All things considered, I was doing surprisingly okay physically.
A mild shoulder sprain, cuts and contusions, a bruise on my leg - falling a handful of feet during the trial had roughed me up fierce, but modern Pokemon Center facilities had me up on my feet almost as soon as I had been admitted.
Still, I was exhausted, and the right side of my body hurt. My bandaged shoulder still throbbed and I knew I’d feel that pain for a few weeks. Beyond pain, I was emotionally drained: my starter was hurt and would have to stay in the center for the night.
Last I had seen them, their prone, battered body had been laid in a specialized medical frame, lit up under UV light. They’d woken up and given me a few signs of reassurance, but still my heart hurt. I knew they’d be fine, I knew they’d be right back on their feet but knowing that they had been hurt on my account frightened me.
My feet brought me on autopilot towards Lilliane and I’s motel room, late in the night.
Pokemon are hardy; they bounce right back up. Still. It was failure, and it was unnecessary pain on my starter. It was mistrust in me and my teammates.
Failure doesn’t sting, I thought; it’s a poison, it festers in the mind and burns you from inside. I had now failed once, which meant I could fail again. I could fail, I could get Petal hurt, and I could disappoint all the people that had put their trust in me.
Anxiety bubbled in my heart like water on the stove. Events of the trial replayed in my mind again and again.
I should have told Lilliane enough about the trial beforehand. I had clearly startled Loa with my outburst. I had stupidly, stupidly fallen off that stair. I hadn’t had the strength to send OJ back out. Did… did he even feel safe with me?
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I felt at my belt OJ’s ball and released the Dunsparce. Pokemon can see outside their ball, I knew, so he probably wouldn’t be spooked at being out so suddenly.
Slowly, he turned around and faced me. I didn’t know what to say, really - it’s not like I wanted him or Petal to take on the trial and get hurt–
Oran Juice beckoned and motioned from me to get down to his level. I kneeled, and before I could say anything, he moved to a side-pouch on my backpack and dug through to retrieve some packaged biscuits and drinks that he suddenly pushed into my lap.
Then he began to babble to me animatedly, gnawing on an unopened juice box of his own - so I quickly motioned for him to calm down.
“OJ, I– We failed. Petal’s at the center. They’re not here to translate for you.” I wrung my hands. “We’ll have to talk the slow way.”
He tilted his head to the side, and waited for me to continue.
“Are you okay?”
A shrug, and a nod.
“Are you… are you afraid?”
Visible confusion, then shakes of the head.
“Are you disappointed in me?”
Confusion morphed into disbelief, and disbelief went to– he just turned around and poked me in the face with the tip of his tail!
“Agh! Bwah! Why?” I pushed back the frantic snake, scanning through his facial expression and body language to understand what he was trying to tell me. “Oran Juice, listen, I messed up. Back in the trial I– Augh!”
Once more, my Dunsparce reared up and poked his scaley end twice in my face, then turned back and let out an indignant “Du-dun!!”
I stared at him with wide eyes, gears turning slowly in my head. “Okay, uh– listen. I feel bad about this. I just saw Petal on a stretcher, and I feel like you wouldn’t want to be on one too.” I turned my gaze to the ground, cold anxiety raising up my back. “...Are you sure you want to stay with me? We’ll have to do this trial again, and you could get really hurt.”
Silence for a moment. OJ stared intensely at me, eyes narrowed. He let out one angry snort, then moved down to chomp on the packaged biscuits, plastic and all, and ate it whole. Then he promptly slithered to me and nuzzled my leg.
My fear cooled down just a smidge, and a tentative smile crept on my face as I allowed myself to pet the snake’s scaley back. Maybe I hadn’t lost his trust, yet.
“Okay… okay. You’re on team Selene still. I’ll be counting on you.” OJ pushed back against my touch, and I looked for the right spot to scratch.
I got up. Time to sleep off the stress.
“Still… I wonder about how it would have gone, had I released you earlier during the trial.” I started to slowly walk toward our motel room, and OJ followed by my side. “I still think your dig’s got potential. Maybe you could have held your own against the Gumshoos–”
“Uh, hey.”
I stopped.
Hau stood, not far from us girls’ room. Hands in his pockets, he rocked on the balls of his feet. He looked at my bandaged shoulder and I watched his face go through a flurry of emotions– embarrassment, worry, relief, then back to a tentative smile. “Glad to see that you’re good, cuz’. I got real worried there.”
I rubbed my bandaged arm. “Yeah, I guess it could have gotten worse. Could have gotten much better as well.” I couldn’t suppress a wince on my part, and was surprised that he couldn’t suppress one as well.
“Yeah, no kidding.”
The Dunsparce at my feet looked to Hau then to I, unsure what to make of the situation.
The boy broke the silence, rubbing the back of his neck. “Do you think it’s good if we head in? You know, talk about how the trial went an’ all.”
I gave him a nod, and knocked on the door.
----------------------------------------
A strange tension filled the room.
Hau had entered and then sat on a chair like a skittish Delcatty, one leg up and hugged to his chest.
Over the last week, I had found the boy to have an overbearing personality; someone who made his presence known and immediately filled the room with his cheer. This wasn’t the same boy. Hau looked awkward, unsure, clear attempts at trying to smile or bring the mood up but failing to do so. There was tension, he made a clear effort not to look in Lilliane’s direction and failed to suppress the twinge of discomfort on his face.
Meanwhile, Lilliane seemed faced with a similar dilemma. We had found the blond girl in our room stiff, sitting on her bed, a quiet and pensive Stella on her lap. She had welcomed us in (though more directed at the boy, since this was the room I slept in with her, still), and offered to brew Roselia tea for us. When she had come back with the kettle, she had handed me my cup, and even if I hadn’t seen her hands shudder I would still have heard the clinkle-clink of trembling porcelain.
Perhaps it was too easy to comment on their demeanor. I was terrified, failing to such an extent was something I was unfamiliar with.
It was strange to see the two other teens in a similar state of mind, but also comforting, in a strange way. It’s like a spell that had been cast on the two teens had been broken.
“Alright. Let me start this off.”
Hau had spoken up first, raising a hand, grimace on his face. “I’m taking the blame on this. I should have been better. If I had a better bond with my starter, I don’t think it would have gotten to shit like this.”
Wait, wait– this wasn’t right! “But I thought– it’s my fault.” Both teens turned to look at me, and I balked under the attention. “Didn’t I startle her into attacking when I shouted?”
The boy let out a sigh. “No? Not really. Loa was already being real aggro with that Yungoose. You didn’t provoke her or anything.”
Huh. Wind out my sails, I let the argument drop. I felt OJ pat me on the leg and he nodded in agreement.
“So yeah. We were talking loudly, I didn’t stop Loa from blasting that ‘goose, and that attracted the whole pack. Then we went into panic mode, and honestly it was mostly over from there. That Gumshoos must have been waiting in the wings since we encountered the first Yungoose, honestly.
“But, real talk, I think we weren’t doing too bad.” I saw him raise his hand as though he was measuring something, then he reconsidered it and lowered it a tad. “We were real careful like, 80% of the time. That gotta count for something.”
“I- I fell. I sprained my shoulder. I wasn’t careful enough to shop that.”
Hau shrugged. “Can’t really fault you for this! That big dude spooked you out of nowhere. Had I been in your place, I would have broke my arm, instead.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of it. Despite everything, Hau still managed to cheer.
“Alright. So now that we know what went wrong, let’s see what–”
“I’d like to… say my piece. Please.”
Hau and I turned to Lilliane. Those were the first words she had said since we had sat down.
She balked for a second under the attention, then looked at Hau and continued. “Hau, I– would like to apologize. I’ve been brusque to you in the cave, and it wasn’t warranted.” Hau crossed his arms but nodded, and she turned her gaze to me then. “Selene. In my ignorance, I panicked. I did not mean to cause you nor Hau distress. You’re looking for what to blame, but it’s… it’s rather obvious, isn’t it?” A pause. We held our breaths. “I’m the problem.”
She had said it.
A part of myself wanted to blame my actions, and I could do it all I wanted, but the fact that she and Stella practically hadn’t taken part in the trial stayed.
“I am aware that I’m posing a problem to you two. To all three of us.” She shuddered and wrung her hands against the hem of her dress. “I did not mean for me– for my fears to get this bad. I thought I could get a hold of them before the trial.”
Huh. This was very unusual, however. Lilliane had been a stoic person for all the time I had known her. Unbidden, the thought of meeting someone more scared than I was had never crossed my mind.
Hau spoke up, tentatively laying a hand on the bed where she sat, still keeping distance. “So, uh. What are you afraid of, really?”
“...I can’t say.”
“You don’t know, or you can’t tell us?”
Fear rose in her voice. “I– I can’t– I can’t really talk about it.”
A moment of silence passed.
Hau let out a heavy sigh.
“Sis, we can give you your space but you gotta work with us, here.” Hau rubbed the bridge of his nose and I saw him hide his frown. “You’re allowed to be afraid, sure, but we need to know so we don’t step on your toes or whatever.” He wiped his face with his hand. “Do you have a doctor you can talk to or–”
Now fear stormed into panic, eyes wide, and she cut over Hau with an outburst of “No no no no no, no medical professional– I tell a health official and they’ll tell my mother, and my mother can’t know, she really can’t learn about this.”
Hau and I practically jumped back.
At that moment, she looked at us with wide blue eyes unhidden by her long blond hair and the rim of her hat. Tears threatened to spill at the corner of her eyes, and her skin grew paler still as she had hissed out her fears.
Once more, silence settled over the room.
In those blue eyes of hers, I saw something familiar. A dark scene seared into the back of the eyelids, an irrational fear, a thought process that grips the throat and doesn’t let go. Something I could maybe relate to.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Whatever she was afraid of, it was something she was afraid of others knowing, of others using against her, no matter how senseless it may be. And perhaps she, also, felt the destructive need to let it out.
Perhaps, then.
I saw a chance.
But I would need to take the first step. Harrowing.
“Um. How about then– how about we swap secrets?”
Both teens turned to me in confusion.
“I mean, I guess–” Tapus, this was awkward. My throat felt dry all of a sudden. “I could tell you something that I’ve never ever told anybody.” Anybody that knows me at school. “No string attached. Just the understanding that you know something that… I really, really don’t want people to know.”
Tapus above, what the heck was I doing?
Gears turned in the head of my fellow teammates. For Lilliane, I could imagine, what I offered was an open hand; the understanding that anything I could use against her, she had something to use against me. Hau considered it with uncharacteristic stillness, and I dare not predict what was happening in that mind of his.
Then slowly, both teens gave me a nod.
I really, really had not thought this through.
----------------------------------------
One could look at it in a poetic way: let's say that she was born in the ocean.
Look at Akala bay from afar, and it is a beautiful, massive expense of sea blue that sparkles under the moonlight. Stars and nebulae paint the sky in ethereal hues of blues and purples and greens, and a distant glow lines the horizon.
Look a little closer, and the sea isn’t as peaceful as it may seem. It is ever shifting, it is curves and peaks, ebb and flow, an ordered but chaotic rhythm outlined by the glow of the moon.
Look a little closer still, and watch a four year old girl struggle in the water.
The little girl’s first memory is drowning.
Those memories are blurry and fragmented. With time she found that they distort further, like rewinding a cassette tape too many times; the footage warps and deteriorates and all fills with white noise.
Her body is death cold. She is pushed down by a great force. She is being turned this way and that, and suddenly it will feel like she’s been thrown and then it repeats again. There’s no rhythm to it.
There’s a desperate instinct to keep her head up and out but she doesn’t know what up and down are. Arms and legs flail uselessly. The body is stuck between holding its breath and trying to take in oxygen. It chooses the latter, and water enters the lungs instead.
There’s no emotion that can convey what it feels like. It is fire and ice in the veins. It is death. It is cradling her face and holding her hand.
That’s all she could remember.
Who knows how much time passed until they fished her out.
----------------------------------------
I hugged Oran Juice tight to my trembling chest. The Dunsparce had motioned for me to pick him up and I had reached for him like one would a life preserver. My tears wet the scales on his back and I felt him curl tighter around myself in response. My hair fell on my face like a shroud, shading my eyes from view.
My chest was still wracked with sobs as I told my worst memories to people my age for the first time. This was a huge, huge mistake, I immediately thought.
I didn’t really know how they reacted. I couldn’t really look at them. I had grabbed at the idea of being vulnerable but really did not think this through.
Somehow, though, I could breathe a little better.
“...Oh,” Hau muttered, “That’s why you were exempt from swimming class.”
Hau’s absurd realization would have me chuckle any other time. Instead, I only gave a few terse nods.
“I’m so, so sorry to hear this, Selene…” I heard Lilliane say, after a moment.
Silence, again.
Despite it all, an urge came to me to say more.
“I was–” I stopped, and sniffed, and raised a hand from OJ to wipe my face and nose with my sleeve. Tapus, I felt wet and gross. “I was bad for a while after this. I don’t remember much from– sob– from before I was… nine or ten.
“I didn’t really… feel like a person before then. I was in medical facilities a lot, and I kept reliving th– that moment over and over. Being stuck in that time.
“Then–” And my heart really felt lighter then, because this, truly, was when life started to turn around. “Then I was just… better. And then I was in the care of my parents, and Petal came into my life. And that helped.”
I recalled the doctors saying at the time ‘Selene is an unopened flower’. What I needed was support, something I could lean against to bloom. My dad suggested that a plant pokemon from his region would work, and funnily enough, he couldn’t have been more right.
“...Wait.” That was Lilliane. “Your parents, what were they doing before?”
This felt like a separate bombshell to drop on them, but the words spilled out of my mouth anyway. “Um… I didn’t know them. They hadn’t adopted me then.”
“Oh!” let out Hau, involuntarily. “Oh. Uh. I had no idea.”
“...What about your biological parents?” asked the blonde girl.
Silence.
I only gave a weak shrug. Hopefully she would get the idea.
Once again, the room was quiet.
The steady breaths and the beat of OJ’s heart was felt against my own. My heartbeats matched his own and followed his rhythm. I didn’t have Petal with me here, but I had truly found something special in the Dunsparce.
I looked up.
Both teens had changed positions. Hau now sat straight on the chair, staring at me intensely with something like– I couldn’t say. There was fire in his eyes, certainly, but I didn’t know if it meant anything positive or negative.
Lilliane was looking into the distance, arms no longer cradling and petting her starter. I saw Stella looking at her trainer with sad eyes. Then, Lilliane began to speak and the Cleffa’s eyes widened in realization.
“I think…” her voice hollow and haunted, “I think my mom killed my dad.”
A veil fell over the room.
A miasma grasped at our throats and choked our voice.
…
What could we even say?
“...Father disappeared a few months ago. He went to work and he did not come back.”
As she spoke, Lilliane laid a hand down on Stella’s head, in between the ears, and her starter grasped Lilliane’s hand with her paws and hugged it close.
“Mother told– told my brother and I to keep it secret. That he was gone on a business trip, and that it was very hush-hush.
“We believed her, for a while. This wasn’t the first time he'd gone on a work trip, but it certainly was the first time we were asked not to mention it, ever.”
Lilliane’s voice had taken this strange monotone quality, like no emotion was left to feel.
“The situation took on a strange turn,” she continued. “One of my tutors asked us about Father– days later, that tutor was gone. We asked Mother about it, or about Father’s whereabouts, but she–” and Lilliane left the phrase hanging there, not knowing how to end it.
“I, um– I decided to look into it myself– Gladion and I did. We had grown good at sneaking around and we had an idea of where to look.” Her voice started to break, and we watched as she curled smaller around Stella, her head in her crossed arms.
“It was– it was really, really bad. It was so much worse than anything we could have expected. It was harrowing. A lot of research notes, at first, documents we expected– but the deeper we dug, the more strange it seemed. Research failures– reports on casualties, e-mails to Unovan officials to keep it away from the public, experimentation on live pokemon in explicit detail–”
A sob broke through and stopped her. She shuddered, and took a deep breath.
“I saw Mother’s signature a lot. And I found a door I didn’t know about, in her office, and behind it I saw–” a gasp, and she stopped. “Brother found something else, as well. Captive pokemon. Something we could act on. This was the straw that broke the Numel’s back, and so we planned for an escape.”
We watched her head raise and she looked at Stella, eyes filled with horror, reliving the moment. We looked at her, Hau, my pokemon and I were utterly dismayed. We waited with baited breath.
“A two-pronged plan. We each had our own objective. We had stolen keycards and hid them in our shirt drawer. We knew when the cameras would be turned off, and how to rig them so that we wouldn’t be recorded. We did all this, we separated, I went through Mother’s hidden door in her office, and then…
“I couldn’t do it.
“I looked at a little pokemon, asleep, locked in a metal container, like a tool locked in storage. Just a little dark blue cloud with stars shining through– and I imagined Stella in its place, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t free that little night cloud. I couldn’t take the risk.” She turned to us and I was struck by the overwhelming conflict of emotions behind those blue eyes. Something like hope and grief, love and betrayal, courage and cowardice– I couldn’t make sense of it. “So I couldn’t do it. I returned to my room, went back to sleep, and feigned ignorance– and that was that.”
“I don’t know where my brother is, but he’s gone–” And at this point, sobs completely tore through her, tears streaming down her face, voice growing louder with every word– “He’s gone. If he’s even alive he must hate me, because I betrayed him and that trapped pokemon because I’m a trash human being, and–”
My body moved before my mind did.
I felt myself make the steps to her, and I leaned and hugged her as tight as I could. She grabbed onto me like I was her lifeline, and her head melted into my shoulder, where she started to wail and dampen my shirt with her tears. Her chest against mine shaking and trembling. Not a second later, I felt Hau hug the both of us and squeeze us with his big arms as he joined in. OJ’s body heat I felt around my leg, and I heard Stella’s meep from within the pile.
We stayed like that for a while.
----------------------------------------
Eventually, Lilliane ran out of tears.
I kept a hand around her shoulders - showing comfort like this was something that was still so unfamiliar, but feeling from how Lilliane leaned back into me, I felt like she didn’t mind any of my awkwardness.
Hau was back on the chair, now sprawled limbs limp like a rag doll with one elbow against the desk, still processing everything that had been said.
Stella had gotten up from Lilliane’s lap and handed tissues to everyone.
I was just numb. My own fears and traumas felt so small in comparison. Wrapping my mind around the story she’d told us and how we still had the Trial and the Island Challenge to worry about–
I don’t know if Hau sensed it, or if he was just thinking the same, but the next thing he said was “Um. So obviously, we won’t tell a soul. Secret’s safe.” He mimicked closing a zipper over his mouth. “And don’t worry about the trial– we got it, Selene and I.” He turned to me, intense gaze boring into mine. “Right?”
I don’t think I fully processed what he had said, but I at least gave a nod back.
“Wait, no, hold on.” Hair disheveled, and dry tear marks on her face, Lilliane looked between Hau and I. “This still isn’t right. I don’t want to be a burden.”
“We’re not going to force you to fight if you don’t want to,” I told her. This was still making the Trial difficult, but still. This was important.
The situation remained terrifying, still– to think that there was someone on Alola doing unethical experiments and putting pokemon in cages… Maybe it wasn’t that unlikely. And to think that it was someone so close; that it was this someone’s mom–
I couldn’t help but feel like vomiting.
What would I even do, if I was in her place, I wonder. Curl up into a ball and cry, probably. Then once I run out of tears, freeze up for the rest of the Island Challenge– yeah, that seemed about right.
Hau rubbed his chin, eyes in thought, then he snapped his fingers and pointed at Lilliane. “Your Cleffa– she knows any moves that she can do from afar, while you’re holding her?”
Maybe she did, but the blonde grabbed her starter and hugged her right. “I don’t want her to fight.” That was that.
Hau lifted both his hands in a placating gesture and stepped back. “Alright, alright.”
However, as I looked at Lilliane, I couldn’t help but keep my eyes on Stella – the Cleffa in question looked clearly conflicted, disappointed almost? I recall that the Gumshoos had said that Cleffa wanted to fight.
Nevertheless, Stella just crossed her arms and pouted.
“Well… I should probably let you guys sleep, then.” Hau got up and stretched, then went to move towards the door. “Selene and I, we got a lot of training tomorrow! We should start to plan, and–”
“Wait.”
That was Lilliane.
Despite the tear tracks, despite the disheveled hair and the haggard face, she looked into Hau’s eyes with an intensity I hadn’t seen before.
“What about your secret, then?”
The boy stopped on his tracks and his eyes widened like a Deerling in the headlights.
“You haven’t told us anything yet, Hau. This is not an equal trade until everyone has shared.”
Hau rubbed the back of his head, looking at us Mareepishly. “Um. I can’t help but feel a little outclassed. here. Dunno if I have anything that can match up.”
Lilliane’s eyes narrowed, and even though I had never seen her nor her starter raise a hand, even I got a little scared. “Yes, well, then start thinking.”
He balked, and his eyes drifted to the side, pensive, looking for something.
We waited.
“Okay. Okay, I think I got something.”
Lilliane and I exchanged a glance. We leaned forward and gave him our full attention.
“So, uh.” He scratched the back of his head. “I guess I promised Tapu Koko I would kick Its ass.”
“...what?”
“Well, I met Tapu Koko without my grandpa. And then I swore on my family’s honor I would fight It and win.”
“...you promised the legendary Island Guardian that you would beat It in combat, and you put your family’s honor on the line?”
“Well look at the time!” and the teen started to hurriedly pick up his clothes and his bag. Lilliane guffawed once, then started to snicker while the boy continued “We got a busy day tomorrow training an’ all–”
I got up. “Hau. Hau, come back here.” He slung his bags over his shoulder and headed to the door, “Hau you– you’re not getting out of this, you–” and Lilliane bursted out in laughter, and out the door he went, now running– “Hau Hakalaua! You explain yourself, NOW!”