I have lived in these mountains for a little over ten years, without seeing another person once without my pair of dark sunglasses at the market a few miles down the road. Still, I often get a feeling as though I am being followed. I look over my shoulder, only to see my muted television screen flashing in the darkness, no one to be found. I cannot say if it is simply old habit, or that I truly long for human contact. Maybe I subconsciously want to be found, to put these ten years of hiding behind me and face what the justice system would find to be my proper punishment. It wouldn't be the first time in recent years that a former Pokémon league champion was sentenced for such serious crimes. I don't know their story, how they were caught, or if they were truly guilty, but I do know this: I am guilty. I know goddamn well my crime. The question has gnawed at my mind nearly every night in the past decade- "is it so wrong of me to be hiding?" Again taunted by this inquiry, I silently drift to sleep…
As I have become accustomed to in these past years, I am awoken early by the loud, scratchy yawn of my Arcanine. Puppy, as I'd called him since he was a young Growlithe, has grown old in these mountains along with me; his once crimson red coat now a faded tint. I, too, have not been spared the treatment of old age; my jet-black hair has receded and acquired streaks of grey. Whenever I hear Puppy's yawn, I remember back to when I first obtained him back at the age of twelve. I am now forty-five, Puppy thirty-four, and I am still reminded of the very first time he woke me up with his yawn. Though back then, it was much more powerful, energetic. His yawn, and his bark, has become lazy and tired.
After lying in bed for another good fifteen minutes, Puppy finally becomes annoyed and hops on me.
"Ow, Jesus Christ Puppy, what the hell are you trying to do?" I yell at my best friend. Puppy responds with a swift lick in the face.
I put on my favorite robe and head to my kitchen, also my living area. My log cabin is fairly small, as to avoid detection. Truth be told, I could easily buy a mansion to rival the biggest in the country. Money is no object to me, money obtained legally. But people would talk if a new gargantuan mansion were to be built in these secluded Johto Mountains and conspicuousness is just what I've been trying to avoid.
I turn on the TV and flip to the morning news, where the usual stories of murder, rape, armed robbery and Pokémon-related crimes grace the screen. Every morning, when these stories reach my ear, I stop and think of the way things used to be back when I was young.
Back then, though I didn't realize it until the world started to look the way it does now, life was a utopia. Newspapers and news programs on TV existed almost exclusively to report sports scores, recipes, politics and advertisements. On rare occasion, you would find a story highlighting the events of a teenager using his Pokémon to rob a convenience store for $37 and a box of gum, for example. These stories outraged the community. Crime just didn't happen back in those days. The era of Team Rocket's robberies and heists had ended some twenty years before I was even born, and new technologies and breakthroughs in security had prevented any of their followers from continuing their crimes.
I can remember paying a nickel for a newspaper at the small stand a block away from my house in New Bark Town. I would sit by the small lake separating the regions of Johto and Kanto on a rock and begin reading. What did I read? The only thing a young boy in those days would read, the sports section. And there was only one sport that interested me- Pokémon Battling. Each summer, the International Pokémon League Championships were held at the Indigo Plateau, Kanto. Trainers from all over the globe battled their hard-trained Pokémon against one another. In those days, Pokémon and Pokémon Trainers were friends, and their bond was unbreakable. The winning trainer would cry alongside his Pokémon to celebrate the hard-earned victory, and their place forever in the Hall of Fame. Nowadays, trainers collect Pokémon to battle, and that is all.
I always dreamed of traveling to the Indigo Stadium, and taking part in the opening ceremonies. Legend has it that the Pokémon League dated back to an ancient civilization far away. The patron God of their society, the legendary phoenix Moltres, provided the flame for the torch to light the tournament even in the night. The flame, as legend would have it, was said to last forever. Some believe that the flame that burns brightly every year is still of the same flame borne by Moltres those thousand years ago.
"That's amazing!" I would think to myself after hearing these stories. I was always one for legends. In fact, if the course of my life had turned out differently, I may have become a Pokémon historian. Even so, I never regret the events that have led up to my staying here. I may have fucked it all up in the end, but my decision was only a human one. I had one hell of a time in those twenty years, and I would do it all over again.
"Regret is wasted emotion", my grandfather used to say. It was my grandparents that got me involved with Pokémon. They ran a small Pokémon day-care and breeding center outside Goldenrod City, Johto, where I lived for six years of my life.
Aside from being an acclaimed breeder, my grandfather was also one of the most celebrated writers of his day. It was he who inspired me to write a memoir. I started writing it five years ago, and it is near completion. My plan is this: write an autobiography chronicling my life as a trainer and champion, and conclude my story with the events that led up to my running away. I will send my finished copy to a publisher, and no doubt the police will get involved. I am, after all, a wanted criminal. They would scan it for clues as to my whereabouts, but I'm not stupid. I will end my story without hinting once as to my location.
Puppy starts barking in a way he has not barked in years.