A cliff face near the top of Mt. Coronet – Age 23
It was cold. The wind whisked the smoke away from his mouth before he could really blow it out. He turned around when he heard her footsteps approaching.
"How'd you find me all the way up here?" he asked.
"You look like shit," Cynthia shook her head. "I had to have Looker do some digging. His psychic team found you."
"Figures," he scoffed. "Just can't escape anyone anymore."
"People are worried about you," Cynthia protested, "Do you have any idea how long I searched for you before I went to looker? No one comes up here anymore!"
"People are only worried about me because of my money," he replied. He dropped the butt of his cigarette onto the ground and ground it out with his foot. "If I wasn't the head of the company I could have fallen off the face of the earth and no one would even notice."
"That's not true!" she shouted. "I'm here because I worry about you. Even when you aren't off in the woods in the middle of nowhere. Dammit, Liam, not everyone is after your money and status! Looker, me, Silver, Iris, fuck, even N, we're your friends. I put aside my champion duties for a whole week just so I could come find you up here."
"You hear from Red recently?" Liam asked. Cynthia visibly recoiled.
"That's a low blow," she said. "I'll let you get away with it this time, but if you bring him up to me again-"
"I wonder if he has the right idea," he interrupted her. "Just run away from it all, disappear."
"Liam, what the fuck are you talking about?" she screamed. "No one's heard from Red in two years."
"I saw him eight days ago," Liam corrected quietly. "He's doing fine. Better than me anyway."
There was no warning before the slap hit him in the face.
"You know what, asshole?" she shouted. "Fuck you! Fuck you for disappearing, fuck you and Red for doing this shit all the time. If you saw him, why didn't he call me? Why didn't you call me?"
"He was just coming to check up on me," Liam answered. "He still doesn't really want to see anyone."
Liam lifted another black cigarette to his mouth. He snapped his fingers in front of it, and a small lick of flame danced to life. He shook his hand out once it was lit.
"You told her that you'd stop smoking those," Cynthia said sadly.
"I told her I'd protect her, too," he replied. "I guess I'm a liar on both counts, huh?"
"Liam, it wasn't your fault," she said. "You know it wasn't. You can't keep blaming yourself."
"My company was funding those monsters with my money, I was just too stubborn to claim it," he said. "If I had just given up my useless fucking rebellion, they never would have gotten off the ground. Instead they almost destroyed Sinnoh."
"We were kids, Liam!" she shouted. "You and Red need to stop brooding your lives away about things we couldn't change, it's not right!"
"She was a kid too!" he shouted back. Small sparks came out of his mouth as he raised his voice. "She was just a kid, just like the rest of us! She was seventeen, and she fucking died!"
-line break-
Eterna Forest – Age 8
"Young heir, come back this way at once!" the babysitter scolded.
Liam giggled as he dashed away through the brush. It was a warm summer day, the bird pokemon were chirping, and he had conned his keepers into bringing him out to Eterna Forest to 'help him focus'. Really, he just wanted to see some pokemon. Maybe he would even meet another kid his age!
He wasn't really looking where he was going as he ran through the woods. When he woke up this morning, he had felt something telling him that this plan would work today. Now, he was focusing on that feeling to guide him through the woods. He could feel it getting stronger as he reached a part of the forest that was more shadowed than the rest. Eventually, he arrived at a large stone covered in vines and weird symbols. Looking closer, the vines were denser around the center, clearly covering something. Brushing them aside, he revealed a large opening. Shrugging to himself, he stepped through.
Not a moment too soon either, as his minders crashed through the woods past him a minute later. He scowled. He wished a wild pokemon would get back at them for being so careless, they could be disturbing nests and bug-type habitats.
"Psst, hey, this way," he heard a voice. It seemed to be coming from deeper in the cave. He couldn't see very well.
"Who's there?" he asked.
A flashlight was suddenly shined in his face. He sputtered and held his hands up over his eyes. When the spots had vanished, a blond-haired girl wearing black clothes was holding the flashlight under her chin.
"I'm Cynthia," she said. "I'm going to be the best pokemon trainer ever!"
"Wow, that's really awesome!" Liam said.
A shy-looking girl with green hair and clothes stepped forward into the light.
"I'm Cheryl," she said. "We're pretending to be treasure hunters. Do you want to play with us?"
"What's that?" Liam asked.
"Treasure hunters are super cool!" Cynthia shouted. "They find powerful items and cool crystals and they go to all sorts of crazy places!"
"This place is kinda crazy," Liam said. "Is this where a treasure hunter would go?"
"Of course!" Cynthia supplied. She seemed about to go on, but just then, a pulse of the energy that Liam had followed to the cave came from deeper within. It almost knocked Liam over. Cheryl and Cynthia didn't seem as affected, but they looked disoriented for a moment.
"Did you feel that?" he asked. The girls nodded. He scrambled back to his feet. "Let's go see it!"
"What if it's dangerous?" Cheryl asked, seeming hesitant.
"What if it's treasure?" Liam countered, dashing deeper into the cave. Cynthia was quick to follow.
"If it's dangerous it'll be good practice for being champion!" she shouted back over her shoulder.
The three children ran through the dark cave for a few minutes before they saw a light ahead. They sprinted out into what appeared to be a circular clearing surrounded and covered by trees.
Light filtered down from the trees above, showering the grotto in small drops of brightness. There was a rock in the center. Two pokemon were on opposite sides of the rock, looking at each other. One was small and pink with a long tail and blue eyes. It floated in the air. The other, which looked almost humanoid, sat on the ground cross-legged. It was blue and black, and had a doglike face. The pokemon turned to the new arrivals as soon as they stumbled into the clearing.
"Caaaaaarrrrr," the humanoid one called to the other.
"ew," it answered. Its eyes started to glow a bright shade of magenta.
"Greetings human children," it spoke into their minds, "how have you found our grotto?"
"Um, well, we just followed the feeling," Cheryl said. Liam and Cynthia nodded vigorously.
"Yeah! There was this weird feeling when I woke up this morning that led me to the forest. Then, I ran away from the grownups who are always telling me what to do, and I met these two girls. Now we're here!" Liam narrated excitedly. "It's like you two made it happen!"
The pokemon exchanged glances.
"And just where do you think we are, right now, children?" the pink pokemon asked psychically.
"What, do you think we're stupid? I'm 9! I know that we're in Eterna forest!" Cynthia answered brashly.
A low chuckling noise came from the larger pokemon.
"Eterna forest may be where you came from, my child, but it is not where you are now," the pokemon answered. It sounded amused, even in their heads. It floated in a small circle around them. "Perhaps I should explain. The pokemon you see behind me is named Lucario. I am Mew. We meet here to meditate together. This place is called the Aura grotto. It appears to trainers who can feel aura when they enter the deepest part of their region's woods, but it is not really a part of them. You are no longer in Eterna forest. Truthfully, you aren't really even in Sinnoh anymore."
The kids were floored by this news, but mew wasn't done.
"There have never been so many Aura-sensitive children at the same time before though," Mew continued. "You three are in Sinnoh, and there's that boy and girl over in Unova, and then those two in Kanto. There's a boy in Johto as well, and then there's the Aura Guardian that Lucario here works with. Perhaps we could organize for you all to meet sometime."
"What is Aura? Can it make me a super-strong pokemon champion?" Cynthia asked.
Lucario chuckled to itself. Standing, it started to glow with blue energy. A blue sphere blasted out of its raised palm, and blew a crater into the stone wall that the three children had come out from. It nodded, barked, and then left.
"Aura is a pathway to many abilities, combative and otherwise," Mew telepathized. "Lucario has likely left to go inform the human he works with, called an Aura Guardian. He may want to meet with you and help you train your abilities at a later time, but for now, your parents and guardians are looking for you."
Mew floated in a lazy circle around the children. They were enveloped in a light pink glow. There was a flash, and then they were outside the forest. They could see Mew cheekily looking over its shoulder and teleporting away as the adults set upon them.
"It was highly irresponsible of you to run off like that, Liam," one of his attendees scolded. "You are the future of the corporation, if anything happened to you, it would be disastrous."
Liam didn't pay their scolding any mind. "I made friends! Look, these are Cynthia and Cheryl!" He pulled them out from behind him. "We went exploring in the forest, and met some really cool Pokemon!"
He was pulled away from his new friends to return to the boring world of homeschooling, but not before extracting from his overseers a promise that he would get to play with the other children soon.
A cliff face near the top of Mt. Coronet – Age 23
"Liam, why are you even up here?" Cynthia asked. "You seemed like you were doing better."
"I like this place," he answered. "It calms me down. I can't hear anything except the wind or feel anything except the cold."
"Please, just come home," she pleaded. "Sabrina misses you."
"Don't lie to me," he said. "She never cared about anything more than my last name."
"It's not a lie!" Cynthia shouted. "Have you even talked to her, had one fucking conversation since you got married?"
"It wouldn't be much of a conversation," he said. "I fought for my freedom so hard that I lost everything I ever wanted to be free for, and I still ended up chained down."
"She loves you, Liam," Cynthia protested. "She always has. That's why she was so willing to go along with her parents' plans, that's why she's always at your side when you let her."
"Then she's just another person I let down," he concluded. "None of it fucking matters anyway."
He removed the second cigarette from his mouth and flicked the butt off the edge of the cliff. It whipped away in the wind.
"It does, Liam," Cynthia said. "We all want to help. Your friends, your teachers, your wife, we care about you. Why won't you let us in?"
Liam turned around to face her. The anger that was on his face had morphed into an apathetic frown.
"You want me to let you in, Cynthia?" he asked. "Give you a little window into my head?"
"Yes!" she shouted.
"I'm dying, Cynthia" he said. "I came up here to think about it. You're the second living person I told."
He spun on his heel and walked to the edge of the cliff.
Aura Grotto – Age 8
It was a few months before the children felt Mew and Lucario pull on their Aura again. Once they had, they each begged their guardians to be allowed out into the woods. The two pokemon were waiting for them in the clearing, as was a tall teenager in a blue hat and coat. Several other children had come out of the tunnels as well.
"We're here!" Cynthia shouted boisterously as she, Liam, and Cheryl entered the grotto.
A girl with fluffy indigo hair bounced up to them, pulling along a boy with light green hair. "Hi, nice to meet you! I'm Iris, and this is my friend N! We're from Unova."
"Hello there, we're from Sinnoh," Liam introduced. "I'm Liam, and these are Cynthia and Cheryl."
"Wow, Sinnoh? The pokemon there are supposed to be super strong, right?" Iris asked excitedly. Cynthia looked ready to answer, but the teen in blue cleared his throat for them all to be quiet.
"Why don't we continue with introductions first," he said smoothly. "I am Riley, and I work with Lucario as what is called an Aura guardian. We, much like many legendary pokemon, are caretakers of the world we all live in. The reason I have gathered you all here today is that you all are sensitive to Aura in some way. Now, please continue introducing yourselves."
A boy with a red hat which shadowed his eyes stepped forward from the rock he was leaning on. "Name's Red. I'm from Kanto."
A girl with blue-green hair spoke next. "I am Sabrina Natsume. I'm a psychic. I'm also from Kanto."
The final child, a boy with red hair, introduced himself as well. "I'm Silver. I'm from Johto."
"Great, now that introductions are done, we can get started," Riley said, clapping. "Like I said, I called you all here to talk about Aura. It's a powerful ability, one which can grant humans many of the same abilities as pokemon. Mew here is going to activate all your Auras. Memorize the feeling, so that you can practice before the next time you come back here. Whenever you're ready, Mew."
Mew squeaked in response to the Aura gaurdians request, and then a visible pulse of energy spread out to envelop all the children.
Liam was knocked off his feet. The last thing he felt before he passed out was a comfortable warmth.
A cliff face near the top of Mt. Coronet – Age 23
"I wondered whether it would feel better to jump, to go out on my own terms," he said. Cynthia jolted, and started to run towards him. He scoffed, and continued, "Don't look at me like that, I decided not to. I realized when I reached the top how meaningless it would be."
He sat down with his feet dangling over the edge and lowered himself backwards until he was lying down.
"My Aura is eating me from the inside, you know," he said. "There isn't anything anyone can do. Red dropped in to see if Mewtwo would be able to help me. It couldn't. Mew and Celebi are dead, Arceus has to devote all its energy to containing Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina, and the lake spirits still hate me."
"Why? You were always so powerful, even right at the end of the fight, how could your Aura be hurting you?" Cynthia protested. "I've never had any problems with my Aura, and I know the others are the same."
"Cheryl did," he corrected. "She confided in me about it. She wasn't sure what she wanted out of life, and it made her Aura weak. Remember how her healing wasn't as powerful until around the time we were fifteen?"
"So what, you don't know what you want anymore either, so your Aura is killing you?" Cynthia asked. "That hardly seems fair."
"It's less that I don't know what I want," Liam said, chuckling, "and more that I've ceased to want anything at all."
"But you seemed so excited to be handling the restoration," Cynthia said. "What changed? Your philanthropy is saving lives, last time we talked you said it was all you had ever wanted when you took back the reigns of your company."
"Do you remember the promise that you, me, Cheryl, and Red made when we were thirteen?" he asked. Seeing her nod, he continued, "I wanted to keep my side of it so badly, but after she died I broke it and kept breaking it."
"The truth is, I haven't felt much of anything in a very long time."
Liam's room at his home in Jubilife City – Age 13
"Thanks so much, nana!" Liam said with an exuberant smile on his face.
"Any time, young heir," said the maid, "now enjoy your time with your friends."
"I will!" he said, just as cheerily.
As soon as the door closed, the smile dropped off his face to become a neutral expression.
"Whoa, dude, what was that?" Cynthia asked.
"What was what?" he returned, "Anyway, come on, show me this new Aura technique you figured out, I want to see it."
"No, hold it, what was that with your maid?" she demanded. "You were all smiles, and then the second she left you look like you're at a funeral."
"Oh, that? It's something I picked up when I was a kid," he said dismissively, "everyone expects me to act a certain way, regardless of what I think of them, so I just give everybody what they want to see."
"Um, I'm no expert, Liam, but I don't really think that's healthy," Cheryl said quietly.
"You guys never seemed to have a problem with it before now," Liam said, "What's the difference?"
"Wait, you do that shit around us too?!" Cynthia berated. "Why? We're your friends!"
"I do it with everyone, if anything I'm grateful to you guys for it," he said, "my neutral face takes the least energy, and it doesn't seem like you all need the happy-go-lucky smiles I have to put on for the maids or the cold mask I need for the elitists."
Red leaned forward and put a hand on Liam's shoulder. "Listen, man. I know I'm not really one to talk, I'm mute most of the time, but as your friends, we don't want to see fake faces you put on for appearances. We're your friends, we don't expect you to act a certain way, and certainly not the same way all the time."
"Liam, um, I think we, um, I mean we all want to just know how you're feeling," Cheryl said, "When Cynthia comes in and she's angry or said, we all try to help her, right?"
Liam nodded, looking over to his friends as if he was seeing them all for the first time.
"Are you sure?" he said, "What if I'm not really the same guy that you all like so much? What if the calm, casual heir to the business doesn't exist? Huh? What then? Would you all still stick around? Or would you leave, like everyone else?"
The sheer uncertainty in his eyes was crushing to the other teens in the room. He started to take their shocked silence the wrong way.
"See? Everyone hates the real me, so I lie about how I feel all the time. It's not like you're all honest either," he protests, "So what's a little acting?"
Cheryl lunged forward and hugged his head to her chest. He stiffened at the contact, but didn't push her away.
"We don't hate the real you, Liam," she assured. "We were surprised, is all. It's okay. It's okay to feel strongly. We're training to be Aura guardians, we have a lot on our shoulders. You most of all, with the pressure to run the company and keep up appearances. I promise, though you don't need your masks around us."
While she was saying this, Cynthia nodded to Red, who used his Aura to make the room inaudible to anyone outside it. It was a good thing he had, because the dam broke immediately and Liam started bawling.
"That's it, just let it out," Cheryl said, stroking his hair. "It's okay. Everything is going to be okay. We're here."
"I showed my caretakes my Aura, I told them I was going to use it to help people," he sobbed. "They just laughed at me. They said that I was going to take over the company, like there was nothing else to it. I'm not even a fucking person to them."
By this point, Cynthia and Red had come back from the door and were hugging Liam from the sides as well.
"I hate it!" he cried, "Liam, do this, do that, say this to that person, it's like I'm a robot who only exists to carry my parents' name! They don't even let me make decisions in the company, they just make me sign papers and smile at parties."
"We're sorry," Cheryl said, "if we were better friends, we might have noticed that you were going through all of that. Believe me when I say, though, that we know you're a person."
"I know you do," he said. "I think I always did, I was just so afraid that if you saw how I felt all the time you would leave. You two were my first friends ever, fuck, you were the first people my own age I ever met. I couldn't lose you."
"You won't get rid of us that easily, dumbass," Cynthia said quietly, "you matter to us. Not the rich man-about-town heir you either, the you that gets really nerdy about his Aura techniques and knows just where to scratch a Garchomp behind the fins."
"You saved my life," Red said simply, "There's no keeping up appearances there."
Liam finally reached out his arms to encircle his friends. He opened his eyes and turned his head to look up at Cheryl. Despite the crying, he blushed hotly at knowing she was holding his head right to her chest.
"See, Liam," Cheryl said softly, "it'll all be okay. From now on, I want you to promise us something. No more fake faces around us."
"I don't know if I can do it," he said pitifully, "Being myself in front of you guys for five minutes has been exhausting, I don't think I could manage it all the time."
"I believe in you," she said, "and I'll offer you this promise in return. When you come to us angry or sad or afraid, we'll always accept you. I'll even hold you like this every time if it helps."
"I, um, I-" he said, once again crying and struggling to get the words out, "I think it will. I promise."
"Wonderful," Cheryl said, leaning down to kiss his forehead. "Now, let's stay like this for a while until you feel better."
A cliff face near the top of Mt. Coronet – Age 23
Liam eventually backed up from the cliff face so he was lying on a more flat patch of ground. He was surprised to have Cynthia flop down right next to him and grab his head. She pulled it to her chest.
"Is it okay?" she asked. "For me to hold you the way she did? I know it doesn't feel the same, but does it help?"
"No, it isn't the same," he said, voice breaking. "Your breasts are much larger."
"Asshole," she said as she smacked his shoulder. "Just shut up and stay with me for a while. It's okay. Everything will be okay."
If she noticed the dampness on her shirt from his tears, she didn't mention it.