summary;; an abused teenager runs away from his family to start his pokemon journey. he ends up in the mysterious region known as mysste, leagues away from his birthplace in kanto, with no recollection of how he got there. and so, he and his Shinx Themba must travel to find out how he got there and who took him there, leading him straight into the heart of the region's most heated battles.

PROLOGUE

The boy makes his escape in the dead of night. There is no other time to make this risky move. If he wants to get out of the house without his parents noticing, he has to do it fast. He starts packing his bag when the air begins to cool outside, the sun's merciless rays finally putting themselves to rest behind the canopy of trees. He doesn't even need to go outside to know that it is time. Something inside of him just... knows. He feels his heart jump to his throat when his parents walk by his room a few times, voices raised in some petty argument, but he doesn't bother to listen to their words. After tonight, he won't need to listen to them ever again. Won't need to hear how much they hate him, how much they regret bringing him into this world.

The boy shoves more clothes into his bag, practically punching them in. He can feel his anger rising, as much as he tries to hold it back. What's the use in holding it in now? He won't be around for much longer. Once he's shoved several pairs of clothing inside of it, the boy zips up the backpack, looking around his room for anything else of value he wants to bring with him on his journey. He nabs his wallet with a few dollars still inside of it and shoves it in his pocket. It won't last for long, but it should be able to last long enough until he can get into town and start winning some battles. Then he'll have all of the money he needs.

After his bag has been packed, now he has to play the waiting game. The sound of his parents' footsteps echoing through the house has to stop before he can even think about leaving. He sits on his bed, ears pricked and listening, bag in his lap. He hopes this won't be one of those nights where his parents decide to stay up into the early hours of the night arguing. Thankfully, tonight doesn't seem to be one of those nights; they go to bed relatively early, and leave the boy to his own devices. He slings his bag over his shoulder, then slowly opens the creaky door to his room. There's still one more thing he has to grab.

He sneaks out of the room and down the stairs, careful to skip the creaky third step to avoid any chance of him getting caught. When he reaches the bottom of the stairs on feet quiet as a cat's, he quickly walks into the kitchen, covering almost two steps at the rate of one. His full bag thumps against his back, but he ignores it as he closes in on his destination: a singular cabinet underneath the microwave. He opens it up to find what he's looking for: a cache of empty Pokeballs. Unzipping his bag, he shoves as many of them as he can into his bag, counting a total of twenty. That's probably way more than he needs, but that doesn't matter right now. What matters now is getting out of here.

The boy gives one last look to the place that's been his prison for the past fifteen years. He doesn't think he'll miss it. No, he knows he won't miss it. With a final fleeting glance, he shoulders his bag and opens the front door, carefully shutting it behind him and then taking off down the street.

Ricky Bradley is finally free.

CHAPTER ONE


Ricky manages to run for five miles. That's an incredible feat for him, especially considering how out of shape he is. It's also five miles into the thick of the woods, which is even more impressive, in a way. When he can run no more, he collapses where he stands, falling to his knees and then to his stomach on the ground covered by pine needles. It's something like a bed, he figures. Cushion-y enough. He curls up into a loose ball, muscles twitching as his body has come to an abrupt stop. It's painful, but he doesn't regret it. He'd run for a thousand miles if it meant getting away from them.

Despite his exhaustion, Ricky doesn't sleep for very long. He wakes up the next morning before the sun does, the sky above him only just starting to turn grey. It would be best to get moving now, Ricky thinks. The sooner he can get a move on, the better. He stands up, ignoring the ache in his muscles as he does. Every atom in his body is screaming at him to lie back down, but he doesn't. He has to keep on going. He has to make it to the lab and get his Pokemon.

From where he stands, he can just see the roof of it over the treetops, and he gives a sigh of relief. He knew the lab wasn't far from his home, but he didn't know just how close they were. He's glad that he doesn't have to travel much farther; as determined as he is to get away, he doesn't know how much his body will be able to take. Traveling another five miles doesn't sound very appealing to him at the moment.

Ricky continues to trudge through the forest against his better judgement. He doesn't want to risk taking one of the trails and possibly encountering his parents; while he's sure they don't really care about him to begin with, there's no telling if they're looking for him. After all, abusers don't tend to be very happy when the object of their abuse manages to get away. Ricky grips the straps on his backpack hard, so hard that his knuckles turn white. He doesn't want to think of what will happen if his parents get their hands on him again.

But there's no time to think about that now. The lab is getting closer and closer, and Ricky is forced to swallow back his nervousness as he reaches the front steps. There are already a few people milling about, mostly young children. He guesses that most of them are probably around ten years old; the age he should have started his own journey. If only his parents hadn't held him back, he would have had five years of experience by now. At fifteen, he's definitely older than most people starting out on their journey. But, that isn't exactly his fault.

Ricky was born into an incredibly religious family. They kept him absolutely sheltered from the outside world for his whole life, only letting him go outside once he turned ten years old, but still not allowing him to go on his Pokemon journey. They said it would be too "unholy" to allow their child to run around willy-nilly about the countryside. And so, home he stayed, and was forced to watch as all of the other children of the town he lived in started off on their own journeys. He often asked why he could not go on his own journey, and was always answered with one word: "unholy." It was around this time Ricky began to question who he was, and his life.

Now isn't the time to be going down memory lane, however. He's got a starter to get, and as the line thins out, Ricky starts to step up the front steps, putting his palm out to push open the steel doors. When they refuse to yield under his palm, Ricky's eyes slowly roll down to see a "pull" sign on the door. Some of the people behind him have started to stare, and he turns his head in embarrassment. His fingers curl around the door handle, pulling it open and holding the door of a few of the people behind him. Politeness is something that has been instilled in him since he was a very young child, and he's not going to give it up now.

Shutting the door behind the final person to follow him through, Ricky pulls away and looks at the service desk in front of him. There are even more people inside of the lab than there are outside, and he starts gripping his backpack again. His knuckles are starting to turn white again as he approaches the service desk, pale-faced when the lab assistant looks up from her paperwork and sees him.

"Hello ma'am," she says absently, and Ricky visibly flinches.

"Sir," he corrects sharply, his jaw tightening. He knows it wasn't done out of malice, but he can't help but stiffen up. After so many years of being misgendered, it's just his body's natural response.

Thankfully, the lab assistant doesn't argue with him. She has a look of incredulity in her eye, but she doesn't say anything against it. Instead, she only mutters a quick "Alright", notes something down on a notepad, then looks back up at him. "Your name, please?"

"Richard Bradley." Technically, all new trainers are supposed to give their legal names, but Ricky signed up with his chosen name instead. Nobody would ever know. The lab assistant nods again, looks back down at her pad, and scratches a name off of the list.

"Alright, follow me." She gets up from behind the desk and comes around the side, motioning for Ricky to follow. He does, albeit a bit numbly, as she walks into a back room. This is it.

Ricky's breath catches in his throat as the lab assistant ushers him into the room, then closes the door behind him. Sitting in the room is a single table in the middle of the room, and sitting on that table are three Pokeballs. Each one is marked with a different sticker: one has a Shinx sticker, the middle one has the sticker of a Seel, and the last one is marked with a Fennekin sticker. Ricky's hands are trembling as he puts them over each of the Pokeballs, considering his options.

"What are their stories?"

Ricky's hands settle over the one with the Seel sticker. The lab assistant shrugs. "I'm not so sure about that one, but he's an old soul. We picked him up from a trainer who couldn't afford to keep him anymore."

His hands move to the ball to the right of it, the one with the Fennekin. "That one's a certified Service Pokemon. It was owned by a disabled trainer who bred and trained Fennekin specifically for other disabled trainers." Ricky pauses for a moment, his hands hovering over the Fennekin's ball. He is certainly disabled; an accident from his childhood left him with a permanently broken leg. Every once and a while, it would send a shooting pain through his leg and into his thigh, causing him some pretty extreme pain. He decided to save the idea of the Fennekin and come back to it later.

"And the last one." Ricky's hands go to the Shinx's ball, and the lab assistant's eyes narrow.

"That one's new. Apparently, his father was a bear hunter, his father's father was a bear hunter, and he's a bear hunter. However..." She pauses, looking slightly to the left. "His past trainer was killed by a strange Ursaring with a fiery red mane. In that attack, the Shinx was scarred on his face. Not long after that, his second trainer was also killed by the same Ursaring. He's determined to hunt it down and get revenge. I'm not sure if he'd be the best choice for a trainer like you."

Ricky tries not to flinch at the words. Obviously she had noticed his disability. "Any one of them would be a good choice... but I don't think I'll take the Seel." He pushes the ball slightly away from the other ones, marking it as the one he isn't choosing. Then, he grabs both the Fennekin ball and the Shinx ball in his hands, holding one of them in each hand. He seems to be literally weighing his options.

"I need a determined Pokemon who works for themselves," Ricky finally says. He sets the Fennekin's ball down, and holds the Shinx's ball in his hand. "I need a Pokemon who wants to journey just as badly as I do. This is the Pokemon I need."

And so the choice was made.