Chapter 42

"I'll be back in just a few days. Until then, you're the man of the house."

Those were the last words that Eric's father ever spoke to him.

He never liked it when his father went away. What made it worse was that it had only been three years since his mother had passed away. Claimed by that strange thing that grew inside of her and taught Eric that growing was not always a good thing. After that, he wanted his father to be as close as possible. Losing one parent had hurt enough; losing a second would be unbearable.

To keep his mind off of his missing father and the loneliness it created in him, Eric wandered the mansion. Both of his parents were hard-working, intelligent and talented people. They had strived to give their son the best that they could, including the magnificent home they had found for him. But to Eric, the mansion wasn't anything special. It was just the place he grew up in. It was as ordinary as the color of the grass.

At age eight, he had started school and was in between third and fourth grade. His Mudkip had become a Marshtomp and Eric had given it the nickname of Tsunami. He knew little about tsunamis, aside from the fact that they were large, powerful waves. One day, his small Mudkip would become a large, powerful Swampert. It was a good name.

Fernelia, the Tropius his father had gotten him for his seventh birthday had taken a bit more thought. Some help from his father also made it a bit easier. Eric was still at a young enough age to be obsessed with dinosaurs. That made a Tropius a perfect fit for the young boy and was the most precious gift his father would ever give him. Sadly, Eric's father would never live to see just how much it meant.

Unfortunately, whereas Tsunami could follow Eric throughout the entire house, Fernelia's large size restricted her to the garden. In fact, her presence in the garden had been what prompted Eric's father to hire an actual gardener and begin to take better care of the grounds. A Tropius required a large area to properly take care of it. Eric was unaware of how expensive keeping Fernelia was, but his father never minded.

The garden, as it turned out, was the perfect place for Eric to train both of his Pokémon. The expansive grounds attracted a wide variety of other Pokémon. Some were good for the garden, like Budew and Roselia, while others had a tendency to do more harm than good. Working together, just a few Wurmple could devour an entire section of the garden overnight. That was where Eric, Tsunami and Fernelia came in.

Franz, the gardener, had his own Pokémon for fending off the small threats, but he always appreciated any help from Eric. As long as he didn't destroy the patch of garden that he was trying to protect, of course. Tsunami's Water Gun proved particularly helpful, since it could scare off most minor threats while giving the plants a nice, healthy watering at the same time.

The garden was easily Eric's favorite part of the house. It was no surprise that in the early days, after his father left and never returned, that Eric spent almost every waking minute out in the garden.

"I'll be back in just a few days. Until then, you're the man of the house."

Eric's father was charming, spirited and somehow down-to-earth despite his wealth. Eric couldn't remember what his father looked like before his mother had passed away. He only knew what he looked like from photographs, and he had once been a very handsome man. But on the day that he left, he looked tired and distant, as if a piece of him had been left far behind. Eric wanted to remember him the way that he had been, but whenever he thought of his father that last, tired smile he gave to his son was all that remained.

It truly was the last time that Eric saw his father. They said that his body had been too badly damaged in the accident and they had no choice but to hide it from him. So, with the Marshtomp still at his side, Eric had to look at a closed casket at his father's funeral.

Eric didn't know whether this was good or bad. When he looked at his mother, lying with her hands folded across her chest, she had looked small, thin and worn, as if someone had sucked the very life from her. But it was still his mother.

Eric didn't cry at either funeral. For each one, he had felt nothing. When he looked at his mother's body, he had asked his father if he should be crying. His father's response was that he should do what he felt that he needed to. But this only confused Eric, because he felt nothing. He thought he should be crying because his father was, but he didn't think that he could even force himself to cry.

Three years later, the same scene repeated itself. The same funeral home, the same friends and family paying their respects, even the same kinds of flowers spread around the casket. But his father was gone, the casket was closed and he would never see him again.

The mansion, that Eric's father had declared him to be the man of, supported two maids, one butler, one cook, and one gardener. Eric himself hadn't started to learn how to explore the place on his own until he was almost six. And even with the servants, without his mother and father around, the mansion always felt hollow.

However, just two weeks after his father's funeral, even the servants were gone.

With the insurance money left over from the deaths of his parents, Eric would be able to live comfortably for some time without any other outside financial help. There were few doors that had been closed to him. There was only the matter of needing a legal guardian.

For that role, his father's older sister, Aunt Rita, stepped into Eric's life. Aunt Rita had never had any children of her own and when it came to raising Eric, she had little interest in learning about him. At first, that was fine with Eric, who spent more time out in the garden, training his Pokémon, than inside anyway.

Aunt Rita didn't care for Pokémon, particularly Tsunami whom she had described as being "slimy, weird and repulsive." Eric had no idea what she was talking about and saw no reason to investigate further. However, since Tsunami rarely left Eric's side, it seemed as though Aunt Rita's pointed nose was always thrust upwards, towards the ceiling. Her demeanor was not helped in the slightest either.

Though she never hit Eric or otherwise did anything to hurt him deliberately, she nevertheless succeeded in doing so. Eric had overheard a growing number of troubling conversations that Aunt Rita had had with some friends of hers. Whether Eric was in the room or not, she showed a number of odd, shifty people around Eric's home as if she had earned the money that paid for it. Her complete apathy towards the memory of Eric's parents, which included her only brother, baffled Eric.

Months passed as Eric watched his mom and dad's possessions, which they had earned through two lifetimes of hard work, get carried away forever. He could do nothing but stand back and watch as Aunt Rita foolishly sold what never belonged to her in the first place.

During those months, Eric retreated to the garden more and more often. At first, he, Tsunami and Fernelia had worked to maintain whatever they could and keep it as beautiful as possible. But the boy still had school and the Pokémon could only do so much without him. In the end, it was a lost cause and by the time Eric turned nine, the garden was only a memory compared to what it once was.

But even in its rundown state, the garden still held a source of escape for Eric. Wild Pokémon entered more frequently and Tsunami and Fernelia were getting stronger all the time. His two Pokémon were always quick to comfort him whenever he came to them. He loved them and they loved him much more than what Aunt Rita was capable of. The only other people that Eric remembered showing him that kind of affection were his parents.

His greatest fear was that Aunt Rita would sell them along with his parents' old possessions.

In the autumn of that year, just two years and eight days after Eric had woken up to see what he believed to be a dinosaur living in his backyard, Aunt Rita told him that she would be selling Fernelia.

"We have to think about your future, Eric," this was not the first time that Eric's future was used as a weapon against him, "and your…Pokémon is simply too expensive to have around. And I just don't understand why your father would let you keep something like that. It's dangerous, I tell you!"

"You can't take her," Eric shook his head. There was no fear or alarm in his voice. He spoke with a conviction that he had never seen in his father, but he had inherited nonetheless.

"Whether you think you can take care of…her?" Aunt Rita was unaware that Fernelia was female. She also didn't know her name, "well, you can't keep her. Think of your future! You want to go to a good university one day, don't you?"

"Not if it means giving up Fernelia," Eric remained composed. It was a behavior he had adopted through dealing with Aunt Rita. Getting upset at her never changed anything. She ignored him whether he yelled or screamed or did nothing at all. Emotions like that were meaningless around her. The only attitude that seemed worth having was one of polite composure. It was an attitude that bordered on stoic indifference.

But as he left the small meeting with Aunt Rita, he felt rage and hatred like he had never felt before. She was going to take Fernelia from him and there was nothing he could do. Aunt Rita was his guardian and Eric could do nothing to stop her. He had stood back and watched as his mother and father's estate was picked apart and he would be forced to do the same when Aunt Rita came for him.

His entire body was shaking from the rage that threatened to consume him. He walked with his fists clenched and his teeth gritted. At his side, Tsunami was spitting in anger, which was something Eric had never seen him do.

There was only one thing that Eric could think of to do. With his rage boiling over, he stormed directly from his father's old study, now Aunt Rita's, and went straight out into the garden.

His heart sank when Fernelia was outside, waiting for him. If he had been able to cry at his father's funeral, he might have then, as well. But he wouldn't shed tears until he had done so for his parents. He had promised them that.

Instead, he thought about Aunt Rita and how he would lose Fernelia in just a few more weeks if he didn't do anything.

But he could think of nothing to stop her. Whether he wasn't smart enough or creative enough or mischievous enough, there was nothing. There was only the harshness of reality telling him that this was the way it was because Aunt Rita said so.

So he did the only thing he could do. He trained his Pokémon. He did it for hours, long after Aunt Rita should have made him go to sleep, but she didn't care about him enough. He spent hours with them and them alone, watching them grow and get stronger.

How many more nights like that would he be able to spend with them? Eric had no idea, but he vowed to spend as much time with them as possible. Because in a few more weeks Fernelia would be gone. Then Aunt Rita would come for Tsunami as well. Then Eric would be alone.

And so they trained and Eric cherished every second of the time they spent together. Tsunami and Fernelia, his Marshtomp and Tropius, they were the only family that Eric had left. He loved them more than anything.

Before the sun rose that morning, sometime around one thirty, Tsunami evolved into a Swampert.

Two days later, he evolved again.

There was no answer outside of Kim's door the morning of the fourth day of the tournament. Mark stood with Maple and Cherry behind him and knocked again, frowning at the lack of a response.

"Are they awake?" Maple asked. She had been up for two hours, a full hour longer than Mark, and it was common for her to find that the other people around her were still asleep.

"I would think so…" Mark tried pounding harder, but it made no difference. Finally, he gave up and called her on his cell phone.

"What is it, noob?" Kim's greeting sounded in Mark's ear.

"Oh, uhh…" Mark had thought a "good morning" would have been more appropriate, but he realized he should've anticipated Kim's response, "well, we're about to go see Eric's match. Where are you?"

"We're training at the beach," Kim answered, "you said Eric has a match?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, cool," Kim's voice spiked with interest, but she had already chosen to decline, "sorry, we can't make it. Lots of training to do. Cheer for us too, would you?"

"Sure," Mark agreed, "we can do that."

"Cool, talk to you later," Kim hung up without waiting for a response. Closing his phone, Mark turned to Maple and Cherry.

"I guess we could try Lily," he shrugged.

But Lily was also out training. Overall, Mark realized that he shouldn't be very surprised. The group that had raided the Team Deus base had formed out of necessity. With their mission accomplished, the other members were eager to put the ordeal behind them and get on with their lives.

At least, that was one theory. The other, which Mark liked better, was to assume that Kim and Lily both wanted to train even harder than before. If they all became stronger, a victory against Team Deus wouldn't be an unreachable goal.

Whatever the reason, Mark was still disappointed that it was going to be just himself, Maple and Cherry attending Eric's first match.

It was another clear, beautiful day on Himitsu Island. The brief storm from the night before had left no evidence behind, aside from the whispers from those who had seen the golden ring over Mount Totetsu. However, even those whispers would be gone soon enough.

Cherry, like Maple and most other human Pokémon Mark knew, was eager and excited to see her first tournament match. But more than that, she was excited to see the bright, warm sun. It had been three months since she had last seen it and it was every bit as bright and amazing as she remembered it to be. She loved the flame burning in the sky as much as anyone.

They made their way to the stadium, weaving their way through a thickening cloud of tournament-goers. Mark let Maple take the lead with Cherry behind her. The events of the previous day had already served to make Mark somewhat paranoid. He feared that if either one of them left his sight for more than a few seconds they would vanish into the crowd and be lost forever.

The crowd itself was rather sparse for a human Pokémon match, especially compared to the mass of humanity that Mark remembered from Aurum's first match. And back then, Kim had led them into the stadium more than thirty minutes ahead of schedule. But this was little comfort as he watched Cherry become more and more uneasy around the crowd.

She was fine, at first, but the closer they moved to the stadium and the more the crowd thickened, the more uneasy she became. She walked slower and her eyes scanned the crowd. The girl hadn't been around a crowd of people of this size even once. Her underground confinement hadn't helped anything, either. While Mark paid for their tickets, she started trembling.

"We can go back if you want to," Mark suggested, his own worry made Cherry feel worse, but he could do little to hide it from the perceptive Charmander-girl.

"No, no, I'm okay," Cherry assured him, nodding in spite of the tremor in her voice.

"It'll be better once we sit down," Mark took one of her hands and Maple the other. With her hands being held, Cherry felt a bit better and could continue. Nonetheless, while they were filing into their seats and could only move a few inches at a time, Cherry released Maple's hand to clasp onto Mark's leg in an iron-hard grip and buried her face into his side.

Mark also nearly panicked when she did so. If she froze with her arms around his leg, he felt certain that there was little he could do to remove her. However, when he tried to walk, Cherry shuffled along with him. Thankfully, they could still move and they awkwardly made their way to their seats.

"Cherry, we're here," Mark attempted to soothe her, "it's safe to let go, now."

Cherry very seriously doubted that until she started to take a look around. There were, of course, people everywhere. The murmuring of the crowd created a low rumbling sound like a building thunderstorm. There were at least twenty other human Pokémon in range that could easily attack and defeat her with little effort. The entire scene terrified her...except for the view of the field.

She scanned it from end to end, from the trainer's boxes, to the red and white Pokéball painted into the center. Huge and a comforting shade of green it was exactly the way she had pictured it. She let go of Mark's leg and she felt like she could breathe again.

Eric always felt afraid whenever he was alone. But that didn't matter inside of the stadium's locker room, he had no choice. Tsunami and Fernelia were inside of their Pokéballs. They were by his side, sure, but they still felt impossibly far away. He could endure it, though, he had been through worse.

Yesterday, for example, was a mere hair short of being hell made real for Eric. With Fernelia's disappearance it was as if Aunt Rita were still trying to force him and his Pokémon apart. Eric could barely keep calm enough to be of any use to his friends. New friends who had come from nowhere to fight for him. They wanted nothing more than to help. Eric had never known people to be that kind that weren't his parents, or his adopted parents.

He wondered if coming to the tournament had been a bad idea. Eric had been unsure, especially so soon after being officially adopted by Tsunami and Fernelia. But it was his new parents that had urged him to do it. It was their first official act as his parents to encourage him to attend the tournament with them by his side.

All three of them knew very little about human Pokémon. They could pass for human well enough to adopt Eric and there was also the side benefit of retaining their abilities. That was more than enough for them.

It had been Alfred Silph's aide who had visited Eric's home and invited them to the tournament. He had also forged the necessary paperwork to make Tsunami and Fernelia official residents of Johto. That paperwork was an absolute necessity in winning against Aunt Rita.

That was Eric's real life, a constant legal battle with Aunt Rita for what was left of his parents' estate. If Tsunami and Fernelia hadn't evolved, then it would all have been gone already. At least, that was the way Eric felt.

He owed them a lot, but what they wanted to see for him was a happy childhood. Between the deaths of his parents and the reign of Aunt Rita, Eric had grown well beyond his years in a very short time. The other kids at his private school noticed, even if they didn't know what it was that caused the difference between them. As a result, Eric was always kept at a distance. Not that he would be able to relate with them, anyway.

But the distance between Eric and his peers worried Tsunami and Fernelia. The boy needed friends and he was having a very difficult time finding any. The tournament would be just the place. There would be other trainers with human Pokémon that shared a deeper connection than what most trainers even knew existed. They wanted to go for him. It was just the kind of parents that they were.

"Excuse me," the stadium attendant came back to fetch Eric, "are you ready? It's time."

Eric nodded and followed the attendant.

He thought back to when he had seen Mark, a fellow newcomer, walk out onto the field. The stadium had been filled with excited murmuring then, and it was more of the same when Eric took to the field.

Except for one spot, about six rows back. Eric could see Maple leaping into the air and cheering. Beside her, the Charmander-girl they had rescued along with Fernelia also cheered. Mark was doing his best, but it was much more subdued, as if he were far too concerned about what the fans around him thought.

It was a small greeting, but Eric was no less happy to have it.

"AND ON THE RED SIDE," the voice of the stadium announcer echoed, "WE HAVE…RICHARD EDWARDS!"

Another fresh face in the tournament, the crowd's excited murmur continued. But as Eric approached the center of the field to greet his opponent, he stopped short. He already knew the man he was facing.

"Oh, God…" Mark drew in a sharp breath and stopped cheering.

"What? What is it?" Cherry also stopped to see what was wrong. Mark pointed and Cherry's emerald eyes went wide with shock.

"Why did you stop cheering?" Maple asked, but when she followed Mark's finger to where he was pointing, she knew.

Despite the warm sun of the late spring afternoon, the man that the stadium announcer had called Richard Edwards was wearing a gaudy lavender colored suit.

AN: sorry to have to depress you for a bit there. Eric's had a rough life in his ten years.

I may also be getting a bit too realistic when it comes to Eric's adoption, but they are officially his parents. Silph's aide helps to speed up all the legal jargon that would go into making a human Pokemon into a person that could legally adopt a son, though. so, that helps.

Anyways, Eric's full back-story and match against Farin are just starting (technically, it hasn't started yet).

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!