It wasn't easy to live in that horrible world. Pokémon had never seen the Sun rise, due to the perennial darkness caused by the planet's paralysis. The water was crystallized, hard as marble, and was regularly cracked by Rock, Fighting and Steel-type Pokémon and subsequently distributed.
The food was a really sore point, given that very few forms of vegetation managed to grow in those conditions of almost total lack of atmospheric agents and those few vegetables that were found existed in scattered dungeons filled with Pokémon that were anything but inclined to share the booty.
Some Pokémon ate each other. It was not uncommon to find tribes that had regressed to prehistoric times that hunted and cooked each other.
Indeed, there were those who had adapted to eat minerals even though they were not Ground, Rock or Steel Pokémon. In short, a desperate situation.
The night was eternal, it was cold and there was little light. The wind didn't blow, gravity had stopped working properly and the stones could float in the ether, as well as dew drops or snowflakes.
The trees were relentlessly dead. Only ferns, small shrubs, bushes and sparse blades of grass had survived the catastrophe.
The Pokémon were divided, wary, completely intent on keeping what little they had left and ready to attack everyone else.
Marriages had also become problematic.
Getting married meant sharing one's possessions with someone outside the family, so the parents of those concerned placed heavy vetoes, even going so far as to recommend marriages between cousins, in order not to waste the assets.
One of the most striking cases was Delcatty, the scion of a noble family now in decline.
Delcatty was beautiful: she had a nice golden fur, expressive dark eyes and touches of vermilion on the ears, tail and around the neck, a real riot of vivacity in a tide of gray.
Delcatty lived with her family in the Dark Wasteland, in a dilapidated building that a century before, when time was still ticking, must have known its true splendor.
In that remote village there were few services: a library, a post office, a small grocery shop.
The library itself was convicted in Delcatty's case.
Her parents pressed for her to marry Glameow, the son of fallen noble friends like them, a Shiny feline like she was.
Delcatty couldn't stand him: Glameow was snooty, lazy, bored. He acted as if the planet's paralysis was a spite to his continually seeking comfort.
The beautiful cat killed the sadness of that world by getting lost in reading, and making some money by reading books to young Pokémon, or to the elderly ones who had bad eyesight. All this made her parents grumble, but money was never enough, so they turned a blind eye.
Between one reading and another, Delcatty asked the librarian, a certain Sceptile, for information.
He was a well of wisdom, but he was also very shy, always entrenched behind his thick black glasses.
As the months passed, the young Sceptile opened up to the beautiful client, even though he sometimes stammered, dropped books off his counter, or blushed uncontrollably when she approached him.
Delcatty watched him and was delighted, so much so that once she saw him so agitated, she leaned over the counter and gave him a peck on the reptilian cheek.
Sceptile turned entirely purple and Delcatty laughed gleefully.
"Hee hee hee! I like you too, Sceptile!" she said jovially.
From that day on, the two became an item.
Despite the depressing environment that surrounded them, despite the long and drawn faces of its inhabitants, the two lovers saw everything with their rose-colored lenses: the suspended rocks could become "the path to Paradise" as Delcatty had renamed it; the still water was the work of a very good sculptor and so on. They were flawless in finding the romance in every little detail.
Youyamao, a non-Shiny Delcatty, and Houndoom were the young cat's parents.
When they saw her in an intimate moment with the nice librarian they went on a rampage:
"You must never see that boy again, Del!" her mother had told her one morning as she brushed her fur and applied a pretty blue ribbon on her head. For breakfast they would've been joined by Glameow and his family.
The girl said nothing; she would only have pretended to indulge her parents, but in her heart there was only Sceptile.
They married in great secrecy, thanks to the mayor of the Desert Village who had taken a liking to them, and for a while they continued their life as if nothing had happened.
Delcatty listened to Glameow's moans about how boring that existence of his was with her head already at her next meeting with her husband.
But one afternoon, while the pedantic feline was chattering, he realized that his alleged girlfriend was not following him.
"Delcatty! Do you listen to me when I speak?"
Delcatty, however, sitting on that bench in the center of town, looked straight and didn't answer. She was trembling.
"Delcatty?!"
The cat had opened her mouth, but the tremors had been increasing.
Frightened, the cat had alerted as many Pokémon from the village as possible. Sceptile also came out of the library and immediately ran to his beloved.
Delcatty had jumped off the bench and held her belly.
"Ugh..."
"Delcatty... What is it, what's happening to you?"
"Iiih!"
It was a matter of seconds: a small egg rolled onto the ground. It was beautiful, painted green, purple and red.
When he saw it, Glameow was horrified.
"WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!"
Sceptile stood between him and Delcatty and that was enough for the fop to put two and two together.
Soon after, Sceptile, Glameow, and Delcatty were sitting in her family's living room. The girl held her egg tight between her paws.
They knew, they knew everything.
Sceptile had spilled the beans.
Glameow had turned all the colors.
Houndoom hadn't stopped smoking his pipe for a second, so much so that the inside of the house had become toxic.
Youyamao was sprawled on her daybed and she faintly waved a fiery red fan, the same color her face had taken when she learned that her daughter hadn't only married an ordinary librarian, but she even had a child.
"If that's how you mean it, go away. There is no place for you in this house." she had growled, while her husband just nodded.
Composed and silent, Delcatty got up, took a bag and put the egg in it, and then left that house forever. Sceptile followed her, and the two left the Desert Village, heading for Faded Village, which had once hosted several Shaymin.
Despite the bane of that world, the place was still quite cute and welcoming, and would have been perfect for raising their cub. Unfortunately, fate had other plans for them.
As they descended along a ridge of rock holding hands, they put one foot wrong and plunged into the void. Gravity had not ceased to exist for living beings, and they both flew for fifty meters. Delcatty, in a desperate rescue attempt, activated her move Protect, but it failed on both her and Sceptile, leaving only the egg unharmed.
They crashed, and it was terrible: the reptile Pokémon was pierced by a tree trunk and died instantly, while the poor cat slammed violently to the ground, however managing not to lose consciousness. She had no time to despair, the new widow felt that her strength would've soon abandoned her, so she dragged herself to the Faded Village, hoping to find some beautiful soul who could take the egg into custody.
Incredibly, the village was populated by humans, a species believed to be in danger of extinction.
Delcatty came to the door of a large building and scratched it with her claws.
A woman in her forties came out, with a mild and reassuring appearance.
"Oh, my goodness!" she exclaimed when she saw the mortally wounded Delcatty.
Camilla, that was her name, immediately asked her husband, a tall man with a mustache named Julian, to rush here.
"In the bag... is my child..." Delcatty whispered.
The couple took out the egg and the girl placed a paw on it, smiling. She had tears in her eyes.
"I'm sorry... We won't be able to be by your side..."
She was crying, and in a whisper she revealed her husband's location to the two gentle people.
They were painful days, with Camilla and Julian intent on giving a proper burial to those two poor, unfortunate Pokémon.
Delcatty was twenty-five, Sceptile thirty.
Their only child, who turned out to be a Treecko, was born five weeks later.
Two months later, a Duskull knocked on their door.
Treecko was crawling around the house, attracted by Julian with some toys.
Camilla asked the Ghost Pokémon what he wanted. He had a child's voice, but also an unusually mischievous aura for a cub of his age, that was, six years.
"My parents left the Icicle Forest for food six days ago. After three days they still hadn't returned, so I started looking for them, they've never been away for that long. I'm afraid they are dead."
Camilla was disturbed by the rational and colorless behavior of the boy, but she invited him to enter.
She offered him an infusion of Violent Seed and Duskull told his story: he lived with his parents, a Dusclops and a Weavile, in the Icicle Forest and the three did their best, until the day he was left alone and was self-convinced of both his parents' demise.
Camilla listened attentively, while every now and then she ran a hand through her short hazel hair and melancholy blue eyes.
Duskull sipped his herbal tea politely, he seemed to have absorbed the trauma of the abandonment and the supposed passing of mother and father within him, and he didn't show any emotion worthy of note.
Suddenly, Julian's dark red hair and black eyes appeared on the scene, as he was struggling to keep up with the lively Treecko.
"Is he your adopted son?" Duskull asked with absolute nonchalance, finishing the tea.
"Yes. His name is Treecko and he came to us two months ago. He too is an orphan."
Duskull floated towards him and Treecko tried to grab him. Maybe it was just Camilla's impression, but she thought she saw a glimmer of hope and interest in the ghost's scarlet eye.
She wasn't wrong: growing up, Duskull became Treecko's guardian angel.
He followed him everywhere, making sure he didn't get into trouble, which happened quite often, because the gecko loved risk and exploration.
To prevent him from leaving on the adventure without thinking twice, Duskull asked permission from Camilla and Julian to build a playground for the two of them, so that they could have fun.
Thus, Duskull rocked Treecko on the swing, while his mind wandered often and willingly to that cruel world that seemed to make fun of them, to his parents, who were now disappeared for four years and to the kindness that still remained in the hearts of humans and Pokémon.
"Duskull, what do you think of the world?" Treecko asked him one day.
"Huh?"
"The sky is always gray. It's ugly." he was telling him, without losing his good humor.
Duskull was ten, and explaining certain concepts to a four-year-old cub could be tough, especially since they were greater than him either.
"Yes, it's true. It's ugly." he muttered, continuing to push him.
"You're gray too, but you're not ugly."
Duskull was puzzled for a moment, then smiled.
"Do you remember anything about your mom and dad?"
For Duskull, that question was like a stab, but then the ghost remembered that Treecko had never seen his biological parents.
"Mom was a hard worker. She grew Seeds and didn't give up even when they didn't sprout."
"Wow!" Treecko commented.
"Dad used to go around looking for Seeds for her."
"For me mom and dad are Camilla and Julian."
Duskull was worried: according to what he was told, Delcatty and Sceptile had been buried just outside the Village, but Treecko didn't know this.
One day he should have known. It was his right.
That day arrived.
Treecko was seven years old and had learned of his parents' grave and their hometown.
"I want to go to the Desert Village." he had thus begun to say.
Duskull sighed and shook his head.
"Forget it. We should go through the entire Gorge Canyon, and it's at least twenty kilometers long."
"How did I get convinced?"
Wrapped in the Power and Special Band given to them by Camilla and Julian, Duskull and Treecko set off towards the Desert Village.
Although the road was long, the Pokémon encountered along the Canyon were quite low in level, so the two managed to tame them by joining forces.
After a few hours of walking they reached the birthplace of Delcatty and Sceptile.
Everything had remained the same as seven years before: still, dark, unhappy.
Then, Treecko saw her: a grim-looking Delcatty, his mother's mother.
His grandmother Youyamao.
This one was standing on the edge of the front door, and she was looking with a dissatisfied glance at a young purple cat with six jumping Sableye in tow.
"What did you come here for?"
"I want to talk."
"Hurry up, come in."
The cat's manners were quite unfriendly, and the two travelers were dying of curiosity, so they perched under the windows of the villa's living room, from where the excited voices came.
A noise of cups placed impolitely on the low table. The shouting of the little Sableye.
The cat who scolded them sharply.
"Come on, I'll listen to you." the host pressed him.
"Finally the old Sableye is on his way, so I could sneak in here! It is your fault that I had to put up with a hound for father-in-law! It is your fault that I have to bear these six degenerate plagues and it is your fault that now no one wants to marry me anymore!"
"What a beautiful necklace!" one of the Sableye suddenly exclaimed.
"Second, no!"
Too late. The little girl clung to Youyamao's string of pearls, pulled hard and they flew everywhere in the living room.
"Mercy on me, heavens!" the Delcatty yelled, horrified.
The guest slapped the little girl and she began to cry.
Youyamao assumed a look of cutting superiority.
"Glameow, is that why you bothered to come here? To play the whining kitty? What do you expect from me and Houndoom, an adoption? Go back where you came from and take your flock of brats with you."
The young Pokémon looked at her with cold blue eyes and came out of her house calling his children:
"First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth! Let's go home."
The Sableye ran out of the villa and Youyamao returned to the entrance. Duskull and Treecko had moved, so the middle-aged Delcatty saw them.
"Do you need something?" she addressed them, literally glaring at them.
Was it an impression of the Ghost Pokémon, or had the cat narrowed her eyes in two slits as she placed them on Treecko?
In any case, the two of them apologized to her and she went back into the house slamming the door.
"What a horrible grandmother that happened to you! Are you sure it's her?"
"Yes, it's her."
Treecko sounded disappointed. Camilla and Julian had known his mother for a very short time, but from what he understood she must have been a friendly Pokémon. How could she have such a snobbish Delcatty as mother?
By the time the two boys returned to the Faded Village, Treecko's desire to meet his grandparents had vanished.