It was a dreary sort of day, and a light drizzle sprinkled down onto four people as they gathered around the base of a tree. Two of them were in tears, and the other two were stoic. The occasion was a family funeral for the pet Pokémon. A Growlithe, it had been a beloved companion for two generations. The mother of this family, Hannah, had been beside him since she was born and was now bawling inconsolably. Holding her in his arms was her husband Donovan, who was putting on a strong front but could still be seen holding back a tear. The youngest son was named Mitchell, a young boy that was wiping his tears on the sleeves of his jacket that was already damp from the rain. And last was the oldest son, Travis, already a grown man himself. Unlike his father, he wasn’t even betraying any emotion at all. Just staring at the place where they had just finished laying Growlithe to rest minutes ago.
It was not that he felt nothing, certainly. He himself had been close to the Pokémon, closer than anyone besides his mother perhaps. But this loss had been a catalyst for a greater realization. With Growlithe gone, their home was now one devoid of Pokémon. None of the four of them were Trainers, Growlithe was all they had. Surely they would come to take in a new Pokémon sooner or later, but Travis’ concern wasn’t quite that. When he was a kid, Travis dreamed of becoming a Pokémon Trainer and traveling around the land on adventures. Challenging the Pokémon League and making great friends along the way, human and Pokémon alike. But here he was, a thirty year old man in a home without a Pokémon. The only thing he could think of, even in this time of mourning, was how he had come to this point.
Kids could start a Pokémon journey at ten years old. Travis had of course already loved Pokémon at that point and dreamed of making a journey, but it wasn’t that simple. Drizzleton didn’t have a Professor that handed out Pokémon to prospective Trainers, and indeed there was no such figure anywhere nearby. The closest was all the way in Sunnyville on the other side of the region. And that was a trip his parents weren’t willing to make. In any case, they believed that it “couldn’t be that easy” anyway. They were sure that you had to actually know somebody there to get one, as they had never met someone that had received a Pokémon from a Professor. At least all the way over here in the middle of nowhere, that was easy to believe.
Other options were elusive. Young Travis had tried to beg various people to give him a Pokémon that he could travel with, but to no avail. Whether it was because he was just an unlikable kid or because no one truly had any to spare, he never learned. He insisted on going with Growlithe at one point, but his mother wouldn’t have any of it. That Pokémon was never leaving home, and indeed it never did. Travis’ last option was to catch a new Pokémon of his own to start an adventure with, but Pokéballs were scarce in this town. There was no Pokémart, so they were a bit too valuable to fork over to some kid on a whim. Ultimately however, these were all excuses.
Travis had been resentful of his parents for while in his teenage years for their lack of support for his dream, but despite their various specific objections, they had always said that they were willing to support Travis if he really wanted to go on a Pokémon journey. He could have tried harder to make it work. It came down to two inescapable facts. Travis had been lazy, and he had been a coward. If he went out into the woods and befriended a Pokémon; anything, even a Caterpie, and brought it back to show someone, he might have been able to convince them to give him a Pokéball. That might have been all it took. But he hadn’t had the courage to go out into the wilderness like that. And it sounded too difficult. It was much easier to play in the yard with Growlithe. And so the years passed like that, thinking about what could have been.
He had eventually gotten a job stocking shelves at the general store in town. Sometimes he worked the counter. He still lived at home though, as where was he going to go? He had no family of his own, he had never even had a girlfriend. Girls weren’t particularly interested in him for whatever reason. He told himself he was over it by now. He had no real skills, moving somewhere else was pointless. It was easier and safer to stay at home. Just like with Pokémon, Travis had taken the path of least resistance. And it clearly wasn’t just him that was dissatisfied. Twenty-two years after he was born, Travis got a little brother, Mitchell. Travis had been born when his parents were very young, so they managed to have another before it was too late when they probably decided they weren’t happy enough with the one they got. Travis never blamed them, he wasn’t happy with himself either.
After about half an hour of standing out in the rain beside the tree that they had buried Growlithe under, the family began to go back inside. Mitchell and his mother’s tears were still flowing, but they were close to composing themselves. Donovan put a hand on each and ushered them back inside and out of the weather. Travis stayed behind for a while, still in his existential rut. He stayed under the tree for another half hour, long enough for the drizzling to stop. It was still overcast and gray, but there was no longer any rain for the time being. With that inconvenience out of the way, he stepped out from under the tree and looked back to the wilderness that extended out away from the family’s property.
There was a small mountain some distance away, not much more than an oversized hill, really. Travis had gone with Growlithe to explore it one time, back when he was a nine year old with his dreams still intact. It was the closest thing to an adventure he had ever truly done. The two of them had managed to reach the summit just in time for the sun to set, and they got to share a beautiful scene together. He sometimes managed to forget it over the years, and when he did get back to remembering it he always got choked up. Especially now, the memory of sitting on the top of that hill with Growlithe nuzzled up to him as the sky displayed a sea of colors was finally enough to break the dam that he had been holding in all day. Tears streamed down his face as he mourned his closest friend, and the rain was no longer here to help wash them away.
Once a few more minutes passed and Travis got his crying under control, he had started to think about some serious questions. Was this really it? Was the peak of his life going to be that day as a kid? It had been over twenty years since then. If he couldn’t change in all these years, what made him think there was anything he could do about it now? He always contemplated “what-ifs”, but never really took action. Except for that day, anyway. If he could do it then, why not now? It was still only around noon. The clouds were supposed to clear up in the evening. Maybe in time for sunset. He could make it to the top by then, surely. If he could do nothing else, he could do this. One more time at least, for the memory of Growlithe.
He was still damp from the light rain earlier, but he didn’t care. Travis had a place to be. Stepping past the tree line and into the woods separating his backyard from the mountain, he kept his eyes and ears out for signs of Pokémon. There wasn’t usually anything too dangerous around this close to town, but he had always had Growlithe with him when exploring before. He was alone now, and the only one he could count on was himself. But that would have to be enough. Several bird and Bug Pokémon could be seen in the trees, but they were easy enough to avoid. He wasn’t stopping to stare or bother any of them, just moving quickly but carefully through the underbrush. The Caterpies and such didn’t even have time to take notice of him, while the larger Pokémon like Deerling always ran away as he approached.
As he could see the clouds clearing up and the sun poking out, Travis knew he was making good time. His old phone had no signal out this far, he could never afford one of those fancy new Rotom Phones. But it still kept time, so he knew how long he had until sunset. And as he reached the foot of the mountain and started to climb, he was sure he could make it. The path was steep, but he remembered all those years ago and the way he and Growlithe had made their ascent. The Sawsbuck trails made a lot of it easy, so long as he never ran into any Sawsbuck. There was a scare at one point as he locked eyes with one in the distance, but it was downhill and too far to bother, so it just turned and left. That situation did make Travis realize how precarious his situation was however, this far out into the wilderness without a Pokémon. It was honestly quite a stupid thing to have done. But he was halfway up the mountain, and he wasn’t going to stop now. He had already wasted too much of his life for that.
As the minutes ticked by, Travis stopped paying attention to whether there were Pokémon around him or not. Unfazed by the potential danger, all that mattered right now was getting up to the summit in time to see that sunset. At one point, he even decided to abandon the path and just climb straight up sheer parts of the mountain for as long as he could find places to grab hold. Two minutes following a sloping path was slower than one minute of clambering up tree roots to skip it entirely. It seemed to be working, but as Travis drew closer to the top he realized just how tired he was getting. This hadn’t happened when he came here before. His youthful energy had propelled him upward. He wasn’t exactly old now, but he certainly wasn’t young anymore. Or he could just be out of shape. Either way, his progress upward started to slow. But despite the aching muscles, the heaving breaths, and the growling stomach that hadn’t had food or water since breakfast, Travis was more determined than he had ever remembered being in his entire life. Over such a poor decision, too. He hadn’t even started to think about the journey back. Nothing past recreating that moment with Growlithe was worth considering until he achieved it.
As the sky started to redden, Travis picked up the pace. Panting and heaving as he grabbed trees and pushed off of them for a modicum more of speed, he eventually saw the light as the forest broke off at the summit. He stumbled out into a small clearing that led to a cliff, the open space provided by it allowing for a perfect frame of the sunset. It was the exact same as it had been all those years ago. Falling down to his knees to catch his breath, Travis crawled back to the same spot he sat in long ago, remembering it exactly as he recreated that moment. Sans Growlithe, of course. The tired man put his hand on the ground where his Pokémon companion should have been and watched the sunset as he let another tear escape his eye. He had done it. He did what he set out to do. Now what? Did he prove something to himself, was that all this was about? It seemed silly now, as the dangerous situation he was in became evident. He was going to have to get home in the dark. Was it worth following this whim at all? Travis looked down and patted the grass where Growlithe had once lain and just accepted things for what they were. He really did feel better somehow. That’s at least got to be worth something. He could decide what he really wanted to get out of this once he was back home.
He had rested enough to catch his breath now, and the sunset was over halfway done, so Travis decided to cut his losses and start the long and treacherous return journey home. But as he stood up, he heard a large rustling in the bushes nearby. His first thought was that it was another Sawsbuck, and he was worried though not overly so. They tended to leave people alone most of the time so long as you kept moving away from them. He started to back away as best as he could, though the cliff made it a bit awkward to do so. He couldn’t manage to move perfectly opposite the direction of the rustling. However, that particular concern could only manifest for a few moments before the emergence of the actual Pokémon present superseded all other concerns. A massive Ursaring lumbered out from the tree line, growling and staring Travis down.
All of his fear rose to the surface at once. He cursed himself for being stupid enough to do this in the first place. He had just been lucky all those years ago with Growlithe, to come out here alone was basically suicide. Ursaring were quite rare around here, but not unheard of. What was he thinking? This was pretty much it for him. There was absolutely nothing he could do against an Ursaring. He couldn’t fight it of course, and trying to dissuade it from attacking was beyond him. He might even make it attack quicker if he tried. Outrunning it was futile, even if he tried to make it stumble in the brush running downhill, he was way too tired to keep it up for more than a couple of minutes. He was well and truly screwed. There was only one thing he could try.
Being close to the edge of the cliff due to backing up, Travis gave it a peer downwards. The terrain was more rugged on that side of the mountain, with little vegetation. The drop was sheer, but the height looked survivable. There looked to be some small trees sticking out of the cliff face, so if he was able to slow himself down with a couple of those, he just might make it out alive. He liked his odds of that better than his odds with the Ursaring, anyway. Before the massive Pokémon had time to swipe at Travis, the man was already over the edge and sliding down. Trying to slow his fall by holding onto the rock and dirt of the cliffside, he could feel his skin tearing and peeling away. All he could do was to imagine getting torn apart by Ursaring claws would feel significantly worse.
The first tree that he aimed for was a bit small, and he was falling too fast to really have a chance to get a hold on it. But he did grab it momentarily, and despite the painful pull on his shoulder as he passed it, he did feel his fall slowing down. The second one was bigger, and he thought he had a real shot to stop here, but his hands failed him. The pain from all this abuse hanging onto the side of the cliff kept him from holding on more than a couple of seconds. But he had slowed down, and there was still one more that he had been able to see from the top of the cliff. Even if he couldn’t grab it and stop there, he just had to slow down enough to survive hitting the ground. He was sure he could do it, though at this point he wasn’t sure what shape his fingers would be in at the bottom.
Rather than go straight for a grab on this one, Travis tried to position himself so that his butt would land right on it. If he was able to save his hands a bit more by just managing to sit on it, all the better. However, as he glanced down, he thought something was weird about this tree. From the second-long glance he had made at the top, he couldn’t see very well, but even while falling, from this close he was able to see that this wasn’t actually a tree at all. In fact, it was blue. It looked like a piece of metal sticking out of the cliffside. But it was too late to change course now. He was invested. All he could do was prepare his posterior for a rougher landing than expected.
Slamming one’s rear end onto a hard metal surface is never a pleasant experience, but Travis was honestly a bit relieved to have come to a complete stop. He was painfully and precariously balancing on the blue metal protrusion, and removed his bloody messes of fingers from the cliffside. They stung like nothing ever had before, but it wasn’t as bad as Travis had expected. But that was probably just the adrenaline. He wasn’t too far off the ground now, he could comfortably choose to hop off and make it down safely as soon as he felt willing. But it turned out to not be up to his own choice. He was soon shaken off by his perch removing itself from the wall.
Tumbling down to the ground with a thud, Travis narrowly avoided smacking his head and stumbled quickly back to his feet to see just what was happening. That put him face to face with a Pokémon, floating in the air right in front of him. A small, metallic, blue, foot-like creature with a round head that housed a single red eye. On its backside were three spiky prongs. It was a Beldum. Travis knew about these Pokémon, sure, he had spent all his free time on the internet looking up all sorts of rare and powerful Pokémon. But he had never expected to see one in real life, much less so close to his house. He could scarcely believe it, wondering if he had actually hit his head from the fall or something. But the pain in his fingers was becoming more pointed by the second, and he could be sure nothing but reality was occurring at the moment. He really was looking at a Beldum right now.
The creature stared at him for a couple of seconds before greeting Travis with a Tackle, one he only narrowly dodged by diving to the side. The little metal creature seemed to be quite annoyed. Travis figured it had probably been sleeping on the cliff when he woke it up by landing on it; he had read before that they tend to do that. Before it turned back for another Tackle, Travis held out his hands in a stop gesture and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“You saved me!” he shouted, his own strained voice sounding quite odd to himself after being silent for the wide range of events today. “Thank you. Really.”
The Beldum stopped short of another attack and looked over Travis once more, more carefully this time. Its cyclopean eye stopped on the outstretched hands and scanned the torn up and bloody fingers. Turning to glance over at the cliff, it looked all the way up to the top. Travis couldn’t help himself from doing the same, and saw from the bottom just how far he fell. He coughed involuntarily in surprise at the fact that he actually lived. Just eyeballing it, it was probably higher than a three-story building. He stowed any further shock away for later though, as the Beldum returned its attention to him. It kept floating in place, then made a strange chattering noise. Travis had heard a recording of a Beldum cry before, but it really was a strange one. He had no hope of making sense of it, but he hoped it was a voice of concern.
“Yeah, I’ll be okay thanks to you. Don’t worry.” He assured the creature. “ I’ll get home and get this patched up.”
The Beldum continued floating in place, unreadable in its emotions due to the lack of expression. But after a few moments, it turned away and began to float back towards the wall, likely to return to sleeping. But Travis felt a nagging sensation in his mind, just like when he had decided to set out on this trip to the mountain. Was he going to let that be it? What if this chance encounter could be so much more? He had wasted so much time and even nearly died today. What was taking one more chance?
“Wait, Beldum!” Travis exclaimed as he dived towards the flying metal foot. He wrapped his arms around the creature and tried to hang onto it without putting too much strain on his messed up hands.
The Beldum immediately began shaking back and forth violently at being grabbed, making more strange noises as it tried to toss Travis off of it. But Travis hung on and tried to calm the Pokémon down as he began to plead with it.
“Please Beldum, listen for just a second!” Travis begged as he let go. Beldum turned to face Travis, but was noticeably angry. He probably had one shot at this, and it wasn’t likely to work, but he had to try. Beldum at least seemed smart enough to kind of understand what he meant, though. So that was a good sign. “I just want to ask you one thing. Would you be willing to come with me?”
Travis gestured with his bloody fingers from Beldum to himself to try and get the concept across. The Pokémon seemed confused at first, but didn’t break away immediately. Travis decided to keep going for it. “I know you want to sleep right now, but what about after that? You’re not planning to live your life here on this cliff, are you? You’ve got big dreams probably, right?”
Travis wasn’t sure if he managed to convince Beldum of anything with his grand hand gestures, but as long as it kept listening, he would keep going. “I had dreams too. I was going to travel the world and become a super strong Pokémon Trainer. The strongest.” Travis clenched his bloody fists in front of himself for emphasis. “And even now I want to make those dreams real. If you come with me, I’ll make you the strongest too. Let me repay you for saving me. Please.”
With his hand outstretched in one final gesture, Travis hoped he had managed to communicate his feelings. Feelings that he had only really just come to terms with himself. Now that he was aware of them, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to take being turned down. This little guy really seemed like it was fated to meet him. This was the shot he was always dreaming of. He had finally found the courage and the motivation to take that step into the wild, and this was the payoff. If even this wasn’t enough, then what could he ever hope for? He could feel his eyes start to water, though rather than emotion it may have been from pain now that the adrenaline was wearing off.
But whether it understood Travis’ plea or was moved by the gestures and teary eyes, Beldum responded with its chattering once more while floating more noticeably up and down as if it was nodding. It turned completely around and shoved its spiky foot into Travis’ bloody outstretched hand as if shaking on it, causing slightly more pain than he was already in. He only winced slightly, as he was otherwise too ecstatic from seemingly receiving an affirmative response. Beldum turned back straight and made its chattering sound again, and Travis thought that it sounded kind of happy. Was it also out here just passing its life by waiting for an opportunity? He had just been hoping he was right when he claimed so before, but he was sure that Beldum wouldn’t have ever agreed to come with him if that wasn’t truly the case.
But for now, Travis put those things out of his mind. He would have plenty of time to worry about them once he got home. They just had to get home first. And the sun had almost completely set by this point. Beldum floated back behind Travis to nudge him along, indicating that he should lead the way. Travis was still tired and hungry, not to mention the bleeding and pain. But this was the last time to consider stopping. He finally had a chance to reach for everything he ever wanted. It may have been twenty years late, but he was finally going to make it happen. A Pokémon journey of his own.