The Golden Age, and all the other times, too

For once, Gramps didn’t want me in his Pokémon lab.

“The joy of learning about Pokemon comes from bonding with them, Blue!” he had told me. I just wanted to be left to my own devices that day, but if Gramps wanted me to play outside, I’d make him regret it. This feeling guided me as I hopped the short fence that enclosed the grounds and stumbled out into the Viridian Yellow brush the filled the landscape.

Now that I was out in the wild, I realized I had no idea what it was that I was supposed to do to get back at Gramps. I tried bothering the Rattata and Pidgey, but waving my arms and yelling stopped being fun after the third time around. The only fun came from crawling on my hands and knees, trying to sneak up on the Johtoese soldiers encamped on the roadside, lazily puffing away at their cigarettes and pretending not to notice me.

“Hey, whatcha doing?” I nearly jumped at the sound of that voice. The source was boy my age, in a t-shirt and jeans, who’d crept up behind me without a sound.

He asked me what I was doing and the further I clarified, the sillier it seemed and the more embarrassed about it I was. I told him to forget the whole thing.

Instead, he said “Let’s sneak up on that thing instead!” as he pointed at a Poliwhirl minding its own business in a pond. I Followed along as he lead me closer, but of course, only one of us was actually sneaky, and my clumsiness got us both blasted with water from an irritated water-type.

“Ah, darnit!” I cursed, wiping the water off my torso. Our mission failed and all we had to show for our efforts was some wet clothing. I groaned realizing what a hassle drying off would be.

“Hahaha, that was great!” I couldn’t believe that kid was laughing; he got sprayed before either of us got close enough to see the Poliwhirl. He didn’t seem to care that it had happened or, perhaps, this was what he wanted.

“You’re a real strange guy.”

“I’m not strange, I’m just Red! Like the Color!”

I stifled my laughter before pointing towards Gramps’ Pokémon lab, “How about we go dry off? Unless you want to stay soggy?”

He let me grab his hand and lead him there.

Age: 11

Blue showed up at my door, right on the day he said he’d return. He had a mild tan on his face and a gift-wrapped box cradled in one arm. Blue tore down six months of distance between us with his first words.

“So are you going to let me in or what, Red?” he said, as if he hadn’t left to study in Cianwood. I knew it was his grampa’s idea and that it was something he couldn’t pass up and it’d be good for him and all that, but still, I was a little mad.

I let him in, but reminded him to take off his shoes. He already knew that, of course, and knew the way up the stairs to my room.

Even after half a year, no one else had learned what the inside of my house looked like. Not even Yellow, who played kickball with us out in the flattened fields across from the new town hall, saw my room. Yellow was small and vibrant and kicked with the front of her foot, sending the ball in a new, random direction each time. She would hold onto her straw hat each time she ran the bases and it reminded me that I couldn’t just hide a pony tail under my own cap, and then let it down post-game like she could.

“So what’s that?” I sat on the edge of my bed next to Blue, who’d brought over my desk chair to sit in.

“It’s a gift for you, doofus!” He held the present in front of me. “Come on, open it!”

I clawed at the wrapping, revealing a black plastic clock-radio. Both sides had cartoonish flaming skulls, whose flames met on top near the snooze button. It was aggressively boy-ish.

“A radio?”

“I know your old one’s busted, so I got you a new one,” said Blue, already starting to take it apart with his screwdriver. “But check this out! I’d been messing around with the radio a bit and realized there’s a lot of empty space in it, so I rearranged the innards and made a secret compartment! Just unscrew it a little and…”

“Ta-da!” The clock-radio popped open, revealing a bunch of wires and metal parts, and one very not metal card.

I pulled the card out of its envelope. “I hear you have a birthday, rad dude!” covered the front and on the inside, written in the neatest handwriting he could muster, was “I missed you lots. Sorry about the late birthday card.”

I looked at my present and back at Blue, staring at me expectantly, and wondered about the uncomfortable feeling the objects gave me.

“Thanks, they’re great.” I said.

Age: 13

“Charizard, Flamethrower!” I yelled out into the battlefield, surrounded by thousands of spectators and aided only by my giant flaming lizard. Red’s Pikachu sped under the attack, his small frame proving too tough to hit in every other match between the two that we’d had. Launching consecutive fire attacks usually compensated, but the stress was too much for my Pokémon.

“Alright Pika, use Thunderbolt!” Charizad was in no position to do anything, but receive the brunt of that powerful attack. Loud cheering followed Charizard collapsing onto the ground.

“And the winner is…Red, from Pallet Town!”

Red pumped his fists, ready for his Pikachu to run over and jump into his arms.

“We did it, Pika!” he yelled. I had never seen him smile like that before in my life. Red always kept this friendly, neutral expression on his face, but today I could see something make Red genuinely, excitedly happy.

“We’ll get him next time, buddy,” I said to Charizard, who grunted before I return him to his Pokéball. Red always did have a stronger bond with his Pokémon than I did. I hoped this justification would replace my disappointment with myself.

But I really had fought with all of my heart, and me and my Pokémon pushed Red and his to their limits. It was a spectacular match for the Kanto League Junior Finals. And at the end of it all, Red walked over to my side of the battlefield and stuck out his hand.

“That was the best battle I’ve ever had. You did great.” Red had given me his best smile and his best words. I felt my heart melting and resisted the urge to pull him into a hug on national TV.

I returned his handshake, holding on past the point of social acceptability and staring deep into his eyes. I raised his hand as high as I could and used my other arm to show everyone their junior champion. As the audience cheered, I gripped Red tight and wished that moment could last forever.

Age: 15

I didn’t know how much longer I could do this. I was too engrossed in my journey the first time around to really notice; Kanto seemed so expansive and novel. Training and taking care of my Pokémon consumed any time I’d spend in introspection, but after the Pokémon league, after the rush of winning wore off and I returned home, I crashed.

Legally, I was required to spend the next year back in school, catching up on what I’d missed, and the boredom from that gave me plenty of time for nagging thoughts to intrude. I’d spend days lost in my own mind, not even remotely present in class or conversation; I realized at that time that I’d had one year of my life that felt like my own, and the feeling it gave me disappeared and left a void.

Blue must have noticed too, perhaps during an empty conversation at lunch or after another instance of my borrowing an entire day’s worth of class notes. He always seemed to have his shit together. While I sat around distressed, he planned for a second Pokémon journey. “Let’s go together! I’d be wrong not to,” he said, having already prepared for the both of us.

That’s how I ended up in Johto. It felt like a dream arriving in New Bark Town and seeing the other half of the continent and the countrymen we shared it with. But the familiar routine of officially sanctioned travelling set in, and with nothing new to distract me, I slowly pieced together what I was missing.

It all came together in Goldenrod City. It’s gym was run by beautiful women and I couldn’t help but notice not only how much different from them I looked, but also how similar. That feeling lingered even as I waited in silence outside of the city’s department store.

“You could strip bark off a tree with a stare like that.”

Blue, holding an object in each hand, appeared in front of me, partially obscured by my bangs.

“Did I keep you waiting?” Blue grinned his usual semi-joking cocky grin.

“Yeah...” Pretending to be sad about that was easier. “Whatcha get?”

“I wanted to get the new Pokétch before they sold out,” explained Blue. “Of course, I got you one, too. Because I knew you’d feel left out. Pretty thoughtful, right?”

His smirk said it all. Blue always seemed to know what he was doing, and wanted me to know, too. He put the red Pokétch in my hands before putting the blue one on his wrist. I stared at the craftsmanship.

It was beautiful. It was fashionable. It was not my style.

“Now we’ve got matching ones!” Blue held his arm next to mine to compare. “Cool and useful, to boot.”

He started going over all of the functions that he’d already installed for the two of us. I interrupted he tutorial on the built-in compass.

“What are those things on the cover?” I asked. Whatever adorned the edges of the glass glimmered in the sunlight.

“Oh, those things? They’re tiny crystals embedded in the watch face,” explained Blue. “Very neat, if you ask me.”

“Crystal, huh.”

Age: 16

I could tell something was wrong in the days leading up to the Johto League Junior Finals. Red pretended to be okay, that he was just nervous for the tournament, but I could tell something was weighing on him. Sure, he was good enough to fake his way into the last round, the privilege of having a stellar team that love him, but it was sloppy at best.

And when we met again in the Finals, I trounced him. It wasn’t even close. I didn’t even get to show off my Tyranitar, who I’d been training for months. I had won the Johto League in a complete sweep and it felt horrible. Fighting an opponent who wasn’t mentally there took the satisfaction out. And the next day, he wasn’t physically there, either.

At first, I thought he just left to train for a while on his own; we did something similar before. I returned back home, applying for Gym leader positions and getting ready for school. I passed my anxious days with applications and exams and endless tinkering with electronics. Months passed with no contact, and as I accepted my new Gym leader position, it sunk in that Red had just disappeared from my life.

As part of my new placement at the Viridian City Gym, I earned a month’s worth of paid time-off, which I had almost completely exhausted searching every nook and cranny of the Johto-Kanto mainland. By the time I doubled back to Violet City, I only had two days left before my job and my studies once again filled out my calendar. I spent one of those days pleading with a very patient government employee.

“I can’t list him as missing, not even as a favor for a gym leader. Red is technically still on a Pokémon Journey and that gives him a certain autonomy that most kids don’t have,” said the League official. “Look, kids some break contact with friends and family for long stretches of time. You should just be patient and wait for your friend to be done, okay?”

A nagging thought stuck in my brain as I exited the office building: “What if I had told him? Would he have stuck around?” An even worse thought supplanted it: “What if he left because of me?”

Friends don’t just disappear. If I were his friend, he would have told me. I tried to remember all the times when Red trusted me most, but my brain twisted them into something perverse. Maybe we really weren’t as close as I’d desperately wanted.

I sat down on a section of the building’s front steps where no one could see me and put my face in my hands.

“Dammit, Red.” I began to choke up, uncontrollably

Age: 18

I emerged from the woods and into the field that held that little shack I called home. A pickup truck with two familiar faces and a cargo bed full of propane tanks sat on the dirt road between me and my house.

“Good to see you back in one piece, Crystal,” said Morimoto, a little lopsided from leg pain as he walked over. “And of course you too, Pika.”

Pika let out the kind of “chu” noise he could make only after a day’s trek. Ai lugged one of the tanks over, plopping it down next to her father.

“We don’t see you in town often enough, Chrissy,” said Ai, one hand on her hip and the other against her jacket.

“I guess so. Nature has a funny way of drawing you away.” Pika tiredly tugged at my leg. “Let me bring Pika inside and I’ll get your things.”

Inside were the two Pokétchs that I had left patched up on the table. Years of watching Blue show me his technology had paid off. I didn’t have the talent or inclination for repair work, but I could at least mimic the actions of the person I’d spent most of my years next to. I was good at faking this profession for the money because no one else knew enough about technology to call me out on it.

I returned outside with the Pokétchs in hand. Ai whistled at the sight of my handiwork.

“Wow, these look great!” she said, admiring the fresh coat of paint as she slapped hers on.

“You did a marvelous job, little lady,” said Morimoto. “You’ll be the talk of the town when the boys see this.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. Why, you already have your own admirer! I’ve seen the looks Tai’s been giving you at the grocer,” said Morimoto. “Come to think of it, isn’t that shack a little lonely? I know it’s that time in your life when girls think about those sorts of things.”

“Dad!” chided Ai. “She shouldn’t be thinking about those sort of things yet! We’re still teens, right Chrissy?”

“I’m not lonely as long as I have Pika and the others with me,” I explained, hoping Morimoto would drop the subject.

He did, beckoning his daughter to follow him and leaving the propane as payment. Ai didn’t follow, instead fishing something out of her large jacket pockets.

“These are for you,” she said holding two fists full of packaged sweets with colorful metallic covers.

“You don’t get to eat these sorts of things much, so I saw these at a mart while we were picking up propane and…” Ai stammered her way through the sentence. “Anyway, just think of these as payments for doing such bang up job on my Pokétch, ya know.”

I awkwardly tried to cradle all of it in my arms. It seemed like Ai was still waiting for something.

“Thanks.”

Ai jerked her hood over her head and bolted back to the truck.

I watched the truck disappear down the road, thinking about how much I wanted to do the same.
Every few days, I’d walk out into the forest and each time, I’d go a little further and stay a little longer. Hour-long hikes turned into days long treks. I didn’t have the heart to tell those two how long I was gone for.

This week, I made it to the base of Mt. Silver, normally for me just a majestic blot in the distance. And next week, I’d go further and further and further, until I realized that I didn’t have to return.

Age: 19

Like every other Tuesday night, I had secluded myself in the stacks of the science library on the far side of Saffron University’s campus. The days pass so quickly when they’re filled with lab reports and consecutive gym battles; it astonished me how quickly I acclimated to “preparing for exams” preoccupying my life.

With a couple ending sentences and a third attempted sip from my empty coffee, I completed that write-up. More awaited me tomorrow, but it was way past midnight and I needed to escape the dreary place I was in. Scooping up my pile of books and papers, I navigated my way to the outdoors.

Two things I noticed after exiting: that the night was pleasant with crisp air and that a bored-looking young woman sat sprawled out on one of the benches under a nearby lamppost. Upon seeing me, she shot up from her spot, musing with her hair before approaching.

“Of course you were at the library!”

I heard that voice and felt like I’d been dragged back to my adolescence. I stared, gob smacked, right at her face; it was the same calmly welcoming expression, but the sense of loneliness was overwritten by confidence. My texts slipped out of my arms as ran up to embrace her, not wanting to let my chance slip away.

“Why? Why didn’t you tell me?” I didn’t realize how much I was choking up until I asked her. She didn’t seem to know any more than I did.

“…I think I just needed somewhere…A place where I was just me.” Her voice was serene and a little husky, but I knew it couldn’t be anyone else’s. It hurt knowing I couldn’t see the best version of her before.

“You know I would have supported you? You know I loved you so much, right?” I admitted, spilling out a decade’s worth of feelings. I could barely speak without sobbing.

“Yeah…” We stood, embracing each other for a few more moments, before she spoke again, just above a whisper.

“My name is Crystal now.”

“Thanks for telling me. It’s a good name.” We let the hug dissolve and she helped me pick up my papers. Crystal squinted at the cover of one of my books, as if not seeing it clearly was why she didn’t understand it.

“I see you haven’t been studying the sciences since I last saw you,” I japed.

“You haven’t changed one bit, you nerd,” she retorted, cracking a grin. My smile widened, too, even as tears started flowing again.

“So, we need to talk, right?”

“I’m not letting you go until we do,” I said as I tried to recall what cafes were open in the dead of night. “Actually, how do you feel about coffee? I’ve got some I can whip up at my place.”

“Perfect.”

Age: 20

Blue looks absolutely whipped, resting in his small gym leader office. He says he’s been alternating between fighting gym battles and doing exam prep since 8am and just got off the clock. I think seeing what I was up to during those hours would cheer him right up.

“Wow! No kidding?” Blue inspects the cover of my tiny booklet, running his fingers over the miniscule golden bumps spelling “Johto-Kanto Democratic Unified Republic --- Passport”.

“Crack it open, Blue.” He obliges and stares at the most important page. He didn’t use to weigh his words this much.

“Well…It’s you. It’s Crystal.”

“Yeah, it’s me.” The photo’s awful, but it’s my awful.

Blue makes that expression he always has when he’s planning something exciting.

“So now we just have to pick a place to go,” he says. “The Pokemon World Tournament is four months from now and we both know you’re out of practice.”

“No argument here.”

“But since I’ve freed up the time,” offered Blue, “how about we travel around a region. Somewhere nice, just the two of us. Like old times.”

I couldn’t put into words how nice that idea still sounded. So, I didn’t try, but just made my own suggestion.

“Hey, have you ever been to Alola before?”