Not My Friends (Pokémon)

Sneer

A/N: There a going to be a few short introduction chapters like this and they will probably be updated fairly fast until I get back to normal chapters. By "introduction chapters," I mean chapters that have the sole purpose of explaining where the Sun and Moon characters are now and what Gladion's relationships with them are.  

Ten months after Pokémon Sun and Moon.

When Gladion first met Selene, he thought she was pretentious.

She'd acted confident immediately after he'd challenged her to a Pokémon battle and had beaten him easily enough so that it ticked him off. Trying to calm himself down, he'd assured himself it must have been luck and that she couldn't have actually been that talented.

Then, of course, she went and became the first-ever Pokémon League Champion of Alola.

Gladion couldn't help being jealous of her. Ever since his mother made him feel like he was nothing, he'd wanted to prove her wrong, and he saw becoming the Pokémon League Champion as the ultimate opportunity. Despite not wanting to become the Champion themselves, he could even see that Lillie and Elio were mildly envious of the fame Selene had achieved. The only one who didn't appear to be jealous at all was Hau, but Hau was something else entirely.

Selene annoyed him, but he'd admittedly gotten close to her and her group after some time. The blonde had become even less fond of her upon finding out she was dating his sister, but if she made Lillie happy, he wasn't going to get in the way. If he couldn't be happy, Lillie, at least, should be.

They were always arguing, always fighting over something stupid that didn't even matter. Lillie would watch them, frowning, while Hau would try desperately to hold back his laughter and fail. Selene liked to mock Gladion a little too much, and he'd started wondering if she was a sadist—and hoping to God she wasn't. He wouldn't let Lillie date a sadist.

She'd insist, over and over again, that they were friends. Gladion was absolutely sure she was just saying that to get on his nerves, because he had no friends and didn't want any. Friends would just get in the way. Maybe he'd enjoyed having them for a short time when he was young, but they'd been ripped away from him, and he'd survived, hadn't he? He didn't need them. Having friends—worrying about extra people, taking care of other people's problems—would get in the way of his goals.

Selene would try and force Gladion to accept friendship into his life during the rare times she wasn't taunting him. He couldn't see why he should, much less why anyone would want to be friends with him. He was antisocial and rude and cold. A lot of people thought he wasn't aware of that, but he damn sure was. He knew he was an absolute pain to be around and wanted it to stay that way. Having idiots try to weave their way into his life was ruining it.

His current mission, however, involved gaining complete control over Selene's relationship with Lillie. Though certainly others would claim it to be overprotective, Gladion found it necessary to assure his little sister's complete and definite safety. He would not let anybody else hurt Lillie—not after their mother. He wouldn't take any chances. He wouldn't trust anyone with her.

Gladion also knew that, unfortunately, Selene was very much onto him, and that she wasn't taking him seriously at all.

Just like always.