Trials of a Champion - Kanto [Pokemon x OC]

63 Her Origin Point

Hearing my words, Paul stood up in alarm, eyes wide. "DEAD?!" he shrieked, raising his voice louder than I'd ever heard before. "He's dead?!"

I nodded.

"As in, he isn't alive anymore?!"

"Last time I checked, that's what being dead meant."

"Yeah, but, you're so calm about it. You're not, you're not just messing with me, right?"

My gaze turned dark. "If you think I'm joking about my dead brother, I'll have Charla torch your ass."

"N-No, no, sorry, sorry! That came out wrong!! It's just hard to wrap my head around."

There was merit in that.

"How long has Red been, uh... I mean, for how long?"

"If you sit back down," I answered, "I'll tell you everything."

"Are..." He sat back down. "Are you really okay to talk about it?!"

My eyes moved down as I scratched Luxray's head. "Mmhmm."

"That's not a very reassuring voice."

"Do you wanna hear or not?"

After a moment, Paul straightened up. "Only if you're willing to talk about it. Seriously, I won't push you. Not on something like this."

I didn't reply to that.

"It happened when I was four," I began while stroking Luxray's mane.

"The three of us were at home, in the gym. Red and Volkner were having a practice match. It was the typical after-dinner routine, but that night, in particular, they seemed ready to keep fighting until the crack of dawn. No way I was going to stay up with them. I was way too tired, so I said goodnight and headed back to the main house by myself. Luxray, still a Shinx at the time, stayed behind to watch the fighting.

"When I got back to the main house, I was approached by masked intruders. Their leader was a really tall lady. She had asked about my brothers and asked if she could meet them. I tried to run for it, but I was stopped by a scary Pokémon. It used Psychic to keep me from getting away."

"A scary Pokémon?" repeated Paul. "It wasn't a Ghost-type, was it?"

"It was." I got the shivers thinking about it.

I could see the thoughts in Paul's brain slowly piecing together.

"Anyways, the masked people had me hostage, and we all went to the battlefield. I was surprised to see that more masked men had already surrounded my brothers. The leader introduced herself and announced her reason for interrupting their training session: to speak to Red. They wanted information about a legendary Pokémon. Obviously, his first response was to call them out on trespassing and threaten to retaliate with his Pokémon. That's exactly why I was taken hostage. The leader warned against making any funny moves, or her Ghost Pokémon would attack me, which," I curled up, knees pressed tightly to my chest, "she decided to demonstrate."

"It attacked you?!"

"No. It wasn't an attack." My eyes squeezed shut. "It was torture. Even if it only lasted a few seconds, it felt like an eternity for me. I remember watching the room go pitch-black. I started hearing scary voices, noises, and saw pictures in my head. The scariest ones were exaggerated images of the Pokémon itself."

"That's terrible!!"

"But, it did the trick. Red promised not to attack. The lady didn't attack me.

"Now, she didn't realize that Red had installed a silent alarm in the building. It had gone off when the bad guys first arrived. The planned response was a bunch of Magnemite and Magneton, all owned by the gym, to go into a frenzy and unleash hell on anyone not part of the family. It only took a little bit of stalling on Red's end before they arrived and began attacking the trespassers. Red used the distraction to save me, his Pokémon wiping out the enemy Pokémon keeping me hostage.