Oliver
The instant he woke up, Oliver's eyes sprang open. They were itchy with sleep and it was too dark to see anything, but he did not close them again. It was morning, after all, and Oliver had grown to love the mornings in Box Two.
He rolled away from the snoring houndour, careful not to wake him, and climbed off of the bed, stepping lightly onto the lush maroon carpet. Oliver felt his way across the room and journeyed out into the hallway, letting Scull's bedroom door swing closed behind him. Out here there were a few dim lights to guide him. He walked between the red walls, crawled down the red stairs, and came to the red lobby, which held all sorts of red furniture but was devoid of any life.
After all that red, the colors of the city were almost surprising. The moon and stars were bright, giving off enough light for Oliver to see his surroundings. There wasn't much to look at, though. Nobody else was awake at this early hour, and none of the shops would open until sunrise.
It was strange how much he relished this time. For the first time in his life, Oliver had friends. They were all much older than him, but they were kind to him, and they gave him a sort of happiness that Stan had never allowed him to have before.
And yet…
It seemed that he enjoyed these solitary walks more than he enjoyed the company of Scull and the others. He had spent his entire life wishing for friends, but now that he had some he just felt hollow. Why was that? He wasn't sure, but thinking about it terrified him. For the sake of his sanity, Oliver pushed the thought away and started down the sidewalk.
He would have an hour or so to himself before the day's Skychanger came out to bring the dawn. It only took a few minutes to walk from one end of the Box to the other, though, so Oliver went back and forth between the hotel and the cluster of shops, over and over again. If someone sees me, they'll think I'm crazy, he thought. As he walked, he looked up at the night sky and entertained himself with whatever random thoughts popped into his mind, as he had done so often back in Box Four. He wasn't really doing anything, but for some reason he was still enjoying himself. Oliver had no way to tell the time, but he knew that it was passing quickly.
He made at least ten trips down the sidewalk and back before he saw another pokémon. Oliver was walking back toward the red hotel when the lobby doors slid open to let out a skitty. And suddenly, as he realized that his time alone was coming to an end, he felt that indescribably awful feeling again—the feeling that told him that he wanted to be alone, forever and ever, and that this newcomer was not a friend but an annoyance. Once again, he pushed the thought away. I'm not friendless anymore, Oliver told himself. I don't have to be alone ever again.
The skitty saw him then, and she grinned. "Out for a walk, Olly?" she said loudly.
"I guess," Oliver replied. He hated to be called Olly, but he wasn't sure whether or not it would be rude to tell her that, so he didn't bring it up. "Are you the Skychanger today?"
"Yeah," said the skitty, who was named Skitty.
During their introduction nearly two weeks ago, Scull had said, "Yes, that's really her name."
Oliver had been baffled. "But…why?"
"She thinks it's funny," Kick had said, rolling his eyes.
"It is funny," Skitty had insisted.
In the days that followed their meeting, Oliver had learned that Skitty was willing to do pretty much anything for a quick laugh. She reminded him of his brother, Flame, though Skitty was much older and her jokes were never cruel. Flame, on the other hand, seemed to hurt someone's feelings every time he opened his mouth. Oliver believed that his brother genuinely never meant to be mean, but somehow that only made his quips cut even deeper. He had decided a long time ago that he did not like Flame.
"Wanna come to the control room with me?" Skitty asked, bringing Oliver out of his thoughts and back into the present. "We can watch the sunrise together."
"Okay." Oliver loved to watch sunrises. Back in Box Four, they never occurred, since the Box was so large that it was unreasonable to expect a Skychanger to travel to the control room more than twice each day. Box Two, however, was small enough that the sky could be changed much more frequently.
It took Skitty and Oliver about a minute to walk to the control room. In that time, Skitty managed to get halfway through a fairly one-sided conversation about contests and ribbons. Oliver nodded every few seconds to show that he was listening.
"And the pink ones are so cute," she said, very quickly, as they stepped into the room, "but the blue ones are cute too and I don't know which one I want more or if I'll even ever get one."
She said more after that, but Oliver had stopped paying attention by then. He followed her over to the panel on the back wall and watched as she started to press buttons. Thankfully, she stopped rambling as she worked, so Oliver got to enjoy some silence. He liked silence. It meant that you got to be near a friend, but you didn't actually have to speak or listen. It was sort of like a compromise between loneliness and companionship.
The silence didn't last long, though. As soon as she was finished, Skitty said, "Come on, let's get out there and watch."
Oliver nodded, then followed her back out of the control room. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked up. The sky was already changing. Before, it had been black, but now it was starting to grow brighter. He knew that the sun was starting to creep up over the horizon, though he couldn't see it due to the city skyline. Colors began to change. Light bright shades of pink and blue and orange mixed together to paint the false sky of Box Two.
Oliver, as always, watched the spectacle in complete awe. He barely heard Skitty when she said, "Neat, huh?" Then she said, "You guys really don't have 'em in Box Four?"
He shook his head. "No."
"Huh. Well, I'm gonna go wake the team. Get yourself ready, Olly. It'll be a long day of training."
Oliver didn't watch her as she went. The sky was too pretty and alluring to look away from. It would stay like this for another thirty minutes or so, and then someone would come by again and shift the sun up a bit.
Some time later, he heard footsteps approaching. For one short moment, Oliver panicked, thinking that it must be Stan's gang. No, Oliver told himself, that's stupid, it can't be them. And sure enough, when he tore his gaze away from the sky, he saw that it was only Scull and the others.
"Morning, Olly," Scull said, and yawned. Skitty was with him, and so were Kick and the growlithe named Rush.
"Come and get some breakfast with us," said Kick. He shook a small bag that he held in his left hand, and Oliver heard its contents jingle.
Oliver nodded and joined the group. It took them a few minutes for them to walk down the sidewalk to the stores. The restaurants that had been built here were very strange. They had no doors, only dark windows and walls. Nobody seemed to work there to prepare or deliver the food. It was all done automatically. You just had to walk up to a panel on the wall, slide a few coins into a slot, and wait a few seconds for the food to come out of a bigger opening.
"Who makes the food?" Oliver asked.
"Dunno," Kick said as he pushed the coins into the slot. He had gotten the coins from the trainer, who sometimes gave them out to the team as a reward after a long day of training. There were a few places in Box Two where pokémon could spend coins. Oliver supposed that the money went to whoever had made the PC.
Kick pulled the food out of the opening and doled it out to everyone. It was human food: eggs, sausages, and potatoes. All of the items were spiced and pleasantly warm. Oliver wasn't hungry, because he was in the PC, but the food tasted so good that he devoured it all quickly. He had eaten more in these past two weeks than he had in the rest of his three-month-long life.
By the time he was done, the others hadn't even gotten halfway through their meals. They sat and joked as they ate, and that slowed them down. Oliver mostly just listened. When it was just him and Scull, he didn't mind talking, but with such a large group he was too intimidated to say more than a few words at a time.
After everyone was done with their breakfast, they made their way over to the control room. Scull pressed the button that let them out into their trainer's bedroom. The flash of light woke the human girl. Sometimes when the team came out, ready to train, she would get up and lead them outside to start the session. But today she just rolled over in her bed and went back to sleep. They would be on their own today, it seemed.
Oliver followed Scull and the other three over to the kitchen, where they left through the backdoor.
"Where will we go today?" Rush asked, looking to Scull.
Scull considered the question as they gathered onto the patio. "We could always go back to the forest," he said.
"We were just there!" Skitty said. "Man, Scull, I'm gettin' tired of that place. Can't you pick somewhere else?"
They had been going to the forest a lot. It was a good training spot, but it had some disadvantages, too. For one thing, it was very far away. It took more than an hour to walk that far, and Oliver was not eager to get caught in another storm so far from the PC.
Kick and Rush sided with Skitty, so Scull tried to think of somewhere else. "I guess we could go to town. There are always wild pokémon in the alleyways."
It seemed to Oliver that the trip there would be even longer than the trip to the forest, but everyone else loved the idea, and Oliver didn't want to look rude by disagreeing, so he kept his mouth shut. Kick quickly gathered a bag of supplies, and then they were off.
Much later, after hours of walking and idle talking, the five pokémon came to the city. Downtown Jubilife looked quite a lot like Box Two, except it stretched on for miles and miles. There were all sorts of stores and restaurants. Despite the fact that it was a working day for humans, and despite the fact that it wasn't quite noon, the streets were filled with cars and the sidewalks bustled with people and pokémon. Oliver and his friends avoided the busier sections of the city, preferring to keep to alleyways and abandoned corners whenever possible. Most of the humans left them alone, but one little girl stopped and stooped down to pet Skitty, who began to brag as the group stepped down another alley.
"Heh, I don't see any of you guys getting attention from the humans."
"Hush," Kick told her. "You'll scare away whatever's down here."
There was something down here. Oliver could smell it. And it smelled strangely familiar.
Scull smelled it as well. He gestured for the rest of them to stay put, and he crept down to peer into the shadows further down the narrow path. When he came back, he confirmed what Oliver already knew: there was a wild pokémon down there.
"Can we goad it into a fight?" Rush the growlithe whispered. "It could be good practice."
"Goading won't be necessary," Scull said. "It has nowhere to run off to. I checked."
The five of them walked silently down the alleyway until they saw the pokémon. A poochyena was sleeping against the wall that ended the alley. It was not Caro, obviously, but Oliver's mind instantly went there.
"It's old," Rush observed.
It wasn't really old, Oliver knew, but it certainly seemed old to them, a group of children. Skitty was the oldest of the five, and she was a year shy of adulthood.
"You three stay back," Scull said. "Cut off any possible escape routes it might try to take. Olly, you come with me."
The two of them stepped forward until they were only a few yards away from the sleeping poochyena. Only then did it wake up. As soon as it saw that it was cornered, it scrambled to its feet and tried to back away, but found the brick wall at its back. It didn't say anything, but it bared its teeth and glared. Oliver could tell that it was male from the deepness of its growl.
"Go fight it, Olly," Scull said. "Show off those moves I taught you."
Scull had taught Oliver a lot of moves over the past two weeks. He had learned how to use his claws and teeth to cause pain, and how to dodge attacks to avoid pain. The poochyena did not look nearly as strong as some of the enemies that Oliver had fought back in the forest, and he knew that he could probably beat it pretty easily. But when he looked into its red eyes, Oliver could not help but remember Caro…and suddenly he had an idea.
"Use an elemental attack on it," Oliver said. "You promised you'd show me one soon."
Scull looked uncertain. "I figured you'd want the practice…"
"We'll run into plenty of enemies today," Oliver said. "I just want you to show me this once."
"Go on, Scull," Skitty called out. "Show Olly why the girls fall all over themselves for you."
"Oh, all right." Scull stepped forward and faced the poochyena down. It had been listening in on the conversation, and it seemed nervous now.
"Pay attention, Olly," Scull said. "This move is called Dark Pulse."
Scull never even moved. His body started to put off a dark purple glow. The poochyena tried and failed to back away. Then a wave of dark energy exploded out of the houndour's body and shot straight at his opponent. It slammed hard into the poochyena, throwing it backward and slamming it into the wall. It slid down to the ground, unconscious.
"Man, Scull," said Skitty. "You weren't supposed to kill the poor guy."
Scull looked a little embarrassed. "He's not dead. I didn't hit him very hard, I just didn't think about the wall. I only wanted to weaken him a bit. Sorry, Olly. I was gonna let you finish him."
"That's okay," Oliver said, staring intently at the fallen poochyena. He hadn't been expecting to have to finish it off anyway. Actually, he hadn't even been expecting the poochyena to live. He had always heard that elemental attacks were extremely powerful. He had been expecting, maybe even hoping, that the result would be a bit…messier. But the poochyena was fully intact, and had likely suffered no injuries aside from a few bad bruises. Maybe if Scull had used a fire elemental attack, Oliver thought.
Skitty teased Scull a bit more about the poochyena, and then the five pokémon moved on to a new alleyway, and when they saw that it was empty they found another, and then another, and then another. They explored for most of the day, and by the time the sun was about to set they had encountered and beaten at least twenty wild pokémon.
"It's getting late," Scull said. "We should head back." Nobody argued.
On the long way home, Kick produced five apples from his bag of supplies, and for a while they were all quiet as they ate. It ended up being Skitty who broke the silence, of course, and then all of them were talking again. Well, all of them except Oliver, but that was okay.
The sky was very dark by the time they got back to the house. Their trainer greeted them with a few pets each when they stepped inside.
"I'm getting to bed early," Rush announced a few minutes later. "It's been a long day."
"Will we train tomorrow?" Kick asked Scull.
"I think we'd better," Scull answered. "We have a gym fight coming up, you know."
Skitty groaned. "When are you gonna give us a day off, huh?"
"We can take as many breaks as we want when we're in Sinnoh's Hall of Fame. Come on, Rush has the right idea. Let's all get to bed."
Fifteen minutes later, Oliver was back in Box Two, back in the red hotel, back in Scull's bedroom. Scull was already lying in bed. As Oliver jumped up next to him, the houndour said, "You know I never told them, right?"
"Told them what?"
"About your brother. The mean one."
"Stan."
"Right."
"Why haven't you?" said Oliver.
"Well, I didn't think you'd want me to," Scull said. "I thought you'd want to tell them yourself. Y'know, if you want them to know at all."
"Oh." Oliver didn't really know if he did want the others to know. He knew how angry Stan would be if he found out that he had even told just Scull. "I don't think I mind them knowing. Now that I'm here in Box Two, Stan can't hurt me."
Scull began to look uncomfortable. "Well, that's another thing…"
"What?"
"I've been making excuses for you, Olly, but you know you're not supposed to be living here. Everyone knows you're not really on the trainer's battling team. And your mother must be wondering where you are by now, even if you don't think she cares about you. I think it's time you returned to Box Four for a while. You can stay here tonight, but you should go back tomorrow."
Scull may as well have dumped a bucket of ice water on Oliver. "I can't," he said. No, now that he was here in Box Two, he was safe, he was safe. He had never gone this long without a beating. If he stepped foot in Box Four again, Stan and Caro and Split would be on him in a heartbeat. "I can't go back there," he told Scull, trying and failing to sound calm.
"It will only be the nights," Scull assured him. "You can still come and train with us during the day. I'll show you how to move quietly through the darkness. Nobody will even know you're there. Just go see your mother every morning, and then slip out before your bullies even wake up."
Oliver felt himself settle down a little. "You promise I won't get hurt?"
"I promise."
Only then did Oliver nod. He forced himself to stop shaking, and he burrowed his face into the houndour's black fur.
"You're my friend, aren't you, Scull?"
Scull smiled down at him. "Yes, Olly, I guess I am."
"Then call me Oliver. I hate being called Olly."
Scull laughed. "All right. Oliver."
