1: Everything Starts Sometime
Azrael woke to a pounding on his door. He groggily shouted in the general direction of his bedroom door.
"Gimmeaminute!" He stumbled out of bed and threw on a pair of pants from a pile of clothes on his floor. Groaning, he opened the door, eyes still bleary. Nero blasted by him, pacing furiously and gesturing wildly in the middle of Azrael's room.
"You told me that we'd go today and that you'd be ready to go at eight, but it's only seven right now because I figured that you'd get impatient with me like you always do so you'd leave without me and then I'd have to go alone and I'd get lost and-"
"NERO." Nero stopped talking and took a massive breath. Azrael grabbed his friend's shoulders. "Breath. In," Nero breathed in, "out." Nero breathed out. "Better?" Nero nodded.
"So are you ready to go?" he asked, excitement dancing behind his eyes.
"Nero. I just. Got. Up. Go downstairs and give me a couple minutes. I'm mostly packed. My mom will probably have some breakfast you can mooch." Nero sheepishly ran a hand though his curly blonde hair.
"'Kay. Hurry up though!" Azrael shook his head, bemused, as Nero raced out of the room. Azrael slipped off the dirty pants he had thrown on for the sake of decency and put on the clean, heavy jeans he had set out the night before. He buttoned up a similarly heavy flannel shirt and rechecked the buckles on his pack. Everything was set. Finally. He shouldered the pack and turned his back on the room he didn't plan to see again.
Nero was perched on a chair at the kitchen table when Azrael came down the stairs. He was cheerily munching on a piece of toast. Azrael's mother was busy in the kitchen, packing a bag of food with a quiet intensity. King, her old, greying Mightyena was curled into a ball in front of the stove. It opened an eye quizzically at Azrael. When she hear him approach, she turned a around quickly.
"Oh. You're up."
"Nero made sure of that," he replied wryly. She smiled quietly, tucking a lock of grey-brown hair behind her ear.
"You're sure you want to go? There's no shame in not doing this. There's plenty of other honorable things to-"
"Mom. I'll be fine." She took a deep breath.
"I know, son. Make your father proud." Before Azrael could respond, she abruptly spun him around and stuffed the bag of food into his pack. "Go. I'm done crying over this." She declared with quiet determination.
"Love you mom." He said over his shoulder. She shoved him towards the door, refusing to look at him. Azrael gestured for Nero to follow. Nero grabbed his own pack from where it rested by the door and followed, waving at Azrael's mother as he left.
The pair had been walking quietly along the path out of town for a few minutes when Nero spoke up.
"Your mom seemed really sad to see you leaving."
"And your parents weren't?"
"They were, but, I mean, they were proud too. That I'd qualified this year and could start out right." Nero was thirteen. While he could technically have obtained a Trainer's licence any time past his tenth birthday, the spots in Professor Rowan's Trainer development program were limited every year. Nero had applied every year, but this had been the first year he had been accepted. Azrael had made the cut every single year since he had turned ten. He was seventeen- his last year of eligibility.
"That's true. Mom will be fine. She's got King to keep her company after all." Azrael had always wanted to be a Pokémon trainer, ever since he had watched his father compete in league matches as a small child.
"Besides, the house is paid off now-" just saying the words made Azrael's heart feel lighter, "She'll have her full pension from Silph, and between that and my Dad's insurance payouts, she'll do alright without me working at the 'Mart."
"Just in time, too! Man, Az, you're going to be the oldest one there by years." Nero teased. "I bet they'll call you Grandpa Azrael." Azrael casually placed his foot in front of Nero's and shoved sideways, tripping the younger boy into the tall grass of the ditch. He smirked as Nero scowled, spitting out grass and jogging to catch up to Azrael.
It was just less than an hour's walk from town to the massive research facility of L. Rowan, Pokémon Professor. The facility itself was impressive- all glass and steel, it sat on top a large hill, giving the monolithic structure a commanding view of the surrounding countryside. An even larger fenced-in pasture behind the facility was full of Pokémon of every description.
"Is that a Gyarados in that pond?" Nero whispered quietly. Azrael nodded, smiling to himself. He had been coming out here for years, to stare longingly at the facility. The courtyard in front of the Lab was packed with a small crowd of people. Mostly families, all gathered around a single, visibly nervous child of eleven or twelve. Nero saw his own parents waving at the edge of the crowd. He looked at Azrael apologetically.
"Thanks for walking me here," Azrael said good-naturedly, "go to your parents, I'm sure they're full of last minute advice. See you at the ceremony."
"Thanks Az. See you then!" Nero ran off to his parents.
Azrael looked around the crowd. He did feel old. No. He refused to let anything ruin this day. This day, finally, he could throw off everything that had happened, everything that had stopped him from being here in years past. Today, he was a Pokémon Trainer.