upon seeing the Machamp staring into the van mindlessly, waiting for him to make a move. Good lord, they couldn't even spare humans to do the moving in part? How savage was this place? Was he going to step out to see a bunch of weirdos poking this van with a bunch of sticks? Would they think it ate him?
East carefully made his way to the end, hopping off of the tailgate and walking around front to meet his mom, who was busy stepping down off the cab. Her feet landed on the ground, and she stretched her arms out to balance herself as East poised himself on the side of the van, propping up one leg against it as he crossed his arms.
She looked tired. East figured she might as well be - she'd driven from the airport to Littleroot. And he wasn't sure how long he'd been in the back, but the drive from Lilycove to Littleroot certainly felt long. He didn't envy her, driving something this big that far. He supposed he could lighten up a little bit. At least for now.
"How was the drive?" he asked casually.
His mom sighed and took off her baseball cap, shaking her head to let her bob of chestnut hair flow out a little better. "It was alright. I was starting to feel a bit of jet lag in the final stretch, though." She smiled at East. "Could have used the company up in the cab."
"I would have just messed with the radio the entire time," East said. "Not that there'd be a signal out here."
Mom guffawed. "You'd be surprised! I was talking to this guy for a bit before we got out of range. Called himself Little Fatso, got a laugh out of me."
East didn't know what to say to that, so he changed the subject. "So, uh, what's the house like?"
He was trying to remain optimistic for his mom's sake. He knew that she was probably as much a conspirator as his dad, but she was the one who had to deal with him all this time. His dad had been a Gym Leader here in Hoenn since he was a little kid, so if he were to go easy on anyone, it'd be his mom. Still, he wasn't about to take this lying down. He might make it easier on her, but that didn't mean he'd make it easy.
"It's on the other side of the truck," she said, jerking her thumb in the direction of the cab. "Why don't you go take a look?"
East put a hand to his head and began to walk past his mom, not daring to look through the windows of the cab to score an early look. "Because I'm scared of what I'm going to see," he mumbled to himself once he was out of earshot. He came around the cab and looked at the house in front of him.
Well, it wasn't a straw hut.
East saw a two-story house in front of him, Machamp filtering in and out of the front door with arms full of boxes. They were tossing them around somewhat haphazardly, something that concerned East. But he wasn't going to confront them on that, that was just suicide. The exterior walls were a faded beige with an admittedly nice-looking wooden frame along the exterior. The outline of wood traced along the ground, accompanying a small window box with colourful flowers East didn't recognize. The entire house was quaint, but it was a definite downgrade from the high-rise condo he and his mom had lived in back at Olivine.
"So? What do you think?" Mom's voice startled East, causing him to turn on his heel towards her as she approached. He regained his composure and gave her a one-sided shrug.
"It's alright, I guess. Better than what I was imagining."
His mom seemed pleased from this, brushing past him as she went to help the Machamp with moving some of the boxes. East didn't see the point of that. They were going to do a good enough job on their own; it wasn't like he could make any difference.
So he eased himself down against a tire of the moving truck and pulled out his PokéGear again, feeling entitled to mope now that he was out of his mom's view. He plugged one earbud in and pulled up the internet settings. His frown deepened as he refreshed the page and nothing came up. Refresh. Refresh. Nothing.
"Hey, mom?" he called as she came out of the house again. "What's the internet password?"
Mom had her course to the truck interrupted as East posed this question, and she suddenly looked exhausted. East didn't have to wonder why for very long. "Internet isn't going to be enabled here for a month or two. We'll have to make do until then."
East felt like his head had been wrapped in six layers of towels and beaned with a brick. A month or two? Surely she couldn't be serious. She had to be telling some sick joke that she thought was funny. But as the situation drew on and on, East saw that her face wasn't cracking a smile. The more time passed where East went without a response, the more concerned her face became.
Mom's shoulders sagged, and she looked at East with a flat expression. "You know I don't like lecturing you about this sort of thing, but it's not the end of the world if you don't have internet. One of the reasons we came to Hoenn was to get a breath of fresh air. You could try and make the best of this! Go out and make some friends in Littleroot."
"I have tons of friends, mom," East said. "I have tons of friends, and they're all online. All of them."
Mom's face fell, and she set her load down on the grass, sidestepping it to place both of her hands on East's shoulders. "I know. I know how much they matter to you, hon, but these are the cards life's dealt us. Once the internet comes back on, you can talk to them. I'm sure some places in town do have internet." She gave him a small smirk. "If you have no social shame, you could always ask for their password and leech off of their network."
"That would mean talking to them."
His mom patted him on the head in a notably condescending matter. "I'm glad we've come to an understanding."
East snorted but didn't say anything as his mom turned back towards the house, picked up the box, and disappeared through the door. East threw his head back, resting against the tire of the moving truck.
The sky was a radiant blue, the searing sun's shining visage silhouetted by a smattering of wispy white clouds billowing lazily through the air. Bird Pokémon East only vaguely recognized soared on unseen currents of air, dipping and gliding freely through the atmosphere. East took a deep breath through his nose, curling his hand to grasp at the soft blades of grass beneath him. The air was crisp and clean, so much so that it stung East's sinuses. It felt like he was sniffing an ice box.
He squeezed his eyes shut so hard he could see sparks, scrunching his face up as he tried to imagine himself back in Johto, back in Olivine, in his bed. He tried to imagine himself leaning casually against the headboard of his bed, his pillows haphazardly stacked up against it so that his back had somewhere comfortable to rest as he beamed his PokéGear's screen onto his TV. He tried to imagine himself back where his only real commitments were keeping up on his Newflick subscriptions and talking with his friends about which TV show that came out recently could be cruelly manipulated to make the silliest and absurdist jokes. He tried to imagine himself in a time where he could take an elevator and walk down the street two blocks to get fast food at a discount because he was a student and didn't know how to cook.
But it was pointless. East still didn't know how to cook; he couldn't see any restaurants, there were no jokes to make, no TV shows to ridicule, no friends to ridicule them with, no internet to contact them, no Olivine, no Johto.
No home.
Westrose knew she should be doing homework right now. But this was more important than doing biology drills.
Her pencil scribbled furiously against the paper, only stopping as Westrose peeked out behind her cover to watch her subject. This stakeout had a shocking amount of hours sunk into it, and she wasn't about to let any number of them go to waste because of a stupid reason like drilling into her head how a Heatmor's flame is different from a Blaziken's.
Her subject didn't notice her. Westrose had only been compromised twice before in her reconnaissance missions previously, and both times she had to abandon her post to avoid suspicion. Even today, the universe itself seemed to conspire against her, creating circumstance after circumstance that threatens not only to ruin her stakeout but to have her voluntarily abandon it.
Mr. Parker had shouted rather loudly at her subject earlier this morning, causing it to skitter out of Westrose's range of detection in an evasive maneuver. It took Westrose thirty minutes to track her subject down again, which was an incredible waste of time considering for what she had been waiting. Her mom had been bothering her most of the morning to get her schoolwork for the day done, but Westrose had already measured for that. Westrose had her homework fitted neatly into a timeslot already, mother. Schoolwork was scheduled to start roughly half an hour before fatigue takes over her body and she collapses into a sleep-deprived heap on her bed. Everything had its time, place, and priority.
The most tempting distraction, however, nearly caused Westrose to lose her resolve. When the news was delivered yesterday over dinner, she had choked. She had planned out her schedule for the next day that morning after breakfast, and her mother deciding to drop this atomic bomb as casually as the weather forecast during supper threw a monkey wrench into the well-oiled machine that was her research schedule. She had stayed up all night mulling over this new information, trying to figure out what the heck it did to topple her priorities.
Someone her age was moving into town.
Thinking about it now, Westrose furrowed her brow. Her focus on her subject waned as she thought again about the decision she'd come to late last night. She had gone on this long without any friends her age, so she didn't need to worry about getting any more of them.
...So instead she chose to watch Ms. Skye's Skitty for the fourth day in a row, hoping that it would chase its tail so fast that it would fall over.
Westrose raised her notebook to her face, regarding her notes with a new lens of scorn. She'd written in this thing like it was a military diary, for crying out loud. She was the daughter of a field researcher, not a field agent! And she was missing the most important thing to happen to Littleroot in however many years because she wanted to catch Speckle getting dizzy from chasing her tail. She crumpled the page in the notebook, ready to tear it out, but stopped. She'd already put effort into recording the domestic habits of Speckle. And she did still want to catch the whole 'falling over' thing on camera. She just needed to get her priorities straight.
Westrose stuffed her notebook into her pocket and scuffed her feet reluctantly as she began to walk back to her house. Maybe she would be lucky, and they wouldn't be finished moving in by the time she got there. But who was she kidding? She spent the morning watching a Skitty, and because of that, odds were good they were already having lunch inside. At that point, Westrose knew, it was too late to welcome them. You had to do it while they were unpacking the moving truck so you could offer to help them, see the house, and have lunch with them afterward. That was the way of doing things and if you broke that natural order people would be weirded out. Her dad passed this nugget of info on to her. "From experience," he had said.
She should have been focusing on other things anyway, the new kid notwithstanding. She was getting her first Pokémon in a few days. That was a huge step in becoming what she wanted to be, and so far she'd barely put any research into what she wanted in a partner beyond pure aesthetics. She liked Torchic the best because she felt like Torchic was the cutest. Besides, she'd bonded with Torchic the most from spending time with him at the lab. She liked Treecko and Mudkip fine, but they didn't click with her as the Torchic had. But if she was going to be serious about this League Challenge - and she wanted to be serious about it - she'd have to look into things like stats, type advantages, Individual Values, learnsets, and a slew of other hoopla she didn't want to get into in the slightest. It sounded like a surefire way to make Pokémon boring.
But Westrose felt like she had to do it. Did she have much of a choice if she wanted to be a field researcher? Wasn't researching the literal foundation of that line of work? She shook her head and refused to think about it for now. The League Challenge was something to do in the meantime. It'd give her insight to what Pokémon can do in and out of battles. And she'd get a partner or six out of it, too.
Honestly, that was the part she was looking forward to the most.
The front door creaked noisily as Westrose carefully turned the doorknob. The smell of stew wafted through the air from the kitchen, signalling to Westrose that her mom was not only home, but cooking dinner. Her mother would be a problematic part of getting back up to her room, considering she'd been shirking her work pretty much the entire day. Westrose wasn't exactly the most skilled person at stealth, but that wouldn't stop her from giving the old slink a try.
Taking a deep breath, she carefully eased the front door shut, lifting it up by the doorknob in the last few inches to keep the latch from colliding with the doorframe. This wasn't her first rodeo, and it wouldn't be her last. The door gave a soft click, being kind enough to hold back another squeaky whine as Westrose pressed herself up against the wall beside the doorway. The clinking noises from the kitchen were still going, so her mother hadn't noticed that she'd come in yet. Her room wasn't near the kitchen anyways, so it wouldn't be too much of a problem for her to walk down the hallway, shuffling her feet on the carpet to prevent making too much noise. She'd just drop off her notes and talk to her mother about all of this over a nice bowl of stew.
"So how was your day?"
Busted.
"Uh...fine. I was conducting research," she replied with uncertainty.
"Jennifer told me," her mom's voice came from the kitchen. "Did you have fun?"
Westrose screwed her face up. She did, yes, up until the end; fun, however, was not a prerequisite of research, and she felt like if she admitted that she did have fun it'd make her case look worse. "I guess, but I was more focused on the research aspect."
"Right, right," came the reply. "Well, go drop off your notes."
"Alright," Westrose said suspiciously, turning around to head to her room. She took her first step slowly, expecting another reply.
"Let's hope they come in handy for the pop quiz tomorrow."
A cymbal crashed in Westrose's head, her teeth gritting together in annoyance. There's the punchline she was waiting for. Sure felt like a punch! She slipped into her room and reached behind her head to take off her bright red bandana that kept her hair out of her eyes. Instinctually she brought a hand to brush her bangs off to the side before setting her notebook down on her desk, flipping through it to review her notes. The paper fluttered softly under her hands as her emerald eyes squinted scrutinizingly at the page in front of her. Some of this stuff was salvageable for her biology test tomorrow, but she'd have to cram tonight to hope for a passing grade. Westrose slipped her fingers under the leather cover and pushed the book shut, slamming her forehead into the desk with a groan shortly afterwards.
Well, maybe this day was still salvageable. After dinner, she could go see the new kid. She had no idea what he was like, sure, but a bit of after-dinner chat could be what she needed to establish herself to him. Just a bit of friendly conversation, and build off of those blocks to get to a friendship.
Westrose stood up from her chair and walked out of the room, peeking into the kitchen. "Mom? Is dinner ready?"
Her mother looked back at her with a small smile. "Just about. Can you get some containers?"
"Containers?"
"We're having dinner with the new neighbours. They just moved in today, so I don't think they're going to have much to eat. So your father and I thought we could bring dinner to them!"
...Oh.
Oh, good lord.