I
It was so cold, that night. So lonely. I was on my own, in a small side street of an Eturgy City wall. I had had enough. Enough of being pushed around by my family, not wanting to get into an argument, or lose my temper. Salty tears slid slowly down my cheeks as I thought about the night’s events.
It had been simple, really. My mother and my brother were having an argument about the so called crime that he had committed the other night. As usual, I was being shouted at by both people to back them up. I knew that if I backed my brother up, I’d be isolated by my cruel mother. If I backed my mother up, I’d have got pummelled into a pulp by my brother. So I walked out. It was a hard thing to do for me, walk into the snowy cold eve.
And as I hid in that space, crouched against a wall and wrapped up in my jacket, I heard screams of anguish coming from the wall opposite that I knew was my house. The snow was falling thicker now, and I realised that it had half buried my body. But that would not stop what was to come.
There was a deep roar from inside the house, an inhuman roar. It suddenly occurred to me that that terrible sound, almost a war cry in its own right, was ripping through my home, destroying its contents and inhabitants in an instant.
A wave of heat came through the wall, and melted some of the snow nearest to it. The insanity of my mother had finally been revealed, as she burnt my home.
When I returned to the ruins the next day, after the police and the firemen had announced that it was arson, I sifted through the burnt remains. My oldest toys were in there, singed and black, along with some of my favourite books. I looked to where my wardrobe had once been, but now halved in size and scorched. But what was behind it was something that I had never noticed before.
A small door was open a tiny bit, unharmed by the fire. I cautiously stepped over to it, and steadily opened the hole of mysteries that awaited me. In it was a single ball. The ball was bright red on its top segment, while grey on its bottom half. In the very centre was a button, which could have released something. I instantly recognised this as a Pokéball, the things that Pokémon Trainers used. It had always been one of my childhood dreams to be a trainer, yet my mother denied it, saying that it would make me stand out from the crowd.
There hadn’t been a Pokémon Trainer from Eturgy City for years, and looking back on it now, I think my mother only wanted to protect me.
Yet as I picked up the small capsule, I realised that there was a note attached to the bottom. It was written in my mother’s untidy scrawl.
“Take your dreams,” it said simply, and instead of ripping the paper off of the ball, I slowly pried it from the tool, and stowed it in one of my jean pockets. My mother had left me a Pokéball. An empty Pokéball at that. But why, if she never wanted me to be a trainer?
My name is Adam Stevenson, and this is my story.
