Sometimes I wonder about that whole theoretical other-reality stuff, distant worlds that develop a lot like our own but with a few jarring changes here and there. I like to think about what the hell’s different in those worlds and realities, what they’ve got that we don’t and vice-versa. Makes me wonder just what a world without the creatures we live amongst would be like… So, y’know, if it’s alright with you, and, just hear me out before turning your focus elsewhere, I’d like to address you like you’re one of those hypothetical parallel-world people. Yeah, it’s delusional, but, for the sake of catharsis, please, just hear me out.
So, anyway, now that I’ve got you looking at things from that perspective, I might as well start things off the way every Professor with an official grant from the League does when appointing newly registered dex-fillers… Welcome to the world of Pokemon. Pokemon of course being our cute little portmanteau for pocket monsters. Quite the umbrella term, but that’s how we’ve been designating them for years now, and I doubt anyone’s gonna seriously attempt a change to it.
Inevitably you’d ask “what’s a Pokemon?” and, boy, I think the real question by this point is “what isn’t a Pokemon?” Bugs, fish, reptiles, dragons, plants, dinosaurs, rodents, equines, bovines, lagomorphs, polymorphs… From wayfaring aliens to the products of mutated viruses… From manmade, artificial lifeforms to deities… Some people even like to theorize we humans are just our own type of Pokemon as well, just the kind that somehow manages a sort of dominion, to a point. If I had to somehow summarize this varied species, it would probably take me forever and a day just to make sure I got all the important details down, so instead of the short version, I’ll give you the super-short version:
Pokemon are living creatures that inhabit the majority of the civilized world, and, as far as anyone knows, the entirety of the wilderness. They’re creatures that have the capability to generate all sorts of powers, under a plethora of different elements, or, as we more commonly refer to them, ‘types’. They can be as small as a child’s fingertips, or as massive as the tallest skyscraper. For as long as anyone can remember, we’ve lived in relative harmony with them, aside from a few encroachment instances or, more devastatingly, the occasional war or two. Now, for the reason why they’re labeled Pocket Monsters… well, some time in the past, humanity apparently came across quite the technological breakthrough. They created a capsule that could safely contain these creatures in some form of compact energy, creating a sort of miniature habitat that anyone can easily carry around with them anywhere. These Pokeballs, upon making first contact with a Pokemon, can call it back in or jettison it out in an instant. Now, to actually tame a Pokemon in order for it to actually stay in the ball, it’s not quite so simple, and there have been a number of cases where a Pokemon refuses to stay confined. It’s hardly some brainwashing technology, but there is something that seems to happen to a lot of Pokemon when they first get caught… More often than not they will complacently follow their captor, humans who tend to call themselves Pokemon trainers, or just trainers for short. Trainers make a career out of battling other trainers’ Pokemon. Professional fighting circuits seem to have been around almost as long as the concept of training, and they essentially dominate our culture. Why Pokemon will suddenly become obedient despite facing a future of constant combat is a bit of a mystery… Personally I theorize that they see it as some kind of proof of competence. If you can catch them, then they feel you have proven your worth, and will reward you with their consenting trust. Just a theory of mine though, and I’m not exactly a professor, so, take that for what it’s worth.
What exactly am I then, you might be inclined to ask? Well, name’s Wayland Sharpe if that’s of any interest to you, technically I’m just your everyday officer of the peace, but, lately that designation has taken on a few extra responsibilities to go with it. As for why I became a cop in the first place, well, that motivation goes back a ways… a little more than a decade or so by now.
See, I grew up in a place north of the Unova region, just outside of its borders. Now, official regions are the only place where training a Pokemon is under any sort of legalization or regulation. Each one’s got a whole governing body, or a “League,” keeping things in order and making sure trainers and Pokemon are given all the resources they need to go through a rigorous career such as theirs. It is a big business by the way, as in… pretty much all-encompassing within any league-based region. There are a lot of little differences between how each region operates, some even conduct competitions beyond the usual battle circuit, but, generally, the entire infrastructure is dependent on a steady stream of trainers continually making the rounds. All other jobs and businesses almost certainly have some stake in the training business, and even if they somehow don’t, well, their taxes are still quite the investment in itself. When you’re a league region, you’re dedicated to the sport, that’s the bottom-line.
Seeing that level of dedication over such a thing, especially from the outside looking in, made it all the more a spectacle to witness in the rare cases where a match might show up on television or come through the radio waves. I mean, you might get to see a fight or two in person, but usually they’re just a scuffle between two kids lucky enough to somehow import a Pokeball or two over, using inexperienced little critters that can barely do more than tackle or scratch at each other. For a kid like myself, the only chance to see a real battle up close was to fork over the money to take a trip down south, and I never had that kind of cash to spare.
Fortunately for me though, there eventually did come a day where my dad informed the family that we were all moving to Unova anyways, thanks to a job transfer in his business. Man… you know how sometimes moving away at that age can really get to you, leaving a familiar home and setting off into an uncertain environment and all that? Couldn’t have been further from how I actually felt when I heard this news. Not that I didn’t have any friends that I would miss, but… damn, this was the dream I’d had since I first realized what a Pokemon was!
The day of the move couldn’t have come soon enough, and all of a sudden, I was living in a part of the world where I could look out my window at any given moment and see a dozen different Pokemon species milling about or accompanying venturing trainers passing through. Considering I lived in Driftveil, one of the bedrock gym locations in Unova, that was quite the common occurrence, even back then when the town wasn’t quite the insane international hub that it became in later years. It felt like every day where I dreamed and anticipated being one of those people myself, and I’ll admit, my growing youthful obsession over it was probably my downfall…
The fact that I remember this moment so vividly… in spite of everything… Can’t tell if it makes me the most or least fortunate sort of putz who’s undergone such trauma, but I digress… My family was all taking a vacation up north in Nimbasa City, a real festive town, like someone mashed a sports complex with an amusement park. As you can imagine with such a merging of venues, the place was constantly crowded and awash in chaotic music and chatter. My parents kept an eye on me for the most part, much as they might say differently these days, but I remember they were diligent, they just couldn’t have predicted that particular scenario. For a few seconds, that was all it took, I was away from their gaze, as something had caught my attention in the form of a balloon with a face and strings that seemed to operate like limbs. I didn’t know what a Drifloon was specifically back then, but I knew for a fact I’d never seen such a creature in Unova before. It had floated towards me at that moment, one of its string-arms within arm’s reach. Without thinking, merely thrilled by the sight of it, I grabbed at the string. I had taken the bait…
Now, if you know anything about a Drifloon, you’ve probably heard the rumor that in the wild they seek out children to carry off into the netherworld or some other grim spirit realm, but they’re not strong enough to carry a kid anywhere and tend to get pulled along instead, a sort of ironic twist of fate or whatever. Those are the wild Drifloon though, untrained, unprepared… This one had a trainer, and before my blissfully naïve mind could sense the trouble I was in, I was being pulled through the populous crowd, just high enough where I could get my feet on the ground to run away, and just low enough where no one would be able to see me in the mass of people. It was disgustingly well thought-out… and I have nightmares to this day wondering if I was truly the first ‘successful’ lure. I had tried to scream for help but I remember no one paying any mind… then I remember seeing her face… and that’s where things get hazy. The part where my memory starts to clear up from there was the start of a pretty dark time in my life, as you might expect when you’re abducted. For the next few years I lived a lie, a lie I quite genuinely believed, and yet I still knew… I had to get out of it.
I don’t want to have any negative reactions or aversions to psychics. I know in my heart there must be plenty of good-hearted, well meaning people who are psionically gifted, but this woman obviously wasn’t one of them. She never told me her name, she merely insisted I call her Mother, and by “insist,” I mean she actually forced me to believe it. Along with her own abilities, she had herself a collective of psychic type Pokemon, all conditioned to amplify her own abilities in a way, which meant, in this case, a very potent mind-control. I truly believed at the time that I was the actual son of this woman, that I grew up in what basically amounted to a dilapidated shanty nestled deep in the woodlands.
I could never leave the house, I never had more than one set of clothes that only got rattier and filthier as the days went by, and the idea of daily meals started to become something of a luxury. This… sick, delusional person didn’t have the slightest clue how to raise a child, that or she perhaps didn’t actually want to. I couldn’t say what her motives were, all I knew at the time was that she was my mother, and apparently always had been… Only in hindsight do I realize that this belief felt so intrusive, like it was constantly being hammered into my brain whilst the reality of the matter struggled so desperately to break out of its grasp. I didn’t even know my real name, she had gone so far as to take that from me as well. If she needed to address me, she’d use such terms of endearment as “boy” or “you,” and of course, my scrambled mind thought this was all perfectly normal.
The Pokemon at this woman’s command, nefarious as some of them were, weren’t actually… entirely bad. The Drifloon was perhaps the most unnerving just from how it always would loom over me if I ever spent too much time outside. Then there was the Sigilyph who knew how to constantly keep me on edge. Its glare is still pretty burnt into my subconsciousness. At least a couple of the others were helpful when it came to my basic necessities, occasionally bringing me food when She neglected for too long, or attending to any kind of illness I may have sustained. Perhaps a bit ironically a Hypno was one of the more benevolent ones, despite probably having something to do with my hypnosis in the first place, and there was a Meowstic who at least seemed willing to listen when I needed someone to talk to… but then considering their ears always had to stay closed, I can’t help but wonder if it actually heard or processed what I said to it.
Those sympathetic Pokemon brought about the few moments of comfort I could ever grasp for when it comes to that time. Honestly it makes me wonder why they were so inclined to stay under that woman’s command, though as I’ve mentioned, the obedience or lack of which for Pokemon can still be a baffling concept. Whatever the case, with their help, and the delusion that I had lived this way all my life, I somehow survived this lifestyle for a couple of years… but no amount of mental bewitchment could make me feel any sense of happiness throughout it all. If I hadn't been under such delusions I would have asked her what she had taken me for in the first place. I honestly still can't figure out why, and maybe it's better that I never figure out the true reason behind it all.
One thing that always stayed with me was that continual desire to become a trainer, and my seclusion in that shack just served to bring my desire to see the world to feverish levels. I needed to get out of there, but She obviously wouldn’t allow that. I would beg her, constantly, just to let me go for a little bit, just so I could see something else, anything else... but it would get me nowhere. So it was that I decided finally enough was enough, and began to plan some method of escape, but it was a struggle for sure. Under the household of beings in-tune with all sorts of brain activity, you couldn’t exactly work on such strategies with any laxness. I had to learn their behavior, pick up when they were most often monitoring me and how, and where my thoughts weren’t so easily read depending on both the time and place. It took a long while before I could even start planning out the actual escape, just from how many risks there were in having the whole thing get exposed beforehand. By the time I was ready to put the plan to actual execution… it had to have been a few months then, just working it all out, and trying to keep myself healthy enough to even have the strength for it.
The day nonetheless finally arrived… This was likely going to define if I ever left that run-down house in my life, the stakes were high, even higher than I knew. 2 AM… She was asleep, at the least likely moment of being stirred awake. Same with Drifloon. Sigilyph was generally not keeping quite the keenest eyes on things, Meowstic and Hypno were almost certainly resting at that moment as well. This was the zenith hour to take a gamble, and I took it. Naturally the part of the shack considered my ‘room’ didn’t have any windows, so I had to stealthily move myself towards the one door available to get in or out. Throughout this whole ordeal I had to quiet my mind as much as possible. Any number of lingering thoughts could’ve been all it would take to jolt any of the telepaths awake. I’d memorized as much of the floor layout as possible, the amount of noise any which spot gave when trod upon, slipping through the dark confines closer and closer to potential freedom. I reached the door, opened it just as much as I could and stepped outside, only to find a pair of green, feline eyes staring back up at me.
Somehow, I’d miscalculated something… or perhaps the schemes of my ten-year-old self weren’t commonly flawless… Either way, I figured it was over. My one chance, gone in a puff of smoke… only Meowstic didn’t actually make a move, didn’t force me back… In fact, after merely staring at me for a few seconds that felt like hours, it suddenly looked away. Its glance strayed away from my own, and I realized right then and there… it was letting me go. If anyone ever tries to tell me Pokemon don’t have human levels of complexity and empathy, I will never believe another word they say again.
I made a break for it, as fast as my near-atrophied legs could carry me through that pitch-black forest. Every further step away from that prison of my past two years had unlocked another corner of my memories, my true memories… I began to remember my real parents, the life I’d had, my friends from up north, the day of my abduction… but all of it only served to confuse me at first, real memories confounding the illusions, my identity trying to both crumble into dust and rebuild itself at the same time. By the time I’d stepped foot in Nacrene City, I’d realized so much of what I thought I knew was phony, and I remember only being able to hug myself tightly as I collapsed to the pavement, trying to scream for my parents, but I was too weak… too upset… All I could do was cry until darkness took hold.
When I woke up, I was under an intensive-care unit, and as soon as the medical staff could tell I was responsive, authorities came in to ask me who I was and where I had come from. By that point, my awakening had cleared up the truth… I’d been in a living nightmare for years, and only now had my eyes finally, sincerely, been opened. When they asked me my name, I remember saying it, saying “Wayland Sharpe…” and just breaking down in tears again at the realization I’d had a name all along.
My parents were still living in Driftveil, and the reunion was as joyful as you’d imagine. Comfort… safety… happiness… yes, I knew from those feelings alone, this was my family. Obviously, we couldn’t just continue from where we left off as if nothing happened, I had some catching up to do, had to recover from the physical and mental damage, it took some time, but gradually I was in a pretty okay place again, aside from one admittedly pretty significant drawback…
See, when the police tried to investigate and confront my abductor, they’d supposedly combed the forest thoroughly and there wasn’t a semblance of evidence she had ever been occupying those grounds. That never stopped haunting me to this very day, the thought that she’s still out there. Hell, it nearly kept me from venturing out to take on the League, but I’d refused to let Her control me like that. I did what I could to stifle those fears to try and realize that dream of mine.
That aspiration didn’t entirely pan out, as I’ll be getting to next… but something else surfaced in my mind at that time, something that would define my future quite a bit. I knew now, truly, that feeling of being wronged, and I knew the feeling, the desire, for justice to be served for such wrongs. The seeds were planted, and I’d get to growing them… I just needed to face another harsh truth or two to get there.
So, anyway, now that I’ve got you looking at things from that perspective, I might as well start things off the way every Professor with an official grant from the League does when appointing newly registered dex-fillers… Welcome to the world of Pokemon. Pokemon of course being our cute little portmanteau for pocket monsters. Quite the umbrella term, but that’s how we’ve been designating them for years now, and I doubt anyone’s gonna seriously attempt a change to it.
Inevitably you’d ask “what’s a Pokemon?” and, boy, I think the real question by this point is “what isn’t a Pokemon?” Bugs, fish, reptiles, dragons, plants, dinosaurs, rodents, equines, bovines, lagomorphs, polymorphs… From wayfaring aliens to the products of mutated viruses… From manmade, artificial lifeforms to deities… Some people even like to theorize we humans are just our own type of Pokemon as well, just the kind that somehow manages a sort of dominion, to a point. If I had to somehow summarize this varied species, it would probably take me forever and a day just to make sure I got all the important details down, so instead of the short version, I’ll give you the super-short version:
Pokemon are living creatures that inhabit the majority of the civilized world, and, as far as anyone knows, the entirety of the wilderness. They’re creatures that have the capability to generate all sorts of powers, under a plethora of different elements, or, as we more commonly refer to them, ‘types’. They can be as small as a child’s fingertips, or as massive as the tallest skyscraper. For as long as anyone can remember, we’ve lived in relative harmony with them, aside from a few encroachment instances or, more devastatingly, the occasional war or two. Now, for the reason why they’re labeled Pocket Monsters… well, some time in the past, humanity apparently came across quite the technological breakthrough. They created a capsule that could safely contain these creatures in some form of compact energy, creating a sort of miniature habitat that anyone can easily carry around with them anywhere. These Pokeballs, upon making first contact with a Pokemon, can call it back in or jettison it out in an instant. Now, to actually tame a Pokemon in order for it to actually stay in the ball, it’s not quite so simple, and there have been a number of cases where a Pokemon refuses to stay confined. It’s hardly some brainwashing technology, but there is something that seems to happen to a lot of Pokemon when they first get caught… More often than not they will complacently follow their captor, humans who tend to call themselves Pokemon trainers, or just trainers for short. Trainers make a career out of battling other trainers’ Pokemon. Professional fighting circuits seem to have been around almost as long as the concept of training, and they essentially dominate our culture. Why Pokemon will suddenly become obedient despite facing a future of constant combat is a bit of a mystery… Personally I theorize that they see it as some kind of proof of competence. If you can catch them, then they feel you have proven your worth, and will reward you with their consenting trust. Just a theory of mine though, and I’m not exactly a professor, so, take that for what it’s worth.
What exactly am I then, you might be inclined to ask? Well, name’s Wayland Sharpe if that’s of any interest to you, technically I’m just your everyday officer of the peace, but, lately that designation has taken on a few extra responsibilities to go with it. As for why I became a cop in the first place, well, that motivation goes back a ways… a little more than a decade or so by now.
See, I grew up in a place north of the Unova region, just outside of its borders. Now, official regions are the only place where training a Pokemon is under any sort of legalization or regulation. Each one’s got a whole governing body, or a “League,” keeping things in order and making sure trainers and Pokemon are given all the resources they need to go through a rigorous career such as theirs. It is a big business by the way, as in… pretty much all-encompassing within any league-based region. There are a lot of little differences between how each region operates, some even conduct competitions beyond the usual battle circuit, but, generally, the entire infrastructure is dependent on a steady stream of trainers continually making the rounds. All other jobs and businesses almost certainly have some stake in the training business, and even if they somehow don’t, well, their taxes are still quite the investment in itself. When you’re a league region, you’re dedicated to the sport, that’s the bottom-line.
Seeing that level of dedication over such a thing, especially from the outside looking in, made it all the more a spectacle to witness in the rare cases where a match might show up on television or come through the radio waves. I mean, you might get to see a fight or two in person, but usually they’re just a scuffle between two kids lucky enough to somehow import a Pokeball or two over, using inexperienced little critters that can barely do more than tackle or scratch at each other. For a kid like myself, the only chance to see a real battle up close was to fork over the money to take a trip down south, and I never had that kind of cash to spare.
Fortunately for me though, there eventually did come a day where my dad informed the family that we were all moving to Unova anyways, thanks to a job transfer in his business. Man… you know how sometimes moving away at that age can really get to you, leaving a familiar home and setting off into an uncertain environment and all that? Couldn’t have been further from how I actually felt when I heard this news. Not that I didn’t have any friends that I would miss, but… damn, this was the dream I’d had since I first realized what a Pokemon was!
The day of the move couldn’t have come soon enough, and all of a sudden, I was living in a part of the world where I could look out my window at any given moment and see a dozen different Pokemon species milling about or accompanying venturing trainers passing through. Considering I lived in Driftveil, one of the bedrock gym locations in Unova, that was quite the common occurrence, even back then when the town wasn’t quite the insane international hub that it became in later years. It felt like every day where I dreamed and anticipated being one of those people myself, and I’ll admit, my growing youthful obsession over it was probably my downfall…
The fact that I remember this moment so vividly… in spite of everything… Can’t tell if it makes me the most or least fortunate sort of putz who’s undergone such trauma, but I digress… My family was all taking a vacation up north in Nimbasa City, a real festive town, like someone mashed a sports complex with an amusement park. As you can imagine with such a merging of venues, the place was constantly crowded and awash in chaotic music and chatter. My parents kept an eye on me for the most part, much as they might say differently these days, but I remember they were diligent, they just couldn’t have predicted that particular scenario. For a few seconds, that was all it took, I was away from their gaze, as something had caught my attention in the form of a balloon with a face and strings that seemed to operate like limbs. I didn’t know what a Drifloon was specifically back then, but I knew for a fact I’d never seen such a creature in Unova before. It had floated towards me at that moment, one of its string-arms within arm’s reach. Without thinking, merely thrilled by the sight of it, I grabbed at the string. I had taken the bait…
Now, if you know anything about a Drifloon, you’ve probably heard the rumor that in the wild they seek out children to carry off into the netherworld or some other grim spirit realm, but they’re not strong enough to carry a kid anywhere and tend to get pulled along instead, a sort of ironic twist of fate or whatever. Those are the wild Drifloon though, untrained, unprepared… This one had a trainer, and before my blissfully naïve mind could sense the trouble I was in, I was being pulled through the populous crowd, just high enough where I could get my feet on the ground to run away, and just low enough where no one would be able to see me in the mass of people. It was disgustingly well thought-out… and I have nightmares to this day wondering if I was truly the first ‘successful’ lure. I had tried to scream for help but I remember no one paying any mind… then I remember seeing her face… and that’s where things get hazy. The part where my memory starts to clear up from there was the start of a pretty dark time in my life, as you might expect when you’re abducted. For the next few years I lived a lie, a lie I quite genuinely believed, and yet I still knew… I had to get out of it.
I don’t want to have any negative reactions or aversions to psychics. I know in my heart there must be plenty of good-hearted, well meaning people who are psionically gifted, but this woman obviously wasn’t one of them. She never told me her name, she merely insisted I call her Mother, and by “insist,” I mean she actually forced me to believe it. Along with her own abilities, she had herself a collective of psychic type Pokemon, all conditioned to amplify her own abilities in a way, which meant, in this case, a very potent mind-control. I truly believed at the time that I was the actual son of this woman, that I grew up in what basically amounted to a dilapidated shanty nestled deep in the woodlands.
I could never leave the house, I never had more than one set of clothes that only got rattier and filthier as the days went by, and the idea of daily meals started to become something of a luxury. This… sick, delusional person didn’t have the slightest clue how to raise a child, that or she perhaps didn’t actually want to. I couldn’t say what her motives were, all I knew at the time was that she was my mother, and apparently always had been… Only in hindsight do I realize that this belief felt so intrusive, like it was constantly being hammered into my brain whilst the reality of the matter struggled so desperately to break out of its grasp. I didn’t even know my real name, she had gone so far as to take that from me as well. If she needed to address me, she’d use such terms of endearment as “boy” or “you,” and of course, my scrambled mind thought this was all perfectly normal.
The Pokemon at this woman’s command, nefarious as some of them were, weren’t actually… entirely bad. The Drifloon was perhaps the most unnerving just from how it always would loom over me if I ever spent too much time outside. Then there was the Sigilyph who knew how to constantly keep me on edge. Its glare is still pretty burnt into my subconsciousness. At least a couple of the others were helpful when it came to my basic necessities, occasionally bringing me food when She neglected for too long, or attending to any kind of illness I may have sustained. Perhaps a bit ironically a Hypno was one of the more benevolent ones, despite probably having something to do with my hypnosis in the first place, and there was a Meowstic who at least seemed willing to listen when I needed someone to talk to… but then considering their ears always had to stay closed, I can’t help but wonder if it actually heard or processed what I said to it.
Those sympathetic Pokemon brought about the few moments of comfort I could ever grasp for when it comes to that time. Honestly it makes me wonder why they were so inclined to stay under that woman’s command, though as I’ve mentioned, the obedience or lack of which for Pokemon can still be a baffling concept. Whatever the case, with their help, and the delusion that I had lived this way all my life, I somehow survived this lifestyle for a couple of years… but no amount of mental bewitchment could make me feel any sense of happiness throughout it all. If I hadn't been under such delusions I would have asked her what she had taken me for in the first place. I honestly still can't figure out why, and maybe it's better that I never figure out the true reason behind it all.
One thing that always stayed with me was that continual desire to become a trainer, and my seclusion in that shack just served to bring my desire to see the world to feverish levels. I needed to get out of there, but She obviously wouldn’t allow that. I would beg her, constantly, just to let me go for a little bit, just so I could see something else, anything else... but it would get me nowhere. So it was that I decided finally enough was enough, and began to plan some method of escape, but it was a struggle for sure. Under the household of beings in-tune with all sorts of brain activity, you couldn’t exactly work on such strategies with any laxness. I had to learn their behavior, pick up when they were most often monitoring me and how, and where my thoughts weren’t so easily read depending on both the time and place. It took a long while before I could even start planning out the actual escape, just from how many risks there were in having the whole thing get exposed beforehand. By the time I was ready to put the plan to actual execution… it had to have been a few months then, just working it all out, and trying to keep myself healthy enough to even have the strength for it.
The day nonetheless finally arrived… This was likely going to define if I ever left that run-down house in my life, the stakes were high, even higher than I knew. 2 AM… She was asleep, at the least likely moment of being stirred awake. Same with Drifloon. Sigilyph was generally not keeping quite the keenest eyes on things, Meowstic and Hypno were almost certainly resting at that moment as well. This was the zenith hour to take a gamble, and I took it. Naturally the part of the shack considered my ‘room’ didn’t have any windows, so I had to stealthily move myself towards the one door available to get in or out. Throughout this whole ordeal I had to quiet my mind as much as possible. Any number of lingering thoughts could’ve been all it would take to jolt any of the telepaths awake. I’d memorized as much of the floor layout as possible, the amount of noise any which spot gave when trod upon, slipping through the dark confines closer and closer to potential freedom. I reached the door, opened it just as much as I could and stepped outside, only to find a pair of green, feline eyes staring back up at me.
Somehow, I’d miscalculated something… or perhaps the schemes of my ten-year-old self weren’t commonly flawless… Either way, I figured it was over. My one chance, gone in a puff of smoke… only Meowstic didn’t actually make a move, didn’t force me back… In fact, after merely staring at me for a few seconds that felt like hours, it suddenly looked away. Its glance strayed away from my own, and I realized right then and there… it was letting me go. If anyone ever tries to tell me Pokemon don’t have human levels of complexity and empathy, I will never believe another word they say again.
I made a break for it, as fast as my near-atrophied legs could carry me through that pitch-black forest. Every further step away from that prison of my past two years had unlocked another corner of my memories, my true memories… I began to remember my real parents, the life I’d had, my friends from up north, the day of my abduction… but all of it only served to confuse me at first, real memories confounding the illusions, my identity trying to both crumble into dust and rebuild itself at the same time. By the time I’d stepped foot in Nacrene City, I’d realized so much of what I thought I knew was phony, and I remember only being able to hug myself tightly as I collapsed to the pavement, trying to scream for my parents, but I was too weak… too upset… All I could do was cry until darkness took hold.
When I woke up, I was under an intensive-care unit, and as soon as the medical staff could tell I was responsive, authorities came in to ask me who I was and where I had come from. By that point, my awakening had cleared up the truth… I’d been in a living nightmare for years, and only now had my eyes finally, sincerely, been opened. When they asked me my name, I remember saying it, saying “Wayland Sharpe…” and just breaking down in tears again at the realization I’d had a name all along.
My parents were still living in Driftveil, and the reunion was as joyful as you’d imagine. Comfort… safety… happiness… yes, I knew from those feelings alone, this was my family. Obviously, we couldn’t just continue from where we left off as if nothing happened, I had some catching up to do, had to recover from the physical and mental damage, it took some time, but gradually I was in a pretty okay place again, aside from one admittedly pretty significant drawback…
See, when the police tried to investigate and confront my abductor, they’d supposedly combed the forest thoroughly and there wasn’t a semblance of evidence she had ever been occupying those grounds. That never stopped haunting me to this very day, the thought that she’s still out there. Hell, it nearly kept me from venturing out to take on the League, but I’d refused to let Her control me like that. I did what I could to stifle those fears to try and realize that dream of mine.
That aspiration didn’t entirely pan out, as I’ll be getting to next… but something else surfaced in my mind at that time, something that would define my future quite a bit. I knew now, truly, that feeling of being wronged, and I knew the feeling, the desire, for justice to be served for such wrongs. The seeds were planted, and I’d get to growing them… I just needed to face another harsh truth or two to get there.