Please forgive me if I made some horrible mistakes with the French in this, I don't speak French and pretty much relied completely on google translate and yahoo answers haha. Correct me if I'm super wrong as well so I don't look like too much of an idiot.
Also, does anyone else see Calem as geeky? 'Cause I so do, with those sunglasses and red hat and being so lanky. But like, adorable geeky.

Warning: this story is hella cheesy and French lol. Also Calem is the playable character and Serena is the rival. I own nothing!

Carried Away.

She'd just defeated the last member of the Elite Four and was tending to her tired team, giving them medicine to drink and bandaging up their wounds from the brutal fights (because as far as she knew, you totally wrapped them in gauze before the toughest battle you were ever going to have). Her meowstic mewed and batted away the horrible tasting potion with it's ear, but she caught before it had time to spill and handed it back. The creature would just have to deal and get rid of that bad attitude; she wanted a flawless victory, not some half-hearted win.

On that note though, Serena broke into a grin. There was absolutely no way she could lose this, she'd trained so hard to get here and the way she had plowed through the four before the Champion indicated that whoever it was was going to be just as easy. Her parents were veteran trainers after all and the apple didn't fall far from the tree. So now, completely pumped up, she recalled meowstic and stepped forward, pushing the doors to the main chamber open and getting ready to find the Champion.

No, that was a lie.

She was about to but was interrupted by a loud beeping sound coming from the outside of the stadium. She looked at Siebold who just shrugged and buried his nose back in the cookbook he was reading - what great help. So, both annoyed and curious as there was no way she'd be able to concentrate on battling with that, she walked over to the wall to work out what was making the noise. It was getting louder and as she approached it, the wall seemed to fade to black and then as her eyes adjusted, the ceiling of her house came into focus.

Great, that had been an awesome dream and now she'd never get to finish it! She would also never know whether she won or not and was back to boring old reality. Reality where she wasn't even a trainer yet; reality where she'd only ever seen meowstics in books and reality where she lived in the smallest and dullest town in their entire region. Couldn't she just go back to dreaming? That was slightly more exciting.

But speaking of reality, that beeping noise hadn't stopped and somehow seemed to have gotten louder. Grumbling, she crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. What the hell was it? It sounded almost like a truck reversing...

Wait, a truck reversing? That was weird, since when did trucks come to Vaniville? Everything they had was transported usually via human or if there weren't enough people to help out, someone would take a car. The latter was uncommon though, considering it took all of ten minutes to walk to the next town over. So yeah, hearing a truck was really weird. In fact, she's not sure if she'd ever heard a truck in their little town. Instead, it was a sound she associated with Lumiose city.

Ah Lumiose, the last time she had been was...five or six years ago now and that had just been for a few days when her mum visited an old friend. One of the only things she remembered from it were the massive streets and that she could walk for hours and not get to the other side of the city, as opposed to Vaniville where she would legitimately take two steps and have seen everyone who lived there. She had loved it and had wanted to stay so badly but no matter how much she protested when it was time to leave, they had piled back into the car and travelled back to isolation.

Watching the trees and buildings flash past in a blur, she had frowned the whole journey back and for several days afterwards. It sucked, why did Vaniville have to be so small? She'd told Shauna of her adventures in the big city upon her arrival home and her friend had sympathised, she'd been to Lumiose several times with her family too and understood exactly what she was saying.

Now she would have liked to say that those six years stuck here had passed in a flash, but she wouldn't be telling the truth. The time had passed so slowly, but she patiently (or impatiently, depended on how you looked at it) waited out the years until she could become a trainer. It wasn't long now, a few weeks actually, but they were going by even slower than the rest of the time had. In fact that's why she had been napping, to kill time because she actually had nothing to do.

Wow, that was a digress and a half though. The beeping had stopped now, but Serena was still curious and partly about it and sat up from where she'd been lying on the couch so she could see out the window. As expected, there was a big truck parked in the driveway next to her house, but what wasn't expected were the two men moving furniture from the back of it. A woman was carrying boxes marked books and photos in English through the front door along with a boy who looked around their age, only about a foot taller.

Her mouth fell open and she stared at the vehicle, the whole time she'd lived here - which was her entire life - she could not remember one time where someone new had moved in.

Because seriously, who would want to relocate to Vaniville? It was a town for old folk and any sort of population change was when people left or died because it was so boring. You wouldn't think death by boredom would be possible, but those who had been here knew that yes, it was. It really was. And it was a threat they all faced daily.

This was exciting though! Something was actually happening and now maybe she'd have something interesting to do to instead of just sitting around all day or just hanging out with Shauna all the time! Oh, don't get her wrong, she loved Shauna, but they'd seen each other every day of their lives, they kind of needed some fresh faces.

It was at that point that the younger of said fresh faces seemed to notice that a girl was watching him out her window and he lowered his eyes, looking away with pink cheeks before trying to rush inside with a box in his arms. He sort of stacked it on the way in and caught himself on the doorframe, but the box dropped and it's contents spilled out all over the bricks. There were trophies and awards ribbons with the name Grace printed on them and Serena watched in amusement as he scrambled to pick it all up.

"Passerouge, gentille passerouge." Her own mum's voice drifted over, singing a song that Serena recognised from when she was younger. Well, seeing that the woman was around, she should probably get some answers about these neighbours, namely why she hadn't known they were moving in till now.

"Mum?" She shouted. "Can you come here?"

There was no answer and the only way Serena knew that she was coming was that her singing was getting louder. "Passerouge, je te plumerai," She finished the verse as she got the lounge and leant over to talk to her daughter. "What's wrong, Serena?"

"We're getting new neighbours?"

"We are," She pointed to one of the trophies that had toppled furthest away, "Grace is a rhyhorn racer, she used to be all over the television years ago but I didn't know she had a son."

"C'est super," She replied, not taking her eyes off the boy. He was preoccupied with putting everything back in the box, but unfortunately seemed to be failing rather miserably. It appeared the bottom of it had actually broken and it was all just falling through again. "Where are they from?"

"I'm not sure, but it's definitely not Kalos. I do wonder why they moved here though..."

"Yeah," She nodded and then added under her breath, "Why here?"

Mum laughed and placed a hand on her head to ruffle her hair, prompting a grunt from Serena. She was well aware of her rather strong dislike of where they lived and usually just humoured her, much to the chagrin of her daughter. She started to walk off, but before she got too far she turned back around and said with a wink, "Il est très adorable."

Serena groaned, burying her face into one of the cushions on the couch and ignored her mum's laughter. She waited till she heard her footsteps going into the other room to sit up and watch him again, deeming it safe from teasing. He'd resulted in picking up armfuls of his mum's awards and running them inside and when he grabbed up the final one, he glanced up to see if she was still there before scurrying in. He was so tall and lanky that she wondered if falling over wasn't an uncommon occurrence. It was kind of endearing though, he had that sort of geek chic look about him.

Okay, mum was right, he was cute. Really cute, but she'd never admit that to anyone.

So she hadn't been watching him for that long, only like twenty minutes or so. Fine, more like thirty or maybe even forty.

She had been sitting up in her room later that night, minding her own business and reading up on the newly-discovered fairy type when she noticed the light in the room opposite her window flick on. At first she hadn't even cared, but when she'd seen the dark hair out the corner of her eye, she looked up to find him moving about and tidying things up. And that was it, she was done reading for the night and honed right in on him.

And for the next half hour she had watched him unpack boxes of clothing and various other things from his past life, placing them in different parts of his room. It was during this time that she deduced two very important (that was debatable) things about this adorable foreign boy. One; he had a collection of evolution stones though apparently no pokemon to use them on and two; all his pyjamas were blue. She had no clue as to why this was, but didn't care - it just made him cuter.

Eventually he stopped, probably deciding that he'd done enough for the day and stepped over to his wardrobe. He deliberated over which nightshirt to choose, eventually yanking out a random one from underneath the piles upon piles of blue cloth. He pulled his current shirt off and Serena's face turned bright red and she turned away even though she probably should have expected it. Placing her hands over her face to hide the blush, she slowly peeked through her fingers at him and found it was okay to look again.

He checked himself out in the mirror and ran his hands through his just-hopped-out-the-shower hair and then spun around to jump into bed. It was his turn to blush this time though, as straight through his window she saw him see her watching every move he made. His arms automatically wrapped around his torso self-consciously despite the fact it was covered now as he realised she'd seen him shirtless. Their eyes locked and she cursed inwardly, though they were straight across from one another, she'd never considered the possibility of getting caught out.

They stared at each other for a moment longer, neither quite sure what to do until awkwardly, he raised his hand to wave slowly. Damnit, probably thought he'd moved to a town of weirdoes now.

Way to blow it already, Serena.

But you know, at least things couldn't get worse. She quickly weighed up her options in her mind and figured the best course of action was to be as friendly as possible and hope he'd forget she had been staring at him like a stalker. So she grinned back and grabbed her notebook from her desk - she'd been writing notes on fairy pokemon earlier but there were still plenty of pages left. She flipped it over so it was blank and scrawled in her very messy handwriting, "Salut!" and pressed it against the glass for him to see.

He held up a finger to her, telling her to wait for a moment and ran to the other side of his room before coming back with a notebook of his own. He seemed to be considering what to write and she breathed a sigh of relief, he wasn't completely freaked out. After a second or two, he raised a page that said, "Bonjour."

"Je m'appelle Serena, enchantée."

"Je m'appelle Calem," He paused for a moment before pulling his page down and continuing to write on it. She watched him with curiousity, he was so cute and she was definitely going to go talk to him tomorrow. It would be something more interesting than sitting around at home, at least. Finally he finished writing and held his message up for her. "Je suis désolé if you can't read my writing through la ver."

She read it and burst into laughter, there was no way he could have gotten that right. Mum had mentioned that he was from a different region but she'd never thought that maybe he couldn't speak French that well. "I think you mean en verre."

His face turned bright red - even redder than it had been before - at this and he very hastily wrote, "Parlez-vous Anglais?"

"Yes."

If you asked Serena later on, she would swear that she'd never seen someone with a smile as big as Calem's was then. He pumped his fist in the air and flipped his page over, still grinning. "That is the best news I've had all day. I hardly know French, so I'm really, really sorry for any mistakes I made."

"It's fine, I thought that might have been the case," She drew a smile at the end of her sentence. "Anyway, how do you like Kalos so far?"

He downcast his eyes at her question and took a lot longer to write his reply than he previously had, even when they were conversing in French. She noticed him backtracking on a few things he wrote and hastily scribbling them out. When he finally showed her his reply, the page was a mess of crossed out words and all it said was a very unconvincing, "What I've seen is nice..."

"But...?"

"Have you ever moved before?" His shoulders slumped accompanied by what looked like a sigh and Serena just wanted to hug him.

But that was kind of impossible since they were about ten feet apart and separated by a leg-breaking drop, so she did the next best thing. She scribbled something on the paper, showed it to him and when he nodded she yanked her window open. The cool night air felt good on her cheeks and she now had an excuse if he asked why she was blushing. She waited until he did the same thing and together they leaned out like it was the most casual thing in the world. "I've never moved," She shook her head. "But I've always wanted to. Vaniville is really boring and...wait, I probably shouldn't have told you that."

"It's okay, I don't mind," He smiled, shrugging. Ugh and he had the cutest accent too! This wasn't fair, how could someone be so adorable?

Of course, she didn't tell him this but instead made an action plan in her head to get him to speak more. The first step of it involved asking him, "Where else have you been in Kalos? I've only ever been as far as Lumiose City, so I haven't travelled that much. Lumiose is amazing though, it's so big and Prism Tower is so beautiful at nighttime. I would live in that tower if I could, but apparently there's a gym inside which is a little weird." The plan kind of collapsed though and she ended up rambling that all in one breath and hardly gave him a chance to speak. Only when she needed to breathe again did she slow down and finally stop.

"That is weird," He agreed. "The gym leader must have a nice view though, I hope they appreciate it. But to answer your question, Only Lumiose and I actually stayed there last night."

"Are you serious?" Her mouth fell open in surprise. This guy sitting in front of her had seen the alleyways, the boutiques and the cafes all with his own two eyes not even twenty-four hours ago. She wondered if it was still as pretty and stylish as back then or she was remembering it through rose-colored glasses. She hoped it wasn't the latter, but at any rate anything was a step up from Vaniville - pretty and stylish or not. "Did you like it? There were still lots of cafes there, right?"

He laughed at her enthusiasm. "To be honest, I'm not sure. We only arrived in Kalos yesterday and I was so tired that I slept through most of my time there."

"Oh no," She gasped dramatically like it was the most tragic thing in the world. It was the most tragic thing in her world actually, there was nothing else going on. "Calem, you've got to see it! When I become a trainer I'm going to take you."

"Sounds like a plan," He nodded. "So you want to be a trainer then?"

"Totally!" It was funny that he even needed to ask that, everyone else in the town knew that as soon as she turned fifteen she was out the door. Not so much for the strength and raising pokemon bit (though certainly she would try), but for the travelling. If she had no agenda, she could stay in Lumiose as long as she liked and visit every single one of the cafes and clothes stores. Now she had a friend to take with her - Shauna and Tierno had their own goals, but this Calem guy seemed pretty easy going. They could chat for hours in a romantic spot in the big city and it would be just like a scene from a movie, and he even had the accent to boot. "I want to see everything in Kalos! How about you?"

He smiled, but it wasn't the cheesy grin she'd seen several times throughout the evening. "I never really planned on it before moving because I was really happy where I lived, so there was no reason to. But now I'm here and I don't know anyone, I might as well. I think if I hang around too long I'll start comparing it to my old home anyway and that won't be a good thing."

Their conversation was unfortunately interrupted at that point when Calem's mother opened his door from the hallway. He jumped in surprise and pulled his window down, prompting a laugh from Serena. There was nothing to hide; it was probably more just that he hadn't been expecting it. She said something to him, yawning in the middle of her sentence and he nodded in response. Before leaving, she kissed him on the top of his head and pointed out the room.

He turned back towards her, finding that she'd also pulled her window shut. Upon seeing this, he went back to their previous method of communication and pressed a new note up to the window. "I've got to go feed the rhyhorn, sorry."

She gave him thumbs up and watched him sprint out the room like a lunatic, almost tripping over on the rug near his door. She kept her eyes on the empty space for a few moments longer, thinking about what he'd just said. She hadn't ever considered that side of it before. How hard it must have been moving from your home so far away, she'd only ever thought that it was exciting to see somewhere new. He must have felt so out of place and probably more than a little homesick, knowing that he'd never see the place again.

At least when she travelled - no matter how much she disliked Vaniville - she'd always have the option of coming home. The poor boy, he must have been so lonely! Flipping her notebook over to a blank page, she wrote as neatly as possible, "You know me now." and wedged it up against the window frame and waited for him to come back.

Sometime before he returned, she must have fallen asleep because when she opened her eyes again, it was light. She didn't remember it though and made a mental note to apologise when she saw him as that was rude to just end a conversation like that.

Nothing she could do about that now though except blink a few times and adjust to the harsh sunlight. Served her right for not closing the curtains, she supposed. Once she could see again, she looked over to her neighbour's window. He wasn't in the room, but there was a reply stuck to the glass. Thank you was written in English at the top of the page, but he'd thought better of it, crossed it out and underneath it said, "Merci."

So does anyone else know the aloette gentille alouette song Serena's mum was singing or is it just me? Passerouge is the French name for Fletchling also, haha.