I had no idea where my life was going. For five years, I never stepped foot outside of Kanto. Every day, I tried to bring myself to travel to America, take a bus to Orre, and barge into the Museum of PokéWonders. I'd then make Goth shoot them with a Hyper Beam and make Ichigo poison them all with Poison Powder. Then, I would run and find Sanders and whack him across the head with a lead pipe.

But, like all ideas, that was only a pipe dream, no pun intended. I was simply standing in the Pokémon Day Care Center outside of Cerulean City, waiting for the old man to give me back my Pokémon. Without a dream of becoming a Pokémon master, I slowly began to appreciate the Pokémon I had instead of constantly finding new ones. Ever since Swan died, I had only caught one Pokémon, Toadstool. All my other Pokémon were born in this very day care.

The old man slowly walked into the day care building holding two Poké Balls, one Love Ball and one plain. He smiled at me, and I smiled back. Even though we had known each other for years, I had never once told him how Swan died. I had not told many people how Swan died, for that matter. I had only told my mother, father, and little sister.

"Well…" started the old man, "I think 'at your Pokémon are in order, Masaru. I jus' hope you think more 'bout getting' the rest of those Sinnoh badges. You've only got two!"

"Yeah, maybe," I said, knowing that he will tell me the exact same thing next time we meet. He had grown predictable in his old years, making me hope that the years were equally unkind to Sanders. "I'll have to think about it." I knew I was being aloof to him, but sadly, I didn't really care. I took the two Poké Balls and turned away from the old man. "How much do I owe you?"

"Don't worry 'bout it, I'll jus' put it on your account."

"'Kay, thanks."

I walked out of the day care with the two Poké Balls in hand. I pressed the buttons in the middle, causing them to shrink. I then placed the two in my pocket and started walking away. Before I could take two steps, however, my PokéGear began to ring. I opened my PokéGear and looked at the number. Professor Willow of Pallet Town was calling me.

At twenty-one, Professor Abeo Canarium became the youngest professor to be Kanto's resident Pokémon expert, the first female, and the first foreigner. Canarium moved to Kanto from the Jincan region of Nigeria, bringing with her excellent first-hand knowledge of Pokémon that many people couldn't learn through four years in college. She, in fact, taught me almost everything I knew about Pokémon battling.

I answered the PokéGear. "Hello?"

"Hello, Masaru," she said, with an air of trepidation in her voice. "I would love to chat, but there is a problem I found while looking through your paperwork regarding your Johto gym badges. I think you should come to Pallet Town as soon as possible. How far away are you?"

"I'm right outside of Cerulean."

"Good, I'll expect you here in two hours." And without another word, she hang up. I was confused, to say the least, about her calling me. I wondered what would possibly be wrong with eight badges I got when I was twelve. I assumed that it must just be another excuse of hers to see me.

For as long as the old man wanted me to continue on with Sinnoh, Canarium had wanted me to work with her as an assistant in the laboratory. Each time she asked, I gave her a simple "no" and didn't think about it further. I hoped that one day she would learn that I really didn't want to, but she continued on with asking.

I hung up my PokéGear and put it in my pocket. Then, I took out the exact same Poké Ball I had just taken out of the day care.

"Go, Gino!"

I threw the Poké Ball into the air. The Poké Ball fell onto the ground and let off a bright light. As the light cleared, a large Charizard glanced down at me and smiled with his large mouth. I smiled back.

Gino was the first Pokémon I ever had, not counting family pets. As my starter Pokémon, I used him for most of my gym battles back in the old days, but while I was in Sinnoh, Gino gradually noticed that with each Flamethrower he used, another Pokémon was sent to the hospital. Gino became a pacifist, and now I use him to fly around Kanto as my means of transportation.

I am by no means complaining. After I lost interest in Pokémon battling as well, flying with Gino was one of the few joys I found in life. Each second I spent in the air, I felt like a child again. Gino knelt down on his knees. I jumped onto his back and grabbed his neck.

Together, we flew.

About one hour later, I landed outside of Pallet Town. I quickly returned Gino to his Poké Ball and walked into town. Knowing Canarium wasn't expecting me for another hous, I tried to walk down the streets of Pallet Town as slowly as possible. However, something strange happened.

Shortly after entering Pallet Town, I walked past the Pallet House, the largest restaurant in Pallet Town. Outside of the Pallet House, a black woman in a lab coat stood with two Shellos in her shoulders. Seeing as this was Japan, there was only one black woman in a lab coat that would possibly be outside of the building: Canarium. She had an annoyed look in her eyes as she gradually shifted her glance to me. Even her two pet Shellos gave me annoyed looks.

"You're late," she said to me, raising her eyebrow. Her Shellos both said their names in a similar tone.

"I thought you didn't want me for another hour," I said, mimicking her annoyance. "Besides, you aren't even at the lab yet."

"Does it look like either of us really care?" she asked. I couldn't help but notice the blatant hypocrisy in what she just said. "We both know why we're both here."

This is what I always liked about Canarium. She never gave anyone any pity, not even children. Every word that came out of her mouth could burn through a Metagross's skin. That's why I always found it appropriate that she always wore green lipstick.

"I need to talk to you about…" she whispered, each word slowly rolling off her tongue Canarium walked closer to me, her Shellos bouncing up and down as she moved. "…Swan". She grabbed onto my shoulder and began pulling me towards the lab. Even though I moved my legs, my heart stopped.

After walking a few blocks, we made it to Canarium's laboratory. She pushed me inside and pointed to a small table made of green glass. "Sit," she said, quietly. She pushed me towards the table and her two Shellos jumped onto my shoulders. As she walked toward a file cabinet, a large, pink Gastrodon pulled two chairs to the table with its mouth.

"Uh…thanks," I said, and I sat down on one of the chairs. The two Shellos jumped off of my shoulders, snickered, and crawled to Canarium. As they crawled up her legs, I tried to take a look at what she was doing. She was fingering through a file cabinet filled to the brim with manila envelopes. She picked three envelopes out of the cabinet and slowly walked back to me. She then sat down on the second chair, ridiculously close to me, as if she had no sense of personal space.

"Before I open these," she started, "I want to know why you lied to me."

"…Lied about what?" I asked, knowing what she was going to say next.

"Alright, fine." Canarium opened the first of the envelopes. She spilled the contents onto the table. My eyes flew open as I saw a file with a picture of Swan among the contents. "This is a file on all of the rare Pokémon the students under me caught. There are even pictures in here from my predecessors," she added, looking at a picture of an alternately-colored Noctowl. "This, however, for the most part, is irrelevant.

"After looking through the file the other day, I noticed something," she said flatly, looking through the giant pile of pictures and papers on the table. She finally found the file of Swan. "Under cause of death, I put 'fall', just as you told me to. This troubled me, as you can already tell." Her glare burned through my skin.

I had told her years ago that Swan died in 'a fall' and left it at that. I never talked about the subject with her again, and I figured she believed me. I could now see that she clearly didn't.

"You're sister let slip what really happened years ago, along with some other …grim details. Swan was shot and all these years you swept it under a rug?!" She pounded her fists on the table, causing the files to fly into the air. Her ebony skin gradually changed to a Hellish red. "How dare you think that this was okay?!"

With that one sentence, I snapped. "YOU THINK I THOUGHT IT WAS OKAY?!" The two Shellos silently gasped. I then tried to calm down. "Do you have any idea how I must have felt?"

"Well, I must have." Canarium opened the second envelope. Instead of spilling the contents, she simply took the lone paper in the envelope and handed it to me. "After learning Swan was killed it was rather hard to figure out who did it, but I finally did it. If you helped me, maybe I could have found it sooner."

I looked at the file with an unhinged jaw. "This…is…"

"Don't read it now, I don't have the time," she said. "Let me make it quick. After a quick search online, I found that there was no such thing as 'the Museum of PokéWonders' and it was clearly just a lie that man told you." Canarium took out a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She took one, lit it, and began to smoke.

"This Sanders guy clearly worked for an organization known as Team Slaughter. It's a crappy name, but it's to the point. Team Slaughter is similar to the organizations of the past, like Team Rocket and Team Magma, but this one plays out like a business instead of a cult of a group of terrorists."

"Uh…I don't really…care about this. Can I just get to the reason they killed Swan?" I gradually grew impatient. She knew why Swan was killed and she just kept giving me useless information. "Can you just hurry up?!"

"No. Masaru, this is serious. You really need to know everything about these people if you want to take them down."

"…Take them down?"

"Why else do you think I spent years of my life trying to find these people?" Canarium put her hand on my lap. She edged her face closer to mine. "Masaru, if you do everything I tell you, you can take down the whole organization that killed Swan. Just. Do. Everything. I. Say."