One month. An entire month she had whittled away in Striaton City, which was quickly becoming one of her least favorite places in all of Unova, training so that she would beat that jerk of a connoisseur and exact her revenge. Three months of pouring over textbooks on pokémon connoisseuring in one of the local bookstores, wondering if just maybe that idiot had a point—he didn't—and three months of training her team to perfection. She had marched into the Striaton City Gym in full confidence that she would prove Cilan's evaluation wrong and win her Trio Badge.
The fact that he had already left town to travel with some other trainer left a sour taste in her mouth. She decimated Chili with her team, earning herself the Trio Badge currently pressed painfully into the palm of her hand as she stalked back towards the Pokémon Center, but it truly wasn't the same.
Upon her arrival in the Pokémon Center, she headed straight for the videophones to call home. In a type of morbid fascination, she kept up with every detail of her parents' move. She knew the addresses of every house they looked at, the pros and cons of each, the address and image of the house her parents had just settled on. She knew her parents tutored Ruby and Winslow in Kalosian, hoping to prepare them for a smooth transition. She simultaneously understood that they couldn't hope to do the same for her and hated them for not even trying.
Ruby and Winslow appeared on the video feed first, and Burgundy held up the Trio Badge proudly, telling a glorified version of the battle to her enchanted audience. Her eyes inadvertently focused on the wall behind her beloved siblings—a poor representation of the cheerful yellow house with the white wooden porch and the neat rows of azaleas growing in the front yard, with the kitchen sink that started leaking every few months like clockwork, with the pink-walled room once bursting with Pokémon plush toys that belonged to her.
The unintelligible sound of Ruby speaking in Kalosian ripped Burgundy from her train of thought, and she just barely stopped herself from scowling. More and more, Ruby forgot to speak in Unovan, or even the International Common Tongue. It couldn't be helped, Burgundy supposed, but it stung all the same. Winslow nudged Ruby on the other side of the video feed, smiling apologetically at Burgundy as he prompted Ruby to repeat what she said in a language Burgundy could understand.
Yet he, too, could understand what Ruby said, and she couldn't. Burgundy swallowed and assured her siblings that it was perfectly fine. She understood. She was glad that they were learning so quickly.
Rather than talking to her parents next, as was her usual fashion, Burgundy hung up shortly after the incident. Pressing her lips together, she dug through her bag, counting the money she'd earned from defeating Chili and deciding she had some cash to spare. She strode purposefully to the local bookstore, where she had become such a familiar face that the owner came out from behind the counter to chat as she walked in. She squeezed through the other shoppers down its crowded aisles until she found the section she sought—the miniscule language section. Scanning quickly through her options—mainly Unovan as a Second Language textbooks—she snagged a copy of the sole book on Kalosian and made her way back to the cashier.
While her purchase cost more than she would have liked, she felt marginally satisfied. Learning a new language on her own would be difficult, certainly, but she had more than enough determination—and motivation—to try.
Kalosian, as it turned out, shared some characteristics with Unovan. But it lacked any such similarities to ICT, the language she felt most confident in, on account of the fact that her parents had never managed to get a solid grasp on Unovan. The Kalosian words that sounded so elegant coming from her parents' mouths felt awkward and clumsy in her own, and the grammar was just short of indecipherable.
Burgundy realized she didn't even have a clue if what she said sounded right.
She knew perfectly well that patience had never been her strong suit. Learning Kalosian would take time, time she didn't want it to take. Time that, in some aspects, she felt she didn't have. She slammed the book shut once more, resolving to return later, when she was in a better mood.
She glanced at the Trio Badge sitting on the corner of her desk, not yet added to her meager collection. Her eyes narrowed on the section of the badge painted in green. He hadn't even given her the chance to prove herself, that lowlife.
Her thoughts wandered back to her days at the bookstore, reading text after text on the art of pokémon connoisseuring. She smirked. Perhaps it would take longer than her initial plan, but she knew exactly how she could get her revenge on that green-haired imbécile.
How hard could being a connaisseuse be?