IONEM
.consumed by ambition.
Prologue
Sundays were Jake's favorite days. Not only was there no school on weekends, but every Sunday his mother let him come to the clinic. He woke up every Sunday morning with a broad smile and ran to his mother's van in the front driveway. She'd always come out and tell him to come back in to have breakfast first. She was always smiling.
Jake ate his breakfast fast and scrambled back outside. His mother was always close behind. The van was huge, made to fit most sizes of pokémon, and on the sides and back were large logos in the shape of the silhouette of the pokémon eevee with the words "Amethyst Wild Pocket Monster Injury Clinic" underneath. Jake's mother would always open the back doors and help him in, letting him sit in the back where the injured pokémon would be carried. The musty odor of countless monsters hung stale in the back of the van, but it was a smell that Jake relished. It reminded him of his best times, at the clinic, with his mother and all the pokémon. The van rumbled down the road out of amethyst, toward the clinic on the outskirts of the small town.
They would arrive in the late morning, and his mother would put her hands under Jake's arms and help him jump out of the back of the van. Immediately a group of pokémon would rush over, led by the family pet, an eevee. The little brown fox was the first wild pokémon that the clinic had taken, and it had decided to stay. The eevee had been abandoned by an abusive trainer on the road, and Jake's mother had picked it up and nursed it back to health. The pokémon wasn't alone. A whole family had decided to stay. Eevee would run to the van followed by a vaporeon, a jolteon and a flareon, two of which were helped out of similar situations as Eevee. The third, Vaporeon, was bought from captivity, to give it a better home with pokémon of its family.
As years went on, Sundays became less special, but Jake valued them nonetheless. By the time he was twelve years old, his mother no longer needed to help him from the back of the van. Most of the times, he actually sat next to her in the front on the way to the clinic. A fifth eevee pokémon had joined the family, an espeon, donated by a wealthy breeder. Jake's mother was proud that she had five of the six eevee pokémon, and they were at the very heart of the clinic. It was clear, though, that she wished that she would obtain an umbreon as well.
On her birthday when Jake was twelve, he decided to give her one. He saved up all his money that year to buy an eevee from a breeder. He planned to raise the eevee until it evolved into an umbreon, and would present it to his mother on her birthday. He got the eevee, and raised it, after months of hard work and trying to keep it a secret from his mother, it finally evolved into an umbreon. It was late at night, and he was battling a wild tangela just outside of the town. He beat it, and the eevee evolved at last into an umbreon.
But he was never able to give it his mother.
He hid the umbreon's pokéball in his pocket on the next Sunday's trip to the clinic. It was his mother's birthday, and Jake was so excited to give her such a present that he knew she wanted. She wasn't in a good mood that morning, but he knew that his gift would cheer her up. In the car ride to the clinic, he sat next to her. She usually had the radio on, but today she didn't. Her mind was on other things.
"Three years in a row," she said. "Three years. Can you believe it?"
"What happened?" Jake asked.
"Ruth Gregors from Cinnamon Town won pokémon lover of the year by the national pokémon fan magazine. Again! Three years in a row." She sighed. "It's not that I want to win, you know? I just want to be...I don't know, recognized. I spend my whole life working at this clinic. I quit my job at Prism to work full time helping wounded pokémon. We run on donations, you know that. It's hard. I'm raising a son along with thirty pocket monsters at the clinic at any given time. I get at least four calls a day, usually a lot more." She moved to touch the radio, but stopped and pulled her hand back quickly. She glanced at Jake with tender eyes for a second before looking back to the road. "I don't do this for fame or anything", she continued. "But I don't think I've ever once ben mentioned, anywhere. I mean...Ruth Gregors's pokémon day care is terrible. Have you seen it? No, you haven't. In the magazines it looks all nice and great. That's only for the pictures. I've been there. It's trash. The monsters are kept in these tiny little cells all day long. Hah! And she gets pokélover of the year!"
She turned a corner hard, causing Jake's seatbelt to dig into his shoulder. The equipment in the back of the van rattled.
She sighed again, slowly. "I'm sorry, Jake. I am. I don't want to dump all this on you. It's just hard, that's all. It's frustrating, really."
"You want to be on the magazine really bad, don't you?"
She shook her head. "No. I'm not like that. I don't care about being famous or getting rich. But I'd just...I just really want to be...recognized. Thanked, for all that I do. In the years since the clinic was open, I've saved the lives of over three-hundred pokémon. Did you know that? And that doesn't even count all the trainers who have come in quick just to heal, and the food I leave out for wild pokémon." Her voice trailed off. She looked at her son one more time and smiled softly. "Let's turn on the radio, shall we?"
They drove in silence, listening to a dull meldoy on the radio for the last five or so minutes of their trip. As soon as they pulled into the driveway of the clinic, however, Jake's mother's cell phone went off. She pulled it off her belt urgently and flipped it open. "Rosemary Lake," she answered formally with her name. She paused, nodded. Jake noticed that her face lost some color. She thanked the person on the other end and shut her phone before turning to her son.
"Jake," she said. "I've got to go. There's a hurt pokémon. It's not far away, but it's really bad. And it's a big pokémon, too. This won't be easy. It might be dangerous, it's thrashing like mad." She forced a smile. "You wait here. Play with Eevee and the others. I should be back in a few hours, at the latest. I'll call the clinic if anything happens."
Jake opened his door and hopped out onto the gravel. He turned and looked back at his mother before he closed the door. "Mom?...happy birthday."
She smiled. Some color returned to her face. "Thanks, kiddo," she said, and blew him a kiss.
He watched as the van faded into the horizon. The eevee silhouette on the back of the van was the last he ever saw of it, or of his mother.