Chapter 1 - Arc 1 (Melemele Island) Just a Couple Kanto Kids
There was a loud, obnoxious banging on her bedroom door followed by the plaintive mews of their Meowth. "Up, up, up, it's a bright, sunny day! Also, Mom wants us to help her unpack," she heard her brother shout from the other side, voice cheery and melodic. It made her want to hit him with something. He was such a morning person it could make her sick.
In groggy Kantonian, Selene groaned back, "Five more minutes…" She feebly clutched at the blanket over her body and tried to remove it a few times, but her muscles gave way each time. She was dimly aware that she was sweating profusely beneath it. Fuck, it's hot, she thought with a grimace. She grunted in annoyance as Elio called out to her again in that joking tone. It was way too early for his playfulness. She was jetlagged to hell and back; how was he so cheery and alert already?
"You've had fourteen hours. Isn't that enough?" he teased with another resounding knock.
"Fuck off, Elio!" She intended it to be a demand, but her voice broke into laughter halfway in. She couldn't stay mad at him as much as she wanted to; he meant well.
Fourteen hours? Did I really sleep that long? She glanced around and had to shield her eyes from a blinding shaft of sunlight shining through her window.
"Come on, get up!" he whined. "We've gotta finish packing so I can go scope out the Alola chicks!" She heard him snicker. Rolling her eyes, Selene finally tossed the comforter from herself and swung her feet to the floor.
Some locals had arrived the day before and assisted in putting most of their larger furniture away (which had been weirdly kind of them, she had to admit. Certainly, nobody back in Kanto would have done that), but boxes were still stacked high on the far side of her room. She had intended to put them away the day before, but the second she had sat down on the bed, all her willpower was sapped by the sheets and she had simply gone to sleep. She felt gross and unclean from the sweat, though; it was hot. Did this place not have air conditioning or something? It was a far cry from Kanto's dreary weather.
After throwing together an outfit from the few sets of clothes she had in a suitcase and washing up in the bathroom, Selene staggered her way downstairs. Mom was unpacking in the kitchen, clanging dishes and pots as she went, and Dad had squeezed himself behind the television. "I don't understand how this works," he blustered, "does Alola have completely different cable wires, or something?"
"Better question, do they have cable?" Elio snarkily asked as he popped his head in from the sliding door separating a balcony from the rest of the house. Bright blue eyes gleamed with mischief and his deep, blue-gray hair was windswept against his forehead. That cheeky grin was met with a disbelieving scoff from Dad, who peeked his head over the top of the black TV and his eyes bulged like someone had threatened him.
"Don't joke like that!" Dad demanded as he pointed a finger at Elio dramatically. "My own son! Wounding me like this!"
"Hey, I'm just sayin'," Elio snickered as he leaned against the doorframe, "we are out here in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the ocean with people that worship pokémon other than Arceus, so like…"
"Hey, be nice," Mom quickly corrected him with a stern finger pointed his way, all while her other hand comically balanced a stack of pots in midair, "we talked about this. We're here to learn from Alola."
"Besides," Dad huffed as he dove back behind the TV, "Kanto was no shining example of human behavior, either."
"You tell 'em, Dad," Selene commented dryly as she watched the calamity unfold. She smirked as she added in her best impression of a narrator, "Today, on the Isono Household sitcom, we take a deep dive into Mr. Isono's hatred for his home country… Last time, we heard the rant about how Lance is really a Flying-type trainer, this time…?"
"Lt. Surge is a wannabe hardass," her dad puffed back in a similar tone. Everyone burst into laughter except for Mom, who practically yelped.
"Inaba!" she snapped. "These are your children!" The pots she had been holding abruptly clattered to the floor. "Shit!" she hollered in surprise.
"There you go, Mom, keep him in line," Elio teased as he loped over to help her.
"Oh, calm down, they're 17 and 19, they've probably said worse when we weren't watching," Dad laughingly told Mom.
Selene lost herself giggling and flopped down on the couch. She glared at a pile of boxes to the left of the living room. "Can we just burn them and buy new things?" she called loudly, lazily tossing her head against the back of the couch.
"Sure, how much you got?" Dad answered without skipping a beat. There was a loud bang from behind the TV and he jumped back briefly. "Arceus!"
"Think we can replace it all with…" Selene dug in her pockets and retrieved a single coin. "25 cents?"
There was a loud knock at the door that interrupted her father before he could respond. "Al-ol-a!" a man's voice from outside called.
Selene eyed the door dubiously. "Should I get it?"
"Nah, let him stand there," Elio said sarcastically as he stood up from where he had been helping Mom. "Yes, answer the door, what do you think he's gonna do, bite you?"
"I don't know his life," Selene shot back wryly. She jumped up and sauntered over to the door. Upon opening it, she recognized a man that had been there the day before to help them. She had never caught his name, but she had remembered him by his looks for sure… he lacked a shirt to cover his toned body, instead he just boasted a thin, white labcoat which did not cover his gorgeous abs. Gray baggy shorts flicked in the breeze against his legs.
"H-hi, there," Selene offered in shaky, imperfect Galarish. Mom had tried to teach them all Alolan prior to moving but found nowhere in Kanto offered a class in the language. Instead, they had settled on honing their Galarish-speaking skills, as Dad had explained most Alolans knew Galarish fairly well.
"Hey there, cousin!" the man waved back at her and sported a broad, goofy smile. "I'm sorry, I never got your name. Mine is Kukui. Your parents around?"
She stared at him for another moment before finally ripping her eyes away. Arceus, he was the single most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes on. Who gave him permission to walk around without a shirt? Shaking the hazy thoughts from her head, she cupped a hand around her mouth and shouted, "Mom! You think you got a minute?"
She took a second to respond—learning the new language had been especially hard on her mother, seeing as she hadn't been taught any Galarish at all before they decided to move—but she soon hurried over to the door. She brushed long, faded brown hair from her face and eyed Kukui with bright, amber eyes. "Professor Kukui! How nice of you to drop by again," she offered awkwardly and almost robotically. "Did you need help?"
Kukui seemed to ponder a response and Selene groaned. "She meant, 'how can I help you?'" Selene clarified.
"Yes, that!" Her mother beamed.
"Oh, oh!" Kukui laughed. "Nah, cousin, I wanted to come over and talk about your little ones! What's their names again?"
Little? I'm seventeen! Selene thought indignantly. Before she had a chance to correct him, her mother waved her away, shooting her a warning look as she did.
"Elio is my son and he's 19, Selene, my daughter, she's 17," Mom explained once Selene wandered away back to the couch. She frowned as she sat down again. She felt frumpy and gross all over again. It was so hot!
"Oh, really?" Kukui tilted his head slightly. He then peered a little further into the house and frowned slightly. "Hey, would it be alright if I stepped in?"
"Huh?" Mom paused. "Oh, yeah, I don't see a problem…" She uneasily sidestepped and pulled the door open. Kukui strode into the home with confidence. Selene raised a brow at him. He's not bothered at all about the idea of being in a house full of people he doesn't know… and he just asked to come right on in. That's a little weird…
"S-so, Professor, can I get you anything?" Mom asked as she clasped her hands together. "I do not have much yet, still need to go to the store…"
"Nah, nah!" Kukui put his hands against his hips and grinned widely. "I wanted to talk to your kids about the Island Challenge, yeah!"
"The… Island Challenge?" Mom echoed stupidly.
"Yeah, honey, I told you about it before," Dad earnestly jumped from behind the TV and scurried over to his wife, his black hair glued to his forehead by sweat. He clasped a hand against her arm and then wrapped his other arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. He muttered something in Kantonian quickly to her, and her face lit up in understanding.
"Oh, that!" she laughed. "Oh, of course. Elio, Selene? Come talk to the nice professor about the Island Challenge…" The words rolled off her tongue brokenly, like a skipping CD trying to play. Selene winced at her butchering of the words, but she and Elio soon stood at attention in front of Kukui. Elio was bouncing his foot impatiently. Selene just sighed exasperatedly at his tic.
"Hey, you two, Selene, Elio!" Kukui waved both of his hands in a circular gesture. Selene recognized it; Dad had taught it to her and her brother and told them it was how Alolans greeted one another. She remembered Mom and Dad insisting they practice it and so, for like a week, they all greeted each other with the gesture. It still somehow felt awkward as she did it back to Kukui. It felt weird and unnatural compared to how fluid and easily the professor's hands conveyed it. Elio's was embarrassingly even worse. Kukui just continued on with his words without saying anything about it, though Selene thought she caught the corner of his lip twitch… "You're new here, yeah, so I thought I'd come by and tell you about our Island Challenge, yeah. Everyone in Alola goes through it! It's kind of a coming of age thing, like your gyms in Kanto, yeah?"
"Most people do that, but not everyone," Elio shrugged his shoulders as he answered. "Gyms can be rough."
"Oh, I know!" Kukui nodded vigorously at Elio. Selene frowned. He moved more like a cartoon character than a person, exaggerating every little action intensely… and she had to admit, she may not have understood Galarish perfectly, but she was pretty sure 'yeah' every few words wasn't how it worked. At least it was kind of funny how he said it. It made everything he said sound like a question. "When I was just getting into studying, I traveled to some other regions, yeah! Traveled to Kanto and those gyms showed me a thing or two, yeah! Fought my way to the Indigo League, but I didn't get any farther than that!"
"You challenged the Kanto gyms?" Dad pried. His eyes were nearly bulging from their sockets in disbelief. "How long ago?"
Selene snorted. "Dad trained under Lt. Surge while we lived in Vermilion," Selene said before Kukui had a chance to respond, "so he's just wondering if he saw you while he was there."
"Oh, was just a few years ago, yeah," Kukui nodded. Ignoring how her father excitedly bounced, he carried on with, "Anyway, here in Alola, everyone does it, yeah! If you two want to follow me to Iki Town, Kahuna Hala would be happy to give you a pokémon to start out, yeah?"
Selene fought back laughter. She felt like she'd been kicked in the face by a Rapidash by jetlag and here this man wanted to give her a pokémon and send her out on what she could only assume would be their version of a Pokémon League. She still couldn't believe they didn't have an official one of those… Before Dad had sat them down to first talk about Alola, she hadn't even considered it possible for there to be a region without one!
"That sounds great!" Dad answered for them when both Selene and Elio were awkwardly silent. Brother and sister turned their heads in disbelief at him. What the hell, Dad? Selene wanted to demand. …Didn't you guys want me to help unpack boxes? I'm still so tired!
"Perfect!" Kukui laughed and clapped his hands together, making Elio and Selene both recoil slightly. "I'll go wait outside, yeah? You two just head on out whenever you're ready!" With that, he did another Alola wave and strutted back out the front door, closing it behind him smoothly.
"So," Elio turned on his tiptoes to face Dad after an awkward stretch of silence, "what was that?"
"Yeah!" Selene demanded as she clenched her fists and glared back at her parents. "We just got here! I'm still tired!"
"You slept 14 hours, literally how?" Elio asked in an incredulous, high-pitched tone.
"After being awake for 32 hours," Selene puffed back at him defensively. "Unlike you, I like to sleep." She smugly crossed her arms and smiled at him.
"Enough," Dad sighed. "Listen, remember what I told you about the Island Challenge being important to Alola?"
"Yeah," Elio and Selene answered nearly in unison. They both then turned finger-guns on each other, all but forgetting the conversation at hand in their impulsive game. "Jinx!" they both exclaimed in sync. "Jinx agai—"
"Hey! Listen!" Dad snapped his fingers in their faces to get their attention back. Selene grunted and turned back to him. What was so serious, anyway? "Everyone in Alola has to go through it, it's kind of their rite of passage…"
"Yeah, I got that much," Elio snickered, "is that it?"
"No," Dad shook his head, "it's more than just that. The Island Challenge… is steeped in the Alolans' belief in the guardian pokémon of each island, the Tapus. Now, the Island Challenge isn't that hard." Dad removed his arm from around Mom's shoulders and she shuffled away from him with her eyes trained on the floor. "But it's extremely important that you both participate in it, okay? I was hoping we'd get a few more days to settle in before they'd start asking about it, but, well…"
"Are you for real?" Elio scoffed. "Well, what're they gonna do if we don't do it? I didn't get into the Kanto League for a reason, Dad, remember?"
"Indigo League, son," Dad corrected him almost automatically.
"Whatever!" Elio hissed and arched his shoulders slightly. "I don't care for battling. I think pokémon are cute and everything, but that's it. I don't wanna make them claw each other for no reason."
"Yeah, and why not just tell them we don't really feel the need to do their Island Challenge?" Selene pressed.
"We're new here," Mom interjected softly, "okay? They've welcomed us with open arms and have been really, really helpful. I think it would be nice for you two to participate in their traditions, get to know them better, show them not all Kantonians are the same."
"So, we're ambassadors for the whole of Kanto now?" Elio snidely asked. "'Cause I don't remember signing up for that. You definitely failed to say just how important this thing was."
"Yeah, that's totally unfair," Selene echoed his frustrations, stamping her foot slightly in agreement. "You tricked us!"
"I did not trick you, and I'm sorry, but you're going, and that's final," Dad said, shaking his head. His stern face softened as he smiled slightly. "Come on. Alola is so pretty. Won't you at least give it a chance? And like I said. I've heard many people say it's not that hard at all. It's nothing like the gyms. They don't even have an Elite Four. You just have to do these little tests here and there across the four islands and once you're done, you're done! You can do… whatever it is you two want to do…"
Elio put a hand to his forehead and groaned. "Photography, Dad, photography. We've been over that. At least it'll let me get some pictures for my photography portfolio," he muttered.
But Selene wasn't so easily convinced. She still had her arms crossed and was glaring back at her parents. "Like Elio said, what're they gonna do if we don't participate? Kick us out? I want to just raise pokémon… maybe help rehabilitate some that were abused in the past. I don't really wanna go out there and make a name for myself, you know."
"Selene," Dad frustratedly growled and he pinched the bridge of his nose, waving a hand at them to tell them both to wait a second before saying anything. "You're just going to have to do it. Okay?"
"Professor Kukui is still outside," Mom gently tried to cut the tension, "you two should get ready and then follow him like he said…"
"Fine, not like I have a choice anyway," Selene spat back at them and marched away, headed for the stairs. Elio followed in short order. He caught up to her at the top of the staircase and they both looked at each other for a long moment. "This just feels so weird," Selene sighed at last.
"Yeah, it is," Elio rubbed the back of his neck and averted his gaze as he agreed. "I… think there might be more to it than Mom and Dad are telling us… Maybe he's right though, and it's not so bad… Come on. We got this, eh, sis? At least it'll probably get us some money if we win some while we're out, huh? I know that'll help you out with what you wanna do."
He smiled weakly and held out a fist to her. She bumped it back and relented, smirking back at him. "Sure thing, El. And I'm sure people would love pictures of Alola." As she and Elio parted ways and she walked into her room to get her bag and things, she thought, Okay, so we participate in this dumb Island Challenge, do their little tests, and then we can get a move on with our lives… I suppose traveling the paradise islands of Alola isn't that bad. Might even be fun! Everyone does seem so nice here…
A lot better than Kanto, anyway.