Red is Dead

When we were pudgy little ten year olds, we both left our homes in Pallet to go be the great Pokemon trainers we'd wanted to be all of our short lives. I was Blue. Strong and cocky, as if God himself had reached down to earth and sculpted me with his own hands. He was Red, smaller, quieter, but eternally challenging. I wonder, sometimes, if deep down, I didn't always know he was the better trainer.

I know that when we were even smaller, and would run across the grass yards in little Pallet, I was stronger than him. He would do something I didn't like, though sometimes he didn't do anything, and I hit him. We were boys- he'd hit me back, and we'd go rolling across the grass kicking and biting until somebody tore our tiny flailing limbs apart and put us in time out. I wonder, though, if I didn't realize he was a better trainer than I was.

We went out into our world strong and smart and perfect, with no apprehensions. It did not take long to realize how awful the world really was. The world was not ours to control, it was barely ours to live in.

At first I hated him for it. I was always the stronger child, the young pride of Pallet Town. I was the one expected to succeed. I was the one with the breeding, the training, the influence. I had the money and the connections. Red was a tired little boy who may have been mute for all I know, living with a single young mother in a tiny house in a tiny town. People expected me to look out for him, to make sure he at least made it through one gym before giving up. I let him win our first battle to help his confidence, out of pity.

You can imagine my surprise at our second encounter when I couldn't win, even though I wanted to. I thought to myself it didn't matter, he would give up eventually. He would go home. He didn't go home, though. I don't think he ever went home again.

I met him one last time at the Indigo Plateau. I was okay with his being there- he wouldn't be the Champion. That was my destiny; and it was. I stepped forward into the halls of the Elite Four and kept walking. I took on the Champion, and I took him down. I was the youngest Champion ever crowned, for a total of twenty-three minutes. Those brief moments were so incredibly fleeting I can hardly remember the adrenaline and pride that came with them. So many people, many much older than I, had poured their lives and skills and power into something I, and only I had achieved. I was the pride of Pallet Town.

After twenty-three minutes, Red stepped into the room, and silently took that from me. He did it with ease- more than I would have ever expected. Tiny, broken, silent, ten year old Red with his dirty black hair and pudgy, baby-fat cheeks walked into the Hall of Fame and became the Pride of Kanto. No one has ever described him as anything less than the greatest trainer ever born, one with God-given talent.

I was angry. I was frustrated, and bitter, and confused and hurt. I was a lot of things. When Red smiled after the battle and offered his hand to shake, like the grown-ups we had always been driven to surpass, I snorted and shoved my fists into my armpits with as much defiance as my naïve ten year old self could bear to muster. I can still remember the look on his face, to this day. He didn't stop smiling, but his eyes softened in the saddest way, and his fingers folded back into his hand. He stepped into the Hall of Fame, and his record was recorded over top of mine.

It seems so strange now, to look back and imagine the emotions I felt. I was a child- a tiny one at that. I knew so little of the world, but I felt I knew everything I needed to. I was already weary of the world, having worked my hardest and achieved all my goals, only to have them ripped from my trembling fingers so quickly it was like I never achieved them at all. We stepped out of the League building together, but he stayed, eyes closed, breathing in his first breath of Kanto air as the Champion. My face grew hot with the pure hatred I felt for him at this point, and I stormed away in a huff to tell Daisy the news. That was the last time I saw him.

I arrived at home to much congratulations, only to have it vanish as soon as the updated report came in. They suddenly wanted to know where Red was, or how stunning he had looked as he trounced me. Even more bitter and cynical than before, I stormed home and went to bed. When I woke up, my sister told me Red had left to train somewhere, but she didn't know where. I pulled a granola bar out of the cabinet and flew away on Pidgeotto to see about reclaiming Championship in his absence.

They made Lance Interim Champion.

There was no age determinate on Champion, anyone strong enough could be. However, there was no way for me, a child to be Champion without that qualifying standard. With the current true Champion missing, it seemed I would never truly achieve my goal. They gave me Giovanni's gym, because it was open, and somehow they deemed me mature enough to handle at leas that responsibility.

I earned success there, at least, but it for all the fame and money I acquired through it, I found no satisfaction in being the second best, the almost-Champion.

I went looking for Red.

I did not find him.

This was the first time I had realized Red had vanished. It had been almost a year- and I, tiny, pudgy, immature little eleven-year-old Blue had not noticed that my Childhood rival and friend had simply vanished off of the face of the earth, all those months ago.

I went home, but they'd already stopped looking.

I went to the League, and so had they.

While I was busy with my own self-conceived problems, my only friend had been lost, searched fr, and given up on. Shortly after that I gained quite a bit of notoriety for rarely being at my gym. I spent days on end searching. I overturned every tiny corner of the region, but I couldn't find them. The League flagged me on multiple occasions for being MIA when a trainer needed a match- but I honestly had stopped caring.

I did not find him.

Two whole years of futile searching for a person I would not find. I had been everywhere in Kanto, but he was gone. Desperate, I tried to search Johto, but the savage icy winds and terrifyingly strong Pokemon that inhabited Mount Silver that guarded the region's border made that impossible.

I would go out searching, and I would practice my lines. All of the things I would say to him when I found him. "You stupid dunce, do you have any idea how worried I've been?"

I did not find him.

Three days ago, a little trainer named 'Gold' acquired my badge. He apparently defeated Lance- with Red missing and my match's results being null with time, he was considered region Champion. Little thirteen year old Blue, who still had cheeks full of baby fat and eyes full of weariness, watched as an even tinier ten year old Gold left to train on Mount Silver, the one place he had never braved.

I think I knew, right then, what was going to happen. I am young, not stupid.

I waited due time until he had inevitably reached the peak of the mountain and done what he had to before I called Professor Oak. It was all arranged smoother than I had anticipated. So smoothly it almost felt like everyone had been ready for this, prepared for this, for years. It put a knot in the pit of my stomach.

His tiny, frigid little body, bruised and battered and blue still looked the same as it had three years ago when he'd claimed my title.

His dirty black hair still had the same dip from the back of his hat it always had, the same sweaty matte of knots near the nape of his neck I remember pulling on as a child when he upset me. He still wore the collar of his thin red jacket propped up against his neck, not at all the way his mother had wanted him to. She used to lick her thumb and smudge the dirt from the corner of his mouth, before smoothing down his collar against his shoulders. He still had the same tear in the white fabric of his left shoe. He still looked like same old Red- but he wasn't. Red was dead.

Ten year old, pudgy, silent Red with the dirty black hair and the tear in his left shoe climbed a Mountain and never came down. The Pride of Kanto never came home again. His Pokemon were missing- I'm certain he told them to leave before he took his final breath, because that's just how he was.

I think I'm going to resign as a Gym Leader. I intend to become Champion- like I did those short years ago that feel so long. He will always be the Pride of Kanto, the greatest Trainer who ever lived, but it feels like he left a hole, just for me to fill. As if in his absence he had meant for me to regain myself. I intend to. There will be no looking back. I won't need the gym after this, because I will win. I am the true Kanto Champion, and I will fill the hole he left me.

I just wish he would be here to see it.