You and Me
I've never liked PokéBalls. Going inside one is like sucking the soul from your body. Your mind floats for a moment and you feel your body dissipating into bits and pieces of nothingness. It's your eyes that remain the longest, as if to taunt you with one final glimpse of the outside world. Then the darkness closes in, that unbearable darkness. You lie there waiting in that darkness for what seems an eternity, mind dulled and senses numbed, all emotions drifting mindlessly about save for a gnawing ache of loneliness.
I never used mind the darkness so much. Everyday, Ava would let me out to play in the sun and morning dew. Ava was my trainer, but she was my friend long before I knew the role of Pokémon and trainer.
"Someday," she'd say in that decisive voice of hers, lying on her back in the grass and gazing up into the sky. "Someday I'm going to be the greatest Pokémon master of all time. And you're going to help me. We'll do it together, just like we do everything else." Then she'd turn over and hug me around the neck. "You're my best friend," Ava would murmur into my fur. "You and me together. I promise that we'll make it."
On the day of her tenth birthday, Ava and I traveled into the next town over to get her Pokémon license. There was a small, dilapidated building on the outskirts which bore a sign reading "Official Pokémon League Registration Office" in peeling red letters. There was a counter at the end of the room, a counter so tall that Ava had to stand on her tiptoes to see over to the other side, where a man in an official League uniform was seated at a desk.
The man took one look at Ava and shook his head wearily. "You'll never make it," he stated, voice cold and flat. "Pokémon training takes commitment, and that's something most kids today don't have. Besides, you're much too young. Go home, little girl, and come back when you're ready."
Through a mixture of threatening, wheedling, and whining, Ava managed to extract a Pokémon license from the man. He grumbled quite a bit more before approving Ava. No trainer from our small town had ever made it to the League Championships and become a Pokémon master. But I knew my trainer was different. Ava had commitment. Ava knew how to keep a promise.
Ava and I trained hard for many long days. The days turned into weeks, and the weeks in months. Battle by battle, we fought our way to the Viridian City Gym.
The Gym Leader wasn't there when we arrived in Viridian. Even though all the townspeople insisted that he would not be returning for another few weeks, and even though numerous trainers had already given up and left, Ava demanded to know the Gym Leader's whereabouts. After much persistence and many days in Viridian, we discovered the Gym Leader had gone to the Cinnabar Island Gym to inspect damage from a recent volcanic eruption.
We took the first boat out of Viridian to Cinnabar. Ava spent most of the trip leaning over the railing, for she suffered constantly from an acute case of seasickness. "We'll find him," she promised to me, no matter how green she was looking. "I promise we will."
Once in Cinnabar, we picked our way through hardened strips of lava and the wreckage of the Cinnabar Gym, only to be informed that the Viridian Gym Leader had returned to his Gym. Hastily, we made our way to the docks and prepared for the long journey back.
In Viridian, however, the Gym Leader refused to see any challengers. The doors to the Gym were locked closed, and the Gym Leader himself never emerged from within. And every single day, Ava would go up to those locked doors and pound on them with her fists, demanding to be admitted as a challenger. No matter how many times her hands had to be bandaged, or how often a guard would arrive to throw her out, my trainer was relentless. She bashed her fists until they were dark with bruises and yelled until her voice was hoarse and croaking. And still the Gym Leader did not open his doors.
Others trainers came and left, shaking their heads at Ava. "She's crazy," they would whisper among themselves. "She's going to kill herself with this foolishness."
But I stood by my trainer's side, until one day, the Gym doors were opened at last. Ava fell back in surprise, for there was the Viridian Gym Leader, arms folded and a smile on his face.
"Never, in my entire life, have I witnessed a trainer as committed as yourself," he informed Ava wryly. "Come, let us battle."
Ava and I battled fierce and hard. We won the Earth Badge.
But while administering the Badge to Ava, the Gym Leader reached around his neck and pulled off a silver chain. And at the end of the chain sparkled a small blue stone, not unlike a Badge itself.
"Take this," he said, giving it to Ava. "I won it long ago from a very talented individual. Now you have won it from me. Take it as a symbol of your perseverance, and someday the world will know you had what it took to be the best."
Ava was so proud that she had the stone cut in two and reset on separate chains. One half of the stone she repainted silver, the other gold. "That's you and me," she told me, hanging the gold half around my neck and the silver one around her own. "Gold and silver. No matter what, I'll always be your most precious friend of all. And you'll always be mine."
After many more battles, Ava and I returned home. Ava spent many days boasting of her success as a Pokémon trainer, but her bragging fell upon deaf ears. No one wanted to hear Ava's stories of Pokémon battles. The other children sneered and mocked her when Ava told them what she had done at the Viridian Gym, and the adults shook their heads and walked away.
"Imagine going to all that trouble, just for a single Pokémon battle," they scoffed. "The girl's not right in the head. Why couldn't she have become something sensible; gone to school and gotten a proper job? What a vex to her parents, such a disgrace to her poor family!"
And around her, the other children made sharp comments and biting taunts. "Ava and her stupid Pokey-man!" they jeered whenever my trainer passed. "Can't she make any friends besides that stupid Pokey-mutt that follows her around everywhere? What don't you just grow up, Ava? Why do you have to keep on playing those dumb games?"
Ava always shouted angrily back, but I ignored them and held my head high. Ava was my best friend. We had vowed to be the greatest trainer and Pokémon. Nothing could possibly stand in our way.
We moved on, battled some more trainers and won some more Badges. But the spark in Ava's eyes had faded, and doubt had rooted itself where none had existed before. The battles became less and less frequent, the journeys to distant Gyms procrastinated. After one long battle, my golden chain was broken. Ava promised to fix it for me and put in on top of her bureau drawer. It lay there for quite some time, gathering dust and dulling.
Then, one day, Ava didn't call for me to come out from my PokéBall. I floated there in the drifting darkness, mind numb and soul yearning to be set free. But Ava would call for me, I knew she would. Ava was my trainer. Ava was my best friend.
So I waited in my PokéBall, what little conscious I still had hovering patiently in place. I waited as my memories became a fuzzy blur and Ava's voice grew further and further away. I waited as even the pain of being alone began to dull.
After a while, I lost what it meant to be alive in that dark, lonely place. Bit by bit, the darkness wrapped itself around my soul.
Sweat trickling down her neck, Rowan gave the old cardboard box one more heave. It came out of the attic corner in a thick cloud of dust, making her sneeze.
"It was so nice of you to come up here," her eighteen year-old companion said gratefully as the two of them set about opening the box's tucked flaps. "I'd never be able to finish all this cleaning by myself."
Rowan smiled back and tried to stifle another sneeze. She had been in the neighborhood, and the girl Ava, Chris's young cousin, was family. "I'm glad to help out," Rowan said. "Chris says you received a scholarship just last month, Ava."
"Yeah." Ava let loose a wide, determined grin. "I'm going to college. And I'll be the first person from my town to even try. All the support I've gotten from the family and the neighbors has been just great. I know I can make it. Oh, what's this?"
Inside the box they had dragged out lay a dusty old PokéBall.
"I can't believe I still have some of my old PokéBalls in that box," Ava said sheepishly to Rowan. "You see, I got rid of all that stuff a long time ago. I was a real nutcase back in those days, wanted to be a Pokémon master and all that. It kind of embarrasses me now that I think about it…no offense intended, Mrs. Chimera, with you having been a Pokémon master yourself."
Rowan smiled. "None taken, Ava." Picking up the PokéBall, she weighed it briefly in her hand before pressing the silver release button.
There was a flash of red light that illuminated the entire room. When it had finally faded, a young Espeon stood bemusedly in the middle of the attic floor, blinking in shock and wonder at the sunlight streaming through the nearby window.
"Is she one of yours, Ava?" Rowan asked curiously.
Ava looked into the Espeon's wide dark eyes as the Pokémon took a step forward and nuzzled her hand gently. "I guess she must be," Ava said finally, reaching out a tentative hand and stroking the Espeon's head. "She's just been there all this time, and I never remembered she was up here." She bolted up with a start as she saw the Pokémon pawing frantically through the box. "What is the poor thing doing?" she asked Rowan anxiously.
Rowan shook her head, not understanding herself.
Finally, the Espeon emerged with two dusty necklaces, one with half a stone of silver and the other with half a stone of gold. She took them and held them expectantly out towards a confused Ava.
"What's the matter, sweetie?" Ava asked curiously. "Like the pretty necklace, do you? Oh, but it's all filthy! And one of those chains is broken!"
Rowan's hand came down over the golden necklace and turned it over in inspection. "I can fix it, if you like," she said, handing the broken chain back to the Espeon. "Ava, I can take this Pokémon to my home. I have a little daughter, Lody, who's interested in Pokémon. I'm sure she'd love to take care of your Espeon."
"Fine by me," Ava shrugged. "I don't know what I'd do with her otherwise. The pound does seem such a cruel place to leave such a pretty little creature."
Looking down, Rowan watched as the Pokémon pawed hurriedly through the box once more, coming across a scribbled picture of a little girl and a smiling Espeon standing under the sun. In a child's hand, a single sentence had been scrawled at the top of the picture. Silent tears smeared the letters as the Pokémon read, leaving inky smudges on the yellowed paper.
I'M goIng to be the gREatest POKémon master oF All TIme. YOu and mE toGetHer.
Notes: I'm pretty sure not everyone, even the Pokémon world, approves of Pokémon training. And yeah, the Espeon in question is Amulet from "Star in the Storm."
Does anyone know why I can't get FanFiction.Net to display different fonts and font sizes other than the standard? It's really driving me crazy.