[This piece has recently been revised to reflect my current style. If you'd like more information on that, please consult my profile. Other than these revisions, the general tone and feel of the text that follows is still a time capsule from the glorious early 2010s. Thanks for understanding.]
Word count: 1149 words.
New Mild and Modest
It happens quickly, too quickly. One moment, he's moving into a new house in a new region with his single and ready to mingle mother. The next, he's thrust into a monumentally preposterous journey beyond the wildest reaches of his infernal imagination before he can even so much as step a foot out the front door, one teeming with strange and unseemly creatures both familiar and not. It's like a dream come true in some respects, if that dream were a nightmare governed by a deathly wyvern in the shape of a letter of the alphabet.
Calem laments his woes under the starry Santalune sky, courtesy of the complimentary balcony the Pokemon Center provides in case trainers need to vent their typical teenage angst in a form befitting typically angst encumbered teenagers. Shockingly, it's the most popular amenity after the waffle iron.
"I'm a lot like a waffle myself," is the bold conclusion Calem reaches after minutes of deep, brooding thought. "Except I was taken out the iron too early, before the batter could harden. It's not that I don't want to be eaten for breakfast, it's that I would have appreciated some, I dunno, prep time before being served up with a side of eggs and bacon maybe?"
"That sounded much better in my head," he says after some further thought. "Glad no one was around to hear tha—"
"What the heck are you doing?"
"Alright buster, which one of you timed that?"
The intruding voice is soft, feminine, and belongs to a young woman around his age, sporting pink pajamas and the nastiest little scowl this side of Santalune.
Calem continues staring at the moon with the kind of trite melancholy that wore out its welcome ten AMVs ago, pretending not to hear the girl behind him until a hellish growl forces him to stop pretending that his ears aren't working. "Oh, uh, you know. Brooding, musing. That sort of thing."
Serena cocks a brow. "It's three in the morning. You should be in bed."
"So should you."
"Don't you have a date with a Surskit tomorrow?"
"Don't you?"
Serena pouts; his spirit's usually much easier to crack than this. Determined to make an omelette out of him, she joins him by the railing with a smorgasbord's worth of nagging intent. "Any particular reason you're marinating in your own muck, then?"
"I don't know," her rival says. "I'm just feeling kind of empty, I guess."
"You stepped out of bed to ogle the moon because you were feeling 'empty'?"
"W-what did you expect me to say?!" Calem snaps back, quirky and insecure.
"Probably something about your existential crisis over whether you're good enough for this whole trainer thing," she says without skipping a beat. "You're very easy to read, you little dweeb."
"Right, well," Calem pivots from her while munching on his bottom lip. "I suppose you could put it that way. Like, for example, the guy, uh, the one with the pineapple hair situation—he told me earlier today that he doesn't have any high hopes whatsoever and expects only the bare minimum out of me. Wait, no, ixnay on that. He hoped that I would get laid on the way to the league, but I'm not sure if that really meant anything or if was just some sort of vague innuendo that flew over my head."
Serena inches away from him in what's surely an unrelated countermeasure. Calem blinks in response, unable to make the connection at first. When he does, some seconds later, it comes with a side of 'nice guy' and overly frenzied theatrics. "W-wait, t-that's not what I m-meant! I would never-!"
"I know you wouldn't. You would just cry the whole time," she huffs. "Still, you can never be too careful when you're as desirable as I am. Try again when you aren't compromised by your own concupiscence."
"My what now?"
"Lust."
"Oh."
The balcony is a little more than serene as Calem processes her snark, which he does about as competently as the rest of her snide remarks. Rather than stir the pot, he instead opts to get back on topic.
"Let me guess, you don't think I'm ready for this either, do you?"
"Idiot. When did I ever say that?" Serena chides him with a wag of her finger, something he can't help but find rather cute. "You've made it this far, haven't you? I mean, it's not terribly far in the grand scheme of things but it's far enough in the running that turning back would be nothing short of foolish, which is the only reason you're even considering it to begin with because doing stupid things is so terribly on brand for you. Honestly, it would be so pitiful and pointless if you went home now. Why not stick it out?"
"Well, I never did finish unpacking for one. That, and the guy didn't seem too enthused about passing the torch and—"
"Who cares about what he thinks?"
"Would you like it if your future was being controlled by someone you've never heard of from some region you've never been to?"
"I can't say that I've ever been so paranoid that I've had to wrestle with such an imaginary struggle, no. Listen, it's late, so I'm going to wrap this up with some advice—"
"Oh joy!" Calem claps with a big 'ol grin. "Advice from little miss you? I can't wait to hear i—augh! Ow, ow! Let go, let go!"
She releases his nose, red and runny like the watery sting welling up in his eyes.
"You were told to achieve the bare minimum, weren't you? If you haven't noticed, you're only a few hours away from your first badge. Why not persevere and get to that minimum? Then perhaps, if you have the will, the wherewithal—if the very notion of going forward doesn't leave you completely in tears, we can continue from there."
Calem mulls it over, particularly her usage of the word 'we'. "Are you only saying this to get me to go back in?"
"It's a little bit of both," says Serena. "I had a feeling I'd tire of your whiny drivel before long and frankly, you look like a bum loitering out here. You're better off inside, brushing my hair. You know I don't like it when it's like this."
Calem finds himself between a rock and a hard tent in his trousers. He looks on one end and sees a trainer who throws in the towel too soon because he's been told he won't make it past the fat guy who obsesses over technology. On the other end, he sees a whipped simp who at least gives it the old college try and has some semblance of fun in the process.
"Fine," he succumbs quite easily, taking her hairbrush and quickly walking back inside. Serena follows him with a smile.