Deception - Gladion x Reader. [UNDER CO.]

Team Skull

Reader's POV

"Mom, I'm going out to train!" I called out from the living room, trying my best to tie my shoelaces whilst Shadow clawed at them. It was a new day, and he woke up rather excitable.

When I was finally fully dressed, I gathered up everything necessary for starting a journey and slipped it into my bag, pulling the straps over my shoulders before heading outside. I made sure to put Shadow's Pokéball in as well as an afterthought seeing as he hadn't actually been in it since before our walk home yesterday; he'd slept at the end of my bed last night and I think the soft sound of him purring actually helped me sleep better.

My mom made it to the door in time to see us off, waving goodbye as we made our way along the road, past the Hau'oli Beachfront and the following trails. We'd been planning to train in the grass patches in the Hau'oli shopping district and it seemed promising, however we were soon stopped by a blockage in the road. A group of three guys dressed all in black and white stood there, their blue hair mostly covered by white bandanas with two black circles stitched on the front, one on either side, like eyes. Masks covered their mouths and they each had a chain around their neck with a skull dangling from it; they didn't look nice. Where they stood, they were stopping a woman from passing through the street and hassling her for some reason.

Curious, I moved a little closer and managed to overhear some of what was being said. The guy on the left yelled, "Hand over your Pokémon!"

"No! Never!" The woman was clearly panicking, clutching her bag and what appeared to be a Pichu to her chest. "W— Who are you and why are you doing this?"

"Yo, seriously? You ain't never heard of us?"

"We're part of Team Skull, the coolest and most fearsome team around," the right guy announced, stepping forward. "We follow the boss's orders, and right now that is to take people's Pokémon and sell 'em for money, yo!"

I couldn't just watch anymore. Hands flexing at my sides, I moved towards the group and stood in front of the lady, scowling at the three bullies opposite me. "Hey! Leave her alone!"

The guy in the middle scoffed. "Ooh, what's this? A little kid with no Pokémon thinks she can stop us?!"

"Oh, I have a Pokémon." Shadow slowly peeked around from behind my legs, arching his back and hissing at the thieves.

"Woooow, a little kid with a little kitten. How terrifying." He burst into laughter at the end of his sentence and his friends soon joined in with him.

"You'll see just how terrifying we can be."

"You really wanna take us on, kid?" I nodded, and the guy glanced between Shadow and I before smirking. "Fine. If we win, we get her Pokémon. . . and yours."

"And if I win?"

He rolled his eyes. "And if you win — which is unlikely — we'll leave ya alone."

"Great. Then prepare to lose," I growled through grit teeth.

Once the woman was safely standing at the edge of the road, the battle swiftly begun. I fought the guy on the left and then the guy on the right, neither fight being too difficult since they both only had one Pokémon — a Rattata each — which turned out to be no problem for Shadow. For having trained so little, he was already pretty strong.

The last guy finally pushed the others aside, stepping toward me with his arms crossed over his chest. "Alright, that's enough. You may have knocked these two to the ground, but now it's time to take on the real challenge, and that's me!" He whipped a Pokéball out of his pocket and threw it forward, revealing the evolution of his friends' Pokémon; an Alolan Raticate. Shadow stood his ground in front of me and I knew he was ready to go.

"Shadow, use ember!" I called, our attack landing despite him trying to dodge, and once he'd finished scowling at me the Team Skull trainer commanded his Raticate to use bite. "Shadow, dodge and use ember again!" Following my instructions, he moved out of the way just in time and got into position to fire his attack, hitting the target head on and making him faint.

Our opponent's next Pokémon was a Salandit which proved to be harder to beat, though with a similar strategy we managed to do so within a few minutes of the first. Even though I may not have managed to do much training with my new partner by that point, Shadow was surprisingly strong and most definitely proving himself as a Pokémon to compete with.

His final Pokémon defeated, he called it back to its ball with an expression full of fear, causing me to smirk. "Woah, this kid is crazy strong!" He took a step back, followed by a couple more as his friends copied him.

"Yeah! Let's get outta here!" The group exchanged worried looks before running past me, thankfully in the opposite direction I'd been heading. I could only hope I wouldn't have to deal with them again any time soon.

Relieved, I crouched down to give Litten some love for doing such a good job before he mewed and jumped onto my lap to climb up to my shoulder. He squirmed a little until he managed to get comfortable then I skimmed my hands through my hair and stood up, looking over at the woman and her Pichu. Almost immediately she came over with a smile, thanking me profusely and giving me a piece of candy along with a Pokébean for Litten which she said was all she had. It was incredibly sweet so I returned her thanks and saw her off down the street, waving until she disappeared into the distance.

At that moment, however, I saw him out of the corner of my eye. He was standing off to the side, hidden in the shade of the trees once again but this time, a split in the branches allowed enough sunlight to peek through for me to be able to make out his features. He had platinum blonde hair which was similar to Lillie's, and bright green eyes like her as well. His entire outfit was black aside from the occasional splash of red; black capris and red trainers, and a black hoodie with a gash in the middle revealing even more red. As a matter of fact, all of his clothes seemed to have cuts in them which wasn't my usual style, but I couldn't deny that on him it looked pretty cool.

My gaze was locked on him and he was staring back at me with an expression that was hard to read. It wasn't friendly, but it wasn't exactly the hateful looks I'd received from Team Skull either. His eyes seemed to pierce right through me like no-one else's and even though it made me uncomfortable, I found it difficult to look away.

The feeling of his eyes on me reminded me of the day before when I felt someone looking at me from the shadow of the trees. It felt exactly the same. . . could he have been who was watching me yesterday. . . ?