The world is not a fair place, not really. It does not matter how much effort governments put into making its citizens believe otherwise, the truth will always stay the same. Things such as social mobility and economic incentives are really just another lie. I think everybody knows this on some level, they just choose to ignore it. And really, why wouldn't they? It is infinitely better to go to bed every night with the hope that if you study more, work harder, make better decisions, or take all the opportunities presented you will eventually better your life than to know with absolute certainty no matter what you do, you will never move upwards the social ladder. And yet, when our senators and mayors and presidents tell us to work harder to buy a bigger house, a newer car, better clothes, fresher food, we all believe them. Because it would be devastating to accept the cold hard reality that where you were born, save for some miracle is where you are going to stay for the rest of your life. Because as I was saying, the world is not a fair place.
Case and fucking point, my entire life from birth to grave.
I was born on September, or at least that was the best guess the nurses at the orphanage could give. Confused? You really shouldn't be. When a baby gets dropped at the door of a police precinct in the middle of the night without any papers, not even a name, the best the government can do is to check the baby's health and estimate how old they may be.
Of course, this tends to be inaccurate when said baby, apparently just shy of three months old, was dehydrated, starved, malnourished, and addicted to a delightful thing called crack fucking cocaine. Any one of those things can be detrimental to the development of a child, let alone all of them combined.
Still, September was the best guess for my date of birth, and so Olive came to be. Born to a cocaine addicted mother who abandoned her when it apparently got too hard. Usually that would have been the responsible choice. You have a baby, you cannot feed her, what do you do? Well, give her away, obviously. At least this way she can get the food you tried to provide but could not. Right? Well, thing is, from the scarring in my lounges and irritation on respiratory tract, my mother did not try very hard to feed me, or she would have spent on food the money she used to continue her drug habit. Even after I was born. Often in very close proximity to my infant, malnourished, and delicate body. The result? Respiratory damage from when I was born to my mid-teens.
That was the first slap the world gave me. I was but an infant, and yet I was so badly screwed already it wasn't even funny.
But why am I exaggerating, you may ask? Yeah, I had health problems, but I just said they went away before I turned 20, so surely it couldn't have been that bad. Well, to those of you thinking this way, you must not know how harsh reality really is. It is the same reason my name is Olive, no surname. Olive is the colour of the blanket I had when I was abandoned, and in case you didn't know, most orphans don't get a surname until they get adopted.
Funny thing, that. And of course, when prospective parents visited the orphanage, even when they seemed interested in me, they all left with an apologetic face the moment my medical record was brought up. And really, I couldn't blame them. When a couple gives birth to a defective offspring, they suck it up and continue to take care of them. Sometimes because of some sense of responsibility, more often than not because even if the baby is just a newborn, they already love them. It is a biological imperative hardwired into our brains. You get a baby, love them and take care of them until they can take care of themselves. But, when a couple cannot or will not give birth, that instinct is, if not absent, heavily supressed. And so, when they can choose who they want for their child, nobody wants the defective one.
Not even when she was, arguably, one of the more attractive babies in the orphanage. Not when she grew up and became one of the prettiest girls in it too. Not when she worked hard to get good grades and go to church so she could get adopted. Not even when she fought so hard to keep the coughs at bay to the point where her ribs ached and her vision got fuzzy. Not even when she got first place for the district in the standardized tests for primary school.
No one wanted a defective child.
And finally, when hormones came and repaired all the damage my dear mother had done to my body, I was already too old to be viable for adoption. So, I remained a nameless child. See, the world is not fair. It is a fucking terrible place, but I had hope.
As you might have picked up, I was smart. Not a genius by any means, but when you grow up in an orphanage, things like pattern recognition, body language, and logical thinking stop being boring topics with funny names and become a matter of survival. And when you try your hardest to get adopted, an impeccable work ethic often follows. And that was how it became apparent I had a gift for the exact sciences. What did I do with that information? I devoured everything I could of the subject. All to get better grades, a scholarship to go to college, get a degree.
But as you may have read already, the world isn't fucking fair.
And so, my life continued. I left the orphanage the day after I turned eighteen and moved to the dorm of the community college I studied in. It was there I discovered my gift for coding. Because while I was definitely not a genius in math or physics, I could count as one for programming. I could do so much with my ability and the ideas I had. But I couldn't.
Do you know how expensive computers that can run long, hard, professional-grade code are? I didn't until I tried to buy one. I couldn't afford it. I was already working to get myself through college, there was no way to earn enough money for one. And who would give scholarships, grants, fucking opportunities to an orphan studying on one of the cheapest schools around? No one, that's who.
And so, I lived my life listlessly. I finished college with the best grades of my generation, but no one cared about the top graduate of the Shitty Slum Community College, so I got a job as tech support in a big company, and never moved upwards in the social ladder.
So you see, I have experience in telling you the thing is rigged. Unless a miracle happens to you, you are stuck when you started. If your folks are CEOs of a big and bad company, even if you are an idiot, you will have a much better life than a nameless orphan that worked her ass off every day for over two decades.
The only moment I was not completely apathetic to everything around me was when it came to videogames and a few programs and apps I made to be a support for said games. Hell, I even made bots, trainers, or downright hacks for some of them. But still, my income never reached the level where I could buy a pc with the specs needed for my more ambitious projects.
And so, there I was writing the finishing touches for one of the apps I was coding, when three assholes stormed in my apartment, and panicked at seeing my terrified self, frozen in place, watching them wide-eyed, they jumped the gun.
Quite literally, too.
A nameless orphan became a nameless worker who became a worthless number in the index of the rising crime rates of the world.
I wasn't even angry on my dying moments, as I lay bleeding to death on the floor of my apartment while the robbers took my laptop and anything of value, I was just stumped and resigned. Because of course it had to end that way.
After all, the world is not a fucking fair place.
So, imagine my surprise when instead of the black void greeting me, an incomparable pain assaulted my head, my lounges burned like ash, and I felt myself being manhandled like a prize. I couldn't even move, and I was pretty sure I died. So after a cheerful voice kept saying, almost yelling it seemed to my sensitive ears "It's a girl! It's a girl!" I did the only thing I could have done.
I screamed.
And when the face of a fucking giant met my blurry vision and the enormity of the complete bullshit that was happening to me finally clicked in place, I screamed even more.
And then I fainted. But give me some credit. Name any other person that got shot, bled to death, was born, and realized with a sinking feeling that she had been reincarnated/transmigrated/reborn all in the span of 5 minutes and handled it better than I did.
Yeah, didn't think so. At least I kept consciousness long enough for me to figure out what the fuck was happening.
Either that, or the afterlife is a pretty weird place, but I didn't think that was the case.
Six months.
That's how long it took for me to come to terms with my apparent rebirth. I spent most of my days just gazing around, waiting for my eyesight to get better. I was restlessly waiting for it to get to the point I could be able to actually see my family.
And yeah, you didn't hear wrong. My family. I had one now. Funny how things turn out. And it wasn't just me and my parents either, I had a sister about 10 years older than me, and a minute-older twin brother. I loved them both.
My sister was Tina, my brother was Jason, my mom was Anna, and my dad was Marcus. I was, curiously enough, once again named Olive.
This time I had a last name, though.
And so, I stopped being Olive the nameless pathetic orphan and became Olive Pars, beloved daughter and sister.
Tina was a carbon copy of mom. Purple hair —and really, wasn't that a shock? Purple hair is something I had never even heard of before, but I was too happy to actually question things—, purple eyes, angular face, and a regal grace that was definitely weird to see on a 10-year-old. My brother, Jason, was the opposite, a carbon copy of dad. Green eyes, brown hair, round face, and an unruly attitude that we all could see him keeping when he was an adult. While I had not seen myself on a mirror, I could confirm that I was, in fact, female. Thank god. And from eyewitness accounts (read mom and dad), I was a blend between the two. Purple hair, though darker than both mom and Tina, green eyes, once again darker than dad and Jason, and an oval shaped face. Not as round as dad and not as sharp as mom, a perfect middle.
The only unusual thing about me was the rectangular shaped birthmark with two concentric circles on the side located on my forearm. It was familiar, but it was just a box with circles, so I didn't put it any mind.
Time passed, and in no time at all it had already been a year since my reincarnation.
I was sitting on my bed next to Jason, flexing my fingers trying to beat into them any sense of fine motor skills, and failing miserably, when my stomach made my hunger apparent. I looked towards the sleeping form of Jason and debated the merits of waking him up to make a fuss in order for him to inform (cry) mom of our hunger, when Tina entered the room.
The action itself was not unusual, though not a daily occurrence by any means. We were still too little to be left alone with an 11-year old, no matter how mature Tina was.
What was unusual, though, was the balloon she dragged with her by the two strings attached to it. It had a tuft of white something on its top, a yellow cross on its front, and on the sides of said cross stood two black spots that could be eyes.
A girl with a balloon? What's so unusual about that? I hear you say. And the answer is easy, really. Tina never carried toys of any kind with her. Sure, she had some and even played with them on occasion, but never took them outside of her room, and never, ever, had she ever had a balloon.
And why is it that it is so terrifyingly familiar?
Any and all trains of thought that happened to be passing by station Olive grounded to a halt, though, when the black spots of the balloon on the sides of the yellow cross disappeared for a second. I was so gobsmacked by a balloon of all things blinking at me that I just stared at it.
It stared back.
And blinked again.
The second time was too much, though, and I screamed. Moments later, of course, Jason was awake and screaming too, and the peaceful morning atmosphere of the Pars household was broken by a living, blinking balloon of all things.
Within a few seconds, my parents stormed in. Mom scooped Jason and I right up and my dad warily scanned the room while shielding Tina with his body and tightly clenching a red and white ball.
I stared at dad, then at the ball, then at the living balloon, and then it al clicked into place.
My dad was holding a fucking pokeball of all things, and the balloon Tina had brought with her earlier wasn't a balloon at all.
It was a drifloon.
A fucking pokemon.
Easy to say, my life got a hell of a lot more interesting from that point onwards.
Two years later, when Tina was 13, she left home to start her journey. Because apparently, you just don't send 10-year-old kids out into the big bad world with only a house-broken monster as company. Not that I personally thought 13 was a lot better, but still. We get what we get.
We missed her a lot, even if she came by to visit every couple of months or so. Still, she never returned to fully live with us, too busy travelling.
It was 6 years later, when Jason and I were 9, that the next significant event in my life happened.
We were on a family trip to Kanto —without Tina, of course, she was busy—, when Jason and I got our starter pokemon. It went something like this:
I found a beautiful purple mouse with big ears. I chased the purple mouse into the woods. I got lost. My brother realized I was missing. He searched for me. He got lost. My parents panicked, alerted the authorities and began a manhunt for us. I gave the purple mouse food and befriended it. Jason found a red and white dog and befriended it. He followed said dog as he tracked me. We spent hours playing with the mouse and the dog as we waited to be found.
Late in the afternoon, a loud caw in the skies above us signalled the arrival of the Ranger forces, followed by our parents. To say they were gobsmacked to find us happily and safely playing with two wild pokemon was an understatement, but still small smiles were on their faces. They even gave us two pokeballs to capture our starters.
And so, I became the trainer of the cutest male nidoran you could ever find. I named him King, reflecting my silent promise to train him into the biggest, baddest, awesomest nidoking anyone had ever seen.
My brother named his female growlithe Blaze, which was an okay name if you asked me. Not bad, but not as majestic as King.
The epic tongue-lashing my parents gave me, and to a lesser degree to Jason, was completely worth it since we got our starters out of the deal.
And while King was my starter and Blaze was my brother's, we were basically one and the same. We counted, most of the times, as being one trainer having two pokemon. Blaze was as mine as his and so was King. I mean, was it a surprise? We shared a womb for 9 months before being born and have been sharing everything ever since, of course the same applied to our pokemon.
One important detail that happened on that same trip, though, was when I was playing with King's pokeball and I lost control of it, making it touch my birthmark. After a blinding white flash of light, my cell phone appeared on my bed.
My old cell phone. From before I died. From when I had another body. In another world.
A fucking iPhone.
And so I panicked, wishing so hard for it to just disappear so my parents couldn't see it when, after another, thankfully duller, flash of light appeared and my cell phone was nowhere to be seen. Though my previously absent birthmark was present once again.
I did the only thing any sane person could do and dutifully ignored its existence thereon after.
The next month was spent almost exclusively playing with Jason and our pokemon, and that was when the first important difference between the both of us presented itself. While I wanted to journey the world and train with King, my brother was a tad more ambitious. He wanted to be the champion, and he told as much to everyone who listened. It was remarkably similar to a blond knuckleheaded ninja that I remembered from my past life. I couldn't remember ever feeling as happy as I was then. I had parents that loved me and took care of me. I had a sister that I rarely saw, but I had her. I had a twin with whom I could share anything and everything. He was always there for me, as was I for him when he got scared of the monsters under our bed. We had each other. We loved each other.
Of course it wouldn't last.
We were traveling towards Snowpoint for a family vacation, even Tina would meet us there when it happened.
I just remember explosions. Loud noises and the ground trembling, and our parents telling us to run towards the shelter. Jason and I released Blaze and King at our parent's order, but a blinding light, a deafening noise, and an unbearable pain on the back of my head made me lose consciousness.
I woke up a week later in a hospital. Alone. No parents, no Jason, no Tina. Not even 'Get Well Soon' cards. When the doctor came in, the first thing he did was ask for my name. I was found barely alive close to ground zero of an explosion surrounded by two overprotective pokemon. Everyone else around me was dead.
Mom was gone.
Dad was gone.
Jason was gone.
Tina didn't even fucking show up to the funeral.
I was alone. All alone, save for my brother's and mine pokemon.
I ran away as far as I could.
I wouldn't return to Sinnoh for years.
Hey! Hope you enjoyed the first chapter of Inherited Dreams. I've got no plans for this one, save for one scene that should be happening once Olive is 2-3 years older. I have 6 chapters on backrow, waiting to be published. Whether I continue writing this or not is mostly dependent on my mood and the response it gets. Maybe. The story has 35k word ready to be published at least.
Anyway, once again, I hope you enjoyed. Be sure to leave me your opinions in the review section, I'll be sure to read and answer them all. Crimson out!
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