The steepest place has always been the asylum of liberty

-François Baron de Tott

This test was the hardest thing in my life, and I'm good at taking tests. I was old enough to test for my Moemon Trainer's License. I knew I could pass and get a license but that wasn't a problem. The issue was doing well enough to get a free moemon. I was one hundred and eight minutes into taking it, and on the very last question. I haven't even had a chance to look over my work.

I looked around the classroom. One other student was still taking the test. I'm surprise so many turn their test already when we had two hours. Maybe they had relatives to buy them supplies and get them a moemon contract.

Moemon contracts basically mean someone can train a moemon for a year. It comes with some subsidies for food and clothing, as well as other discounts for trainers under nineteen years of age. After that a bit more than a year, a moemon is considered a full citizen under Kalos law. A trainer is also obligated to allow a moemon to see the cities of Kalos and to evolve to their full potential. The school age trainer still has to study for schooling and only travels during break.

I looked at the question again.

Who was the first elected moemon mayor of a historically human town or city?

The answer was Gerald Ne'erfox of Ecruteak City. He was a girafarig who was elected although most people think he got into the job by some sort of loophole now-a-days. The problem is that this test was multiple questions and all of the answers were about 150 year after that. They wanted a Kalos Equality Movement answer. I was like eight during these events and wasn't caught up on the finer details. Heck, I didn't even know the test would cover this subject.

I circled the answer I thought was correct. I had about eight minutes left to look over 160 questions. I was horrified with some of the wrong answers I spotted. I must have blanked out. I've even skipped over some! For the next few minutes, I've played

"Time!" the teacher said.

I quickly filled in the last circle not knowing what it even said. Well, I had a 20% chance of getting that one right.

"Nathan," said Andrew my best friend, "How well do you think you did on the test."

"I think I might have well enough to get a moemon partner assigned to me, but I'm not sure," I said.

"I spent the entire two hours doing it," Andrew said, "I messed up when I skipped one and put a bunch of answers in the wrong row. That took a half hour off my time. I kept erasing marks up until the end."

"I took the entire time doing it also. Now I'm worried I did the same thing."

"I can't imagine you doing worse than me on a test."

"Thanks, I hope you get a moemon too," I said.

Moepedia: Moemon contracts

Moemon contracts come in three general values: Standard, Silver, and Gold. Each of this are either bought or reassigned to a moemon. Each contract applies to one moemon but is spent by the trainer. The value of the contract determines how much money is given for food, clothing, and other expenses. The sex and species of the moemon is also taken into account. The contract lasts for sixteen months which is the duration of the mandatory training period.

Earning badges in gym battles also grants either a free standard contract or an upgrade to silver.

It's been a week since the test and results were going to be posted today. They were supposed to be posted yesterday, but today there was a crowd around the student bulletin board. Vaniville High School was a small school and there were only around one hundred student in my year, only about sixty of which took the test. In no time did we actually get to through the crowd and to the two printed pieces of paper that held the lists. The bottom list was the failures, about half of them in fact.

The slightly larger list on top was all the people who qualified for a license. The top dozen or so names were getting moemon contracts and were marked with asterisks.

"Fuck," said Andrew, "Last year didn't have it this bad. Prices for were high this year."

I saw Andrew's name one below the asterisk marked names.

"So are you getting one?" I asked

"My parents said they will get me one if I almost make it. Also, do you know what the double asterisk means?"

"No"

I looked at the top of the list and saw the double asterisk, and my name next to it.

"I did the best?" I asked out loud.

"Yeah," said a girl I barely knew, "you're the smart kid."

A couple days later, I was pulled out of class by the principal and lead outside to the parking lot.

"What's this about?" I asked

"Your score qualified you for a Regional Award Certificate. You're getting a gold level moemon contract, which is the highest level," she said.

"Why wasn't I told anyone of this," I asked.

"I would have it I knew about this more than an hour ago," she said, "You would have been giving a speech yesterday otherwise. You'll get the rest of the day off for scoring in the top six in the region."

We stopped in front of a random red car with a man in front.

"This is Mark," the principal said, "he is working directly for Professor Sycamore. "

"I'm also the record holder for the qualification test," Mark said, "but that's not an important detail."

"So this is an official school sanctioned trip?" I asked pointing uneasily at the random stranger's car.

"I'm the principal and I got your parent's permission."

Mark opened up the back door for me. The seat on the opposite side was filled up with stuff, but I got in. There was a male delphox driver. Mark got in the passenger side door.

"No need to wear a seatbelt," Mark said, "we have a psychic driving."

"We all wear seatbelts!" said the delphox, "I'm not avoiding cops with the kid in the car."

"Kid?" Mark said, "He's a year younger than me."

"You look about six years apart to be honest," the delphox said.

"So did you evolve a delphox from finnekin in a year," I asked.

"Yeap, Roger and I make the best team. We work out together even, although he prefers to read."

Thinking back, getting a best friend is one of the major reasons I wanted to be a moemon trainer. I didn't have that many friends. I suppose I would get along with a fennekin the best since they are supposed to be smart. I don't know how many people feel the same way. Only slightly more than half of everyone wanted to be a moemon trainer. Much of the appeal of being a trainer has been lost due to moemon being officially equal to trainers. I guess many trainers back in the day wanted to be dominate over there moemons, even having pacts where they would force them to have sex. The trainers these days just seem to be looking for friendship.

Kalos was spare from much of the damage of the revolution. It had some of the most conservative laws in the world, far behind the values of the people. Change was coming and humans support full moemon rights. Many thought it would be the end of moemon trainers and that wild moemon would just blended into society as they flocked to civilization. That would have been disastrous in its own way.

The wild moemon would have had all the right, except that the civilized moemon turned out to want nothing to do with them. Being trained and evolved by humans and learning the ways of society set them apart from the less civilized. Moemon trainers had a new purpose to training moemon for society. They could still be moemon battle masters, given their moemon decided to stay with them after the sixteen months were over.

"You're going to enjoy training moemon," said Mark, "the gold contract with your starter is pretty nice as well, and so is the free silver one. If you take the league challenge and get all 8 badges, then you'll have five silvers and one gold. Just remember to study and you'll all set."

"I guess that is pretty good. If only I was good enough at school to get ahead, I would have plenty of time to do that. I have mostly breaks of two weeks, like what's coming up this weekend."

We stopped at an internet café in Aquacorde Town. It was only about a twenty minute drive. It was also getting quite hot as the sun rose. I guess summer wasn't technically over.

"Why are we here," I asked, "Are the moemon here?"

"No," said Mark, "but I can get a secure connection to Professor's Sycamore's lab from here"

Mark turned on a computer terminal and opened a teleconference up. Professor Sycamore appeared on screen.

"Ah, Mark, Nathan," he said, "I'm so glad to see you. I've been stalling so that Nathan can get a fair choice."

"For two hours?" Mark asked.

"Nearly two hours," the professor said "I was so worried when I got the list of students and one was from a school I've never heard of. It's a good thing I went with my instinct and checked up with the principal. Never trust administration."

"So what the the choices? Fennekin, froakie, and chespin?" I asked

"It seems that froakie is the most popular one this time around. I have two of each and you are one of five trainers," Professor Sycamore said.

The screen then showed three pokeballs, each with a picture of a moemon. The chespin was the only girl, and she was very cute and appeared to have slight bigger muscles on her arms than the other two. The froakie was doing some ninja pose and the fennekin was shooting fire out of his stick.

"I choose the fennekin," I said.

"Good, that's doesn't seem to be a conflict then," the professor said.

The professor's hand extended from off-screen and grabbed the pokeball with the fennekin picture. A few seconds later it materalized on a telepad.

"Congratulations, this fennekin is now in your care," the professor said.

"Thank you," I said.

"Nathan, if you don't mind, I really want to back to Lumiose and I'm obligated to bring you home," said Mark, "it's only barely past noon and it's already above thirty degree Celsius."

"Okay, I guess I can my moemon can wait fifteen minutes," I said.

As I reentered the car I looked at the pokeball. I know the moemon can toggle it's ability to hear. This means speaking to it may mean you're just speaking to an inanimate object. Still, it might be best to talk in case he was listening.

"Hey, there's soda and ice cream back at my house. It's a pretty hot day today," I said, "I hope we can be best friends."

The was no response from the pokeball. They really should put an audio indicator on it.