AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Thanks for the review, Daveorn! Hope I can keep you hooked cause this has been fun to write!

Thanks to TrainerIndigo, and yes, the golett's name IS Golem. I definitely gained a newfound love of b2/w2 after this nuzlocke!

And thanks to... Smarfla? Farmla? I see you, and I see your beautiful lengthy review, and I applaud your well-crafted vitriol and the dedication to finishing it. Sorry not sorry, but I'll write what I like and have fun while doing it. But! Thanks for bumping my review count buddy! Makes my story look better!

"I feel so much better

Now that you're gone forever

I tell myself that I don't miss you at all

I'm not lying, denying, that I feel so much better

Now that you're gone forever"

Gone Forever _ Three Days Grace

I don't have a funeral for her.

Funerals are expensive. I don't even have a service for her. I let the undertaker—for humans—burn her up and I put her in a cheap urn. It's pretty, but cheap, because I've spent enough money on her. I don't invite family or friends over, but I do send a few letters out: one for my uncle, one for some distant half-cousin on my mom's side, my father's half sister, and Hugh. Despite not welcoming anyone, Hugh's mother and Molly come over and warm my dingy apartment with food and flowers.

It's . . . nice. They make it a bigger deal than it needs to be, but at least they're kind. And now I have a whole casserole that should last me for a couple days.

More importantly, my life seems to be moving right on track now that I've cut the dead weight off my back. It's a relief to see the debt to the hospital STOP climbing for once. Instead, it will finally shrink, and it feels like I've entered the Twilight Zone just thinking about such a thing. It all feels surreal, really. I've got a job interview in Nimbasa. (The same terrible job, but still, a pay raise.) I'm renting out an apartment in Nimbasa, and I'll move in after this weekend. I'm using the money Hugh gave me to buy a train ticket, pay the down payment on my new apartment, and buy a potion to keep handy for Golem in case the numbnut gets frisky picking fights again. Beating Cheren netted me the cash I needed to pack up my life and move. My heart beats for once in my chest.

I think I'll leave my old mattress behind. Invest in a nice bed. Maybe sleep better for once.

I turn in my two week's notice to Edwards, and it's such a pleasure to see the shock on his face. He's going to have to scramble to find someone to replace me, and I relish in the little vindictive win against him. Find someone else to abuse with your shit pay and hours. I take a few days off with my stockpile of vacation and sick hours.

It's the Saturday before I leave for Nimbasa. My train heads out Monday. I head to the one place with any belongings left to my family: a storage yard. It's a decrepit place on the south side of Asperita City that's all gravel, invasive weeds and cigarette butts. I talk to the guy, show him my I.D. and he hands me a rusted key for the Ebele storage shed. Golem totters behind me like an overgrown child, pulling the wheelbarrow and touching the dandelions as he goes. I stop in front the red shutter with 3C on it. I turn the key in the square slot, swing open the panel and press a button. The locks holding it shut spring open, and the garage door shifts up. I stuff the key in my pocket, reach down, and I heft the sliding door up, shoving at it when rust grinds against the wheels.

It smells like dust and mold. Fitting, I have to say. And there's not much in there. There's an antique wood table of my mother's that I hadn't had the heart to part with when I had to move out of our old house. House payments might have been to expensive, and that large, beautiful table wouldn't fit in my apartment, but I'd be damned if I had let it go.

I walk two steps into the shed and put my hands against the edge of the table. I wipe the dust away to reveal the border pattern of maple leaves. I think she said my gramps made it. Mother's side. I don't want to part with it now, but really? Will I ever use it?

I know I won't. I'll live and die alone. I might as well sell it.

I check the storage bins on top of the table. The first one is full of my baby things that my mother would have wanted. I don't care. It's trash. Next is my stack of archeology books, both old textbooks and easy reading. Trivia books. All my nerdy shit. I heft the tote and put it on the wheelbarrow.

Golem whirs and pats at a box too high for him to reach. I pull it down and fold open the cardboard. It's full of paper. Pictures in frames and stacks of pictures out of frames, old bills and tax returns. My heart tightens seeing a stack of well-loved letters with twines of string holding them together. My father's handwriting. Golem picks them up and I scowl. I snatch the letters away from him.

"No," I tell him. He whines. I shake my head and toss them back in the box. "They're just clutter. Don't look at me like that, they're just going to take up room." I do take a few pictures, making sure to at least get one of each of us and a couple family pictures. I even take the one at one of my birthday parties where I shoved Hugh's face into my cake. I take the legal files. I hand them to Golem to put in the wheelbarrow. I move on, and he sneaks my father's letters out with the pictures. I let him sneak them. What's the point of fighting him if he's just going to sulk if I don't take them? Sentimental idiot.

My parent's bed frame leans against the wall, and so does their mattress. There's a box full of blankets and sheets and pillows. I thin the box of anything I won't use and set it on the table. There are seasonal items stored in the back, stupid decorative shit and a tree I've never bothered to put up for Christmas. There's a box of old tapes, both movies and home movies. Golem whines and is so persistent about taking the home videos that I take those out and throw them in the box to take with me. There's mom's old clothes, dad's old clothes, a mess of shoes, and too many hangers. I hate it. I'd like to burn the remnants of it all, just so I don't have to think about any of it anymore. It'll at least go to the dumpster and I won't have to pay that quarter every week to keep the shed.

There are old trophies and school accomplishment things, like when I took a small foray into playing the clarinet. I was always shit at the clarinet. Those participation trophies can go to the dump as well. I find a small jewelry box in the corner. I toss it in the cardboard box, fold up the flaps, and carry it out to the wheelbarrow.

I plunk the box down just in time to see someone crossing the yard. I scowl at him. I turn around back into the storage shed, hoping there was something else I could take or something, but this is really all I want. I don't need the couch, and the armchair is too old and rickety to be worth it. The only thing left worth something other than vapid nostalgia is the custom table that I could make a good buck with.

The person knocks on the storage shed. "Josey."

I groan and lean back with the most disdain I can muster. "What do you WANT."

"I loved your mother too, Josey. The least I could do is visit her grave and make sure her daughter is doing well."

I whirl around on him. "Oh SURE," I spit. I point a finger at him. "You didn't love my mother enough to help me with the bills, Mr. Money Bags. You didn't drop a dime to help pay for shit, I know how much you care."

His jaw flexed and he crossed his arms. The muscles there bunched up like fucking balloons, and I knew how easily he could snap a person in half. "Don't you try to pin that on me," he growled. "I would have helped you, but you had to be stubborn as a mule and prideful to boot! You're the one who didn't want my CHARITY. You turned your back on family, Josey, not me." My jaw tightens and ticks at his admission. I hike my chin up, daring him to clock me on the mouth.

There's a tense moment between us. Golem whirs uncertainly when neither of us gives quarter, and then he inches forward. The man's stern demeanor shifts into a smile, and he drops his arms. "Hey there, Golem. I saw you had a great gym battle." Golem exclaims and bounds forward, plunking into his stomach with a big hug. He laughs and pats Golem's head, and I can't help the annoyance that Golem gets along with him. "Seems like you and Josey really have what it takes to be battlers," he suggests, and he looks up at me with a light twinkling in his eyes. "A real talent for it. Seems like it runs in the family."

"Oh shut the fuck up," I mutter. I lean against the table and cross my arms and glare at him. "So what is it? I know good ol' Uncle Marshal doesn't come down from his castle unless it's important. What do you want?"

Marshal cocks his brow at me. "I came to show my respect for your mother, brat." I roll my eyes; I'm not ten years old anymore. "Left her some daffodils. Her favorite, right?"

"A narcissus for a narcissus."

He doesn't like my salty quip. I shrug. What did he expect? Marshal glances into the shed I've ransacked, and he asks, "What's all this?"

I gesture aimlessly. "A dead woman's loot. I'm taking what I want and getting rid of this shit."

"You're getting rid of it?"

"I don't have a use for any of the rest of it," I say. "I don't have the room for any of it. It's just extra shit that's gonna waste away in this room, so I'm getting rid of it. Feel free to take what you want."

He frowns. "You're getting rid of the table too?"

I shift. It IS a family heirloom from my mother's side. "Was gonna sell it. You want it?"

"I'll take it if you're pawning it off. You might decide you want it some day."

I snort under my breath. Yeah right. I don't need a big family table when it's just going to be little ol' me. And a ghost who doesn't eat.

Marshal stares at me for a long moment. Even in casual jeans and a t-shirt, he's massive, his muscles straining out of the fabric of his shirt. He trains too much with his fighting type pokemon. I guess if he wants that fat paycheck from the Pokemon League he'd have to keep up his edge as part of the Elite Four. He glances down at the little wheelbarrow of things I'm taking and back at the shed full of everything my family has left, and he finally mutters, "So this is where you're taking your life now?"

I frown. "What?"

"You're leaving it all behind. Not even that, you're cutting all ties with what's left of your family, is that it?" He glares at me. I turn my nose up, but Marshal gestures to the shed and says, "You're literally throwing it all away." He snaps his fingers. "Oh, expect for the table, a family heirloom. You're selling that for a little extra cash."

He strikes me in a place I don't want touched. I leap to my feet, and heat scorches my cheeks. "Look, you're not in charge of my life. I can make my own decisions. I didn't ask you here, and I don't want you here! If you want to pay your respects to my ma, she's out in the cemetery!" I point my finger in the vague direction of the graveyard. "She's six feet under and clearly better at conversation than I am!"

"What's your issue, Josephine Uzochi Ebele?" My shoulders lift defensively when he spits my middle name like he's my father. He puts his hands on his hips and walks closer to the edge of the doorway, leaving only a couple feet between us. I glare until I'm sure I'll pop a blood vessel in my temple. "So desperate to be your own person you'll literally kill your family and any memories of them?"

I point to the stack of letters from my father in the wheelbarrow. "I'm not killing anything. I'm keeping some sentimental shit. I've got pictures. I've got Pa's letters. And I sure as hell didn't kill my mother, she's been dead for years!"

Marshal mimics my scowl and shakes his head. "Whatever, kid. You keep telling yourself what you need to sleep at night. I can't make you care about your family when all you care about is yourself."

"Shut up." I want to punch him right in his face. I know I've got a mean right hook, but I know better than to fight Marshal. He could put me into the dirt. "You don't know shit about me. You don't know how I've lived. I've made my choice and if that body out in the dirt had to suffer for it, then fine. My conscience can handle it. I'm getting out of this shit hole. I'm not cleaning up after Cheren's messes anymore. And you can't tell me a god damn thing about how to live my life, got it?"

Marshal's gaze is cold on me. It feels like a chilled hospital syringe pulling the blood out of me, and something in my chest shakes. Finally, Marshal blasts out a breath. He rubs his hand over his face. His gaze settles on me again, and this time, he looks more tired than angry. "Right," he mutters. "Right . . . You're leaving Aspertia?"

He's ripped and threatening by default, but the tension has slacked from his arms. The fight's drained out of him. I relax a little and lean my butt against the table again. "Yeah," I tell him. "Heading out to Nimbasa on Monday."

"Good," he says. He looks away from me, and one of his fingers taps against his bicep. "You'll be safer out there. Trying to get admitted into Nimbasa University, right? You're a smart kid. You'll—"

"Wait a second," I interrupt him. I give him an incredulous look. "Safer? What's that supposed to mean?"

His lips thin. "Can't say. Just glad you're getting some distance from it all."

I frown. A chill slithers up my spine. "Does this have . . . Y'know, to do with . . ." I point east to Virbank. "All that?"

There's a veiled look on his face. He's holding something back from me when he says, "All what?"

I know no one's supposed to know about the Virbank gym. But Marshal's one of the Elite Four. I know he knows what went down in that gym. He has to. It suddenly hits me why he's battering around the bush.

"Wait . . . You mean . . ." I dip my voice and lean forward to him, whispering, "You think this is Plasma all over again?"

His knuckles tighten on his biceps. "I'm not at liberties to share anything," he says, "but I'm glad you're a girl who's always had her wits about her. Nimbasa is a far safer place right now, big city or not."

My heart does a little jump in my chest. Plasma. Team Plasma was coming back. And . . . They slaughtered the Virbank gym?

A rock sits low in my stomach. Bunch of glory-seeking assholes or not, the Elite Four is a defense organization. So are the gym leaders. It's why when Team Plasma went on a terroristic streak of thievery and murder two years ago, the gym leaders and Elite Four all banded together to stop them. It was the most active they'd been in years, and yeah, my Uncle Marshal had been at the center of it all. Got his ass kicked by the crown prince N in the process, but it's hard to compete against legendary electric dragons.

But . . . Team Plasma had fractured from the inside out. The ones with more honest motivations for actual battle reform siding with N and the extremists following that mass-murderer Ghetsis. It's why the gym leaders and Elite Four had changed so much in the last year. Brycen, the ice leader, eschewed his post as a gym leader in order to pursue his acting career. (He wasn't a bad actor, actually.) Supreme ninja or not, they replaced him with a gym in Virbank. Lenora Aloe retired her post to focus more on archeology and run the Nacarene Museum with her husband; Cheren picked up her post in Aspertia. Even though she'd been doing the same thing as Cheren, with her trademark Retaliate instead of Bite, she reformed her choices, and I looked up to her more for that.

The Striaton Triplets also faded into obscurity with their small restaurant. Some water trainer up north replaced them.

Most shockingly, Alder was dethroned from his position as Champion. Iris Airisu came through with her dragons, slaughtering most of the pokemon of the Elite Four and Alder in order to become Champion herself. It was a time of unrest. Alder pushed for honest battle reform alongside Grimsley and, actually, my power-hungry uncle. Marshal at least had his finer points, and choosing not to slaughter pokemon was one of them.

However, Shauntal and Caitlin thought otherwise. And so did Iris. When Iris dethroned Alder as Champion, nearly all reform ground to a halt. She's a cruel woman who believes in "old fashioned" battling to the death, where the powerful triumph and the weak perish. She decimates all those she battles and refuses to allow any idea of reform to enter the political sphere. Supposedly, in the year where the power shifted from Alder to Iris, Alder managed to get some sort of underground battling arena in Nimbasa to function as the "trial" for reformed battling. Champion Iris has tried multiple times to tear it down, but she can't legally do anything about it yet. I don't know the logistics of it all, but she's a very bitter, vengeful woman.

I frown at Marshal. The whole region had split when Team Plasma pushed reform. It split families. It split battling teams. It split the Elite Four and even Team Plasma itself. I doubt anyone would ever agree on the battling issue, my own beliefs aside. This country would burn in civil war again. The two dragons scorched the earth the first time, and the second time, they nearly did it again. A third time? A shiver wracks my spine. Heroes of Truth and Ideals would destroy us all if Team Plasma resurfaced and stirred the pot one last time.

"I'll watch out for myself," I tell Marshal. I don't know what else to say. He's obstinate, just like me, but I know he cares. Hell, he came off fucking Mount Olympus to see me when he had no obligation to. Maybe I was being a dick.

I scuff my toe in the dirt. Marshal grunts, saying, "Good. Glad to see you've got the smarts and the battling skills to back it up." He pauses. I watch him chew the inside of his cheek before he adds, "And stay away from the docks. There's pirates about, and they're not playing dress up."

My brows cinch in a frown. He sounds ridiculous, but the weight in his words makes me think twice about teasing him. I glance at Golem before I tell him, "I have to take a ferry to Castelia to get to Nimbasa. I've already got my ticket."

His entire face pinches. He rubs a hand over his brows and takes a deep breath. "You leave Monday?"

I shift. Something is WRONG. "Yeah." I give him another look, harder this time, and I ask, "Uncle Marshal, WHAT is it? What's going on?"

Marshal nods like it's a yes or no question. "You've been too close to it already. Just keep your head low. Don't go digging."

A grin cracks my features before I can stop it. "I want to be an archaeologist, Uncle Marshal, all I do is dig." He glares at me with such heat that the smile flies off my face. I put up my hands. "Sorry. Sorry."

Marshal huffs. His shoulders slump, and he puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head. He looks up at me. "Josey. Just . . . I know we haven't gotten along too much over the years, but look. You're all the family I've got." I look away from him. "I'll do what I can to keep you safe. Hear me?"

I nod and try not to let him get to me too much. "I hear you," I mutter.

"Good. You're behind the grind, so you better get cracking if you want to enroll in Nimbasa University." I bob my head again, looking down at his shadow on the ground. He rocks back on his heels. "I'll send someone for the table and to clear this junk out. Think I'll swing by Floccesy Town and see Alder." Right. His mentor. Marshal hesitates one more time. "Take care of yourself, Josey."

"Sure . . ."

He leaves. I grind my steel toed boot through the dirt and gravel. He's sort of a dick, but he's the good sort. And he's at least given me a heads up on the resurgence of Team Plasma. In pirate uniforms? I guess. I'll just keep far away from the docks after I get to Nimbasa, which will be easy since Nimbasa doesn't have a port.

I shut the storage unit and lock it back. Golem is standing by the wheelbarrow. I frown down at my father's letters. I look back up at my pokemon.

"You ready to go?" I ask him. He lights up like a warm sunrise. "I've got to pack and get things shipped to Nimbasa. And then we'll finally be out of this shithole."

Golem agrees with a little whine, and he picks up the wheelbarrow and pushes it behind me. I give the key back to the guy managing this place and head back to my apartment to pack.

Over the weekend, I think about visiting my mother's grave one more time. Disdain or not, she was my mother. Marshal may have had . . . a SMALL point. Give her some of those stupid flowers. Tell her "I love you" or some shit.

But I don't. My eyes are focused forward. I pack. I get my tickets in order. I send my things ahead and come Monday, I meet Marshal by the pier—no pirates around—and I'm off on a ferry to Castelia. And in the end?

I don't look back.