I didn't know who I was until I met Robyn. I didn't know anything about my future, only my past. Sometimes, I would lie awake at night (or at least what I guessed was night) and worry about what was to become of me. During the daylight hours, I would peer out of the entrance to the cave, looking at all the happy people as they pass my mountain. So many smiling faces…humans and pokémon alike. I encountered trainer after trainer in my little cave, but not one ever tried to catch me. Why? Because I was a geodude, that's why. Nobody knows how disheartening it gets to hear, "Ugh, another geodude?!" until you've heard it directed at you. I've heard it, in varying ways, 6,973 times, and counting. No one ever noticed the tally marks I made on the wall; they were always too preoccupied with trying to sneak past me.

Now, I'm not complaining that trainers don't like me. I didn't like trainers either, until I met Robyn. They force pokémon to fight each other, and no matter how many zubats tried to tell me that trainers and pokémon are friends, I just couldn't see it. A human commanding a creature that couldn't talk back to said human to fight other helpless creatures until one or both fell to the ground unconscious just seemed so cruel. Today, while I know that some trainer-pokémon relationships are strained, bitter, and degrading to pokémon kind, not all are. Some pokémon really do love their trainers, and the trainers care for and love their pokémon right back. Some can even love geodudes.

Whenever I do get into a battle, it means I have to fight with another poor pokémon that I don't even know. When I get into a battle, I have two options. One, I could win. I only know one move that can hurt my foe, but usually, the pokémon I fight are very low levels, and Rock Throw can easily make a little starly, which many trainers that pass me have, faint.

My other option is to faint. While fainting is a terrible experience, I usually choose it, for many reasons. If a pokémon that has obviously been trained to the max happens to pass by with their trainer, and decides they want to fight me, I don't fight back. I know I can't win, so I just let them knock me out as soon as possible to avoid any kind of serious physical damage for trying to be the 'tough guy.' But that only happens every so often, and thus, it isn't my main reason for choosing to faint. Personally, I don't like to harm other pokémon. The looks of pain in their innocent eyes haunt my nightmares, as do the glares of hatred I get from their trainers when I win. If I faint, I get to hear cheering just as my tunnel vision comes to a close and I am plunged into the darkness. They cheer when I fail. Seeing me fall to the ground, and drag myself to the safety of a crevice in the wall just before I pass out brings them joy. What right do I have to take that from them? Occasionally, if I was feeling especially generous on a particular day, I would get into a battle with the mindset that I would lose, just to see the joy in the faces of both trainer and pokémon when I was defeated.

The worst part to fainting, oddly, isn't the fainting itself. I've grown accustomed to tunnel vision, and then, later in the day, waking with a terrible headache. The worst part is when I wake up with three machops standing over me with huge grins on their smug little grey faces. They never let themselves get KO'd. If they get into a battle, they win, or they go deeper into the caves to train, and we never hear from them again. None of the machops that I live with have ever lost a fight. Obviously, that makes me weak in their eyes, and they get a sick thrill out of making me understand that. On more than one occasion, that meant blacking out again. At least I help them level up, and get stronger over time; I'm the community punching bag. Geodudes tend to be bullied by machops in our section of Mount Coronet, but none so much as me. New pokémon trainers often wonder out loud why we geodudes have so many craters and crevices on our bodies. Let me tell you, it isn't just because 'rocks form that way.' Karate Chop has a serious effect on the look of a geodude.

From one particularly violent machop attack, I've got a huge crater in my back. Usually, my various peaks and valleys don't bother me, but this one is just so embarrassing to me. Maybe it's because all the chinglings laugh when they see it, or because the machops love to punch at it and see if they can make it a larger crevice. For whatever reason, I tried to hide it from anyone I met. That is, until I found the stone. It was a polished, light grey stone tucked deep in a hole in the wall of the cave. It was oddly light for its size, but it was just as durable as any other stone: I hit it against the wall several times to make sure of that. As luck would have it, the stone fit almost perfectly into the hole in my back. It wasn't the same color as the rest of my body, but I didn't care. The hole was gone, and that's all that mattered.

So my life continued. Day after day, I woke up, avoided trainers to the best of my ability, and was defeated when I couldn't hide. After waking from my unconscious state, I would be beaten by the machops, laughed at by the chinglings, and comforted by the zubats, who promised that one day, all of us would have wonderful trainers who would love and care for us. Blind hopes, I thought each time they said it, and then I would feel bad about using the word blind to describe the eye-less pokémon. At the end of each day, I would curl into a hole in the wall and sleep. And the next day, it would all begin again. Such was my life. That is, it was my life until I met Robyn.

My life changed when I met Robyn and her team. Robyn was the first trainer that ever showed me kindness. Skylar, the piplup, was my first ever real friend. Dalia was the only starly that I didn't feel sorry for, or consider weak. Christopher made me feel protected, like I had an older brother watching out for me, even if that older brother was a ponyta. And Kyra, the happy-go-lucky little eevee, made me see that even though I thought I had it rough, things could have been a lot worse, and yet she was always smiling. I would never be the same geodude again. Because the day I met Robyn, I stopped being 'geodude'. From that day on, no matter what people called me, I was Evan. I had a name, and it was Evan.