What's So Great About Being A Trainer Anyways?

Chapter 21 - What's The Next Stop On My Journey?

How do I describe this feeling?

Visions of Flora slipping through the cracks repeated incessantly in my head. That last forced smile haunted my every move. The thoughts of the underground water maliciously stealing her away were just like...

I shook the thought out of my head, but then it came back. The similarities, the feelings, and the new understanding became apparent to me. My circumstances were not unlike that of Daron.

As much as I hated to admit it, I suddenly had a smidgen of sympathy for the man that almost tore apart the world. Even losing his love to the water was the same.

My mind wandered and wandered, getting into trains of thought that I wanted to escape from at all costs.

I need something to take my mind off of all this...

I stood up and brushed the dirt off my pants. I was taking shelter from the rest of the world under a tree, as far from any city as humanly possible. Why? Because I thought I needed time to think. Turned out that wasn't such a great idea.

The question is where to go and what to do...

I had left myself vulnerable. Painful memories entered through the opened mental floodgate. I couldn't think of any place without it having been somewhere that I went with Flora. Then it hit me. There were places in the waterworld of Hoenn that we had not gone: Victory Road and the Elite Four.

The wind rustled the leaves, each one gossiping behind my back. "Does he really think that he can move on from this?" they asked each other, and answered each other in an almost plastic applause. "What can he do on his own? Is he so cocky to think that he can handle the weight of the real world after being extracted from his prolonged fantasy?"

These were all questions I had for myself.

Father's words challenged me. "I will be waiting for you at Evergrande City. Once you grow the hell up I expect to see you there!"

Was I not handling this well?! His words stung harder than a Beedrill. I truly thought that I was doing the best that I could, but I now know that I was wrong. My frustration quickly turned into anger. I felt like I had to prove my father wrong. I had to show him that I was mature enough to take him down. Of course that's exactly the answer that a child would arrive at.

I shouted at the sky, frightening nearby Taillow into taking flight. My blood pulsed with fighting spirit, but for all the wrong reasons.

"I'll take down the Elite Four and then I'll be the Champion!" I shouted at the empty audience that was the sky. "Once I'm at the top no one will be able to look down on me! I will have nothing to fear!!!"

I pulled out Bagel's pokeball. Bagel, yet another itching momento of my past. His name, his previously fellow Bagon named Baguette, and even the fact that he was a present from my father bothered me. I held up his pokeball in front of my face.

It was just a normal pokeball, but it now held so much intrigue. This was the object that I owed my adventure to, both the good and the bad parts. It was just a red and silver ball, but the meaning it held was far more than that. Inside it held all that it meant to be a pokemon trainer, as long as you had the mind to see it.

I remembered my first pokeball. It was Aaron's. The now grown up cave dweller that caused me so much trouble, but brought me so much fun. Those were good times up until recently, and it was a pokeball that set the entire thing into motion. It was only a single pokeball.

I calmed down momentarily, thinking about the good times, but then I remembered another thing. It was also by the adventure brought on by a pokeball that left a body count. I was on a roller coaster of emotions that had no end in sight.