Since that day, Elesa made it known who would be the best in the class. Just because appearances were the most paramount thing to her, did not mean that other aspects were worthless. They were just insignificant in comparison. But if she could better her image in any way possible, than she would do just that.

Academically, Elesa had never done particularly well in school before. Lectures always proved monotonous in her mind, and she often daydreamed when she should have paid attention. But when Skyla received the highest score in class on the first test, Elesa felt that she had to improve her grades immediately. And when Skyla's arts and craft project was praised by everyone, Elesa had to step up artistically.

From that point onward, she outdid Skyla in most aspects that school had to offer. In lectures, Elesa asked and answered more questions than Skyla did. In tests, Elesa started scoring higher than Skyla did. In battles, Elesa made sure to win more than Skyla did. It was a fierce competition in Elesa's mind, especially since Skyla was gaining more and more popularity by the day.

Not to mention that there was one aspect of school and life where Skyla had Elesa beat. It was something in which Elesa had no chance of ever reversing the results. The very thing in question, of course, was physicality.

Elesa's body was thin and frail due to the strict regimens she and her parents placed on it early on. Skyla was thick and round, but she was also sturdy and athletic. While physical education was the least of the school's worries, Skyla made it known that she was a sports lover and addict to boot, and wanted nothing more than to fly the skies with her pokemon one day. She either wanted to be a star athlete or a pilot, but for either dream she had to be built. So despite her chunky body, she ran, played, and exercised her heart out.

She shined when it came to athleticism. Elesa grew weary after a few minutes of running, but Skyla could chug on like a bullet train, and rivet down the tracks forever. Elesa was weak with her upper arm strength and had a childhood fear of heights, but Skyla climbed all the trees and playground equipment with utter ease. Elesa feared riding a pokemon due to the idea that it might throw her off at a random time, but Skyla wanted nothing more than to skim the atmosphere with her beloved birds. But pidove was too small for Elesa to ride on, let alone Skyla.

But Skyla caught a lucky break. The boy with the tropius let her go for a ride on his partner once, and she easily dazzled everyone with her unexpected aeronautics skill. In the air, Skyla was unreachable, and Elesa knew that she could never compete with the sight of her flying in the sky. She knew that nothing seemed to bother Skyla, anyway.

Not the mean, anonymous notes that Elesa left on her desk (although Elesa's cursive is very distinctive), nor the snide remarks that Elesa made while passing her by (Skyla just laughed it off)—not even the attempt to defeat her cruelly in battle! (For when Elesa and Skyla did have a one-on-one battle, they were cut short due to Skyla's parents arriving and taking her home for the day).

Still, they were on an even playing field in some sense, and over the days it was clear that the girls were matched in popularity and likability amongst the school. And it devastated Elesa to know this. In her previous schools, she outmatched everyone and was adored by all. But here, she was easily dismissable in place of Skyla, who did not even try half as hard as Elesa tried to be likable.

And that was the most frustrating thing of all to her. Skyla was not even trying to be popular, charitable, or noticeable—she was just naturally all of those things at once! Elesa spent years creating and cultivating her image, yet her efforts were just as noticed as Skyla's, who hardly put any effort into it at all. It burned Elesa to know this, such that her pale skin became livid, and the ice in her eyes gleamed with something heated.

Oh, she really hated Skyla. What a perfect, happy, fat little mess Skyla was. What an extremely lucky girl she had to be for her to waltz in and steal the spotlight like this. She's fat, Elesa kept telling herself, I'm prettier and thinner than she is! Why doesn't everyone like me better than her? Why does everyone like her so much?

Her negative attitude affected blitzle a lot, too. Because blitzle was just as broken as Elesa was, and as such it only knew satisfaction through Elesa's satisfaction. Despite being an electric type, the zebra pokemon lacked the energy and spontaneity that other species of its type were known to have. Its body glowed dimly these days, and it only sent off shocks or sparks when it was livid. But seeing that puny bird pokemon made its eyes narrow and its volts build up considerably.

They would give anything to break Skyla and pidove's image—had they anything left to give, that is. Because at the end of the day, no matter who was more popular, Elesa secretly knew that Skyla had won altogether. Skyla would go home to a family that probably cares about her, feeds her well, and dotes on her as parents should. Yet at the end of Elesa's day, she went home hungry to a family that could care less for anything that was not immediate, obstinate beauty.

And that was the part that really stung. Because for everything that Elesa gave up, she received nothing in return.

...

But things changed at some point. Over time, Elesa's parents became less strict when it came to her image. Her father found complacency in a promotion at his already well-paying job, and her mother had secured her own place at a high-end modelling company. Their own image brought them the wealth and success they desired, so they did not need to rely on their daughter anymore.

But those small improvements did nothing to remedy Elesa's harmful, yet habitual actions. At this point, she was used to having one or less meals a day, and she never bought herself snacks or treats of the kind. She was used to the rumbling in her stomach, as the noise started becoming a sound of hard-earned victory, rather than stressful and agonizing defeat.

Blitzle was very much the same, although as it got closer to evolving, its appetite and body demanded more substance, which Elesa could accommodate more freely since her father stopped taking tolls and counts of their daily food intake. At the very least, throughout this stagnant and bitter life, blitzle was starting to change and that made Elesa happy.

Her efforts were finally starting to amount to something.

...

By the time she was twelve, Elesa stopped openly fighting with Skyla so much. She still held that competitive spirit in her, but she kept her hostility more subtle. It benefitted her to do this, since her fellow students were more conducive to her calm personality than they were her harsh attitude. More of the boys, especially, started seeing Elesa in a new light, and as such they started doing her more favors.

They opened doors for her, shared their lunches with her, and even lost to her on purpose in training battles. One of her opponents even had a ground type, but he let their battle drag on far longer than it should have, allowing her blitzle to tackle the trapinch into submission. The boy with the tropius was even starting to reconsider his choice in a starter pokemon, because he knew Elesa's fear of heights still prevailed.

And the other students, even the girls, let Elesa do other things as well. No one challenged her authority, and no one thought to ever displease her, even in small ways. Their reward was nothing but pure satisfaction and a comment from Elesa herself. Her image was very strong now, and she was the girl that was "going to be a star"', so others flocked to her as they desired the same stardom.

She was growing up well at this point, and became everything a good student and person ought to be—witty, charismatic, beautiful, and intelligent.

She was doing great, and it made Elesa wonder why she went through so much strife to begin with. Then she realized that something was off, that something was different now which was the only reason why she was able to climb to the top so quickly—it was the only reason she was able to take the world by storm like she did.

And the reason was Skyla. Before, Elesa had to fight Skyla and win over her in any aspect possible. The tests, battles, grades, art—in every subject, she did everything she could to beat out Skyla, who was just so naturally talented at it all that it was infuriating.

And yet, the natural girl was nowhere in sight. Not that she was missing, but rather that she was there, presently and obviously visible still—just that she did not actively participate in school matters anymore.

In fact, she had not actively done anything in quite some time. Back then, Skyla was always cracking jokes, telling stories, talking about pilots, acrobats, or something else interesting. Back then, she was cheery, bright, and obtusely kind. She was the star athlete of the class and the do-good, feel-good girl of the year.

Back then, she was all of those things and more. But as of late, she had been none of those things. Elesa had not noticed until now—for she was far too self-absorbed—but recently Skyla had been more subdued. She asked less questions and told less jokes. She even did worse in class, and Elesa knew this because one of her friends gossipped that they saw the teacher talking to Skyla after school once.

Despite this, Elesa did not think too much of it, not until she spoke to the other girl herself. She had never actually properly spoken to her before, and all of their interactions were limited to gossip (from Elesa's end) and forced in-class participation.

On a fateful school day, during lunch, Elesa decided to confront Skyla. Most of the other students and pokemon were outside playing, but Elesa and her blitzle were too good for that. They stayed indoors, where they observed everyone and everything with cold, blue eyes. Today, those eyes saw that Skyla was alone, and not even her usual bird pokemon was out and about.

The pidove-now-turned-tranquill was usually out and about, flapping its wings and doing little tricks that were only half as amusing as they once were. The fact that it was withdrawn, just as its trainer, came off as suspicious, but Elesa kept these skepticisms to herself. She flipped back her perfectly blonde hair and cleared her trained-to-be attractive voice. Skyla glanced at her initially, but then looked back down at her desk in resignation once more. Elesa spoke.

"Hey, your name's Skyla, right?" As if I would ever forget.

"Yeah." Her voice was unenthused, not even accusing or sad that Elesa, a longtime classmate of hers, had seemingly forgot her name. "Yeah, that's me."

"You remember me, right?" How could you ever forget someone like me?

"Of course. You're Elesa, we've been in the same class since, like, the third grade."

"Oh gosh, you're right! It's been, like, forever since then! Do you still wanna be a pilot? I remember that's all you would talk about back then. It was cute but now that we're older you could actually become one. A pilot, I mean."

Elesa figured that Skyla would give some generic response to her inquiries, but it was not so. She stiffened at the word "pilot", and hid her face underneath her long, dark red hair. Her hands fidgeted, her legs shook, and her nerves unravelled before Elesa's eyes.

For the first time that Elesa could remember, Skyla cried. She sobbed, and started coughing because her tears lead to a snot and mucus build-up, which lead to a runny nose and a bleary face. She was a big, fat, crying mess at her desk. Worse is that Elesa, top girl and student in the class, was the one who had to witness such a thing.

She had not prepared for this at all. For the longest time, she used to joke that Skyla was "unable to do anything but smile". It roused a lot of laughs from her clique, although most people agreed that Skyla's bubbly disposition made her seem impervious to social stigmas. But in this situation, that was clearly not the case, and it did nothing but sting Elesa with guilt and regret.

Skyla rose from her seat, and Elesa took a step back, as if afraid she would lash out at her. Panicked, her voice cracked and her image broke for a mere second, and she asked nervously "Areyouokay" like it was one word and not a sentence as it was supposed to be. But it hardly mattered either way, as Skyla looked up from the ground, and it was then and there that Elesa truly looked at her for the first time.

Her eyes were just as deep and blue as they were before, but they were filled with tears and were partly red with exhaustion and stress. Her skin was not impeccably brown as it once seemed to be, but just normally brown as signs of premature acne started to form, and ugly tear streaks fell down her round cheeks. The cheeks that were joked to hold "a winter's worth of food" seemed lacking of their usual vibrancy, the eyes that held the sky and sea and in between were just as empty.

And in those two, maybe three seconds of eye contact Elesa felt so many things at once. She felt happy that she could finally see Skyla break down, and that she could see the perfect little girl tear apart into many imperfect pieces. She also felt sad that Skyla was crying, because when someone cries it just makes everyone else sad. She felt remorseful because all of the teasing she had done to Skyla seemed really unfair in light of this situation. She felt angry, because how was Elesa supposed to know that Skyla would actually be affected by anything? Her image was so well worn and so perfect, Elesa could hardly predict that a day like this would come.

But it did, and Elesa could not imagine doing anything helpful from there on out. Skyla ignored Elesa's concern, and broke eye contact with her by ducking her head down. Then, she stormed out of the room, running past Elesa with ease. The blonde was helpless to stop her anyway, because when it came to physical strength and athletic prowess, Skyla had Elesa outmatched since birth.

But none of that mattered, as Skyla disappeared out the door in a matter of seconds—ignoring the pain of clumsily bumping into desks or other students returning to recess—ignoring everything except the agony crashing down on her.