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The world rotated.
At some point, she had stopped expecting it to stop.
How had she ended up here?
How had she ended up wedged inside a dustbin, slowly rolling down one of the wide avenues of the Candala Region’s Capital City?
Therese wasn’t quite sure. But she blamed her brother. He should never have taken his eyes off of her. He should have known that this would happen.
A constant within five-year-old Therese Williams’ life was her ability to irritate.
It was an ability she put to frequent use.
It was an ability that had seemingly backfired today.
And thus—
The world rotated.
Passersby were no help.
Some raised eyebrows. Some pointed and laughed. Most just tried to pretend they hadn’t noticed her as she slowly clattered along the brickwork.
Not that the Pokémon were any better.
She’d been happily upright and stationary until someone’s Growlithe happened by.
Then a Haunter had cackled at her through a dusty window, set high into one of the terraced houses. And she could see a Smeargle—painting her humiliation—out of the corner of her eye.
Maybe.
The world rotated—
and made it hard to tell.
It was a beautiful day, at least. The sky was blue, the clouds were few, the sun was… making the bin uncomfortably hot, if Therese were to be honest.
Nene’s bakery rolled past. That was a shame. She’d been wanting to go there.
Then one of the city’s Pokémon Centres. An old art gallery, a Trainer’s school, a museum dedicated to an engineer that she had no interest in.
The Queen slowly spun above the street’s western skyline: one of the island’s colossal twin mountains. So called because a member of the island’s first explorers thought that naming an icy, inhospitable, treacherous peak after his spouse was hilarious.
She’d heard it was off-limits of late. Something about the three Birds bickering.
Again.
The world rotated.
This was getting old.
Therese wriggled, but her knees were stuck tight.
Was this her life now? Just a creature stuck in a bin as the world rolled by?
If she could just stop herself, she could at least spend the rest of her life as a hermit crab, dragging this shell with her wherever she went.
And give Ione more ammunition to use against her.
Her stomach was starting to rebel. The constant motion, the constant spinning background, the sour, ever-present scent of whatever soft and squelchy substance her feet were currently pressed against.
Chestnut hair fell over her eyes, each time marking another full rotation.
She’d made so many full rotations.
The world rumbled.
That was new, at least.
Her home rumbled with it, bouncing slightly under the tremor, catching on a pot hole and spinning her through all four cardinal directions before finally—mercifully—coming to a stop near the base of a towering pole.
Face down.
She groaned into the paving, swallowed a throatful of bile before she accidentally added extra flavour to her bin, then lifted her head in a futile attempt to get her bearings.
‘Dizzy’ didn’t even begin to describe how she felt right now. Even without the dustbin’s perpetual motion, the world still turned. She tried to look up the length of the avenue, to understand her odyssey, and how it had come to such a swift end, but her eyes refused to focus.
Her ears, on the other hand, were still plenty functional. And she was blessed with the opportunity to experience that, when the siren set atop the pole she’d found herself at the foot of suddenly began blaring.
Therese rammed her hands over her ears. The sound was horrendous, made infinitely worse by her proximity to it, and her inability to crawl away now that her arms were both occupied.
The outdated siren screeched with static. A terrifying, dual-toned wail of dissonant notes that had no place being played together. The sound bounced off the buildings lining the avenue, seeming to double back on itself, creating a layered moan of nightmare fuel.
Was the world ending? That was the only answer she could come up with that made any sense.
The other citizens seemed as lost as she did, nervous looks exchanged as people grabbed the hands of friends and loved ones and dragged them from the wide open street and to the safety and quiet of nearby buildings or alleyways, Pokémon following loyally behind.
Therese couldn’t help but notice—somewhat sourly—that the child in the trash had seemingly been forgotten.
The world began to quake, heavy tremors, over and over again, each one bouncing her slightly, even as the siren continued its unearthly screeching.
Therese tried to make peace with the end—truly. But at the tender age of barely half a decade, she couldn’t quite manage it.
So, instead, she did the one thing left to a little girl that was being harassed on all sides by sound, shaking, and abandonment—
She screamed and she cried.
Therese blubbered, crying out for someone to help, for someone to take pity on her and pull her from her current, loathsome lot in life.
But the street had emptied to escape that horrific sound. No people heard her cries of distress. No Pokémon saw her snivelling into the layered bricks of the road.
The earth beneath her heaved once more. This time was worse. Her and the dustbin achieved altitude for the briefest moment, before she returned to ground level and bashed her face into the road’s surface.
She looked up once again as the sunlight disappeared, and darkness fell over her.
Her eyes widened, and Therese cried harder, desperately trying to claw free from her galvanised coffin.
The Steel-Type colossus hadn’t even noticed her.
With each of Registeel’s ponderous footfalls, the world shook, Therese bounced, the siren was momentarily drowned out, and the titan drew closer.
Why?
Why?!
The Tomb wasn’t supposed to open today. There’d be a parade if it was, banners and celebrations, and she wouldn’t be in the middle of the street. Was she about to be flattened because of a scheduling error? Because a city planner didn’t fill in his calendar properly? That wasn’t fair.
She wanted to be a Pokémon Trainer…
A Poké Ball hurtled over her head, bouncing off the flickering red lights of the Regi’s face and bringing the Legendary Pokémon to a halt.
“Caterpie, go!”
The Ball erupted in a flash of light, and the ankle-sized Bug burst into existence.
Caterpie blinked up at her foe a few times, as though trying to wake herself from the nightmare she had emerged into, then turned around to cast an accusing glare upon the teenager who had summoned her.
Footfalls—barely audible over the clamour of the siren—rapidly approached.
“Really sorry about this, girl. Caterpie Tackle!” the Trainer’s voice yelled from right beside Therese’s resting place.
Caterpie used Tackle!
It’s not very effective…
She threw herself against the steel wall—did nothing—bounced off, landed safely on the ground, and was then subsequently pounded into the bricks by a colossal fist.
Therese felt a pair of arms wrap around her, awkwardly hauling both her and the bin she was trapped in from the ground. Together the Trainer clanged them across the road until they were finally off the street and safe. A young man’s face came into view, a teenage boy wearing a tacky hat, wincing at his Pokémon’s current fate as Registeel went in for the second—entirely unnecessary—punch.
“This ain’t a great start to our careers.”
The man’s breath caught and Therese almost choked on her own fear when the Regi, apparently satisfied that Caterpie was no longer a threat, turned to face them.
It looked down on the pair, the seven lights on its face flashing as it regarded the child and the young Pokémon Trainer for a never-ending second, before it finally turned away, and continued its lumbering journey down the Capital City’s avenue.
The shaking slowly ceased. The siren began to wind down. The constant rise and fall of the din gradually coming to an end as the unexpected threat passed by.
The man turned to the terrified Therese, plastering on the most unconvincing confident smile he could muster, while fishing in his pockets for a tissue to clean up the mess of snot and shallow cuts that was currently her face.
“You… good?”
Therese sniffed out a negative, feeling more tears pricking at the corners of her vision and more mucus making its way down to her mouth.
“Yup. Makes two of us.”
He looked over at his fallen comrade, at the shiny new pothole in the road with his partner embedded at the bottom, then back at Therese.
“Get the feeling she won’t forgive me for this one.”
Therese snorted. The man’s attempt at humour was immediately rewarded with a thick line of phlegm bursting from her nose and straight onto his jacket.
The man looked down. Therese looked away.
“Brian, by the way. Now come on, kiddo. Let’s get you outta that bin.”
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