We're going to continue with the tour for just a little longer, but our focus will shift to something else. What impact has this new information had on our cast? The students in the Empress's group aren't the most environmentally-conscious people in the world, so how will they handle the knowledge of what's happened to the Orre Region, I wonder?

Just a Bad Writer for Fun: Yeah, that's something I really wanted to focus on, the fact that time can heal these wounds eventually.

KedharS: True. But still, I want to believe in a positive outcome.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 931

The tour through the Pokemon HQ Laboratory had been a very interesting and informative experience for the students.

Now that the main part of the tour was over, they had moved to an auditorium that was filled with all sorts of equipment and machinery that had been used in the past for pokemon conservation efforts worldwide. It was like a long hallway full of history, including things about the lab, like who founded it and what previous projects existed.

The students were starting to glance at their phones, their eyes were getting glazed over and even Sango was considering switching off her tablet and going to sleep.

No, that would be rude to Marion, she decided, and forced herself to try and pay attention to what the professor was talking about.

Even though people were starting to check out, the students, on the whole, had liked the tour.

Many of them had learned a lot of new things about the Orre Region, and walked away with a little bit more awareness of how fragile the environment really was, and what could happen to it if people stopped working hard to take care of their surroundings.

For someone like Lila, who only focused on her own dreams and didn't really care much about the environment before now, it was a revelation.

She had been living her life with the goal to become an idol. She wanted to stand on the same stage as Darla, and work her hardest every day to shine brightly beside her partner. She hadn't really stopped to think about anything more serious than that, she was totally absorbed in her dream.

Lila glanced over at Darla. Her friend didn't seem all that different. Her face was locked in a tight line, and she stared blankly forward as if what she'd just seen hadn't been all that impactful. But Lila knew the kind of person her partner was.

"That tour was… really something, huh?" She said to Darla, flashing a shaky smile. "I really haven't been thinking about stuff like this very often…"

"It was fine," Darla shrugged. She thought about what the professor had been talking about, and it had mostly been things she already knew. She kept pace with Lila as she thought about what to tell the other girl.

"See, stuff like that, I already think about it a lot," Darla confessed. She glanced around at the other students, but they were either listening to the professor, or more likely, their attention was occupied elsewhere. "Considering… where I come from."

She stared pointedly at Lila until her friend got the message.

Lila gasped. "Oh! You mean back at…" She had almost forgotten. Well, not "forgotten". But it was one of those things she knew about Darla that she didn't want to focus too much on, out of fear of hurting her friend with memories of the past. So whenever the Draconids crossed her thoughts, she would always lock it up in a tight little box and put it away in a small corner of her mind, where she wouldn't have to think about it anymore.

"My people lived in harmony with nature," Darla explained. "We would have tiny grass huts and clay houses, built right in the valley of Meteor Falls. Advancements in modern society like technology, electricity, those luxuries were things that we refused, so we could better understand the purity of the Dragon type pokemon."

Lila shook her head in shock. A life without television? No glamour magazines, no top 50 playlists, not even Idol Circuit?!

"That must have been really hard for you," Lila said, beginning to tear up a little.

Darla actually laughed, which made Lila confused. She shook her head and patted her pink friend on the shoulder.

"I hope you never change, Lila," Darla murmured. "Those things, that wasn't why I wanted to leave. You really think I abandoned my home and my people because we didn't have access to television and fashion magazines?"

"Uh…" Okay, so maybe that was an exaggeration. "Well, I guess that does sound kind of stupid when you put it that way," Lila admitted.

"I love nature. I would be fine, without the comforts of the modern world," Darla confessed. "Phones, television, even makeup, all of that I can do without if I had to."

Lila's jaw dropped. Even makeup?!

"What I really needed the most… was freedom, I guess," Darla mused. "Back in those days… I would look up at the dragons soaring overhead, and I would think 'wow. They can go anywhere they want. And what about me? Why can't I ever fly like that?' and that was how it started."

Lila swallowed. Darla had a wistful look in her eye that she didn't see very often.

"That… That does sound really hard," Lila admitted.

"I just wanted to be free… but when I think about how my people lived, it doesn't seem wrong to not care about technology, to only focus on living in harmony with nature… my village was very peaceful…" She murmured, and now her eyes had begun to tear up.

"Darla…" Lila reached out and placed a hand on her partner's shoulder. But Darla didn't even notice.

"The way the sun would set over the lip of the valley… bathing everything in a soft, orange light… and the waterfalls would sparkle in the distance like an amber cascade… the rustling whistle of the wind passing through the trees, like the song of the dragons themselves… oh, Lila… how I wish you could see it someday…"

Then it all came out.

Darla nearly fell over as the tears rolled down her tanned cheeks, and Lila gasped. She caught her friend before she collapsed, but Darla managed to stabilize herself. She looked around, and to her relief, no one had seen.

"Hey, come on," Lila whispered. "It's alright. I know this stuff was really intense, and I know that… I know you miss your home, but… I'm still here, right?"

Lila could see the pain on Darla's face. But her friend was still smiling regardless. Darla didn't need Lila's help anymore, but she still let her friend hold her.

"I wonder if the Orre Region… had sights like that… before everything that happened," Darla whispered, staring at one of the paintings on the wall. It was a landscape depicting the desert beyond Pyrite Town, and it looked like the artist had used every color he could think of crafting the setting sun over the rocky face.

"Maybe… and maybe… it could, again? Someday?" Lila asked. She hoped her words could dry Darla's tears.

Lila knew her friend well. It wasn't just Orre that she was shedding her tears for.

"I want to see it someday too," Lila whispered, taking Darla's hand in hers.

Darla wiped her cheeks and turned back to her friend, her eyes widening. "R-Really? Why would you… even say something like that?"

"Today's made me think about a lot of things, and I know… well, I think I know, anyway… how hard it must be to live a life like that. But like you said, you didn't mind at all, did you? Because you saw something that I've just been kind of ignoring," Lila tried to explain. She couldn't put her feelings into words, and she certainly couldn't tell Darla about how much she loved her.

"I guess I just… well, maybe I wouldn't mind, spending some time getting to know nature a little better, you know?"

Darla nearly burst out laughing.

"You without wi-fi," she said, shaking her head, "now that's something I'd like to see."

Lila puffed her cheeks out in a huff. "I could so! Definitely! Besides, there's still, like, cell service, so I'd be just-"

"Nope. None."

Lila gulped. "Uhum, uh… w-well…"

"Not seeming so appealing now, huh?" Darla snickered, patting Lila on the shoulder. "But that's okay, you don't have to do something like that."

"But I want to!" Lila protested. She was actually starting to feel bad at this point. The tour had shown her just how materialistic and shallow she was. There were people like Marion, who were around her age, that were dedicating themselves to something greater. And meanwhile, she was just…

"I don't want to be some selfish, shallow girl only thinking about myself," Lila mumbled.

Darla shook her head.

"You're thinking about me right now, right?" She replied, squeezing her friend's hand back. "So I don't think you're at all selfish or shallow."

"W-Well, I guess that's true," she had to admit. A weak smile spread across her lips.

"You don't have to make some big, grand gesture to show you care, Lila," Darla assured her. "Just the smallest of things can still make a big difference."

To Lila, hearing that was like the blessing of an angel. A vindication from someone she cared about more than anything.

"Darla… I-I…"

She clamped her mouth shut. What was she about to do?! Was she… was she about to confess?! Tell Darla that she was in love with her, with everyone RIGHT THERE? Sure, nobody was paying attention to their conversation at the moment, but still, there was a time and a place!

"Hm?" Darla's red eyes were crystal clear, and it was like she was looking straight into Lila's soul.

Lila felt her face heat up.

"I… I still want to go there," she whispered. "Even if it's… going to be hard. Because it's your home, right?"

"Lila…" Darla didn't know what to say. She stared at Lila's smiling face in shock.

"Darla's home… is certainly a beautiful place, that's what I think. And I know you must miss it a lot, right? That's why I want to see it someday, with you," Lila explained. Crap. Crap. Crap. This was starting to sound like a love confession! "I-I just mean… it would be nice! Like a pretty vacation, or-or… something."

Darla wanted to laugh, but a throb of pain shot through her heart. She shook her head. "I would… also like that," she admitted. "But unfortunately… it's not possible. I can never go back. If I did… I wouldn't even be able to leave again. And also… you wouldn't be able to come with me, either."

"Darla…" Lila had thought her words would cheer her friend up, but it was clear that Darla was in even more pain now, for some reason.

Darla shrugged, and sighed. "It's just… the way it is, you know? My village distrusts outsiders. I could never bring a stranger back. Not ever. I'm sorry."

She wanted to cry again. It just wasn't fair. But every time she closed her eyes, she could still see that burnt orange sky.

"…Hey… it's okay. Your home is just… a little confused right now, that's all. They're just thinking selfishly, and don't care about other people, right?" Lila said. "But if I can change, hey, maybe someday… even they can change. And then we can go there together."

She wrapped her fingers together with Darla's and squeezed tightly, feeling the heat of her partner's palm against hers. She didn't stop squeezing until she felt it stop shaking.

"You really are an unending optimist, aren't you?" Darla asked, wiping the tears from her eyes with her other hand.

"You know it," Lila grinned.

Of course, even as the two girls shared their silent look, the important point went unsaid between the two of them. They both understood just how impossible it would be for such a moment to come. Darla knew it, far more than Lila ever could.

But she still wanted to believe in that smile which filled her with so much hope.

"So you see, I've been thinking a little myself," Lila confessed. "About this whole thing. And I really do want to make some changes in my life, you know?"

Darla blinked. "Really?"

"Yeah, I do. After all, I'm… well, I'm not exactly what you would call 'progressive' right?" Lila sighed. "What am I even doing, you know? Have I helped with the environment? No. Have I done anything to erase my carving footprint? No."

"That's 'carbon' footprint," Darla corrected her.

"Whatever! You know what I mean," Lila groused. "I guess I just never thought about it before. But hearing you talk about your home like that… hearing what we did today… I guess, I don't know, it made me think about some stuff."

"Stuff like what?" Darla asked, curious.

"Well, you remember my mom's old apartment in Rustboro City?" Lila asked.

"Oh, god, how could I forget? That pullout couch was atrocious," Darla groaned, rolling her eyes. "I still feel sore whenever I think about it.

"I know, it was like the mattress was filled with rocks," Lila laughed.

The early years of Darla's life on the run from the Draconids had not been easy. She could still remember the look on Lila's mother's face when she came home with Darla, insisting that she lived there now. In a one-bedroom apartment.

"But anyway, my point is, Rustboro is a really big city. It's full of pollution and noisy people who don't give a damn about anything but themselves," Lila sighed.

"I mean, I guess that kind of goes with the course of being the city where the Devon Corporation is located," Darla shrugged. She wasn't a big fan of Devon Corp. Yes, it had provided jobs, and it was the reason that Rustboro City was the economic powerhouse that it was. But at the same time, in the advancement of technology, Darla felt that something had been lost along the way, too.

"Well… I guess since I grew up there, I never really thought about it," Lila explained. "Stuff like TV, that was just how I passed my days, since I was too poor to go do anything else."

"Lila…" Now it was Darla's turn to be concerned for her friend. It hadn't been easy growing up with the Draconids, having all their expectations placed on her shoulders, without any hope of freedom, but it couldn't compare to what Lila had gone through, living in that hole in the wall.

"Did you know, outside of Rustboro, there's a lake?" Lila asked. "On Route 104. It's called 'Petalburg Lake', because it's right outside of Petalburg Woods."

"…Isn't Petalburg City on the other side of the forest, though?" Darla asked.

"That's not the point," Lila groaned. "My point is, that place… I've never been there once."

"Really?" Darla asked, surprised.

"There's a gorgeous lake, less than an hour's walk from my apartment, and I never once thought to see it," Lila said. "And for that matter, Petalburg Woods itself, a forest untouched by human hands… I'm sure it must be beautiful, but…"

As a child Lila had been more concerned with who was going to be Hoenn's next top model than she was about all the wonders right outside.

"I didn't even go to that crummy flower shop," Lila sighed. "I guess I'm just… what happened in Orre really got me thinking. I mean, Hoenn is the PLACE for berries, you know? They ALL grow there! It's one of our region's highest exports! And yet… that lake, the forest… it could all be gone tomorrow, due to a mistake like what happened here!"

Lila shivered. She didn't want to think things like that, but she couldn't help it.

Darla shook her head, and took Lila by the hand.

"Hoenn's not so bad, Lila, don't worry," she assured her.

Lila blinked.

"How, uh… huh? What are you talking about?" She had just been venting her fears, she hadn't expected Darla to try and comfort her back.

"Do you know about the Rusturf Tunnel?" Darla asked.

Lila shook her head.

"Well, this is something I read about a while back. On Route 116, there's a cave that was called Whismur Cave," she said. "It was a natural rock formation on Rusturf Mountain. You know, the mountain between Rustboro City and Verdanturf Town?"

"Yeah, I think so…" Lila remembered seeing that mountain out of the corner of her window, but not much else about it.

"Well, a few years back, the Devon Corporation sponsored a construction project to expand the travel through the western half of the Hoenn Region," Darla explained. "The idea was, by digging a tunnel through Rusturf Mountain, they could make a trade route that would connect Rustboro City to the other big cities like Mauville and Slateport. And of course, since Whismur Cave already existed on both sides of the mountain, the idea was that they could drill through it and build a tunnel using the natural caverns that were already there."

Lila went pale. This was sounding an awful lot like what had happened in the Orre Region. But Darla was telling this story to try and cheer her up, which meant it had to have a happy ending, right? So she stuck with it.

"Okay, then what?" Lila asked.

"Well, construction went as planned for a while, and they began digging through the cave. But then the construction team realized that the power of their drills, or more specifically, the noise they were generating, was causing discomfort to the wild Whismur that lived in the cave."

"Oh, no!" Lila gasped. That wasn't good. "So what happened?!"

"Well, as soon as Mr. Stone, the president of Devon Corp., learned about what was happening, he immediately put a halt to the project," Darla explained. It was one of the few things she respected about the company.

Lila brightened like the sun.

"He… He did?"

Darla nodded, and felt a smile creep to her lips as well. "He did. They learned from the mistakes that happened in the Orre Region, and rather than risk damaging the ecosystem and the wild pokemon that inhabited the cave, they put a stop to the excavation even at a significant loss of resources," Darla said. "So you see? There is reason to hope. Not everyone is as selfish and greedy as the people who ruined the Orre Region."

Lila could cry. She had never felt prouder of her home region before.

"So what, the tunnel just never got built? But I thought I heard… no, wait." That was right. Rusturf Tunnel! She remembered now. It DID exist! There WAS a tunnel that connected the two locations, so what happened?

Darla was still smiling.

"Yeah, about that. A few years later, someone else took over the project. Not because he wanted to built a trade route or anything like that. He just wanted to get through the tunnel. So without any heavy machinery, with just his pokemon and his bare hands, he dug his way all the way through Whismur Cave and came back out the other side, and from there, the rest of the tunnel was eventually built. All without having to disturb the wild pokemon living there at all," she said.

Lila smiled. "That… that's really just 'wow' huh?"

"Feeling better?" Darla asked.

"Yeah. A lot better," Lila said, nodding.

"Lila! Darla!" Hiromi called back to them. They were at the end of the tour already. "Come on! Let's wrap this up!"

"Coming!"

Lila and Darla let go of each other's hands and picked up the pace, catching up to the rest of the tour group. The smiles never left their faces.

I thought it was good to have a chapter that explored Lila's newfound perspective on the environment. I wonder what will come out of that? Will she grow, moving forward? I certainly hope so.