I opened my eyes when I felt myself being repeatedly nudged by something. I woke up, spotting spiritomb's neon green eyes staring at me. My room was still dark, and a quick look at the clock hanging on the wall of the room told me that it was about two in the morning, way too early to be waking up.
"What's wrong?" I asked spiritomb and sat up, knowing that he had to be doing this for a very good reason. Spiritomb simply slipped through the door and vanished, obviously intending for me to follow him outside.
I silently left my bed and walked out of the room that I am temporarily using in Elesa's house. I didn't see spiritomb anywhere so I simply continued walking and observing the place, trying to figure out why spiritomb deemed that waking me up was necessary. I was walking past Elesa's room when I heard muffled gasps of discomfort from it.
I stuck my ear close to her door, trying to be sure that I was not imagining things but the longer I listened, the more I felt that she was currently in pain. This shouldn't happen, she should be safe in her own home and I know for a fact her emolgas sleep in the same room as her. They should be able to protect her from anything.
Maybe spiritomb had sensed Elesa's discomfort from afar due to him being a ghost type and decided that it was troubling enough to ask for my help.
"Elesa. Elesa?" I knocked on her door and when there's no response, tried opening the door. It's locked.
"Spiritomb," I whispered as the vengeful ghost emerged from my shadows at my command. A second later, I was being transported into her room with Shadow Sneak. As expected, the word messy couldn't even start describing just how… messy her room was. However, that was not my immediate concern.
I knelt down by her bedside and observed. Her eyes were closed, she was convulsing as though in discomfort and breaking out into a cold sweat and no matter how hard her emolgas were trying to get her to wake up she just wouldn't open her eyes.
A nightmare, a very bad nightmare, I'm too familiar with this. It's rare to see it in person, but when nightmares get this bad there's no waking up from it until it finishes running its course, unless…
"Spiritomb, I need you to be very gentle with Elesa. Use Dream Eater, eat her dreams as little as possible and as slowly as possible. It's the only way to get her to snap out of it."
We watched as spiritomb slowly worked his magic on Elesa and we felt a little bit more relieved when the frown on her face lessened and her breathing gradually evened out. I signalled for Spiritomb to stop using Dream Eater once I determined that this was enough. Her two emolgas tried nudging her awake after spiritomb had finished its task and this time, they succeeded in waking her up.
"Mimi... ? Nana…? Huh, Jayce? Why are you…"
"Spiritomb woke me up and led me here, so I decided to investigate," I replied as I took a seat by the side of her bed. "How long has it been?"
"What-"
"Trust me, I have been there. How else did you think I woke you up so easily?"
"Tch," Elesa clicked her tongue as she slowly sat herself up on her bed, her shirt thoroughly drenched with the cold sweat she was breaking out from her nightmare earlier.
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not your business," she looked away and when she realised that ignoring me wasn't going to make me go away, finally relented.
"It's about my family."
"From before you seeked mine out?" I asked, which she nodded silently with her knees tucked close to her chest, her head buried in it. After a few moments of silence, she decided to speak.
"My family, the Euclid family, is nothing like yours. We don't interact with pokemon, ever," she sniffed a little, still looking down at her knees, before continuing.
"My grandfather holds the greatest power within the family. Like the long line of ancestors we were born from before him, the family never interacted with pokemon under his leadership too but grandpa takes this to the extreme. For as long as I could remember he absolutely detested pokemon. My father, his son and successor, was fine with pokemon. In fact, my papa and yours were very good friends."
That is something my father had told me as well.
"I always wanted a pokemon. Ever since I was little, all I wanted was a pokemon. My papa allowed me to keep one despite my grandpa's fierce refusal. He got me a magnemite when I was five, he's very cute. I call him Mr Plus, because he has a plus sign screw on his head and as a child I found it very adorable back then. He followed me everywhere and well, I just love him as much as I love my parents. My grandfather never liked me much because of Mr Plus. Then I turned thirteen. It was two years late for me, but I finally got permission from my papa to start my journey as a pokemon trainer, the first Euclid in our family's history to be one and then papa just… died. My papa and my mama died in an accident and my grandpa retook the position as the head of the family. It was where my nightmare started."
Seeing as how Elesa definitely doesn't have a magnemite or any of its evolutionary forms on her main team, I can guess where this story is heading towards.
"Grandpa hates pokemon. Other than my papa and mama I never felt any love from anyone else in that family. My family weighs a person's worth by the value they bring to them, they are so controlling that it is suffocating. Everything was made worse by the fact that we are the Euclids, we hold such a strong influence over the financial side of things in Unova's economy that nobody ever dares to go against us except for your family, and nobody ever dared to say no to grandpa except for papa and Grimsley. My grandpa doesn't like it when somebody doesn't listen to him. He doesn't like my mama, the wife my papa chose to marry despite my grandpa's protests because she is a filthy model. He said that my mama is filthy simply because she is a model and that all models got to where they are only because they slept around to get the right connections. That's just how he's like. My grandpa always gets his way and so, when he said that I cannot be a trainer, I cannot be a trainer. When he says that he will plan my perfect future for me, I have to comply. Everything in my life, he had planned it out in black and white for me without giving me a chance to decide what I wanted for myself. But when he said that I have to get rid of Mr Plus… that's where I drew the line."
"You objected."
"He didn't take my objection too kindly. Guess what that heartless fucker did? He made me watch. He made me watch as he hired some trainers to use their pokemon to pin Mr Plus onto the ground. I can never forget, never, when Mr Plus was being repeatedly smashed by a gurdurr over and over, over and over, over and over, over and over again and I can do nothing but watch and cry and beg grandpa to stop, to please stop because Mr Plus is going to die but did he ever listen? No. He smiled. He smiled and touched me tenderly on my cheek and said that this is for my own good, that pokemon are nothing but distractions for me, that they should be gone from my life. So I watched. I can only watch as Mr Plus was killed right before my eyes, reduced to nothing but a pile of dented scrap metal tossed into the bin. My first ever pokemon, my starter, my first friend, gone, just like that."
To do this right in front of a kid, that is fucked up even for my standards.
"Then I remembered papa had a very good friend that even grandpa cannot easily sway with his influence. I waited, I waited for so long just for a chance to escape that hell and then ran away the first chance I got and didn't stop until I reached Lacunosa, banging on their gates until they let me in. The rest was history. Murder of pokemon is illegal, but I know the law will never reach my grandpa so after I finally recovered enough I decided to ask Grimsley to teach me how to be a pokemon trainer. All that drove me back then was the spite I have for my grandfather. I will become a trainer strong and famous enough to spite him. Then I decided that no, that's not enough, I want him to see my face everywhere in Nimbasa where my family lives. I want him to have no choice but to see my face at every turn he makes, at every corner he drives around in his precious little city just to spite him. I want him to know that I can live even better, be more successful than whatever he had planned for me, that I can be so much greater without him, just to spite him. I looked so much like my mama, so I decided to be a model like her too, just to spite him. I succeeded. I am so successful that I am now a world-renowned supermodel that the whole world knows who I am. I am so successful that my grandpa is now forced to see my face being plastered somewhere in the city wherever he goes in Nimbasa and whenever he sees my face, he will remember that there was once this failure in his family called Elesa Euclid and that she is perfectly fine. She's doing very well as a pokemon trainer, as a Gym Leader, and as a supermodel, she's doing very well in life at everything he hated her doing. I want him to know that I succeeded without him controlling my life. All of it, just to spite him."
Silence fell upon the room and I spoke my heartfelt thoughts.
"You are very strong. Stronger than me, at least."
"Hoh, did I hear correctly? Praise coming from you?" Elesa let out a laugh of disbelief. "No, I take it as a personal failure when there is someone who doesn't know who I am. Do you remember? You had no idea who I was back at the farm, the first person to say that to my face after I became a supermodel. Tsk tsk, I'm not famous enough, it seems. Now I'm really hurt."
"But I know who you are now. Doesn't that count?"
"Oh but it sure stung my precious pride back then. You had no idea how hurt I was," Elesa rested her head on her knees while looking at me. "And what did I get for all the trouble of getting to know you? You twisted my hands behind my back like gosh! Do you know how much that hurt? Do you even know how to treat a lady properly? And I was being so nice and patient and that was what I got in return? I really should have made the connection back then. You definitely are a Dandolos, definitely."
I sighed.
"You are just going to hold this over me forever, aren't you?"
"You betcha. Whenever somebody asks me how the both of us first met, I will tell them how this gentleman with such a nice handsome face handled me in a way so roughly that I nearly dislocated my shoulders. And that he doesn't know me, a supermodel known far and wide across the world and that his photography skills suck so badly that… oh my gosh, I still can't believe I posted that photo you took of me on social media. What was I thinking? Worst decision of my life, period."
"Fine, fine. I suck, you rock. You win, happy now?"
"No no no, I'm not going to let you off the hook that easily, you uncouth brute. I won't be satisfied until I convert you to be my diehard fan, then I will be happy."
"Pushy annoying woman."
"Frickin barbarian," Elesa returned the shot before asking another question. "Come to think about it, do you still keep the photo I gave you or have you thrown it away?"
"Make a guess."
"Just tell me."
"Not your business."
"Woah woah, quoting me now? In that case you should stick to the script and do what I did, pour your heart out to me. Let's have a heart-to-heart talk like the besties we are."
"Now we are besties?"
"After the talk we had? Why not? The last time I did this was with Leticia when we were still stupid teenagers and we got stupidly drunk to the point that we started comparing our breast sizes in front of a traumatised Lex… Wait, that's how you knew about this, didn't you? Lex told you."
"I said nothing."
"Wow, thanks. Thanks. Lexus is going to be so thankful to you when I get my hands on him later. Thanks, bestie."
"You and Mewtwo, peas in a pod."
"Him? His singing is horrible. Who taught him? You?"
"Believe it or not, he's self-taught. His other favourite pastime is to figure out how and why some pokemon have more than one head. Sometimes he would marvel over miltanks' teats and rant to me the entire day about how wonderful they are. I personally think he is currently undergoing puberty but I'm not an expert in pokemon biology."
"He seems to like you an awful lot," Elesa yawned, probably still tired from whatever work she had to be involved in earlier today to crack down on the Plasmas hiding in her city. I know for a fact that she returned home at a very late hour and probably only just fell asleep only to be woken up by a nightmare.
"I knew I already asked you before, but do you need help with the Plasmas? I'm free anyway."
"Actually, I asked your aunt Giselle for help in that matter. As for you… I did consider it, but I'm not sure if that will be a good idea."
"... What's that look for?"
"You don't work well with others at all," Elesa retorted. "Knowing you, you would just solo everything in your own way without concerning yourself with the opinion of others. That's only going to give me more trouble than it's worth."
That's actually… true.
"You know what? I didn't want to say this originally because it's not really my place to, but since we are besties now maybe there are some things I should point out to you out of the goodness of my heart. I don't think you realised it yourself, Jayce, that you tend to keep pushing everyone around you away when there's no need to. You don't even realise it yourself and that's the issue. Not looking for your family immediately after arriving in Unova, making them worry and to hunt high and low for you for months instead, trying to keep Iris at a distance when the girl clearly adores you so much… Ask yourself, how long has it been since you last talked to Grimsley? Ever gave him a call, even if it's just for five minutes? You have a loving family that I would die for to have once again, Jayce, and you are not even appreciating what you have."
Seeing that I had gone silent, Elesa sighed and continued.
"Okay, I understand, it's not your fault that you turned out this way because you don't understand how it is to be loved after living the kind of life you led for so long but now that you know, how about you start changing for the better, one step at a time? You are no longer a mind-controlled operative anymore. You now have the opportunity to make your own choices. You no longer need to force yourself to be a cold-hearted killer any longer so why don't you try to be nice for once, to try and change? I know you can change, you have already changed a fair bit for the better since we first met."
I looked at that annoying woman and for a while, I had no idea what to say.
"I just have this realisation that every time we meet, you have an uncanny way of wounding my pride by saying things that I cannot refute. Either that, or you annoy the hell out of me. Are you born for the sole purpose of making my life difficult? Because I'm starting to think that is the case."
"Annoying? You haven't seen me trying to be annoying. Hey, do you know why I never trusted the stairs?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Because they are always up to something."
"Seriously, woman?" I made it very clear how disgusted I am by her lame pun but it seemed that she was on a roll and had no plans on stopping anytime soon.
"Can February March? No, but April May. Never trust an atom, they make up everything. Waking up in the morning was an eye-opening experience. Fairy tales have a tendency to drag-on. I would like to make a pun about the wind but it blows. A bakery burned down last night, now it's toast. There-"
"I get it. I get it. You are helluva annoying when you really want to be," I quickly stopped her from going on and on about her lame puns or I might really be driven insane. This is the kind of thing that Mewtwo would be interested in and thank God that Elesa never had the chance to teach him how to make lame puns. I might just try to strangle Mewtwo myself if that were to happen.
"Oh, are you sure that you had not eaten anything with food colouring today? Because you look like you are dye-ing on the inside," Elesa made one last pun before breaking out into a laugh after seeing the disgusted look on my face. "Okay, okay, I will stop here. You really look like you are going to die from a cringe overdose."
"With how bad your puns are, anyone would. Hearing you making up puns is like discussing infinity with a mathematician, it can go on forever."
Elesa looked at me in shock.
"Hey, that's a good one."
"Yeah, so get on my level, then we can talk."
"Okay, I changed my mind. You are now qualified to take part in the operation tomorrow if you want to tag along. Be prepared to leave by six, latest."
"Just because I can pun better than you?"
"Yup, you just earned yourself a brownie point from me for that infinity pun. Now not only are we besties, we are punny besties."
"I don't want to understand what that is supposed to entail."
"Have fun trying to understand. Now, shoo, get out, my shirt is disgustingly sweaty and I need to change out of it. Shoot, there's only a few more hours until we have to be out of the house to continue with the Plasma hunting. Shoo shoo shoo! Out! I need to catch as much of my beauty sleep as possible!"
Elesa pushed me out of her room and slammed the door right in my face, locking me out. I decided to just head back to my room to sleep as well, seeing as I somehow signed myself up to do some Plasma hunting that will take place just a few hours later. Can't go at full power if I'm not fully charged.
I paused in my steps when I realised I had just unknowingly made another pun myself. That annoying woman, now my head is full of stupid puns.
This is all her fault.
Name: Jayce Dandolos
Age: 22
Pokemon Team:
1. Ninetales, female
2. Exeggutor, male
3. Weavile, male
4. Honchkrow, female
5. Umbreon, male
6. Hydreigon, male
7. Drapion, female
8. Zoroark, male
9. Bisharp, male
10. Shiftry, male
11. Porygon-Z, (Nosy), genderless
12. Greninja, male
13. Spiritomb, male
14. Pikachu, (Grumpy), male
Name: Elesa Euclid
Age: 23
Pokemon Team:
1. Zebstrika (Dazzle)
2. Emolga (Mimi)
3. Emolga (Nana)
4. Ampharos
5. Galvantula
6. Eelektross
7. Stunfisk
8. Luxray
9. Dedenne
10. Alolan Raichu
11. Jolteon