Liberty
Written by: Sosai
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Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.
I still remember.
I had been sitting on his bed, playing with a piece of crumpled up paper. He had been at his desk, writing something with a pen on another separate piece of paper. He had messed up on his letter one time already; I had picked up the paper and had started to play with it. Unfolding, folding, unfolding again. To this day, paper continues to amaze me. I had witnessed humans before who had been able to fold these papers into different Pokemon, making flying-types and poison-types and all sorts of creatures native to our region. But that's not what my master had been doing. He had been penning a letter to someone in another region, to be taken over by a flying Pokemon. I was just there...because I was his Pokemon. Small, fluffy, with long red ears. That's me.
On his desk he had sat something I had seen a dozen times before. He had called it an Apricorn. A tool for storing Pokemon, he had told me. It had been invented a while ago in a region called Johto, and it made transporting Pokemon easier...especially the bigger ones. It shrunk them down to pocket size, hence the name 'pocket monsters,' which had been shortened to Pokemon with time. He then had told me that it wouldn't be necessary for me to be inside an Apricorn, because I was small enough to stay outside. I wasn't his only Pokemon. I don't even fully remember how I became his. It was just one of those things I used to take for granted.
I remember the place he called Castelia City...just a short boat ride away from our island. It had been a small town back then, busy and full of people who were arriving by boat from one of the other regions. They came in huge droves to see our world, branching out to the other towns eventually...but Castelia was where it would all begin for them. I remember flying around the buildings and looking at the people. So numerous, so many different people! They say there are hundreds of different types of Pokemon, but I like to believe there are also hundreds of different types of human.
My owner had told me that these people had came from Kanto, Johto, Sinnoh, Hoenn, and many other places. I had wanted to tell him that, yes, I would like to travel there someday as well, but I wouldn't ever get the chance.
That day, after he had finished writing the letter, he had sealed it into an envelope and had written something on the front of it. He then had looked back at me for a couple of minutes, an almost wistful look in his eye...and then he had walked out of the room, blowing out the candle, shutting and locking the door behind him.
I expected him to come back into the now-dark room later that same day. He usually did, when he left like that. I waited...for minutes, for hours. I wasn't sure exactly what he was doing, or what was taking him so long. A couple of days passed, and he still had not returned. Hungry, tired, and cold, I curled up in the bed blankets. How long would it take me? I dozed off into a sleep...a sleep that lasted years.
I still remembered the look in his eyes when he had said goodbye.
The door opening was the only sound that could have roused me from my sleep - it banged open, unlike the soft opening he had used so many times before. I opened my eyes and sat up, realizing that light was flooding the room. The room looked the same as it always had before. The messed up bed I had been sleeping in, the desk where he had written his final letter...even my crumpled up toy on the ground.
I looked down at the paper before looking up at the person who had come into my small room. He was tall, wearing a strange outfit. He looked at me and smiled, but I could read his mind.
None of this was good.
I hid, diving under the bed. He tried to reach for me, but I scurried to the farthest part of my hideout and stayed there, shivering. I tried to use my Confusion attack on him, though my abilities were a bit stale, and all I managed to do was read his mind again.
If I can only do that... I tried to read his mind once more, to understand why he was doing this. No avail. What was with that strange outfit? As I completely awoke, I realized with my psychic abilities that there were more people on the island now. This was supposed to be a hidden island, where only my owner could go. Had the man's secret been revealed? How long had I slept? Everything felt unfamiliar, and worse, I couldn't even defend myself.
Then, I felt somebody else's presence enter the room. The scary man started to talk to this other person, but I paid no attention to his words. I simply tried to read the mind of this other, new person. It was hard to decipher at first, but I was able to tell that this second person was opposed to...whatever this scary guy in a costume was trying to do to me.
I peeked my head out of my hiding spot and took a glance at the new person as he and the scary guy went into battle stances. He wasn't as tall as the previous guy, with some sort of hat on his head. He was also dressed strangely, with pants that made him look like a cowboy and a shirt that I had never seen before in that color - didn't men usually dress in dark colors, and it was the women who wore brights?
The battle was over in a short period of time, and the scary man ran away, to the side, motioning to me. "Looks like it's waiting to test your strength. You'd better get ready!" I could tell he was talking to the cowboy man in the strange red and white hat, not at me, from where he was looking.
The other man smiled at me and then pulled out something...it looked an awful lot like an Apricorn, except it was red and white in color. Out of this Apricorn flew a Pokemon - Munna, a Pokemon I hadn't seen in a long time. I was pondering this realization when I started to feel sleepy. The last thing I saw before I fell asleep was that same Munna...
and awoke again, sleepy, groggy, in the arms of somebody. I couldn't tell who. Then, I remembered everything so far. Was I still in danger? I stumbled out of the arms I had been in and flew, crashing into the ground and tumbling head over heels. Finding my bearings, I looked up to find a woman, standing in the corner with another woman, talking about something.
A woman! Dressed as she was! If my previous owner could have been there...I looked around the building I was in. The bright lights, coming from the walls - those couldn't have been candles. Everybody was dressed differently. A lady with pink hair stood behind a desk, with several more of those red and white colored Apricorns. It was jarring, something I had never seen before. Where was I? Whispers went through the building... "Pokemon Center..." "Castelia City..."
This? THIS was Castelia City?
And that's when I finally realized that some time had passed between when I had fallen asleep and woken up. For a while there, I had thought it had just been a day, maybe two. Now, I was faced with the realization that I could have slept for a couple of hundred years.
I suddenly realized someone was standing behind me; turning around, I saw the same cowboy man who had come to my room before. The man who had rescued me...and I realized that was wrong, he couldn't be more than a boy. That smile was true. He was someone who wouldn't go wrong...and I realized that he was my new owner. The strange guy in the weird outfit who had opened my room up and had tried to kidnap me had failed. That red and white colored Apricorn the boy held in his hands linked me with him, and no matter what I did, I couldn't fully escape.
But for whatever reason, I did not mind. The smile on the boy's face told me everything I needed to know.
It would take me months - years - to understand everything that I had missed. And through it all, I sat on his shoulder. He was the traveler my previous owner never had been. We went from town to town, never able to leave our home region of Unova...but able to see the wonder that was the area we called home.
I still remember the past.
But I will always remember when he came for me, to rescue me...and I will hold that moment dear in my heart forever.
