How to Train Your Pokémon

The Heartbreaking Truth

How to Train Your Pokémon

A/N: Let's just get on with Chapter 22 so that all this angst and family drama out of the way. Roll it!

Chapter 22

The Heartbreaking Truth

After a few intense minutes of banging their fists against the energy bubbles they were trapped in, the Ketchum kids found themselves back in their own living room. Dawn waved her hand over the shield bubbles, and the bubbles popped, leaving the three kids to plop onto the floor hard.

Their mother started to pace the floor, angrily muttering under her breath. "I should've known. I should've seen the signs that this will happen."

"Mom?" Mari tried to get her mother's attention.

"You lied to me, Mari!" Dawn shouted at her.

"Technically, I didn't lie." Mari admitted. "I tried to tell you before all of this happened. But, oh, it's just all so messed up."

"So everything in the ring? A trick? A lie?" Dawn demanded.

"I screwed up. I'll admit it now." Mari said. "But I did learn a lot about the Pokémon. Their strengths, their weaknesses. The twins did, too."

"It's true, Mom." Luke added in. "We even learned to see things from another angle, and use that angle in battle."

"It's really amazing if you think about it, Mom." Evan came in.

"That still doesn't explain why you three were cheating in the ring!" Dawn retorted, making her children flinch. However, Mari came in between her mother and her brothers.

"Look, Mom." She said. "Take this out on me, not the twins. Be mad at me, but please, just don't hurt Elysia."

"That Electric Pokémon?" Dawn asked, surprised that her daughter named it. "That's what you're worried about? Not about the people you put in danger?"

Mari knew that she was trying to reinforce the lie that she grew up believing in, but she knew it would be futile. "She was just protecting me!" She explained. "She's not dangerous!"

"They took hundreds of us!" Dawn shouted.

"And we took thousands of them!" Mari yelled back. "But you know that's not true!"

Dawn slightly backed away, looking shocked. "What are you talking about?" She asked, pretending to be clueless.

"Cut the act, Mom!" Luke shouted. "We know about all of it! The Pokédexes, about what we really are!"

Dawn's face went a deathly pale white as Evan reached into his satchel and pulled out the three Pokédexes that Mari found in Gary's office. "Wh-where did you get those?" She asked quietly.

"I broke into Gary's lab." Mari bluntly explained. "I had a feeling that he was hiding something." But before Dawn could start reprimanding her daughter about invading someone's privacy, Mari asked her the question that she had been wanting an answer to since she and the twins got entangled with this whole mess. "It's true, isn't it?"

"Mari, I don't-" Dawn started to say, but her daughter cut her off.

"It's true, isn't it?!" She shouted. Tears were starting to come out of her eyes. She then lowered her voice. "All of it."

Dawn looked over at her sons, and they were giving her the same look as their sister. A pleading look teetering on the edge of heartbreak. She finally let out a sigh.