Desolate [Pokémon Arven x Protagonist]

Confronting My Mother

We left the station together and saw Penny and Nemona running around each other, sticks in hand, in some sort of competition. They had already piled up a bunch of timber in two different circles, Penny's in a neat teepee while Nemona's was more of an explosive dump. "Guys, we're only going to be here for the night!" Arven warned. "We don't need that much wood."

Nemona laughed maniacally, throwing out a Pokéball and releasing her evolved skeledirge. "Let there be fire!" Skeledirge gave a big huff and set both piles ablaze.

Penny leapt away from the heat. "Hey! You lit mine, too!"

"We have better bridges to burn, quejica," Nemona boasted. "Who's making dinner?" Penny groaned, accepted defeat, and went to collect gravel to contain the fires.

Arven set down his backpack and opened a zipper. "I brought food for all of us." I found a spot on the grass by the fire, and a hungry Nemona plopped down beside me, hands out towards the fire, warming herself as the sky turned scarlet. Penny eventually came back with a handful of pebbles and organized them around the flames before sitting down with us. Arven was using the second fire to cook protein in a pan. The crater walls echoed the screams of Pokémon around us, radiating from the dark center below. I looked up at the sky. The fog was still insulating us, but I could see the pink sun seeping in. The smoke emitted from the fires floated directly up towards the fresh air outside the lips of the crater. I thought about the next day. All we had to do was continue descending into the crater and press buttons in two more stations while avoiding Pokémon. Even then, the... creature that attacked us was no match for our team. The worst that could happen would be the soreness in our legs that would inevitably spring up on us after walking so much. We'd meet up with Professor Sada in no time and everything would be fine... hopefully. I was mostly concerned about Arven. His mental state was rapidly declining with how fast everything was being thrown at him. The journey was easy for Nemona, Penny, and I, but the real battle was all on Arven. We were only here for support. I was fine with that. It's what friends do. Especially now, as his significant other, I had to be there. It didn't feel forced, like all the boys before him. I enjoyed being on these insane mysteries with him, and I loved seeing him happy. It made me happy. It made me finally feel worth something.

"What're your parents like, Nemona?" Arven didn't look up from his craft but made small talk with his former enemy to pad the silence.

"My parents? Normal, I guess," Nemona shrugged.

"Are you serious?" Penny barked. "Isn't your dad on the board of the Rotom Phone company?"

Nemona blinked. "Wait, how do you know that?"

Penny looked away. "He's famous. And I guess I looked him up. I knew you looked familiar."

"So Nemona's actually some pampered princess from a rich family?" Arven scoffed.

Nemona spat, "Ugh! No way! That's so not my thing. Though, yeah... I guess you could say Mother and Father were, like... hands-off but in a good way?" She picked up a stick that was burning at the tip and put it out to poke at the rocks with it. "My big sister'll probably take over the business, so they pretty much let me do what I wanted."

Arven looked up for a moment. "Wait, you call them 'Mother' and 'Father'?"

"That is some pampered little princess stuff right there," Penny teased.

Nemona bopped her shoulder. "Gaah! Cállate, Penny! What, is your family super normal, then?"

"M...my family is... unbelievably annoying," she stammered.