Achromatic

1: Genesis

The sun was arched high in the bright blue sky, and a flurry of graduation caps flew into it.

Traditional high-school graduations were designed similar to the graduations one would have in college; not all the students would be going on to further, higher education, since most of them were of age and able to start a Pokémon journey of their own.

Perhaps Touya Kibo would be one of those.

He wasn't entirely sure what he wanted to do.

He'd graduated salutatorian—the second-best in his entire class of nearly four hundred students. Which he found surprising, given people he knew like Cheren and his own twin, Touko, were amongst the students. The title attracted the unwanted attention of giving an opening speech, which was two minutes of him standing in front of the crowd of graduating teenagers and their families and stuttering out some inspirational nonsense that Touko helped him write, but it also attracted wanted attention in the form of colleges. He'd applied to many places, even reaching out-of-region, nearly ten of them. All ten, he got accepted into, most of them being full-rides, which made both of his parents jovial.

Yet at the same time, Touya wasn't sure that's what he wanted to do.

He wasn't exactly surewhat he wanted to do.

College was an option, and most places said that they'd hold his place for a whole year and a half, if Touya wished to take a journey around the region, and even the length of time was debatable.

When family members he hadn't seen in years asked him at the reception after the graduation, Touya shrugged it off, trying to feign the same confidence his sister had.

Touko was a natural at talking to people, an outgoing soul living in a house full of introverts. It was some sort of miracle that she never ended up going insane on cold days when she couldn't leave the house. Once she got her own Pokémon, though, it was much easier.

Technically it was meant for both of them—a Patrat, who Touko nicknamed Meatloaf, because he was often sluggish and a bit of a sloth—but Touko took him out more than Touya ever would, nonetheless.

The reception was followed by a battle by the top two students—not Touya, who didn't train a Pokémon of his own, or even the girl who was valedictorian. The top two students in the battle courses were called back to the center of the gym, their graduation robes flowing dramatically with them.

Cheren Kimura was one of the two. He was one of the few students not native to Asperita, where the high school technically was, like Touya and Touko were. There were four of them, in total, complete "outsiders"—they lived in Nuvema, and had to take a fifteen-minute walk to even get to school. He called out his Purrloin, and his opponent, a girl who Touya only knew as Eri, who in return, sent out a Pansear.

He'd watched them battle before. It had ended in a tie the previous time, Eri holding strong with her Pansear and Cheren's speed to his advantage with his Purrloin, and Cheren had barely managed to defeat her. Either way, the two of them were going to be the two who battled in front of the graduating class on graduation day, as the rules go.

Touya found his sister, sitting in the seats, next to the other student from Nuvema—a girl named Bianca Taketatsu, but Touko often shortened it to "Bel". They'd been inseparable since the first day of high school, and Cheren was dragged into a bit, too. Touya himself was technically part of their friend group, but on the technicality that he was the twin brother, so none of them were really friends-- acquaintances, more or less.

"Who do you think's gonna win, Touko?" Bianca asked, looking down at the fight with her fists clenched, but eyes wide and sparkling.

Touko was a natural battler, and really deserved the spot that Eri had, but she'd flunked out on the battle trial the last day on purpose, to avoid the unwanted duties that the students who won had to have. She only took a glance down to the field before saying, "I think it's gonna be Cheren. Cleo's got a slight advantage because of her dark-type, and Chili's strongest move is Lick, which is ghost-type."