A/N. That one OC-centric pokémon fic I promised I'd write. Well, here it is.

For the appearance of the main OC, look on my DeviantArt page, she's my most (recent-ish) drawing. She's got a loose backstory too, slightly separate from this fic for those of you writers who need/want an OC (big if, I'd also greatly appreciate it if you ask me before you use her.)

Anyways, this is my first completely OC-centric story that doesn't have an actual main character from the canon as a focus. I'll try not to make her too Mary-sue, (yes, I did the test thing and realized I couldn't answer half the question because there were words I didn't understand, or I wasn't entirely sure if the context applied in the way I was thinking it did…). I'll be relying on you guys for this mostly…

Anyways… Most of the canon characters won't appear (unless they are gym leaders…) and I'll need additional OCs to fill out some roles here… (That means you peoples should look at my bio for a Trainer Profile! Remember: Be detailed and specific!)

Summary: She wasn't a tragedy waiting to happen, but she had a feeling that she probably wouldn't be coming home any time soon. Because really, what had they expected to happen?

Where a young girl is sent out rather reluctantly on a journey she is almost certain she won't survive, with a less than idea pokémon that she chose for herself.

Disclaimer: I only own Row, that is it…


EP 01- Skid Row Mistakes


"And Ladies and gentlemen, that's it! A landslide victory from-"

"Well that was anti-climactic…" Brown eyes stared at the now black screen, dead without the electricity pouring out of the nearest outlet to feed it and the remote lost to the magical demons of the living room couch for the rest of the day, or at the very least until someone came home and bothered to find the damn thing…

"And you expected any different?" the voice came from somewhere in the kitchen, a disappointed, bored frown only deepening into a slight grimace as the speaker finally revealed herself, a tall green haired girl well into her teens and looking for all intense and purposes, as if she owned the place. She didn't, they both knew, but it was that kind of blatant sassiness that had gotten her to where she was today. And he wasn't entirely sure if he'd have had his younger sister any other way. "Bro, that was a Kitty League tournament hosted by the chairman of the K.R.P.F.C*, not one of those big meanie, high pressure championships you specifically go out of your way to compete in." she smirked, the same brown eyes he held glinting back at him with a growing sense of mischief, and he wasn't entirely certain whether he wanted to know what was going through that head of hers. "Be glad you saw anything good at all. That's a bunch of six, seven, and eight years olds playing patty cake with each other!"

"Yeah… well…" the objections would've fallen on deaf ears, especially when she simply turned to head back into the kitchen. She still hadn't finished breakfast after all, and with their father putting in early hours at his job once again, and their mother passed out upstairs and expressly forbidden from the kitchen as a whole for various very good reasons, the duty simply had fallen to whoever had gotten up the earliest.

"Well, what? You gonna give me another one of your 'Diamond in the Rough' speeches, or should I hold out till this afternoon?"

"Must you be so mean?"

"Well… Somebody needs to let out all that air before you get a big head!" came the mocking, entirely unapologetic call. He sniffed in false indignation, or maybe it was genuine, he wasn't about to nitpick, and spared a glance at the clock.

"Hey… Kirsten?"

"What?"

"Where's Row?"

"At school?"

"Hasn't come down yet… unless she snuck out?" Kirsten ducked back out of the kitchen, a delicate eyebrow quirked in blatant disbelief, as if he'd just told her their mother was actually a twenty foot tall man who sang show tunes and did ballet in his spare time.

"Matt… This is Row we're talking about… You know? Our baby sister who's just shy of being ten years younger than us both?"

"Yeah, so? Your point?"

"Matt, the girl can't run for more than a minute without her lungs practically giving out on her."

"That doesn't stop her in school…"

"Yeah, which is why we constantly have her teachers calling home and asking our parents if she has asthma or something."

"Good point… ROW!"

"And he yells as if that's going to somehow do the trick when he's downstairs and nothing short of a rampaging tornadus would wake her up."

"Ah, you forget that this is Row, and normally she's up by now."

"Yeah, this is Row, again. She stayed up till three last night doing Arceus knows what…"

"Oh yeah…" and here he'd been hoping against all hope that he wouldn't have to go upstairs and physically get her up. Just as well though, it was coming up on ten, and the girl was already just shy of being half an hour late for school, plus he hadn't heard their mother's alarm clock go off yet, "I'll be back down in a bit, save me some pancakes-"

"I'M LATE!"

"…"

"Shut it, before I feed your pancakes to Princess and Bear."

"Yes ma'am…"


"Shit… shit-shit-shit!"

"Row, language!"

"Sorry!" It was an increasingly bad idea, but she'd never claimed to be one of the more brilliant people out there, and she was already running terribly late. Taking two or three steps at a time certainly wasn't going to hurt any… "Double shit!" Unless she slipped or tripped of course, then it would hurt a lot.

"Row!"

"Uh… Row? Breakfast?" She only just barely dodged her brother's drastically taller form, slipping through the small space the coffee table and sofa provided on her potentially disastrous short cut to the door.

"No time!"

"You're already late! Like really late!" she could practically see the spare glance he'd probably given the clock as he watched her hop over the hulking monstrosity he'd brought home after one particular journey to some far off region that had left him filthy rich, only for him to spend most of it in a little under a month's time on… well furniture and video games…

Not that she'd ever complain, because she'd certainly benefited from it.

"Doesn't matter!"

"Row!"

"What?!" she snapped, not entirely sure if she actually meant it, and glared at the form of her older sister in a plain white apron. There was a quirked eyebrow, one hand propped on her hop as an unimpressed look that she'd probably gotten from their father met her gaze.

"Breakfast."

"Feed it to Bear and Princess." She said in a tone she knew would've gotten her slapped had her father been present. Luckily, he was probably at work and wouldn't get home until half an hour after the academy let out.

"Smartass…" her sister shot at her retreating back, the door slamming shut and startling the two sleeping pokémon that had claimed the recently vacated seats of the larger sofa, much to her brother's increasing chagrin if the frustrated shout that echoed out of an open window was anything to go by.

"Bear! Princess! Arceus-damnit!"

"Matt!"

"Sorry!"


"Miss Wielder…" she winced, honestly she couldn't help it. Her teacher was staring her down, eyes filled with clear disappointment. And she didn't have to look him in the eye to know it. It was the look she always got whenever she managed to screw something up. Just as well too, because she was perfectly content to keep her own eyes glued permanently to the Arceus-awful linoleum floor underneath their feet. "… I'll let it slide this once since this is the first time you've been late this semester… but if it happens again…"

"I know, I know… Report home." How could she not when at least half the male population of her class alone had showed up an hour late at least at one point or another, their appearances all in various levels of disarray and upheaval.

One guy had even had the audacity to show up in nothing but his dress shirt and underpants. Now that had been an interesting day.

And thank Mew for her hair having the decency to grow into bangs, because there was no way she would've been able to hide the smile stretching across her lips at that memory. 'Damnit!'

"Now go find your seat young lady."

"Yes, sir." She mumbled, skirting around the edge to quickly take the seat farthest from the front.

She couldn't see a thing, considering she'd left her glasses at home in her rush to leave the house, but at that point, she really just didn't care. She'd already embarrassed herself once already showing up late and panting for air as if she'd just run a cross regional marathon. She wasn't about to compound on it by informing the teacher, and she certainly wasn't about to call her mother or either of her siblings and ask for them to deliver the pair.

She'd go blind and pretend that a zubat didn't have better eyesight than her.


"Alright class… And Anthony, I see you there sleeping, wake up! Remember your projects are due two weeks on Thursday. Make sure you are ready. I'm expecting your best work. Casey, if you're having issues, talk to me. Kyle, I want a check-in to see how far you've gotten, not today, but tomorrow, and Row." She winced, freezing in the doorway and almost causing a bit of a traffic accident as result.

'Damn, and I almost made it too.'

"We need to have a talk. Come here."

"But…"

"Miss Wielder." She waited in complete silence, watching as the rest of her classmates filed out of the room in resentment, and grimaced as three in particular stopped to laugh at her misfortune, before scurrying out of the room like rattata.

"Ah… Sir, I know I haven't been doing too good lately, but…"

"Row."

"I promise I'll do better, honest."

"Row-…"

"Really."

"Row!" she sighed, puffing air through her nose and stubbornly gluing her eyes to the floor again, ignoring the slight pain when her chewed up nails that had finally been growing out a little bit into the palm of her hand. "You're… well, I won't lie, you're in quite a bit of trouble. Ignoring the fact that you were late today, it baffles me, how you can do so well on the tests and still somehow manage to nearly flunk out of the class entirely."

"I'm sorry."

"You're a bright girl. I've seen it, you understand. I've seen it, the way your eyes light up when something finally clicks. You can learn, and you are… And yet you have such a low grade."

"I promised I'd do better…"

"Row, that's what you always say. And don't doubt, I've seen your record. You do great at the beginning of the semester. Amazing, in fact, and then you just stop. Your grades plummet, and… I can't see why. I want to help, I want to see you succeed. But you don't seem to want to try, at all."

"I am trying…"

"Are you? Are you really?" she knew he was trying to look her in the eye, trying to get her to do the same. He probably was hoping for something in her eyes to show that it clicked, that something he had said had gotten through… Well, she'd never been particularly good at listening, had she? "I'll schedule a meeting with your parents, see what we can do about this and see if maybe we can get those grades up. Go on, go home now… I'll see you next week."

Not if her parents didn't kill her first.

"Yes sir."


In actuality, she hadn't gone home immediately that afternoon. She'd purposefully missed the bus, and had simply walked half-way, before deciding on a different course and taking a bit of a detour into town.

She'd idled, knowing full and well that she was stalling, and eyeballed some of the stores, not actually bothering to head inside and take a closer look at anything. And then she'd wasted a couple more hours watching some of the visiting trainers who'd stumbled into town on their way to one of the major cities with the more well-known gyms battle each other. There were a couple of coordinators, but none of them quite so impressive as to draw her attention completely and she was almost certain that her sister probably would've blown them out of the water had she been present.

Lucky for them, because while her sister was no master coordinator, she was skilled and had been doing it for the better part of seven years now. She'd yet to win a competition though, but she'd also only ever competed in the more difficult ones, and those were never easy.

Eventually, the sun had completely sank under the horizon, and night had settled in like a blanket, sending most everyone with some sense in their heads scurrying back in doors. She still hadn't felt like going home though, so she'd further avoided the problem by slinking off to an old park that few people visited now.

A new, bigger, fancier one had been built closer to the center, and this one had kind of fallen into disrepair since, but enough people visited it that it hadn't completely fallen apart yet.


It wasn't until rather late, the old clock's hour hand striking what might've been nine but could've just as easily been ten with how dirty the glass had become, that someone finally found her.

"You know, I don't know whether I should be impressed that you managed to avoid the house for this long or not." Matt's voice echoed out across the empty space and silence, his expression unimpressed and his tone dripping heavy with incredulity as he eyed her from some feet away.

Bear was somewhere in the shadows behind him, digging through the bushes and probably looking for presents to bring home, but it was little footnotes and trivial details that she was focusing on only so she wouldn't have to face her older brother.

The nineteen year old wouldn't have it though, and plopped himself down rather bodily into the swing next to her, the rusted metal creaking under his weight as he watched her comparatively small form swing next to him.

"Mom's pissed… And Dad's even more pissed… And Sis is… either impressed that you finally managed to beat her record for avoiding home, or amused that you had the audacity to do so in the first place…" there was a beat of silence where he waited for her response, though what exactly he was expecting of her she hadn't the faintest clue.

She certainly wasn't about to guess or comply.

"…"

"Right, well, after they got pissed, and three hours passed they started getting concerned cuz you hadn't come home yet. I'm not even going to try and guess how exactly you managed to avoid them like that, but they practically tore the town upside down trying to find you." He let that image sink in before continuing, and if she hadn't been so completely depressed she might've laughed. "Mom thinks you're dead by the way, but she's also the first to jump to the worst conclusion her panicked brain can think of so… Dad's threatening to kill you the instant he finds you though."

"…"

"You know you're going to have say something eventually, right?"

"…"

"Right then, my baby sister has suddenly taken a vow of silence without letting anyone know…" there was a sharp whistle that cut through the air, and for a split second her heart stopped, the thought that her father had followed her brother here sending her into an almost panic. She calmed down though when she realized that it was only her brother, and his perfect mimicry of their father's usual commands and cues that the dog pokémon they kept as pets adhered to like trained soldiers.

Bear came bounding forward out of some bush on the far side of the park, leaping over a rusted see-saw that was far too dangerous to ever see use again and a rusted spring rider that looked ready to collapse the instant a pidgey landed on it a little too roughly in one go, not even slipping as she landed and sprinted the rest of the distance.

The fluffy furfrou grinned, dropping her head with a rather heavy thud into her own lap and she just stared into those blue eyes for a moment before she gave her an almost piteous whine and trotted over to her brother instead. She got the pet she wanted finally and set down with a huff.

"Well then, let's go. I found you now it's time to face the music." He grinned at his own joke, but it quickly disappeared when he got no other response than her standing up and shuffling her way out of the park and in what was probably the direction home. "I blame you, because I can't blame anyone else right now…" she heard him say behind her, just imagining the pokémon's confused and indignant expression as the normal-type glared up at her brother before huffing and walking away.


"Do I even want to know what in the world you were thinking?" she sat on the sofa, both her brother and sister having made themselves scarce rather quickly after she'd trudged her way through the front door and into the house. "Eight hours… you were gone for eight hours…"

"…"

"Where did I go wrong?"

"Your teacher, Mr. Harts, calls today saying that you are failing his class… You're failing all of your classes, and you choose to fucking do this?!" she flinched as a hand came slamming down on the table, her father's voice rising in volume as her eyes remained glue to the wooden surface. "Arceus-damnit! Look at your mother and I when we are talking to you!"

"I'm sorry…"

"Just… just go to your room."

"Yes sir…" she mumbled out, slipping passed both and running up the steps, ignoring her sister when she peaked out of her own room and more or less sliding into her own. She crawled into bed, pulling the covers over her head and told herself she wouldn't cry no matter what, because this was entirely her own fault and she knew it.


She'd woken to her alarm clock blaring some increasingly obscene noise the next day, the sun having not quite risen in the skies just yet, and blinked morosely at the little red numbers…

Why had she set the clock yesterday when school wasn't till next week?

She fumbled for the off button twice before finally managing to shut the thing off, stumbling back into bed to get some more sleep.

There wasn't anything to do, really. It was the weekend, and she didn't have friends to hang out with that lived a reasonable distance from her house. She probably wouldn't be allowed outside anyways after yesterday.

"Row, sweetie?" she grimaced, hoping she could pretend to have fallen asleep, rather than answering as her mother opened the door to her room, probably frowning at the sight of various toys littered across the floor. "Row, I know you're up. You don't fall back asleep so easily."

She could damn well pretend to.

There was a sigh somewhere and the bed sank as the woman sat down, a hand coming up to pull away at the covers. She stubbornly refused to let go though and kept her face buried in her pillow when she lost that battle.

"Row, listen… your father and I, we've been doing some thinking… School. School's clearly not working for you right now. And honestly, I don't know why… I thought I raised you better, maybe I haven't. I don't know, maybe it's not even me or you, or your father…" her mother stopped talking with another resigned sigh, and she frowned, daring a glance as she watched her mother stare out the window in contemplation. "I keep telling you, and telling you, and telling you, and it just doesn't click… We're going to see your teacher tomorrow, or maybe I am. Your brother's on house arrest right now for various reasons." Reasons probably revolving around her. "So if you need anything he's here. I need to get to the labs, the professor's run into some issues again and someone needs to feed the pokémon because poor Anna's gone and gotten herself sick again." A hand came down to pat her back as the weight disappeared, her mother standing up to leave.

"Your father is going to work late today. Stay in the house, please, both for today and tomorrow. No going outside, and no calling your friends. I'll be home late as well… I love you…"

"…" there was another sigh, and the click of the door shutting reached her ears, echoing in her own mind for a few minutes, maybe half an hour, before she went back to sleep.


"Welcome home!" she smiled at the greeting, hugging her eldest as she walked in before walking around him to set her purse down and remove her coat.

"Hi Matt, where's Kirsten?" she greeted back, pulling her hair into a ponytail as she tiptoed into the kitchen, only to be met by the stubborn wall that was her middle child.

"Right here and already aware of what your planning, Mother dearest."

"Too clever for your own good." Was the response she gave as she poked her daughter on the nose, kissing her on the forehead before slinking guiltily back to the living room. Matt had somehow managed to commandeer a spot on the sofa between the family pokémon in that time. Bear, the annoying little fur ball on one side propped up like she was queen of the household, while Princess remained splayed rather happily on the other, hogging whatever space was left and then some as she plopped her head rather demandingly into his lap.

"Always!"

"So how was your day?" she questioned giving both pokémon a fond scratch behind the ears before taking up a spot on the smaller one, pulling her laptop from its place to finish some work she'd had to start at the lab, but hadn't actually managed to get finished.

"Slow, boring… Really quiet."

"…" she nodded along silently, the repetitive clicking of the keys the only thing to break it, before she finally gathered enough of her thoughts not currently devoted to her work, to ask; "And Row?"

There was a frown there, and she watched with a growing sense of concern as her son's face twisted up in clear distress.

"Really quiet." Unfortunately that wasn't very telling. Row was always quiet when she got in trouble, regardless of the reason. She'd hole herself up in her room, and it was honestly anyone's guess for when she came out. Normally though, it was usually whenever she was hungry or got thirsty enough, but she usually made a rather hasty retreat back to her room after she'd gotten whatever it had been she'd come down for in the first place. So it wasn't anything particularly new…

"But she's eaten, right?" Row always ate, even if it was one meal a day. She couldn't cook but, she'd always been able to scrounge something together.

"Honestly?" there was a beat of silence, and she nodded, looking her son in the eye. "I wouldn't know."

"How would you not know? You were told to stay at the house…"

"And I did. But while I was awake, Row never came down to my knowledge. I mean, I took a nap on the sofa for an hour or two, and she might've snuck in then but…"

"Not possible!" Kirsten's voice came echoing from somewhere in the kitchen, accentuated by the clatter of various pots and pans. Something hit the floor with a loud clatter, and the eighteen year old swore loudly before joining them in the living room with a frustrated huff. "I came home a little after he'd passed out, and I didn't catch her in the kitchen. Kiddo hasn't left her room at all today."

"And you let her starve?"

"No, no." the older girl shook her head rather violently, looking like her mother had just told her that that one boy down the street had just gotten married to a lady fifteen times his age. "I cooked something warm up, figuring she might be hungry, but she'd taken the chance while you and dad were gone to lock her bedroom door. I knocked, but she didn't answer… so I left the food on the floor."

"For the pokémon to eat?"

"Nah, they didn't touch it. Came up thirty minutes later to see if the plate was still there, and I don't think she even looked at it. It's in the fridge now, but she hasn't eaten-where are you going?" she stomped up the stairs with a huff, only pausing briefly to stare the two eldest down.

"I swear she gets this from the two of you." Was her only response as she grabbed the unbent hanger her husband had straightened out to pick the locks in the upstairs bedrooms.


She fiddled for a few seconds, cussed once, though she'd never admit to it aloud and practically swore to one of the legendary pokémon when she nicked a finger before the doorknob finally gave a satisfying click and turned.

What met her sight was a rather depressing thing. Her daughter sat huddled into her bed, covers wrapped around her tiny frame like a cocoon, and her computer flashing against pretty blue eyes rimmed red with clearly dried tears. There were a couple of empty soda cans she had half a mind to scold the girl about, but she'd come here for a reason and an unclean room could wait until she figured out what was going on.

"So both Matt and Kirsten tell me you haven't eaten anything?" dead silence, and she realized belatedly that the insistent, rhythmic humming in the air was coming from the earbuds she had jammed into both ears. Row had turned the volume up on whatever she'd been watching to max volume. "Arceus give me patience…" she mumbled under her breathe, walking further into the room, carefully picking her way passed the number of obstacles the child had strewn about before sitting on the bed and carefully yanking the cords out of her ears.

The look she got in return had to have been something she'd picked up from her father. She was almost intimidated.

"Don't give me that look young lady. You're already in trouble." She quickly reprimanded, shutting the computer by closing it before taking it and placing it on the nearby desk. She got a rather deep frown in return, but ignored it for more productive things. "Now, someone in this room hasn't eaten today. Downstairs. Now."

"I'm not hungry." She mumbled, taking her cocoon of blankets and laying down. She huffed, knowing that was fat lie, and pulled the covers out of her grasp.

"That wasn't up for debate young lady. Besides, there is something I want to discuss with you, and it will not be done with you playing metapod in your bed." She said, pushing her out of bed and guiding her downstairs with little choice in the matter. Her daughter would not vegetate if she had anything to say about it, however badly the little one might've wanted to.


"Uh oh…" was the whispered response as they both came downstairs, her two eldest rather quick to disappear back upstairs. She rolled her eyes at their behavior, eyeballing the clock for a second to see how much time they would have to talk before her husband came home in a potentially foul mood.

"I've done a lot of thinking today, while at work. And I… I haven't quite decided yet, but I want to ask you a question." She said, fixing a sandwich and placing it in front of the girl. She only stared at it for a few seconds, before picking at the bread. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

It was a simple question, with a not so simple answer, and she'd probably heard it enough times at school. Most children younger than her daughter wouldn't have hesitated to answer, but…

Her daughter hadn't ever been like most children. Something in her brain just didn't seem to ever tick quite right when compared to other children around her age. Others would've said something along the lines of being a pokémon master, or a master coordinator, or an idol. Something bigger than what they currently were, someone famous and that other children would idolize when they eventually became their age.

Most children would have been almost instantaneous in their responses…

Her daughter jut remained silent, still picking at the sandwich she'd been given.

"Row…"

"Don't know…"

"Of course you don't." and that was the problem really. The crux of the problem right then and there.

Row didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up. She didn't have a goal or a dream to aspire to. She just doing things to do them. Because she had to, or was supposed to, and never because she wanted to. And that just wasn't enough to get her through school.

She remember when they'd enrolled the now twelve year old girl, back when she'd been even tinier and had wanted to be a pokémon trainer. Not a master, but a trainer. Simple, and easy, something to look forward to when she was little. She hadn't necessarily wanted to be big and famous, but she had found pokémon so neat at the time.

It had come after she'd taken her to work with her one day, after her older brother had gone running off to a new region and her sister was off somewhere competing in something she'd just recently discovered and had fallen in love with almost instantly. Her husband had had work that day, and the professor had explicitly told her that it was okay. She didn't need to worry, or rush to find a babysitter at last minute. The lab pokémon would gladly keep a curious four year old busy.

The little girl had fallen in love almost instantly with the strange little creatures that played games with her so willingly, no matter how strange and nonsensical the rules had been.

So she'd enrolled her in the academy, the professor having pulled some strings to help. At the very least, even if she hadn't graduated, she would be prepared, and if her dream had ever changed she'd be able to stay, learning what she could in the less pokémon-intensive classes to one day be a productive member of society.

She'd thought that if Row had ever given up on that dream or changed her mind, she'd have found something else to fall in love with eventually…

Apparently that had been her first mistake in a growing list of them.

And she should've known better by now. Row did best when she had a goal to work towards, when she was doing something she loved. And right at the moment, there was really nothing about that academy, or any school for that matter, that Row loved or wanted anything to do with. So she was failing, horribly, and while it was easy to get her back on her feet, keeping her on her feet was becoming increasingly hard.

What was she going to do?


"Problems at home?"

"Oh! Professor!"

"You've been sighing quite a lot over here, and staring at that picture of your family…" a kind smile, the professor always had a kind smile for them, gentle and understanding... "Which one is it this time? Matt giving you heart attacks with his pokémon training? Or is it Kirsten and her increasing issues with her friends?"

Did she really talk about her family that much? She hadn't meant to. Family life and work life were supposed to stay separate. It wasn't very professional… "Or it is Row again?"

Row again? It should never be Row again. Row shouldn't be a problem child, her baby shouldn't have ever been a point of stress like that. Her boss shouldn't have ever had to ask if it was "Row again."

"How?"

"She's the youngest, right? Row that is." She couldn't help but nod, stunned as she was. "It must be hard, being the youngest to two amazing trainers. Her sister's already so famous… And her brother! I hear he's been eating up the circuits lately… I still can't figure out how that boy manages to lose every competition he's competed in, when his pokémon are so clearly well-trained."

"They are amazing, aren't they?"

"And they started out so young too, you must be proud of them."

"I-I am… Especially with…"

"With how many mistakes you made when you were their age?"

"When I was younger. You know the story… I just…"

"You had an overbearing mother and was living in a bad place. You wanted out, and pokémon training was the key. Yeah, you had it rough, and people have done so for far more nobler reasons, but there are people out there who have made worse decisions for a lot less. You did what you thought was best at the time."

"Yeah, but those pokémon, I don't think they'll ever forgive me."

"Maybe not, but look where you are now! Three beautiful kids and a happy marriage… most of the time."

"We do fight a lot, don't we?"

"Good, you're smiling."

"H-Huh?"

"The pokémon don't like it too much when you don't smile, it upsets them too, and they get concerned. You get so depressed so easily…"

"Sorry."

"Don't apologize… But… You know, you don't talk about Row nearly as much, can I hear about her?"

"What is there to say?"

"Depends on what you're willing to tell…"

"She's… she's the little bubble of life! You should see her. She's gotten so big since the last time she visited… And yet she's still so tiny. She laughs easily, smiles and her whole face lights up. She's got these songs she sings, and I swear I can't pin what kind is her favorite. She… she doesn't judge and is always so accepting…"

"But…"

"But she can be so mercurial sometimes… She's got her father's temper, my impatience, she's so gentle, and yet she can be so mean sometimes… She's got a vindictive streak the size of Mt. Coronet."

"She sounds interesting."

"She is… She's clever too, brilliant little cunning thing. I can't keep up with her sometimes. She's so quick-witted." She wasn't even going to get started on the 'Chip on your Shoulder' Incident… "She'll do something without thinking it through completely, and then just when you think she won't have a comeback she spits out these jokes and gets everyone in the room laughing. She's so smart and yet…"

"And yet?"

"She's failing school, badly. And I can't figure out why or what to do… I see her drowning there, and it's like I don't know how to swim and she's too far out to save."

"But you want to try?"

"Badly… She's… She's so unlike her brother and sister…"

"Maybe that's the problem."

"Huh?"

"You and your husband, might be expecting more out of her than you think."

"Explain." She didn't like that tone.

"Well…"

"No wells, just out with it. What do you mean?"

"Mattias is this up-n-coming tank of a pokémon trainer with a team that would make quite a few gym leaders jealous. He's got the skill, the talent, the charisma. He'd clearly go far and we both know it. A blind man could see it. And then there's your middle child, a star in the making. The day she wins a Grand Festival, it's over, she'll have the entire world in the palm of her hand. They set such high expectations… The bars been placed so high in its almost like mountain…"

There's a brief pause, and she knew what the professor was doing, letting the words sink in. "And then there's little Row. Strange little Row, who is clever, and cunning, and brilliant, but is having difficulties in school, who isn't out on the road right now making a name for herself at age ten, like her siblings. Who is twelve as of late last year and still at home all but vegetating in her room…"

"I'm expecting too much of her?"

"Maybe… I don't know, I don't know Row well enough to be able to tell. All I know is that you want what's best for your youngest, and it seems like her best isn't something she's willing to give right now."

"What should I do?"

"Well… it is April… And that day is coming up relatively soon…"

"But Row…"

"True, Row seems to have lost her interest in pokémon training of any kind from what I can tell… But maybe that's just what she needs."

"We have pokémon at home though. Bear and Princess…"

"But she's grown up with those two around her since she was little, and they're not her responsibility. They're everyone else's."

"Do you think it would work? I mean… Row just…"

"Who knows, but it's worth a shot. Right?"

"I guess…"

"Here, how about this. Friday, next week, is the date. That's when all everyone will be showing up to get a pokémon and start their journey. There's gonna be a couple kids Row's age and older, as well as some that are younger. I'll reserve a spot for her, just in case. In the meantime, you think it over. Talk with her teachers maybe, see if there isn't something else they could do to help her. If you decide this is the better option, I'll get those pesky forms filled out and you bring her in. We'll get her started and on her feet, and well, we'll see if she can finally learn how to swim."

"O-Ok… Yes, ok. I'll… I'll talk about it with Vince and see what he thinks."


Maybe… Maybe the professor was right…

It couldn't hurt to try, right?


A/N. So what do you guys think? This has to be the longest chapter I've written at 6443 words as of six words ago. And I'm pretty happy about it.

Anyways, as I was writing this I was listening to several songs including P!nk's Walk of Shame and Slut Like You, and Melanie Martinez's Mad Hatter from her recently released album of Cry Baby (YAY!)

Um… Just as a reminder, I do need OCs for this story, ones that can fill roles like a "Rival" and maybe a few traveling companions, cuz this is not a character cut out for traveling on her own without supervision of some kind just yet… All backgrounds of all kinds are welcome, but make sure their backstories are reasonable and within the realm of possibility. Nothing too outlandish, please.

Also, if you want a character with a legendary, ask first and make sure you have something that can take its place if I decide otherwise. A guide is in my bio if you need it, and I suggest at least giving it a look over so you know what I'm expecting to some degree.

Only leave OC Trainer Profiles in your reviews if you do not have an account on this website. If you do have an account, send them to my PM.

Anyways, please leave a review and see ya!