Pokémon Obsidian | An Orre Fanfiction

Chapter 74: Long Gone

16 January
26 years ago
Wyndon, Galar

A Wyndon Prison shuttle bus stopped on a suburban street. Mowers whirred. Garden shears clipped. Bird Pokémon chirped in meticulously manicured trees and atop the pointed roofs of distinguished, almost-identical houses. The chirping was the only remaining sound when the bus pulled up. A nervous woman in a floral dress peered out from her porch.

Everyone was staring. Steel-haired pensioners, tending to their beloved gardens with pet Indeedee and Growlithe, shook their heads. It only took a few moments for the oldest women to begin grumbling about what the neighbourhood had come to. Weary prisoners grimaced back. They were all being delivered to hostels or dirty tower blocks. This was an uncomfortable detour.

The woman in her dress rushed to meet her younger sister, wearing only socks with her grey prison uniform, who stepped off the bus. She frantically ushered her to the porch. She wanted the bus to go, but if some mythical Pokémon could have granted her any wish then, it would have been for the ground to swallow her up.

Her neighbours already looked down on her since her ex-husband cheated with a woman half her age. Then it was international news that her sister was imprisoned for stalking the owner of the Battle Tower and his children. No-one respectable liked their little brother, Barnaby, either. Unlike his sisters, who were both well-behaved teachers until the Leon incident, he founded a notorious rock band. Touring the world, he allegedly slept with every groupie who would have him and fathered 16 children in the process. Even Piers didn't like him.

It was alright for April. She wasn't identical to Barnaby. There was no escaping the association for the oldest sister, Beth. People used to joke that April was the milkman's kid, but now their grey hair grew out and the entire neighbourhood was staring at them, there was no doubt they shared the same parents.

Beth felt like her skin was on fire as the front door slammed. She stiffly held out two Poké Balls. They contained April's Liepard and Aromatisse, which were trained by Cipher, turned into Shadow Pokémon and, eventually, purified in the Pokémon HQ Lab's Purify Chamber. Beth didn't understand any of that. She didn't want to understand. All she knew was that Liepard was significantly less tame than it was as a Purrloin and she hated the pungent reek of Aromatisse.

She left them at the local Pokémon Nursery. Liepard laid several Eggs there, but Beth begged the staff to keep them. In all honesty, she hated Pokémon, even the cute ones.

'Cheers. I forgot all your neighbours are snobby old biddies.'

April was proud to be called a snob, once. Did she really change so much in those months in Orre? Or was it in prison? Or did Beth simply miss her sister becoming consumed by obsession with some Pokémon Trainer?

He sounded like her worst nightmare. She couldn't imagine even April genuinely liking him. Though she liked cute and mischievous Pokémon, she despised battling and didn't consider being a professional Trainer a 'proper job.' It was for teenage boys with delusions of grandeur. That was what she thought last time she walked by Wyndon Stadium with Beth... but now, she looked at her Pokémon in a completely different way.

Beth never actually invited April. Her ex-husband Carl didn't know what to do with her belongings when he left their house for a new life in Ballonlea. Barnaby was on tour. Their parents, who retired in southern Kalos, didn't want to know. He knew Beth probably didn't, either, but he also knew she was a softie who couldn't bring herself to abandon her little sister when faced with the choice. She reluctantly stored the three suitcases and six boxes in her attic.

She called the prison to let her sister know. April said she could try on the designer clothes and perfumes in the suitcases if she wanted, which at least sounded more like the April she knew, but none of the clothes fit her and she thought the perfumes were tacky.