In 'character', the Elite Four are intended to be the most intimidating and iconic trainers on the planet. An ice goddess, ghost communion grandma, and the international police's own undisputed master of dragons and other 'untamable' pokemon, complete with dramatic red silk cape. A few layers of professionalism are all that keep them from being Kanto and Johto's international mascots. Don't mess with our pokemon, or our country, they say.
All of this theatrical posturing is undercut by their champion, a physically underwhelming twenty-something in a white t-shirt and jeans, but with Red's record smashing wunderkind turned dynastic tenure at the top of the world, giving the impression that only someone that awesome could beat them, intention and reality shake hands at the end of the day and agree that the Elite Four are awesome.
Out of their costumes, after stepping outside the characters that made them renowned, they are just my adopted aunt, grandma, and uncle. The first two of those three I can see distantly below as I circle the Four's private airport, the latter leading our group of three saddled dragonite. Lance is dressed in something more appropriate than his usual Dracula cosplay, but just as ostentatious, his ace pilot get-up: a leather jacket, leather pants, thick riding boots, a white scarf fluttering violently behind him like a weather vane in a hurricane, dark reflective aviators, and a white beret sporting the crosshatched Elite Four logo.
Lance raises a pearl-white gloved hand and signals to the orange flock, pointing to the ground. I clutch the saddle horn with a death grip as my Dragonite dives; my other hand is pressed against the keystone and mega stone hanging around my neck. In the moment, its safety is a higher priority than me slipping out of my straps and free falling to my death into the private jet meant to take me to a new life.
A few hundred yards above the earth, my steed rears upward and flaps down, the force of its wing strokes booming in my ears. I imagine the cartoonish plush Dragonite toy the Four sell at the Plateau gift shop, with its itty bitty wings, and laugh. The wing span of the thing I'm riding is monstrous. With such a huge body, it has to be. How would me surviving this dive be possible otherwise?
Everyone touches down on the tarmac. Lance jumped off mid-landing and is already helping Mom dismount, along with our few bags, handing them off to an attendant. In turn, my Dragonite leans to the side to let me out of its high saddle. I give it a few soft pats in thanks, but, as I'm walking away toward everyone, he whines. I turn to see it gazing at me with its big watery dragon eyes, pawing in my direction.
I feel a pang in my chest. I walk back and let him nuzzle me with his cheek, and I hug his face as well as a teen girl can hug something a few dozen times her size.
"I'll miss you too, Charlie," I say.
Charlie whines a bit more before he lets me go.
I turn back toward the plane and find that Mom and the three Elite are gathered in a semi-circle, with the backdrop of the small plane and all its staff preparing for departure, watching me and Charlie, smiling.
"Uh," I say.
Lorelei, dressed in a ruffly white blouse and black slacks, long raspberry red hair tucked into a ponytail, chuckles into her hand, then waves me over, while Grandma Agatha, in her usual purple tracksuit, is waving at me genteelly, like her hand might fall off if she's too enthusiastic.
After I hug both of them, Agatha kissing my cheek, Lance calls us all over to just in front of the stairway leading up into the jet. I follow after them. Lance then holds up his hand for me to stop, then points at a point a few yards away from him. I hesitate. He arranges his face to say something like, "Trust me, little weirdo, and go along with the production."
"Uh, OK," I say, moving to and standing right on the spot.
The three Elites arrange themselves in a line in front of me, hands folded behind their backs, expressions shifting into their professional selves. Mom, in line with them, does her best to copy their posture, as well as impersonate Dad, lips pursed, 'secretly' tensing her moderate biceps to make them look bigger-a fraction of what Dad had-and pinching her face together so it all meets at an angry wrinkly point between her eyes, nose, and eyebrows.
I can't help but laugh. She looks constipated. Everyone looks over to Mom to see what I'm laughing at. They just manage to stay professional, lips twitching upward.
"Mizuki," says Lance, voice clear and resounding, "In recognition of all your accomplishments-"
"Like playing 'dress-up' with Dewgong when you were four," says Lorelei.
"Or that one time two years ago you 'helped' me make nachos and you gave me blue cheese instead of cheddar and it made the whole thing look like an alien was sick all over the chips," says Grandma Agatha.
"And all the other times you've made life here at the top of the Pokemon world feel like a home," says Lance, taking out a small glossy pin.
I startle when everyone, including Mom, takes out their own pins. "Wait, are you re-"
Lance continues, "We present you with these badges, proof that we have encountered you and been changed."
Each one walks up and gives me their pin, Lorelei's heather blue-gray, Agatha's grape violet, Lance's red-orange, exactly the same color as his hair, and my mother, with 'Bruno's' pin, a dusty brown. Besides their glossy coloring, made from polished precious stones, everything else in their pins is shaped and pressed from solid gold.
"Obviously, ah," Lance stops himself, choking up a bit, "Obviously, you haven't beaten us. But those Alolans don't need to know that, right?"
I run up and hug him.
"Ah," he says, before eventually returning the embrace. "We left some trainer jackets in the plane for you to choose from. To have a place to put the pins. Would have given you one here, but Lori said it'd be better to give you a few to choose from." I mumble some thanks. Lance glances over at Mom, then whispers into my ear, "I was looking forward to you giving Red a good shot, you know." I hug him more tightly. He continues, "After this is all over and you're on your own, come over and show our gym leaders a good time, yeah?" I nod my head.
After letting go and giving Lorelei and Agatha, who is openly weeping, another set of hugs, and giving everyone a bit of time with Mom, the two of us walk up the red plush stairwell, everyone waving goodbye, asking to see us soon.
The jet's airlock door seals in front of me, slowly hiding my friends from view, until they're gone.
A few moments later, the jet has started taxiing away.
An attendant coughs into her palm, then ushers me into the small cabin. After I'm buckled across from where mom is already seated, the attendant asks if I want something to drink.
I tell her that I'm fine.
I look out the window, to where we all were. Everyone's cleared out.
"So, Kukui has already chosen some restaurants for us to go to with him and his wife," says Mom, glancing between me and the laptop on our table, where she's typing away.
I hum in the affirmative.
"Seafood. Really good. Locally caught." she says.
"Uh huh," I say.
"Apparently, they have a young assistant who's around your age. She'll be there too. New to Alola. Having a bit of a hard time adjusting," she says.
"Uh huh," I say.
She frowns, then goes back to her laptop. She's probably working on something important with the Archipelago project. Hiring. Development. Research. So on.
I take my laptop out of my backpack, plug in my earbuds on both ends, making me deaf. After booting, I do not look up information about the Island Challenge. I log into Smogon.
A few updates on my META threads. I glance over at the General Discussion board. The "Bruno Memorial" thread isn't pinned anymore, but people are still posting. I've never read it.
I glance over at my mother, still engrossed in her work.
I'll look at it later. Maybe.
I navigate away to the league discussion board. Gym watchers from every region reporting on up and comers. The new seasons in Kanto and Johto are the main topic of conversation. A handful of the usual posters have a memetic obsession to find the successor to "Red-sama's legacy," so a lot of attention is payed to anyone successful who's also under sixteen. Lots of photos of pokemon in action. Lots of analysis. Training. Breeding. Rapidly constructed trainer profiles. Internet sleuthing. Challengers' home cities and mentorship history. Even though their level of devotion to head hunting can be a bit weird, I sort of used to pump myself up imagining myself as a topic of discussion there. My eyes are naturally drawn to the league participants boards, private, only unlocked if you can verify to admins that you're currently registered. So much for that now.
An idea comes. One I'm not entirely comfortable with.
I tap the touchpad to a slow beat.
Mid-thought, the plane accelerates at drag-race speed, pushing me down and back into my plush seat, hard. I grunt. If it weren't too hard to move during ascent, I'd still be browsing Smogon. I've travelled with Dad so often that this really doesn't excite me the way it did when I was a kid. There's a bit still there that moves me to look outside the window at the rapidly shrinking mountains, purple, snow capped, but that's about all kid-Mizuki is going to wring out of me.
Soon, we're at a stable climb and I can get back to wasting my time on the internet. I've made up my mind. Being only ten hours away from Alola has made it more real. Alola isn't just a promised dread squatting over my head, like it's been for the past six months, but a real place where people live, shop, raise kids, and spend time not having a Pokemon League. That shift makes what I'm about to do easier to frame as natural curiosity, instead of the first step on the way to giving in.
I head over to the "Bingo Hall Leagues" board, a dedicated to smaller amateur leagues usually centered around regions without official gyms, like Alola, or large intramural city leagues, the name a tongue-in-cheek reference to how far down on the "card" things like this are to the hivemind of the board. After searching and scanning a few related threads, just a few "Alola Represent!" style threads-in other words, dumb uninteresting stuff-I start typing.
Topic: Alola Island Challenge
In: Boards ► Bingo Hall Leagues
What do you know about it? Pretty much anything. (Besides what's on Wiki, duh.) Level of difficulty. Structure. Famous trainers to come out of it. People who're on the scene now. Etc.
I hit enter, and it's up. Now my wait begins. Bingo's such a niche board, so it'll take a while before anyone has anything to say.
It's as good a time as any to go "shopping" for my gift. I scoot out, walk down the hallway, past the kitchen and dining room, and find the bedroom with my name on it.
I open the door, look inside, and laugh. Jackets and matching track pants are laid out on my bed like Lance was fanning a deck of cards, or presenting them on a twenty four hour shopping channel-with an audience of one.
I walk over and notice a small card sitting on the bed.
"Show 'em how it's done!" it says. Signed by Lance. Underneath, it has something scribbled on it in Grandmother's handwriting. "Pick the purple one." Sure enough, there's a Gengar-purple track set. I laugh under my breath the whole time I'm looking through the jackets. All the same basic pattern, with three stripes going down each sleeve and pant leg. Handful of colors. Half blank. Half with the Elite Four logo. Two of them have the national Kanto colors, white on red and red on white. Another has Alolan colors, but whatever. I check the tags, and my smile gets wider. These are the same kind as the limited edition sets they commissioned from Adios Sports for their own personal use. A few have been auctioned at charity events. I try on the white stripes on red. It fits me perfectly.
They commissioned a whole new set. All in my measurements. Same they'd do for the Four. Or a new champion.
I take out the hard cloth insert in the inside left breast pocket, pin their badges on it, and put it back in its zippered see-through sleeve, for easy, safe, dramatic revelations of your towering pokemon trainer status.
I practice in the mirror.
Open the jacket!
"Hah!" I yell.
Yeah.
I check myself out a bit more. The Kanto Elite Four logo is impossible to miss on the back. Lines of heather blue-gray, grape violet, red-orange, dusty brown, in a tight multicolor weave, making a simple outline of a pokeball. Awesome.
I change out of my crusty jeans into the red stripes on white track pants from the other national color set. They're so ridiculously comfy. I don't look half bad either.
Yeah.
And, spin.
"Hah!" I yell.
Yeah.
National pride has its place. A bedroom in a private jet owned by the Kanto Elite Four is one of those places.
I'm forcing myself to forget that I'm not headed out tomorrow to kick Brock's butt. Besides, this'd be a bit ridiculous in Kanto. Like draping yourself in the flag while battling. The only thing worse would be to cosplay Red-while also wearing the flag. All this plays in a foreign country though. Mysterious foreigner. Projection of assumed power. A bit cocky. Someone might really want to put me in my place, and get distracted and sloppy. Combine that with a quiet attitude and I'm playing mind games without even trying.
The fact that I sincerely want to drape myself in Kanto's flag every moment I'm in Alola has nothing to do with it.
I yawn violently.
Good grief.
Well, actually. It's something, like, what? Two in the morning in Alola? I should be asleep, right? And there's a bed right here.
I fold up the spare jackets and pants, even the Alolan one, set them off in a corner. I take the stones off from around my neck, hang up what I'm wearing now, toboggan, jacket, so on, and change into the regular complementary PJs in the small dresser in the wooden mattress frame, put the stones back around my neck, then plop down in my bed. My plane bed.
I lay there, looking out at the port style window, sun beginning to lower over the Orange Ocean. I briefly consider checking my thread on Smogon, but, whatever. Those replies will stay there no matter when I check them.
I can't see much of the outside from here, but I can see the faint orange glow of the sun reflecting off the dust, clouds, and water.
I decide to postpone my nap until I can see the sun set. I take lunch in my room.
After a few hours, with me drifting in and out of half-consciousness, the sun nears the horizon. So so pretty. And I mean it. No matter what sucky things await me in the middle of the ocean, the ocean itself isn't so bad. It's pretty great. Seeing it from a sky bed is even better.
I lay my mostly exhausted body on the mattress.
Here's an idea. If I just hang out at the beach to wait for the sunset, wearing my Kanto jacket, zipped open, with a swimsuit underneath, all day every day, until I can head back to home and start my real life, maybe it won't be so bad.
What a good idea.
Yeah.
- (-o-) -
A Pikipek is knocking on my door.
"Go away!" I yell.
"Miss Kalani? Miss Kalani?" says the Pikipek.
"No!" I exclaim.
"Miss Kalani, we've arrived." says the Pikipek.
"Thirty more minutes!" I demand, reasonably.
"She's like this every morning," says Mother.
My eyes are split open like a log. I sit up. I look out the port window.
I'm at an airport. The moon is out.
"Hon? Ready to head out? We're in Alola."
I groan a deep groan.
"She's like this every morning," says Mother.
Hey! Thanks for reading. If you'd like more, please leave a review and, if you haven't yet, a follow and/or a favorite. If you'd not like more, please leave a review, follow the story, myself, and favorite the story, and myself. Thanks.
This chapter's song is 'Sleepless' by Deadmau5.