The Summer of Two Island
…
Chapter 1 - Brianna
I have been on this earth for as long as time can remember.
I have seen the rise and fall of man, the creation of the first Pokemon and the first contract between Pokemon and Trainer. Yet through it all, the strength and weakness of life has never ceased to amaze.
I had been following her since childhood.
Hers, not mine. For a teenage girl to comprehend my age would be wish upon her an aneurysm, at best.
I am Mew. I trust I need no introduction.
She is Brianna, a young girl. As I watched her step off the bus and find herself in Vermillion City once again, I felt a very certain satisfaction.
To the rest of the bus, she was just another girl. Sixteen, maybe seventeen years old at best. Brunette curls that looped toward the bottom, and bangs that hugged her forehead and framed hazel eyes. Chubby cheeks, a backpack and worn jeans.
Nothing special. Sullen, perhaps. Quiet. A bookish type.
Brianna's fellow bus passengers follow her out and wait for their luggage. Their first glimpse of Vermillon City—a run-down bus terminal with tile floors, plastic chairs, and routine brawls between the homeless—complements the engine exhaust aroma poignantly. It followed Brianna for weeks once she left the first time. It wouldn't wash out of her clothes. A permanent scar on the fabric, but she could remove a stained sweater or soiled shirt. Other scars would not be so easily forgotten.
I get ahead of myself!
Brianna always traveled light. She strolls inside the terminal, through the stained swinging doors and past the waiting travelers. Only young Trainers or old, feeble wash-outs rode the bus. You'd think there would be an exception but I promise you, no.
She walks out onto the sidewalk, then. The sun blinds her. She remembers this heat and shrugs. She packed light, meaning two shirts and one pair of pants. Nothing to alleviate the blaze overhead, but she did remember to bring something for her eyes.
She takes the hat from her bag and throws it on her head fast, like a cloak. A simple white plush cap. It made her recognizable, but that would be a good thing, where she was headed. Vermillion City did like her heroes.
The taxi pulls up. It rolls past her at first. When the older gentleman driving realizes his fare is old enough to be his daughter, yet pretty enough for him to forget, he pulls over. The door swings open.
Brianna slides in and closes the door. The taxi pulls into the also-iconic Vermillion traffic. More Trainers have been stopped by gridlock than by defeat on these roads.
She is quiet. Par the course, but it jars the taxi driver. The last time a kid rode in his cab with one bag and a deathly silence, he had ran out on the fare. That cost him a few bottles that night, for sure.
The taxi driver clears his throat. No reaction. Then, louder: "Kid?"
Brianna looks up, just enough that her eyes connect in the mirror.
"Where you headed?"
She reaches into her pocket. Brianna pushes the frayed, folded page through the dividing cab window. The driver scans it and nods. He got an answer, just not the one he wanted.
"Huntington," he says. The attempt to make conversation doesn't take. He has to jump-start: "I've got a few friends from Huntington."
The driver glances back again. Nothing.
Then, worse than nothing. The girl opens her bag and fiddles with something inside. No doubt her wallet. She's counting the money she doesn't have, he knows. She's wondering if it's okay to pay what she has and apologize the rest of the way. On another night, he might consider it. She's pretty, definitely. But not that pretty.
"It should be about fifty bucks," he says.
Brianna perks up. She's awake, those hazel eyes wide.
"Here to Huntington," the driver repeats. "In case you don't have it, or something." Then, in the silence: "Just saying. You look pretty suspicious." Just for laughs: "What, you got a piece in there?"
She doesn't have a weapon, of course. Not necessarily.
Brianna's a bright child, but in social situations, she could certainly use prodding from time to time. She blinks once, twice, three times for the world, and then is fishing through the smaller bag pocket.
"I didn't mean to," she babbles.
The driver scrunches his eyebrows. "Didn't mean to what?"
She didn't mean to get in without paying. Brianna has ridden in more taxicabs than she cares to remember. She's just scattered, Driver Man. Nervous, even. One can fend off enemies with a steel demeanor, but seeing family after a long time will bring anyone to their knees.
I would know. But again, we're ahead of ourselves.
She shoves something through the divider again. The driver is panicked for a moment. With how strange the girl is, and how just insufferably awkward, she probably would be the type to try and rob him. Not that he's been robbed before. Some people are just paranoid. I'm sure you know.
When he's satisfied that it's not a gun or a knife, the driver takes the small item from her. He's never seen something like the red device before, snapped shut with its clear green light glistening. As if responding to his question, the front cover flips open. More buttons stare out at him. He almost steers into the wrong lane, his attention ensnared by the alien contraption.
He regards the screen carefully while the image fades to life. A quick word flashes. What the hell was a Pokedex?
The girl's face shows up. Name, birthdate, seal of the Indigo League…
When the final image blinks on, he nearly swerves the car. "Wait, what?"
"I'm sorry!" Brianna apologizes for nothing. It's a habit. "Is something the matter?"
He has to glance back in the rear-view mirror. It can't be the same person, can it? There's no way. But it is her, with that haunting stare and that small nose, the bangs and even the hat. And League Certification was restricted to military, civil servants, that kind of thing.
Either this Pokedex thing was a very good forgery of…What was it supposed to even be a forgery of?
He has to pull off the Interstate and park. Brianna knows what's coming, but she lets the driver flip her Pokedex around a few more times. She wonders if the League keeps the existence of the Pokedex a secret for things just like this, for opportunities to show off to locals. Lord knows they love showing off. Brianna is not the show-off type, unfortunately.
The driver finds her in the mirror again. He's shaking his head, and Brianna's hearing his voice before he's saying it. "I can't accept this," he says.
"It's a Universal Pass," she reiterates. In case he can't read. And since he makes his living driving a car, well. "It's accepted by every transportation agency." She hopes she didn't stutter.
All the same, he passes the Pokedex back through the divider. He's sure it's legitimate. If he knew what it was supposed to be, that might mean something. It's a legitimate something.
Now, I've seen other people argue free rides from drivers. There are certainly people in this story who would have bartered the ride, and it wouldn't have been too hard.
That said, those people are them. Brianna is Brianna. She pocketed the Pokedex, and left the cab.
And wouldn't you know it, the driver felt awful right then. He realizes a second too late that she wasn't trying to swindle him, or rob him, or cheat him out of a ride. Certainly, there's no way she has eight gym badges and is an Indigo League Champion, like her red thingy says, but she's not thief.
He sits in the cab and thinks it over. Brianna crosses the sidewalk, looking both ways like a good girl, and stands in the empty parking lot. She fishes through her bag and fumbles something. Her knees buckle. Her hat falls in her vision. It's pathetic. The driver feels like he kicked a small puppy.
He waits for the cars to pass, and then he gets out.
"Hey!" He calls, waves his arm. She doesn't see him. Again: "Hey, kid!"
Third time. "Hey, Brianna!"
She finds him across the street. It's too late, though. She zips the bag shut and pulls her arms through the straps. There's something else in her hand, but the driver can't quite make it out.
"Look, I'm sorry about that. I just need to be careful," the driver yells over the roar of traffic. "Come on, I'll take you for free. To Huntington, or wherever."
Brianna smiles the sweetest smile he'll see this year. To her credit, she never uses her power for evil. She doesn't think she's pretty enough to use it for evil, and personally, I'd rather she think that.
"Thank you, but I'm fine," she says. "I'll find my own way."
"You're being an idiot." He's getting angry, now. "There's no bus stop out here. The city doesn't start for five miles east."
"East?" Brianna confirms. "Thank you again. I don't know the way, but I'm sure I can figure it out on my own."
That shuts him up. She didn't say anything threatening, for sure. But she was fearless. Daringly so.
She adds: "I wouldn't want you to take my pass and get in trouble with your boss or anything."
He won't get back in the car. He suddenly wants to watch. There's no way she beat Lt. Surge, even if she was a Trainer. A small sweetheart of a girl like her? He laughs at the image.
Then she's throwing the ball in the air. He recognizes it from television, from the Internet, from the nightly news and all over the world. A Pokeball.
It bursts open in an explosion of the palest white light. The driver recoils when the brown blur of feathers races into the sky and swoops back to the parking lot.
The girl holds one hand out.
The driver is certain: whatever she just released will race down and slice her limbs off. At that speed, it's all but certain—
In the blink of an eye, she's suddenly off the ground. Head down and riding east, Brianna is a whisper on the wind.
The driver lets it process.
He laughs.
The guys will never believe this.
"League champion, huh?" He asks nobody.
The driver gets back in his cab, and his day goes on.
Brianna soars for Huntington, her fare as free as the wind at her back.
…
She knew it was an awful idea, flying to her aunt and uncle's home in Huntington. She was trying to avoid it at all costs, but sometimes things don't work out.
This first leg of the flight was easy. Nobody would notice her as she soared above the highway. If somebody saw her downtown, that somebody would have a story to tell, about the Trainer high overhead.
Huntington, a small suburb of the sprawling Vermillion City, was different.
It had strangled the life out of her mother and father. They lived in Huntington until college. They met in a film studies class, laughing at the presenter and his thick nerd glasses and high nerd grades. Both students were thrown out, at which point they met one another formally. Twenty years later, seventeen-year-old Brianna is flying to visit. These things happen.
Huntington was remembered for two things: its local fortune-teller industry that sank harder with each passing day, and its capacity to squish any other goals out of young people, like the guts of an unfortunate bug on the sidewalk.
She sees her aunt and uncle's home from overhead. The white one-story home in a quaint cul-de-sac, surrounded by trees. Brianna grew up in Celedon City. She had never lived with nature, and certainly had never seen it before her adventures.
As she lowers altitude, she promises herself that nothing will go wrong.
She had learned many things on the road, and of them: people who live surrounded by nature are not bad.
Oh, Brianna. How sweet. She still didn't know the difference between 'not bad' and 'not ignorant'.
When the ground is close enough, Brianna jumps from the back of her Pokemon, calling it back to its ball in the free-fall. She lands in a crouch, taking the force in her knees as only young people can.
When she stands up again, her relatives are waiting on the porch.
I'm willing to bet we all have relatives like these. Cindy and Chris, both fifty-somethings, never left Huntington. They lived in this neighborhood their entire lives, marrying classmates from high school. It only became 'their' house when Brianna's grandmother passed, only a handful of months ago. They seemed kind enough, Cindy with her hair pulled back and her thick glasses, and balding, paunchy Chris and his bright grin that belonged on a younger man.
Unfortunately, Huntington was still Huntington.
Brianna breaks the silence. "Hi," she said meekly. She waves a limp hand.
The corners of Cindy's aged lips form a concerned smile, all too late. Her brother takes initiative. "What in the hell was that?"
"What was…what?"
"That thing you flew here on," Chris bellows. He pushes the glasses further up his pudgy nose, expectant.
Brianna opens her mouth a second too late. He cuts her off: "What, are you too good for a car now that you're all famous?"
She was certainly not famous, as we both know.
That said, the most famous person in Huntington gained the title by finishing her associates' degree in Community College before having children at the old age of twenty-three. The teenage Champion before them may as well have hailed from Olympus.
Or, as Chris was painfully aware, hailed from his rich and successful brother.
Cindy begins damage control. "Chris, don't be rude! I'm sure Brianna's tired from her flight." She beamed.
Brianna wasn't tired at all. But when someone throws you a bone… "I'm kind of hungry," she lies sweetly. That's my girl.
"Good!" Chris reaches inside the house for his coat. "We're taking you for lunch. You like Unovan food?"
Brianna nods.
"Of course she does!" Cindy adds happily. "I remember you used to love Unovan. From when you visited, remember?"
That particular visit was ten years ago. It was the last time they had spoken. "Yes'm," Brianna says.
"And still so polite." Cindy awes.
Chris locks the door and leads them to the truck parked in the garage. "It's a little ways down the road." Then: "Hope you're not too good for the back seat."
From here, they barrel down the desolate roads. The truck skids at every sudden stop, as though Chris had never seen them before. If she cared to notice, Brianna would have picked up on the tell-tale signs of annoyance. Chris grips the wheel too hard. He yanks on the emergency break, he slams his turn signal up and down. His entire face is curled up to the left, like he's smelling something strange.
"You're awfully quiet." Cindy tries again to make conversation. She's smiling in the mirror.
"Sorry," Brianna apologizes. "I've just…I haven't been in a truck in a long time."
She knows it's the wrong thing to say. She feels awful the instant the words leave her mouth, but it's the truth. There is nothing quite like watching the trees and small homes race by at a clip, the cab elevated off the ground and bouncing above powerful tires. It's nostalgic.
To Chris, it's anything but.
"That's interesting," Cindy says.
Brianna recognizes the restaurant from ten years ago. Really good noodles.
"Don't you remember?" Cindy asks. "You and Nathan started shoving chicken up your noses. Your father turned red like a beet." She's laughing, but only because she didn't know the full effect of Brianna's father's anger. It's not really a laughing memory.
They go inside and sit in a booth by the window. It's an all-you-can-eat kind of affair. Brianna has to tell her stomach to keep calm. If left unchecked, she might eat everything and puke it all up seconds later. She blames having to traverse Rock Tunnel with nothing but a pack of saltine crackers. She would never forget the hunger, she's sure.
The waiter shows up and explains how the food works. It's self-explanatory: take what you want, twenty dollars a head. Brianna has the social tact to not offer to pay. Though the way Chris glares as he hands over the money, she might as well have slapped her own money on the table.
Finally, the question of the day. Say it, Mister Waiter.
"Would you like anything to drink?"
Twenty minutes and two pitchers of beer later, Chris asks Brianna if she can drive them home.
"I can," she says. "I've never driven a truck…And I haven't really driven at all in a year or so. But I'm sure I can manage."
Chris pushes his third plate aside. He sees an opportunity. "Nathan's a hell of a driver," he boasts. "The factory promoted him to head of shipments. You should see the kid, he's like that…that fast racing guy on TV."
"Speed Racer?" Cindy offers.
"Yeah, that guy." Chris takes a sip. "It's too bad he couldn't make it out today, Bri. He's really made something of himself. Pulled up from his bootstraps kind of kid. He'd have some stuff to teach you about the real world."
Brianna nods. She hasn't heard anything about Nathan since he dropped out of Vermillion University in his first semester. She wants to ask if the kid was his after all, but thinks better of it. "Where does he work?"
"Silph opened a factory by Diglett Tunnel," Cindy explains, pride seeping from her pores. "He's already been promoted to head driver. He's trying to get an apartment. Right now he's living with a friend, but that's just temporary."
"Congratulations for him!" Brianna says sincerely.
It's another ten-minute silence. The food isn't quite as good as she remembers.
"So!" Cindy thinks, third time is the charm. "What are you doing these days?"
Brianna asks a question, but her gob is stuffed full.
"Now that you're a bigshot Champ," Chris says, forcing himself to be supportive. "I remember after your father graduated, he had no idea what to do. Then he just packed up and left with your mother…You're not gonna do something that random, are you?"
Brianna tells the truth. She should have lied. "I don't really know yet."
Now, let's be frank.
A Hall of Fame Champion is already down in the history books. Civilization as humans understand it could burn to the ground, and archives would still show Brianna's name. If she wanted to work as a gym leader, all she needed to do was snap her fingers. Or, if she wanted to explore other countries, she could do so for free with her Universal Pass. The world was hers. Brianna was at no dearth of options, she just wanted to choose the best one.
Huntington belongs to people without options.
"Of course she doesn't know!" Chris throws a hand in the air. "That's what happens when you choose Pokemon over yourself. You end up screwed."
"Chris!" Cindy scolds. She turned to her niece. "I'm sorry, he's not normally—"
"It's the truth, Cindy. You agreed with me a few hours ago, come on."
Cindy's face pales.
Chris continues. "It's what I told Sophia: if you get involved with Pokemon, you end up with a bunch of funky ideas and nothing to do to make ends meet. I mean, Bri. Look at your aunt and I. We're fortune tellers. We get on okay, don't we, Cindy?"
They didn't make nearly as much as fortune tellers who had psychic Pokemon for assistance. Brianna knew it, and Cindy knew it.
"We get on okay," Cindy agrees meekly.
A few hazy memories come back to Brianna, but only just. "Sophia?"
"You don't remember Sophia?" Cindy asks. Her voice starts to slur. "Oh, right! Of course you wouldn't remember her. You were just babies. Your grandmother would take you both out to play by the shore. You were the best of friends."
Cindy smiles, both at Brianna and at a younger memory. A younger time. Chris grumbles. "And you both took careers with Pokemon. Figures."
"Where is she?" Brianna asks. She allows herself to clear her plate. It's all in self-control, she knows by now. "Is she busy working..?"
"Hell if we know!" Chris pours himself another glass. "Nathan doesn't hear from her. Neither do we."
Cindy picks up the story. "She wanted to be a Pokemon Breeder."
"Oh! That's awesome," Brianna says.
Cindy makes sure to avoid her husband's gaze. "Your uncle and I couldn't afford to send her to a formal school for breeding..."
"Olivine State! Ha!"
They ignore Chris. "So we told her. 'Sophia, we're fine if this is what you want to do. But you'll have to do it on your own.' She went online and found an internship for some ranch somewhere…Sevii Islands, right?" She turns to Chris. "Two Island, I think."
"Two Island Ranch," Chris groans. "In some podunk hick town." He gets up for more food. The waiters ignore his stumble.
"The Sevii Islands?" Brianna asks, and again, we should be thankful she's oblivious to her own charms. The kind of girl that puts fingertips to her lip when asking a question has caused countless wars. "I've never heard of them."
"They've only just been inducted into the UN," Cindy explains. "They don't have gyms or anything yet, and their economy is smaller than any two cities on the mainland. But they specialize in breeding; a lot of Johto and Hoenn Pokemon can be found in the wild, as a matter of fact."
"Wow. How did you know all that?"
"I just read the newspaper," Cindy says bashfully.
The rest of the evening goes much more smoothly. Chris returns with a loaded plate and more considerate sentiments. After all, how would he like it if he sent Nathan to his brother, and Nathan were given anything less than a warm welcome?
And lucky for both of them, Chris and Brianna have a common sentiment. Chris starts. "So…How has it been, being away from your dad for a while? Old man grumpus?"
…This is another family story. Chris didn't want Brianna's father to leave home. Chris still had the fist-induced scar on his chin. That scar, more than his brother's pleading or their mother's words, finally convinced him let his little brother go.
A bashful grin spreads across Brianna's face. Their dad could be quite…stubborn, is one word. Controlling was another. She used to write them down.
She's gotten used to defending family too, but not from family.
This is okay, Brianna thinks.
What was life like, living away from home?
"I chased rainbows," she says. "As far as I could go."
…
"Thanks for driving, sweetie," Cindy says. She closes the front door once a staggering, slobbering Chris is safely passed out on the couch. "I don't know why he drives that truck. It's a death trap."
Brianna found that out for herself, after accidentally gunning the ignition and almost ending her story in an unremarkable ditch.
"Think nothing of it," Brianna replies. "Honestly, thank you for having me."
The warmth from the alcohol spreads through Cindy's veins. She's unaware of the setting sun and the coastal breeze. Brianna shoves her hands in her pockets, straining her muscles against the wind.
"You should come by more often!" Cindy beams, and not quite without sincerity. "Chris won't show it, but he's always glad when family comes around. And I'm sure Nathan would love to see you, too."
"Definitely," Brianna says lamely.
They wait on the porch, locked in a stalemate.
"Are you staying the night?" Cindy offers first. "I suppose you can sleep in Sophia's room. Chris can't bring himself to go inside, but I make sure to change the bed sheets every now and then."
It's not a genuine offer. Brianna can tell from the way Cindy blinks rapidly, and how she keeps staring up and to the left. That's the part of the brain that tells lies, she remembers. Memory, for that matter, is stored in the right. Not that it mattered, but Brianna liked to be sure.
"That's generous of you, Aunt Cindy, really. But I need to be going."
"Oh?" Cindy's eyebrows jump up. "Are you staying with friends somewhere? Do you need a ride? If you need the truck…"
"The Vermillion Port closes in a few hours." Brianna's ironclad smile breaks at the edges. "I don't want to miss the last boat out."
"The last boat? I thought you didn't have any plans following your big win." She says it like a euphemism for a dirty word. Like she wants to say the real thing, but has learned better.
"I don't have any plans. Not really." Brianna crosses her legs. She's twelve and lying to her parents about signing up for a Pokedex, all over again. "It's more of an impulse." Then, the truth: "I've gotten good at acting on impulses."
"Oh," Cindy says. "I see." The contagious Brianna Grin has her in its snare. "Are you okay for money? You're eating okay?"
"I'm fine."
She doesn't mean to rid herself of these people as fast as she can, really. This is Brianna trying to catch a ship, not her trying to run from family members with whom she has nothing in common, never will have anything in common, and wouldn't want to know if she weren't obligated to by blood.
Cindy recognizes it. She's seen it before. She may be a small-town mom, but she's still a mom.
"Tell her I say 'hi', when you see Sophia?" Then, her voice catching: "Tell her to call home more. I miss her. Tell her, her mother misses her."
Brianna wants to ask what gave her intentions away, but then she remembers, mothers tend to know everything.
Cindy knows there's nothing left to be said. She doesn't go inside, and Brianna doesn't wait before pulling her Pokeball from her backpack. She's about to throw it into the sky when Cindy raises a hand.
She casts a glance toward the front room mirror. Then, once the coast is clear: "If you don't mind my asking…That's not Sawyer," she points to the ball. "That's not him, is it?"
"No, I'm sorry," she replies. "I didn't bring him. I thought he earned some down time for a while."
"That's a shame. I would have loved to meet him." The disappointment is more real than anything Chris has said all afternoon. "You know my husband. He's a little closed in the head, but…Well, I'm sure my son couldn't very well beat the champion of driving, but you beat the Pokemon League Champion, so there that is!"
Brianna giggles. She's sure she'll never get used to flattery, not even the deserved kind.
"I'll bring him around," she says. "It's a promise."
She throws the ball above her head. It breaks apart in a white burst, and the blur of feathers races above.
"This is Gabby," Brianna says.
Gabby glides to earth, well aware of Cindy and Brianna's eyes. Unlike her Trainer, Gabby is a sucker for attention.
"She's a Fearow." Brianna holds up a hand. "One of my best friends."
Then, an almost inaudible whisper: "Can you fly for me?"
She doesn't give any goodbyes. Brianna leaps onto Gabby's back and is off in the distance, tearing through clouds with her knees buckling and teeth chattering. It's only when she's in a cabin on the ferry, headed for Two Island Port, that Brianna relaxes.
She worried for a moment over whether or not the ferry company would accept her Universal Pass. They asked her one question. "Would you like the normal-size room, or Queen-sized?"
It feels great to be back! I'm excited for this one. Review if you like, and please stick around!