And in my dreams, we're still screaming and running through the yard.

When I was six years old, I learned what death meant.

Of course, living in Lavender Town, I heard the term used quite frequently, but I'd never given a thought to what it meant. Not until a man showed up at the house one day.

I'd been playing in the front yard with my twin sister, Guernica. The black car rolled up in the driveway. It wasn't strange to have random cars pull into the lot, after all, my parents owned the pokemon shelter in town.

I didn't stop playing until I noticed my sister had her attention on the man who had gotten out of the car. He wore an officer uniform. Like most police officers, he had that authority figure complex about him.

As soon as we noticed him walking towards us, Guernica hid behind me.

I could tell something was wrong. The smile he flashed at us seemed to be forced.

"Are your mother and father home?" He asked as soon as he was close enough.

I couldn't bring myself to say anything, only nod my head slowly.

"Thank you," he bowed slightly before making his way towards the front door.

The two of us didn't budge an inch.

He knocked on the door and after a couple of seconds, my mother answered. She had a smile on her face- until he said something I couldn't quite hear.

Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and she cupped her hand over her mouth. After a few seconds she let out an awful wailing sound before she crumbled to the ground.

The next thing I knew my father and older sister, Florence, were at her side trying to pick her off the ground. I heard my sister ask what was wrong.

At this point, Guernica was tugging me forward. Her dark brown eyes were filled with worry. The two of us didn't know why my mother was crying.

Did he say something mean to mommy?

We happened to be close enough to hear the policeman start talking that time.

"I'm here to inform you that last night at 8:20pm, the S.S. Anne sunk," the police officer said.

"Liam? Where's my son? Is he okay?" My father asked, still kneeling next to my mother.

"Your son, Liam Orion Emmerich, was on it. The ship sailed into a gyarados breeding ground. No bodies have been found yet. We are still searching," he said.

I later found out that the ship had been hijacked by a group of thugs known as "Team Rocket" and had sailed the ship into gyarados breeding grounds unknowingly.

This time my father and sister broke out into tears.

Florence looked up suddenly.

"What about Jordan? Jordan Hayes? He was travelling with Liam," Florence asked, trying her best not cry.

The officer said nothing, merely shaking his head.

My redheaded sister started crying even more.

"How could this happen?" My father cried out.

"We're still investigating the cause. As soon as we have more information, we will let you know."

The officer turned his back to the family. He looked at us out of the corner of his eyes, before continuing to his car.

"Mommy? Daddy? What's wrong?" Guernica asked, pulling me up the steps with her. At the sound of her voice my parents cried even harder. Florence wiped at her face before getting up and holding onto the two of us.

She cried softly into our necks. Seeing her distraught made the two of us start crying.

After that life changed.

For almost a year my mother would spend most of her time in Liam's room crying. As for my father, he seemed to spend even more time working at the shelter. Florence took up the reins, even though she was 14 at the time, and started taking care of the two us.

Guernica and I still didn't understand what happened to our older brother. What we did understand was that people around us had begun to treat us much differently- almost like they were afraid to hurt our feelings.

Guernica and I quickly learned not mention our brother's name in front of our parents. It would make my mother cry for hours and my father would go to the shelter and spend time with the pokemon.

When we asked Florence what happened to Liam, she would tell us that he was still gathering badges. I could tell she was lying because she had to fight back tears.

It wasn't until one night that I happened to be tiptoeing out of my room late at night to get my sister something to drink that I realized there was something very wrong about how everyone was acting.

I heard my father's voice coming from downstairs. I did my best to be as quiet as I could as I moved closer to the stairs. I sat on the top step and leaned forward a bit to get a better look at was going on.

My father was standing beside my mother who was seated at the kitchen table. My father had a stern expression on his face while my mother looked like a body without a soul.

"Miranda, you can't keep doing this," my father said in a soft voice. "I know it's hard, but Liam is dead, and we need to accept this."

My mother let out a sob and buried her face in her hands.

My father turned my mother to face him. He pulled her hands away softly and wiped at her face. "Listen to me, sweetheart. We have three more kids to worry about. If we keep acting like we are, they won't have any good memories of us when they get older. I know…" he paused for a moment, "it's hard that we lost Liam, but we need to start acting like parents to the children we have left."

I heard my mother hiccup and she looked up at my father.

"Y-you're right… I'm sorry…"

My father wrapped his arms around my mother.

I couldn't make out anything else they were saying.

I decided not to go downstairs.

What they had said about Liam being "dead" bothered me. I didn't know what it meant but I figured it had to be something awful if it had caused my parents to act sad all the time.

I barely got any sleep that night.

As soon as my sister woke up the next morning, I told her about our parents' conversation. Together the two of us decided to get to the bottom of what "dead" meant.

We didn't like what we found out.

Our brother was gone and he was never coming back.

While everyone else around us seemed to have accepted Liam's death, the two of us didn't. There was no way that our brother who said that the next time we met he would be champion was gone and that we wouldn't ever see him. We couldn't.

And that very line of thought made it easier to target us.

It started on my 12th birthday. My parents were busy with a nidoqueen who had taken a few of the shelter pokemon under her wing. My older sister, Florence, was busy helping out at Lavender Tower. Guernica had been forced to stay after school for her upcoming stage performance. In short, I was alone. I didn't mind. I wasn't one of those kids who threw tantrums because my parents were always busy. I knew that it was important to them.

I'd just gotten off the bus. As soon as I approached the front door I noticed something sitting on the front porch. The closer I got I realized that it was a small package. As soon as I was close enough, I picked it up. It was roughly the size of a shoe box and it was covered in teal wrapping paper. Written in black permanent marker was my name. There was no address or anything- just my name.

I glanced around to see if anyone was watching me but saw no one. With the box in hand I unlocked the front door and threw my backpack down in the entrance. I started unwrapping the box as I went to sit on the couch.

After tossing the wrapping paper aside and prying open the box, I was shocked to see the contents. Inside was a manila envelope, a pokedex, what looked to be a trainer license that even had my face on it, and a pokeball. Before I could reach for the envelope, the front door opened.

In it stood my sister, Florence. Florence was a 20-year-old girl who towered at the height of 5'9". Compared to the rest of the Emmerich children, Florence was unique in the fact that she was the only one of us who had orange hair. The rest of us had dark brown hair. My aunt always joked that Florence was adopted. She did, however, share the same pale freckled skin and dark brown eyes the rest of us had. A lot of people thought she was pretty- until she opened her mouth. It wasn't that her teeth were heinous or her breath smelled bad, it was that she had a foul mouth. She was very blunt and didn't mince words. As a result not very many people liked her. She didn't seem to mind though.

She locked eyes with mine and a smile formed on her face as she made her way over to me. "Hey kiddo! Happy birthday! Whatcha got th-" She cut herself short when she saw the contents of the box. Her face scrunched up. "You can't have that in here. You know what will happen if mom and dad find that and figure out you're leaving."

"I-I swear I didn't know what was in the box. It was on the front when I came home," I said, putting my hands up.

Florence plopped down on the couch next to me. "Well, don't let me stop you from opening it. Better hide it real well though. You know what happened when I said I wanted to leave on a journey…"

I did indeed. My mother broke down crying and ran into the other room. My father told my sister that if she left mom wouldn't be able to handle it. My sister had to reassure my mother for weeks that she wasn't going to leave.

I nodded my head slowly in response before turning my attention back to the box. My hand started for the pokeball but switched to the envelope. I really wanted to know who had sent this to me.

I carefully opened it. I was expecting a long letter of sorts, but it only read one sentence. A sentence that sent a shiver down my spine.

"Come find me in Johto."

-Orion

I heard my sister's breath hitch.

Orion had been my brother's middle name. The very one that had been missing- or to everyone else "declared dead".

My sister tore the paper away from me. She appeared to be trying to piece things together like she knew something that I didn't. "I-it can't be," she murmured to herself. It was almost as if I was no longer there to her.

She didn't say anything else for the longest time.

When she did finally speak, I didn't like what she said.

"You can't go."

"But-" I cut myself short when I realized that my sister was crying. Not only had Florence lost her brother, she had also lost her best friend and our next-door neighbor, Jordan Hayes. He was only with Liam, because Florence had asked him to watch over our brother. It was awful to say, but his family blamed Florence for it. It had been much harder on her than on anyone else.

She gripped hard at the paper. She made no effort to wipe her face.

"You can't go, Quinn," she muttered, "because I'm going instead."

"W-what?"

"I'm going instead," she repeated as she wiped at her face. She tossed the letter at me before getting to her feet. She glanced down at the box still in my lap. "You keep that and make sure you keep it hidden from mom and dad. I'm going to get my own."

I knew anything I said in protest to her would just fall on deaf ears so I didn't say anything.

"What's in the ball anyway?" She asked, before sitting back down beside me.

"I don't know…" I replied, reaching my hand for the pokeball.

"Well, send it out?"

"Er…okay."

I want to say I tossed the ball elegantly, but I didn't. The ball slipped from my hands and landed before my feet. There was a flash of bright white light that caused me to cover my face with the sleeve of my shirt.

For some reason my sister started laughing.

I looked over at her with a worried expression on my face before noticing that she was pointing at my feet.

There stood a pink round pokemon with wide teal eyes staring up at me.

It didn't say anything.

"A-are you kidding me?"

My sister continued to laugh.

"H-he…he gave me a Jigglypuff?"

The small Jigglypuff started to climb up my leg and plopped down on my lap.

I felt so embarrassed. "Why would he…"

Florence finally regained her composure and reached for the pokedex while I was still busy wondering why my brother thought it was funny to give me such a girly and cute pokemon.

She tapped a few buttons on it.

"Hmm, looks like it already has a name…" she said, stifling a giggle.

"What is it?"

"Destroyer."

Without a doubt I knew that my brother had definitely given me this pokemon. His very first pokemon was a larvitar that he had named "Fluffy" because he wanted to catch people off guard.

After the whole fiasco was over, Florence told me what she planned to do. She was going to take the gym circuit in Johto to see if she could find any clues to our brother's whereabouts. She said it was the best shot she had.

Two days later, my sister left. She convinced my parents that she was going to a convention on all the latest pokemon technology in Johto. My parents and my twin sister Guernica remained pleasantly unaware of my sister's real intentions.

Before she boarded the bullet train for Johto in Celadon City, my sister made me promise not to follow after her. She put her hand on my medium wavy brown hair and gave me a smile filled with malice. I knew if I said anything other than "okay" or "I promise", she would find a way to make sure our parents grounded me until the end of time. I hesitantly made the promise.

...And broke it four months later.

I really had no intentions of breaking the promise originally.

It wasn't until one morning three months later I woke up with a missed call from my sister.

I clicked on the message and pressed play.

I was expecting to hear my sister's upbeat voice telling me about how she found a clue or how she defeated Goldenrod's gym leader. Instead, her voice was panicky. "Q-Quinn, please pick up. Shit. Okay. You're probably sleeping… Okay. Okay. Calm down, Flo. Quinn, I think I may have stumbled onto something big. I think… someone may be after me because of it. Even if you don't hear from me, please, please, don't come to Johto. Whatever you do, don't come here. I think things may get bloody over the next couple of months. Remember our promise, yeah? I think I may have found him but-"

I tried calling her back multiples times for the next two weeks. It always went straight to her voicemail.

Then on the third week I made the decision to break the promise and go to Johto.

I decided not to tell my parents but tell my twin sister. Keeping the secret from my twin had been Florence's decision, but now that she was gone I felt there was no reason to keep it to myself.

I told her everything- including about the things I had gotten for my birthday and about Florence leaving a cryptic message.

She was unsurprisingly calm about all of it. Then again, she was always calm and level headed about almost anything. Something that might annoy me, would probably go unnoticed by her.

She listened to all of it without saying a word, even when I told her I was leaving to find out what happened to Florence. When I was done talking, she merely put her finger on her chin and appeared to be lost in thought.

She remained quiet for an awfully long time. When she did finally speak I was already packing a backpack with essentials. All she said was "I'll join you soon enough."

"N-no," I told her, folding some clothes and stuffing them in my backpack.

When I got no response, I turned to face my twin. However, she wasn't there anymore. I let out a sigh. While she was a naturally calm person, she was about as stubborn as a mudbray.

I decided not to hassle her any further about it.

After I was done packing my backpack, I looked over at my dresser where Destroyer's pokeball laid along with my pokedex and trainer license. I took a deep breath before I walked over and put them in my pocket.

I wasted no time leaving the house after that. I knew my parents would be home in an hour and if they saw me like this they would lose their minds.

I shut the front door behind me and started to walk off in the direction of Route 7.

I glanced back at my house for one final time.

This is probably going to get me grounded but I have to at least try.

And with that I focused my eyes back at the task at hand.

Looking back on it now, I really wish the fear of being grounded was enough to have made me stay.