#Wooloo Head {Bede}

[cherryroselock22]

Go ahead and freely use this ask to infodump on your Pokemon SWSH sexuality, gender, or other headcanons :3

Hehe Hop: -Hc name is Hop Arce Laventon, Arce is his father's last name -Speaks both spanish and english, could not help making him a lil hispanic -Youngest of his friend group, he's 15 and a few months younger than Gloria and Victor -Looks more like his mother, also has a name very similar to hers (I hc their mother's name as Hope) -I hc he goes by any pronouns but mainly uses He/him. He's non binary to me, a little butch, overall pretty comfortable in his own body. I think he'd get more social gender dysphoria (being misgendered, not called by the right name, etc) rather than body dysphoria -I also like to hc him as an asexual Biromantic, no preference -He and Gloria are very close, considered platonic soulmates. They camped together all the time during the gym challenge. They met when they were kids, around 4? Leon introduced them. Hop didn't have any friends as a kid, he also struggled to speak and spent most of his time playin with Leon or just playing alone, it worried him a lil so he tried to introduce him to some of the kids in postwick. When his mom was out, Hop often stayed at Gloria's and Victor's home. -Hc that he got scorbunny. When Gloria was picking, he was silently hoping she wouldn't pick it. Hop wanted scorbunny not just because of Milo, also because fire types are the rarer type between fire, water and grass -Salty over Marnie and Bede getting growth spurts and getting taller than him. He's the second shortest of the group

-Likes to bully Leon a little

-Holds grudges and remembers them. He still has a grudge over Raihan grabbing his wooloo plush and holding it over his head like 10 years ago, main reason he doesn’t like him today.

-I also think that when he gets angry (actually angry), he acts passive aggressive instead of yelling. He does this with a smile on Gloria: -Hc name is Gloria Knight -Shortest of the group (5'2) -Younger than Vic by 30 minutes, both are 15 -During the gym challenge, loved to run off and bite more than she could chew by fighting pokemon way above her team's level. When she got hurt, Hop was usually the one to patch her up, she'd get scolded but always try again -Got through the gym challenges rather easily, the only one she struggled with was Gordie's, she's rather impatient and found the whole mechanic annoying. She still does not shut up about this -Ended up becoming Champion. She has Zacian as her legendary, though she tries not to lean to much on it during her battles. She absolutely steals the cape idea from Leon, he's salty over it

-I think that personality wise, she’d be very chaotic and energetic, jumping from one place to the other. She’s also the impatient one of the group. -She loves to gossip, she's also obsessed with love stories, ironically enough. She's nosy with everyones lives except Victor, -Overprotective of her friends. After Hop lost to Bede in the gym challenge, Gloria death glared at Bede up until the 5th gym, when she joined her when she was camping (Gloria was not invited) and kind of passively-aggressively asked what Bede's deal was.

-Pushed Victor off a small cliff just to see what would happen, he has a small scar on his leg. She also likes to playfully bully him. I hc her as aromantic and ace, she loves love stories but does not want one of her one. She figured this out after Hop's mom kept teasing about the possibility of Gloria n Hop being a couple and they decided to (awkwardly) give it a go. I don't think she'd care much about gender, or even view it as an important concept tbh. She's just Gloria. I think she'd go by She/He pronouns My Hc team for her: Inteleon (starter, she chose sobble) Braviary Runegirus Magnezone Haxarous Victor: -Hc name is Victor Knight -Second tallest -Definitely the more anxious of the twins, unlike Gloria, who tends to run head first into danger, he prefers to be cautious. -Is somehow the luckiest of the group, he finds rare pokemon all the time, he's found a few shines too, he's only caught one though. He also found a dreepy sleeping in his hat when Leon was stayin over at the start of the game, he might have accidentally stolen one of Leon's dragapult's dreepys lol -Has a shiny cinccino he babies, he spends around 30 minutes every morning brushing it's hair. Refuses to let Gloria battle with it because he knows she would not take care of it's fur. His cinccino loves to play with Marnie's morpeko -He falls in love with every pretty face he sees. He was gushing about gym challengers all throughout the gym challenge and Gloria was tired of it. He's probably had a small crush on Marnie, Bede and Hop at least once -I like to think he likes to help his mom out with her garden, as well as helpin with her flower shop. -Gloria likes to mess with him by refering to him as her little brother. Gloria and Victor bicker a lot -He goes through the Crown of Tundra dlc, and he's the one who catches Calyrex. He also catches the galarian legendary birds (with some help). After this, he decides he wants to stay at freezington to study the tundra and why the birds decided to stay there, he stays there for years. (Gloria is definitely not emotional) -Got a few scars from his time at the tundra. He also visits once a year, he uses that week to catch up with Gloria, Hop, Marnie and Bede.

I have no interesting gender headcannons for him sorrry, he's a he/him although he doesn't mind what he's called. I do think he's pansexual, maybe a lil polyamorous

My hc team for him:

Rillaboom (starter) Dragapult Cinccino Salazzle Gastrodon

Marnie:

Hc name is Marnie Cameron -Going with gender headcannon first cause of pronouns. I hc Marnie as a transmasc bigender, he/him. He doesn't really care much about how he dresses; he doesn't get much dysphoria either. I also think he'd be bi -Second oldest, he's 16

-Sonia used to babysit him when he was younger when Piers was busy. Marnie goes to bother her sometimes when he's bored

-Definitely a foodie, loves to eat, he'll often drag Victor, Bede, Hop or Gloria to a new food place just to check it out. Somehow appears out of nowhere when one of them is making curry

-Plays guitar, he has a red electric guitar, looks like a flying V. He doesn’t let anyone grab it

-Has nicknames for almost everyone. (Hop = Hoppip, Bede = Cotton, Victor = Vic, Vicky, Gloria = Glo, Champ)

-Has accidentally stolen clothes from the rivals. He has two of Hop’s shirts, one of Gloria’s skirts and one of Vic’s hats.

-Sends his morpeko to steal Bede’s food when they eat together. He also likes to bully Bede, jokes that being blonde is a sign there’s something deeply evil going on

-Closer to Victor and Hop. Also likes to bother Victor by messing with his hat and pullin it down to cover his eyes -Lives with Piers, mother is out of the picture. Bede: The hc name I use for Bede is usually Bede Hibaru cause that's the last name i hc his bio parents to have. I use Bede Poisonmaker (Oleana) or Bede Roseary (Rose) sometimes though Gender hccc, I think Bede is transfem, He/She, doesn't really care what pronouns you call him as long as you don't refer to him as a guy. Gets a lot of body gender dysphoria. I also think she'd be sapphic -Oldest, 16 and a few months older than Marnie -Born in Kitakami, lived with parents for a few years before bein abandoned. He only has foggy memories of his parents, he doesn't care much about them, she does remember their pokemon though -Closest to Gloria overall, she's the one who helped her with the Rose stuff. She's also the one who makes sure Bede gets out sometimes and doesn't stay all her time at the gym. Gloria loves to take him shopping. They get matching earrings when they're older -Bickers with his hatterenne a lot. Has a few bite marks because his mawile chews on his arm, he got used to it. He also has a few scars on his hands from when she was looking for wishing stars -Raihan keeps bothering him (I think Raihan is very chatty and likes to get to know new gym leaders) -Hop's dubwool hates him, Bede has gotten stuck in a tree cause it would not stop trying to tackle him

-Dislikes bitter stuff, loves sweets. Hates coffee in specific. Sometimes he’ll dump spoons of sugar into his drink. She loves to go to random cafés.

Sonia: Hc name is Sonia Sparks -Raised in Spikemuth, dad is from there. Lived there up until she was 12, she then went to live with her grandma -Childhood friends with Piers, when Sonia went to live in Postwick they lost touch, met again in the gym challenge -Had trouble defeating Kabu back during the gym challenge, almost quit, her ninetales comes from his challenge. She quit after the 4th gym

-Disastrous love life. Dated Leon before her transition as kids, broke up after she quit the gym challenge. Was in a relationship with Nessa before deciding they were better off as friends

-Takes naps during the afternoon and stays up late (usually until 2 or 3 am). Definitely not a morning person, very grumpy if woken up. Wakes up late too.

-Loves to drink coffee, has a yamper mug. She saved up for a coffee machine in her kitchen.

-Her n Raihan sometimes share clothes since they have the same body shape.

-Goes on a girl’s night with Nessa (n sometimes Raihan) every month. Leon is not allowed to accompany anymore.

-A few months younger than Leon, both are 25.

-Was very mean as a kid (I like to imagine she was exactly like Bede as a kid). She was very angry too.

-Used to be taller than Leon during the gym challenge. He had a growth spurt after becoming champion.

-I hc Sonia as a trans girl (she/her), realized a few days before she quit the gym challenge. I also think she’s a lesbian.

-Has a ninetales, rotom, yamper and (gigantamax) butterfree. There’s also a few pokemon she keeps in the lab to study, Victor gifted a dreepy to the lab

Raihan:

Hc name is Raihan Everfrost

-Used to be very shy as a kid, clung to Sonia all the time. Didn’t speak that much either. Sometimes hid behind Leon, even though he was taller.

-Raised in freezington, used to wearing warm clothes, so when he visited the mainland he was shocked by the weather. Had an orange scarf gifted to him by his dad. Adoptive dad is the mayor of freezington. Even after moving to Hammerlock, he still visits his dad at least once every 5 months, texts him often.

-Raihan found Leon in freezington a few months before the gym challenge when Leon got lost and somehow ended up in freezington. Raihan met Sonia when she came to pick Leon up.

-Leon was the one who suggested Raihan try the gym challenge.

-Raihan’s vision isn’t the best, his duraludon helped him with navigation back at freezington and during the challenge. After becoming a gym leader, he got contacts to help him see better (still not a perfect vision) but they’re uncomfortable if worn for a long time so he only uses them in public. His contacts also make his eyes seem very blue, his natural ones are a grey-ish color.

-Very social person, doesn’t like being alone, he also feels lonely easily. He visits Sonia and Leon when he can, usually when they’re working. If Gordie’s free he also visits him.

-Has scars from when he got too close to some of the pokemon in freezington, the more recent ones are from accidents during battles. His duraludon also likes to bite. He also has a scar from when Leon’s charizard bit him.

-Has a small pokemon daycare at the gym where he takes care of injured pokemon, usually has a few dragon types.

-While visiting his dad he found an abandoned pokemon egg. He refused to let it out of his sight until it hatched. A shiny snom hatched from the egg and he brings it everywhere. The snom likes to shoot icicles at him when it wants attention.

-Very common Raihan hc but I like to think he has fangs

-A year older than Sonia and Leon (26)

-My hc is that Raihan’s genderfluid, usually doesn’t mind pronouns but on days where he does, he wears colored bracelets that Sonia made for him. Goes by He/She. He’s also a disaster bi in my mind.

Leon

-Hc name is Leonel Arce Laventon

-His fashion sense are just t-shirts, snapbacks and jeans. Maybe a jacket or two. Has an unhealthy amount of snapbacks, at least 40 different designs. Raihan is getting a little worried.

-Lives in Wyndon, his apartment is there. Hop goes to visit him sometimes. -His first name is Leonel (which is what he's called in the spanish version of swsh, fun fact) he just doesn't bother by telling people. Raihan only found out years after knowing Leon. Sonia always knew.

-His hair is naturally black; he just dyes it purple so that he can match Hop. Also reminds him less of his dad

-Takes at least 15 minutes in the morning to comb through his hair, it gets tangled easily.

-Has very good eyesight, as long as he isn’t too close. He’s a bit far sighted. He does have glasses for this but he doesn’t like wearing them.

-Lightweight drinker, gets drunk easily. In contrast, Sonia has a high tolerance.

-Doesn’t like talking about his dad, gets quiet whenever he’s mentioned. He also looks a lot like him, which is the main reason why Leon made some changes to his appearance after he left.

-Wants the best for Hop, but sometimes he’s a little overbearing. He always thinks he could do better.

-Almost got lost in the slumbering weald as a kid because Hop convinced him to go in. Hop has also told him many lies as kids, some he still believes today. It doesn’t help that Sonia did the same during the gym challenge

-Like Sonia, has a disastrous love life, most of the time he doesn’t act

-Honestly, I don’t have a set gender hc for Leon, it’s just. I don’t know. I mostly go with the hc that he goes by any pronouns and doesn’t really care for gender. I do think he’s some flavor of trans. He’s also a disaster gay in my mind, falls for every pretty boy he sees.

TY FOR THE ASK!! i'm goin to add some hc doodles in the reblogs cause it will not let me ‹/3

[the-witchs-cafe]

Hop from Pokemon Sword and Shield would turn into a witch in Puella Magi Madoka Magica!

Cause of Witchification: All his life, Hop believed that he was destined to become just like his big bro, and that he had what it took to achieve just that; to carve his name unto stone and begin the tale of his legend, all in the efforts to make his brother proud as he walked in his footsteps. After all, he's attributed his vast knowledge on Pokemon battles to him continuously recording and rewatching Leon's matches, and, in a sense, Leon was the closest thing he had to a father figure; of course it'd be natural to be like the person he admires most.

In truth, the air of pride and arrogance he had showcased throughout the game's first half was nothing but a front; he had nothing to his name, a fact that has been hammered unto his head time and time again as he kept on losing to both Bede and the player with no time to breathe in between these hopeless matches- and, in the back of his mind, he knew that. After all, the walls of their home only displayed the memorabilia of Leon, with nothing to remember Hop by; an air of competition was bred by the other figures of authority in Hop's life, whether any of them were aware of the effects of their favoritism or not.

Hop looked up to his big brother - how could one not when his face has been plastered over every nook and cranny across Galar? -, he practically idolized him, so when he was presented with the reality that his pathetic display of weakness was doing nothing but tarnishing his big brother's name, it destroyed what little hope he had in himself and prompted him to take up other methods of battling that were so...unlike him. He even had to abandon Wooloo, his first partner, under the belief that it is was for the best if he had to live up to Leon's name, even after he had promised that they would be in the pokemon league together.

In the end, even after stopping Eternatus thanks to his intuition and knowledge, even after saving all of Galar with the player, his self-worth has been reduced to nothing. After witnessing his childhood friend defeat his hero, he realized that...there was nothing left for him. Everyone's moving on with their lives, including Leon, and he is now there left in the dark; lost after chasing the light of legend that is eternally so far away...

"You know, even when Sonia was saying that you and me looked like we could become heroes, I never really felt like one…"

Estimated time of witchification is speculated to be either during the aftermath of the second Darkest Day or in the middle of the post-game story.

[a-tale-of-legends]

In the early days of their friendship, Bede was never the one to say nicknames. Carol has pretty much given him an unfortunate nickname ( Bede-a-lee), as did Hop ( wooloo head), both with varying reactions ( as annoyed as Bede seems, he doesn't hate the nickname Carol gave him. Hop calling him wooloo head is specifically used to rile him up tho). But to actually say the nicknames his friends had was kinda out of the question for him at first. Marnie pretty quickly started calling Naomi, Nomi and Hop, Hopscotch/Hoppy/Hopper ( both instances made the two besties very happy. Friendship goal reached!), and vice versa with them calling her Mar-Mar, Marbles ( coined by Carol as always) and the like. Bede never participated in the nicknames only bc he thought it was stupid lmao.

That is until one day Naomi casually mentioned Hop as "Hopscotch". It wasn't the first time Bede has heard her call him that, but he always assumed that it was towards Hop himself when he was present.

Bede: Hopscotch?

Naomi: Huh? Yeah? You've heard me say it before, Bede.

Bede: Well, yes, but not when he isn't here.

Naomi: ( tilts her head slightly) Why would I not, though? Hopscotch is pretty much Hop's second name at this point.

Bede: .....hm.

It wasn't until a while later where Hop and Bede were annoying each other (again), when Hop called Bede wooloo head, again to rile up Bede. Bede's mind immediately flash back to Naomi and her calling Hop Hopscotch. In Bede's head, he thought calling Hop, Hopscotch was a good gotcha moment, like " haha, not so funny now is it". But he must have forgotten that Hopscotch was basically a term of endearment, cause Hop immediately turned it back on him saying " hopscotch? Aaaaaw you really do care! >:D" which just annoyed Bede even more ( he did care, btw, but he doesn't want to admit that-)

After that, nicknames kinda started to be said more and more. It started out with just Hop, mostly to combat Wooloo head, but it then spread to the rest of his friends in terms of endearment. Soon enough he's going " Slow down, Hopper" or " Nomi, could you....?". Marnie is probably the one he says the nickname the least because hers are the ones he thinks are too silly for him to say. He's adamant of giving her a better one.

Carol has been cursed with me not knowing a good nickname to give them. I need to find it bc Bede-a-lee is mostly said by Carol, and I want a nickname for Carol that's mostly said by Bede. Sibling bonding and such. But alas, my brain still hasn't come up with anything.

But yeah! That's Bede's nickname journey! Does this mean he starts to nickname his pokemon? Maybe, yeah. Though I can see it for practicality that he doesn't use it often.

[dragon-tailz]

Musharna mail!

You find yourself walking down a garden path, your blue and pink sneakers crunching the gravel beneath your feet with every step you take. Your periphery is blocked by high hedge walls, and the towering poplar trees beyond that, but the sky above you is bright and clear and the flower beds beside you are full of colorful flowers. Peonies, foxglove, begonias and anemones wave cheerily in the breeze as you pass by. 

You’re positive you came to this garden for a reason, although at the moment that reason escapes you. However, as you follow the twists and turns of this verdant labyrinthe, your purpose here quickly becomes apparent. You brush a pale colored curl of hair out of your face as you emerge into the hedge garden’s central clearing. On a raised platform of intricate brickwork stands garden furniture arranged into a makeshift tea table. The table itself is round and its metal framework is covered by a tablecloth, while the four seats around it are adorned with plush pink cushions at their backs to make sitting on the harsh material easier. Three of the seats are occupied. Former gym leader Opal sits in one- she wears a cyan baseball cap with a white pokeball design and is currently pouring more tea into her Togepi-patterned teacup. Next to her sits Allister, wearing a huge and heavy looking pumpkin shaped crown and pouring tea into one of his mask’s eye holes from a Sinistea-patterned cup. Across from Opal sits Hop, who wears a puffy Wooloo shaped hat (“Who has the Wooloo hair now?” you find yourself thinking) and daintily nibbles a strawberry topped teacake. 

The sound of your shoe against the gravel alerts them to your presence. 

“Oh, young Bede,” Opal says warmly, “Now, this is an interesting turn of events. How nice that you would happen upon us and our little hat party. Good thing I prepared for an extra guest.” She patted the empty seat across from Allister at the round table. 

You blink at the scene before you and stutter slightly. “I- Hmph. That’s very kind of you, Ms. Opal,” your voice comes out deeper than you are used to it being, “But I feel the need to point out that I am woefully unprepared for a ‘hat party’. I’m afraid I’ll have to decline your invitation until I find myself an appropriate hat.” You find yourself wondering why you weren’t invited in the first place. Perhaps THEN you’d have brought a hat to wear… although probably not. Hats are awfully troublesome to the distinguished gentleman who likes to keep his hair just so. 

Hop raises a dark brown eyebrow. “Uh, Bede? Mate? Have you looked at yourself lately?”

There’s a curious ripple in the air above your head. You reach your hand up and feel a party hat squashing your fluffy white hair, its strap hugging your chin to keep it upright. You know without seeing that it is covered in orange and green spiral stripes. “I stand corrected.” You sigh and step up to take your seat at the table, the chair making an awful scraping noise as you tug it out and along the brickwork below. 

The four of you sit and eat in silence. Allister continues pouring tea and passing snacks into the holes in his mask, going along a clockwise pattern- a piece of biscuit in his left eye, a drop of tea in his right eye, a slice of cake in his mouth, on and on around and around. Hop is still nursing the same piece of teacake. Is that boy taking the smallest bites he possibly can? Often, your gaze flicks toward Opal. You can’t help but think that there’s some sort of manner or custom that you’re missing, something you’re doing wrong without even knowing it. The tea party is an incomprehensible, nonsensical dance. Forks are placed to the north of one’s plate, except at Hop’s place where it’s to the south. All participants rub the handle of their teacups with their thumbs before picking them up, but the number of rubs seems to have no rhyme or reason. Everyone’s gaze wanders toward you disapprovingly no matter which number you try. Opal excuses herself at one point for chewing her scone an odd number of times. You find yourself sitting there stiffly, in your orange and green party hat, making as few moves as possible for fear of them being wrong. How ridiculous you must look, mistaking the rules of this frivolous game…

Of course, eventually the tea party is done. It just… finishes. In the manner of dreams, you blink and suddenly find yourself standing with them in another portion of the garden, knowing without saying that the party was over. You, Hop, and Allister stand in a line, Opal pacing before you with her large wizened hands clasped behind her back. You are all still wearing your hats, and Opal’s in particular stares you in the face as she shuffles by. “Now, children, what hat party would be complete without a little bit of fun?” Opal’s eye glitters with mischief. “And I just had a good idea, as I tend to do. We’ll make it a competition.”

Hop pumps his fist. “All it takes is a little healthy competition to keep a person energized! Count me in!” Allister stands stock still. Well, not quite- he wobbles and slouches under the weight of his gargantuan pumpkin crown. 

Opal chuckles and holds up an Alcremie’s flower sweet between her thumb and forefinger. “Look here, the three of you- I’ve had my wonderful Mawile hide a flower sweet just like this in and among the shrubbery you see before you. I don’t have any real prize for you, but the first to find it will be a reigning champion of garden hide and seek, I suppose, hohoho~”

Hop adjusts his stance and puts a contemplative fist to his chin. “Well, I HAVE always wanted to be the champion of something. Any rules?” 

Opal waves a dismissive hand. “No rules. I'd hate to stifle the creativity of a boy so clever that he answered all my quiz questions correctly.” You find yourself struck with a sting of jealousy and indignation. Did she have to tout Hop's success around him all the time? He'd have answered her questions in the gym challenge correctly, too, if not for… if not for… what was it that got in your way? You can't seem to remember, and you drop the subject as Opal turns her attention toward you. “Now, Bede, you can think of this like another one of my little tests. You know, I daresay I'm impressed how far you've come since I found you in Hammerlocke all that time ago… Will you be the one to win this challenge? Or perhaps it will be one of these skilled young men beside you. Oh hoho, I'm on the edge of my seat!”

She shuffles a few paces away, giving the three boys a clear view of the path before them. She counts off on her fingers, three, two, one, and the challenge begins. Hop sends out his Corviknight and leaps onto its back, bursting into the air at startling Mach speeds. Allister turns his head to stare straight at you before slowly disappearing in a puff of dark colored smoke. You're the only one who walks down the path and deeper into the hedge maze, your shoes crunch, crunch, crunching on the gravel path. 

You spend a great deal of time sifting through the hedge rows, looking for a glimpse of orange petals. Conveniently, none of the flowers growing by the path are orange themselves- they all come in purples, pinks, and blues. The sun creeps across the sky as you search, the only indication of the passage of time. You wipe sweat from your brow and scratch at the strap around your chin. It's disheartening to be met with the same verdant green everywhere you look. Step after crunchy step, bush after leafy, defiantly green bush… the monotony is so infuriating that when you finally spot a flash of warm color you lunge straight for it, paying no heed to the thorns wreathing it. 

A rose. A red rose. You're moving too quickly to stop when you realize just what you've found, and your hand closes around a thorny branch. You pull away. A bead of blood wells on your finger, red as the flower glaring at you from the depths of the hedge.   

Suddenly, a scent fills your nostrils. Strong, overpowering, all-too-familiar… woody, like oak, cloying, like leather. Undertones of something sickly sweet in comparison. You try to whip around, see the person who must be behind you, but the dream holds your attention, your gaze to the red rose. It expands. It fills your vision. You cough again. Suddenly, you find you can't breathe. The strap about your chin has tightened, turned to thorns, draws blood. You claw at it. Your fingers turn even more red.

Just as you think you can't take it anymore, you wake up. 

Wyverlyn blinks the sleep out of her eyes, black washing away into the familiar sight of her ceiling and the fairy lights lining the apex of her walls twinkling in the dusky morning blue. Her heart pounds against her ribcage painfully and her dry throat swallows nothing.

Lifting herself with a weary hand on the railing of her loft bed Wyverlyn's body disrupts a rapidly thinning cloud of fragrant mist, the pink haze smells sickeningly sweet, like decomposing roses.

Her eyes follow the trail of perfumed gas as it drains out her open window that was closed when she went to bed.

"That's... definitely one of the weirder dreams I've had about Bede..."

[milezryn]

I would love to hear all your thoughts on Hop. All of them. Use the full word allowance(/lh)

ohhhhh my god you have no idea what you're asking of me.

thoughts under the cut cuz this post got long ehe. thank you for the opportunity my brain was going to explode <3

ok hop is DEFINITELY one of my favorite rivals in the franchise (at least out of what ive played aha) and has some of the best character development to me. i know sometimes the writing in swsh is a bit clunky but idc, the context is more than strong enough ok. heads up some of my own hcs might creep in here but i can't help it i have so many thoughts abt him all day

FIRST OF ALL the idea of our rival being the champion's younger brother is really great. i love love love it. hop starts off as borderline worshipping leon and fully believing himself to be destined to follow in his footsteps as champion. and why wouldn't he!! he grew up watching his awesome big brother on the tv, seeing how powerful and happy he looks, and his mom probably echoed a lot of those praises back at him as he grew up. lots of "oh, you're going to be just like your brother when you're older, aren't you?" especially when he's had his own first pokemon (wooloo<3) for a while by the game's start!!! like dude!!! this guy has big dreams and he's probably never had anyone tell him otherwise, he's barely had any exposure to anything else, of /course/ he's gonna think he's meant for this!

and we know from some of sonia's dialogue in the games that leon "practically raised" hop, and there's really no other father figure to be seen, so. just saying his only real guy role model is his bro like. of course he's gonna idolize the hell out of him

and i think that starting him off as this cocky and honestly kind of full-of-himself personality while still being a good kid at heart is a really cool thing, /especially/ when we get to see how his character develops through the story!!!!! his loss to bede paired with his repeated losses to the player /and/ his first gym loss at circhester is such a major hit to him, and we /see/ that!

seeing take wooloo off of his team is SO IMPACTFUL because it's shows how desperate and conflicted he feels! we see the cracks in his confidence forming and it culminated in this harsh move of removing his #1 pokemon, the one he's had since childhood, just to try and he stronger! he's grappling with having the idea of this dream he's been wanting his entire life shaken /and/ repeated losses /and/ the stress of trying to follow in his brother's footsteps?? the feeling that he's letting leon down, that he's not good enough?? that he's somehow a stain on leon's reputation just by being himself??

BRO!!!!!!! break my heart in half why don't you!!!

that moment honestly cemented him as one of my favs. just seeing him that desperate to win </3 and then the satisfaction of seeing dubwool leading his team afterwards, when he's realized that even if he does want to win, it won't matter if he's not doing it his own way. seeing dubwool again was like getting to see his arc starting to come full circle, not nearly as unshakably confident as before, but /genuine/ for probably one of the first parts of his story!

facing him in your battle is so great </3 seeing him emulate leon's movements like the little cheek slaps and when in the way he's animated directing his pokemon is so sweet. you really see that all he wants is to live up to this unreachable shadow he's lived under his whole life, and it's so heartbreaking to beat him!! seeing him get frustrated and pull himself together!! knowing that he still cheered you on in the champion battle, knowing you took that dream from him, because really, it's not even what he wanted. we see that at the end of the game when he takes on the research position under sonia, when he's finally able to act genuinely and start exploring interests that are his own rather than those he's grown up idolizing.

who knows if being a professor is really his passion?? who knows if he won't switch career tracks 4 more times in his life?? that's the power of it!! he had nothing else to look up to his whole childhood, so he never really let himself think about those things. at the end of the game he's finally doing it just for himself, to explore himself as a person, not just as a carbon copy of his brother! he gets to tell his own story instead of following the path of leon's and it's so good!!! thinking abt how he can flourish as a person, how scary it might be to finally be without a set path in front of him but simultaneously how freeing it might feel!!

i could talk abt him for DAYS

AUGH. he is so underrated </3 i hate how much hate he gets, it's unwarranted. yes some of the writing is weird yes some dialogue could be better written, but hop's character is just so interesting!!

i have so many headcanons abt him and leon and sonia and like. everyone but <3 here are some hop thoughts thank u for indulging me <333

[misskikuwrites]

The Next Step Ch 1

Bede/Gloria (dressedinpinkshipping)

Tags: angst, fluff (i swear there will be fluff later), references to past assault, a lot of plot

Words: 5,295

-

Gloria ruffled her Arcanine’s cheeks, his tongue hanging languidly out the side of his mouth, and said quietly, “look after her for me, will you?” 

Arcanine gave an astute bark, snapping to attention. He changed from lazy, spoiled canine to alert and ready in an instant. Gloria pressed a kiss to Arcanine’s brow. Her stomach tied itself into knots, unease roiling inside her, as she stood and turned to her mother. 

“I’ll be fine,” Gloria’s mother said, accepting Arcanine’s Pokeball from her daughter. “I’m the one who should be worrying about you, not the other way around!”

Gloria’s mouth twisted. “I know, but… I’ll feel better if Arcanine stays with you. You’ll keep him out of his Pokeball as much as you can?” Arcanine leant his big head on Gloria’s hip, gazing up at her in hope of more pats. She scratched behind his ears automatically. 

“You know I can’t bring him into the shops,” Gloria’s mother said. “And I’m not sure the Wooloo down the street would appreciate him-” 

“Okay, okay, I get it!” Gloria huffed, throwing up her hands. “Just keep him around when you’re at home, then. He gets along with Munchlax well enough.” 

For a moment, when the two Pokemon had met, Gloria thought that Arcanine was going to make a chew toy out of Munchlax. Thankfully, Arcanine had decided against it, and soon the two had curled up on the rug for a nap. 

“And what about you?” Gloria’s mother asked. 

Gloria looked up from her Arcanine. “What about me?” 

“You’re doing all of this so that I’m safe, but what about you? Do you feel safe here?” 

Gloria didn’t know how to answer that. Something lurched in her stomach. “Of course I do. This is my home.” 

“It doesn’t have to be,” her mother said gently. 

“What?” Gloria gaped at her mother. “No, we’re not moving. Not because some asshole had it out for me.” She stood her ground, folded her arms. “You’ve spent years on the garden! You love this place! You can’t just- just leave all that work behind!” 

Gloria’s mother touched her arm. “I wasn’t talking about me.” 

“Then…?” Her heart plummeted. “No. You know I’m not leaving you. Ever.” 

“Hun-” 

“No, I made a promise. I can’t just… abandon you.” 

“Gloria, listen to me.” She gave her daughter’s arm a soft squeeze, her expression firm. Understanding, but not willing to budge. “I never wanted you to feel as though you had to give up your life because of me.” 

“I’m not-” 

“Just listen. Let me finish.” 

Gloria pursed her lips, but remained silent. 

“Do you really think it would make me happy to see you never move out, never fall in love or get married, because of a promise you made when you were a child?” 

Gloria’s gaze dropped to the floor. 

“I know you feel like you have this duty to stay with me, but isn’t it enough that we already lost one life? I don’t want you to put yours aside, to put your life on hold, because of me.” 

Something heavy sank in Gloria’s stomach. “But…” 

“Gloria, no matter what, nothing will ever take you from me.” Gloria’s mother wrapped her arms around Gloria, embracing her daughter in a hug. “If you move out, if you get married, that’s not you leaving me. That’s you growing up, living your own life.” 

Tears pricked Gloria’s eyes. “But I don’t… I don’t want to…” She sniffled, tried to blink away the tears. “What if I end up getting hurt? I don’t want to… lose anyone like that…” 

“Oh, hun.” Gloria’s mother gave her a squeeze. “Do you think I would’ve preferred to have never met your father? To have never fallen in love, to have never had you?” 

Gloria had no answer to that. 

“I know it hurts. Arceus, I know it hurts.” Her mother’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But the time I spent with him, loving him, having you, I would never for a moment give that up. Not for anything.” 

“Even if you knew what was going to happen?” Gloria wondered out loud. 

“Even then, I’d rather have those years with him than none at all.” 

Gloria closed her eyes at those words, letting the heat of her tears warm her cheeks as they fell.

-

The morning air was brisk as Gloria stepped outside, hiking the tartan scarf around her neck that little bit higher. She hadn’t hidden the bruises around her neck when confronting Elliot the day before, using them as a way to get him talking for the hidden cameras livestreaming the whole thing, but now, as she desperately wanted to leave that whole incident behind her, she opted for a scarf. Light enough not to press on her bruises and make them hurt, but sturdy enough that she didn’t have to keep securing it in place every few seconds. 

Gloria glanced up the street to where two teenage girls remained on guard. A Drednaw and Pelipper flanked them at the junction between Gloria and Hop’s house. They spotted Gloria, hopped off the fence, and bolted towards Wedgehurst. 

“Wait!” Gloria cried, the word leaving her mouth before she’d thought about what she was doing. The two girls froze. They exchanged worried looks as Gloria approached. 

“Um, we were just…” the one called Nicole stammered. She gestured sheepishly towards Wedgehurst. The other girl, Megan, stared at her boots. 

“Mum told me you two have been fending off reporters,” Gloria said. 

“Well…” Megan shot a look at Nicole. 

“It doesn’t make up for what you did,” Gloria said, “but… thank you.” 

She sped off towards Wedgehurst, leaving the two girls to their shock, and hailed the first Sky Taxi she came across without looking back. 

-

It was hard to believe it had only been two days since Gloria had last been in Motostoke’s Gym. The Star Tournament, the Opening Ceremony, it felt like it had been a lifetime ago. But, thankfully, it had only been two days. That meant the evidence Gloria was after was probably still here. She walked up to the counter, thinking back to what Bede had told her. 

“Champion Gloria!” the Staff Member behind the counter greeted her, his eyes flicking for a second to the scarf around her neck. “How can I help you?” 

She swallowed the nausea that built in her throat at the Staff Member’s glance, and gave him the ‘everything’s fine’ smile she’d tried to perfect in the mirror earlier. “I was wondering if I could view the CCTV from before the Star Tournament the other day?” she asked. 

He gave her a curious look, but allowed her behind the counter all the same. “Of course,” he said. “Is there anything in particular you’re after?” He brought up the CCTV on the computer, navigating to the date of the Star Tournament. The screen displayed footage from the various cameras around the Gym, both inside and outside. 

“Hmm… I think it’s a bit later than that… wait- there!” she jabbed a finger at the screen showing the waiting room. There stood Bede, a white envelope in his hands. “Can you go back a few seconds?” 

The footage rewound, and a League Staff Member with bright orange hair walked backwards to Bede, taking the envelope from him. 

“There- who’s that?” Gloria asked, pointing at the Staff Member on the footage. 

“That… looks like Jemma,” he said, before nodding with more confidence. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s Jemma. She was on duty that day. She should be on the doors today- you’d have passed her as you walked in.”

“Great! Thanks a lot!” Gloria said, hurrying out from behind the counter, and shot outside. Just as the Staff behind the counter had said, there was Jemma, standing tall outside the Gym. 

Gloria collected herself for a moment before she approached. “Hi, are you Jemma?” she asked, again flashing a smile as unsuspicious as she could. 

Jemma’s eyes, hidden behind her dark sunglasses, flicked to Gloria before recognition filled her face. “Oh! Champion Gloria!” she squeaked, jolting to attention. “What- What can I do for you?” A starstruck smile broke over her face. 

Gloria wondered for a second if Jemma’s smile was real, or put on to hide something. It seemed too bright. Too eager. “I was wondering if you remembered delivering a letter to Gym Leader Bede on the day of the Star Tournament?” Gloria asked. “That was two days ago-”

“Oh, yes! I remember that!” Jemma answered quickly. “The poor kid was so nervous, he couldn’t bring himself to deliver it!” she gave a sympathetic laugh. 

“Wait, someone gave you that letter to give to Bede?” 

Jemma nodded. “It was one of the Gym Challengers. Said he was a huge fan of Gym Leader Bede, and asked me to deliver it for him.” 

A Gym Challenger. Gloria’s heart flopped. “Do you remember what he looked like?” 

“He was, what, about 14, 15 years old? Short, too. With a mop of brown hair.” Jemma shrugged. “He was wearing the Challenger Uniform, so there’s not much else I can say.” 

Oh, Jemma had said enough. A memory flashed in Gloria’s mind of a young boy, a Gym Challenger, fitting that exact description. The boy who’d waited until everyone else had left. The boy who’d thrown accusations about Rose, about her battle with Leon, at her.

“Thank you,” Gloria said. “You’ve been a great help.” 

She turned to leave, to head back into the Gym, when Jemma called, “wait- um, Champion Gloria!” 

Gloria turned back to the Staff Member, to the notebook and pen that was thrust in her face. 

“I-I’ve been a fan of yours for ages!” Jemma squeaked. “Can- Can I get an autograph?” 

Gloria almost laughed. Her heart skittered in her chest as she signed, feeling as overwhelmed as Jemma looked as she handed the notebook and pen back. 

A fan. That’s all she was. Gloria’s head spun as she entered Motostoke’s Gym again. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to people suddenly declaring themselves as fans, suddenly asking for photos or autographs. It always left her feeling dizzy. Feeling giddy. She walked in a daze to the counter again, where the Staff Member greeted her with a tinge of confusion on his face. 

“Back so soon?” 

Gloria cleared her throat to snap herself back to reality. “You were right, it was Jemma,” she said. “So, my next question is, can I have a look at all the Gym Challengers who are enrolled for this year?”

The Staff Member raised an eyebrow and nodded. “If it were anyone else asking, I’d have to say that’d be a breach of confidentiality, but since you’re the Champion…” He let her behind the counter again. “Let me just pull them up… there you go!” He nodded to her and stepped back from the computer. 

“Thank you.” Gloria gave him a smile and began scrolling through the Challengers. 

“Has this got to do with…?” the Staff Member’s question trailed off, his eyes once again landing on her scarf for the briefest moment. 

“No,” Gloria said sharply. The word came out with enough force that the Staff Member stiffened. “At least, I don’t think so,” she added to soften the blow. 

“Right.” The Staff Member looked incredibly sheepish now. “I’ll just… leave you to it, then…” He stepped to the side and Gloria’s stomach dropped. 

She hadn’t meant to snap. Hadn’t meant to let memories of that night, of the day that followed, creep back into her mind. She scrolled through Challenger after Challenger, barely registering their profiles before continuing. She tried to concentrate on what she was doing, but her throat tightened. She itched to tug her scarf higher on her neck. 

Of course, the fact that everyone knew what had happened was her fault. It was her idea to stream the whole confrontation live on Nessa and Raihan’s instagram accounts. Elliot himself had made reference to the bruises, “his handiwork,” on Gloria’s neck. The whole of Galar knew what he’d done. 

And while that made Elliot a monster in the eyes of the world, it also painted Gloria as a victim. There was no escaping that. Nessa had said as much in the hospital after Gloria had detailed her plan. Gloria had accepted it, taken hold of the double-edged sword, and used it against Elliot. The recoil, however painful, was something she had to live with. She had to keep her head held high. Had to take the next step. She had to- 

Gloria stopped scrolling. There he was- the Challenger who’d given the letter to Jemma, the one who’d thrown accusations at Gloria. In his League Card, Samuel Johnson had his arms folded, a determined smile on his face. His brown eyes held a challenge. One that Gloria knew was levelled at her. 

“Is that who you’re looking for?” the Staff Member asked. He’d been watching in silence a few feet away. 

“Yup.” Gloria took a photo of the display before the blood drained from her face. “Endorsed by… Richard Murdoch…?” 

Elliot’s father. 

The Staff Member glanced at the info. “Huh, didn’t know Mr Murdoch gave out endorsements.” 

“He hasn’t before?”

“Not that I’m aware of. Pretty sure I’d remember if the wealthiest man in Galar had endorsed someone for the League Challenge.” 

Gloria’s mouth went dry. She remembered the letter of endorsement that Leon had handed her and Hop all those years ago.

What if… what if it the endorsement wasn’t from Richard Murdoch, but from someone who had access to him, someone who knew his signature, someone who wanted to destroy everything Gloria had, everything she loved- 

Gloria took a step back. She wasn’t thinking straight.

“Are there… do you have any more info on him?” Gloria asked, gesturing to the profile of Samuel on the screen. 

“Sure, all you have to do is… this.” The Staff Member clicked on the profile and it opened to reveal more details. His home address, age, date of birth, even his height was listed. 

What caught Gloria’s attention was the note about the trainer’s school in Hulbury he’d attended. It wasn’t much, but it was a lead. Gloria snapped another photo of the information before looking up the trainer’s school on her phone. 

She took a breath, gathered herself together, and gave the Staff Member a grateful smile. “Thank you so much, I really appreciate your help.” 

The Staff Member echoed her smile. “Not a problem! Anytime, Champion.” 

As Gloria left the Gym, confusion churned in her belly. She’d thought with Elliot arrested, the whole incident with him was behind her. The Gala, the assault, the confrontation that followed, she’d thought she could leave it behind, bury it in the deep recesses of her mind. How was it that he still had claws digging into her skin? She looked at the photo she’d taken of Samuel’s profile. He was just a kid. A kid who’d levelled accusations at her, sent an anonymous letter to Bede, who was probably endorsed for the Gym Challenge by a complete and utter creep, but he was still just a kid. 

She felt sick to her stomach thinking about it. Did he even know what sort of a monster Elliot was? 

Gloria sighed heavily. She had the information she was after, but what was she going to do with it? The trap that had been laid for her and Bede went deeper than she’d thought. 

Bede. Something skittered in her belly. She had a thought to tell him what she’d found out, but the heat pooling across her cheeks burnt it away in an instant. Unbidden memories of yesterday took over her mind. His words, his voice, echoing in her brain. 

“I want you to see me.”

Gloria hurried away from the Gym, down an alley where she could be alone, and leant her forehead against a brick wall. It felt like her whole face was ablaze. Burning, searing, with tortuous heat.

“All of me,” Bede’s voice continued in her mind. “And that includes my heart.”

Gloria bit back a muffled scream. It didn’t matter how hard she tried to suppress what had happened yesterday, again and again it shot back into her mind without warning. She couldn’t forget it, even if she wanted to. Bede had said that. He’d confessed. No matter how she tried to twist his words, the truth remained. There was only one meaning behind what he’d said. 

Bede was in love with her. 

Gloria’s legs buckled and she sank to the ground, feeling like her lungs were filled to the brim with Butterfree. Somehow, in the midst of her shock, her panic, the dread at seeing the heartbreak on Bede’s face yesterday, she’d managed to speak. She’d managed to plead for more time. 

But now… she didn’t know what to do.

How am I supposed to face Bede after that…?!

-

In the end, Gloria decided to leave the question of facing Bede for another time, and caught a Sky Taxi to Hulbury. If she was going to find any more information about this Samuel kid, then the Trainer’s School he attended was her best bet. It gave her something to do, something to focus on. For all she knew, Elliot could be manipulating this kid like he had manipulated her. Maybe… maybe he was just as much of a victim of Elliot’s schemes as she’d been. 

As Gloria stepped up to the doors of the Trainer’s School, she put that thought on the back burner. She wanted to give Samuel the benefit of the doubt, but her heart wasn’t entirely in it. He could be a victim like her, but the other option was just as likely. Just because he was a kid didn’t mean he was innocent. 

She shook that thought off, collected herself, and entered the building. Immediately upon opening the door, two dozen pairs of eyes shot to her. And chaos ensued. 

“It’s the Champion!” a child cried, and Gloria, barely halfway through the door, was surrounded by clambering, excited kids. She hadn’t thought this through at all. Their voices, their calls, jumbled together into a mess of noise. 

“Hey, hey! That’s not how we greet someone!” the teacher called, clapping her hands and silencing the swarm of children. “We don’t want to scare her off, do we?” 

A sheepish chorus of “no…” came from the kids.

“And what do we say to Miss Gloria?” 

Two dozen voices apologised, “sorry Miss Gloria..!”

“Now, get back to your seats while I have a chat with the Champion,” the teacher said, shooing the kids back to their spots while she gave Gloria an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry for that, it’s not often we get visitors like you, especially not on short notice. Or no notice at all.” She raised an eyebrow, curious but unfazed. 

“I, uh, didn’t realise a class was in session,” Gloria said. “I can come back another time…” 

The teacher just smiled. “Class, it’s time for an early recess! Why don’t you all head on outside?” 

There was a mixture of elation and groans, some eager for a break, others disappointed their time with the Champion was cut short, but in a few minutes, the children had vacated the classroom for the yard out the back. Through the door, Gloria spied a variety of baby Pokemon lounging on the grass or cozying up in little shelters. Munchlax, Togepi, a duo of Cleffa and an Igglybuff were what Gloria could spot before the door shut behind the last kid. 

“I’m Miss McCarthy,” the teacher began. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from the Champion?” She maintained a professional smile.

“Well…” Gloria got out her phone and brought up the picture she’d taken of Samuel’s profile, fighting the urge to clear her throat nervously. “I was wondering if you were the one who taught Samuel?” She held up her phone for Miss McCarthy to see. 

“Oh yes, Samuel. I remember him,” Miss McCarthy said, nodding. “I taught him for a few years- he graduated just last year.” 

Gloria almost sighed in relief. She’d found his teacher on the first attempt. “And what was he like?” she asked. “As a student?” 

Miss McCarthy opened her mouth to answer before pausing. “What is this about, may I ask? What business does the Champion have asking about a previous student of ours?” 

“Oh, it’s…” Gloria’s mind scrambled for a reason, for an excuse. “Official League business,” she said quickly. 

Miss McCarthy’s expression twisted into concern. “Of what kind?” 

“Well, you’re aware of how… unfair the admission process into the Gym Challenge can be,” Gloria began, rambling off the first thing that came into her head, “with endorsements often coming from the already privileged to a select number of Challengers…” 

Miss McCarthy nodded. “Oh, yes. The participants of the Gym Challenge are heavily skewed towards those who have connections.” 

“Right! Exactly!” 

“But what does this have to do with Samuel?”

Gloria swallowed. “Well, I’m doing a review of the participants this year, looking into their backgrounds, how they got their endorsements, that sort of thing.” It felt like her mind was spinning. Lie after lie springing forth from who knows where. “We- the League- are trying to come up with a way to make the selection process fairer. Maybe do away with endorsements altogether-” Now she was really digging herself into a hole. 

“Oh, that would be amazing!” Miss McCarthy chimed, clasping her hands together. “There are so many promising Trainers who find themselves locked out of the Gym Challenge because they can’t secure an endorsement.” 

“Right, so, that’s why I’m here to talk about Samuel,” Gloria said, trying to steer the conversation back on topic. “There’s only so much information available on his profile, and who knows him better than the very teacher who taught him at the Trainer’s School?” 

Miss McCarthy nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry for questioning you, you know how it is, we teachers can’t just blab about our students to anyone who comes asking.” 

“I understand,” Gloria said, despite feeling like she’d swallowed a bunch of knives. 

“Hmm, now what can I say about Samuel?” Miss McCarthy thought for a moment. “Well, he was a good kid. Bright, too. He had a knack for anything to do with Pokemon, and was a huge fan of Leon.” She gave a bright laugh, “but then again, who wasn’t?” 

“Did he… ever get into any trouble?” 

Miss McCarthy shook her head adamantly. “Oh no, of course not! Well, he’d get into arguments with the other kids on occasion - he could be quite stubborn when it came to Pokemon - but nothing ever came of it.” 

A weight dragged down Gloria’s stomach. She felt heavy. Nothing she was hearing explained Samuel’s behaviour, other than being a fan of Leon. “How did he get his endorsement?” 

“I’m afraid I have no idea,” Miss McCarthy said. 

“Then… how did he come to be at this school?” Gloria asked. She needed something more. 

“Oh, he was sponsored, I believe,” Miss McCarthy said, thinking back. “There are a few sponsorships running for disadvantaged kids, and Samuel won a position here.” 

“Who?” Gloria asked. Her heart thumped. Pounded. “Who ran the sponsorship?” 

It sounded like Miss McCarthy was underwater when she answered, “I believe it was Richard Murdoch.” 

There it was. The connection Gloria was after. 

“Are you alright?” Miss McCarthy asked gently. “You look a little pale.” 

“I-I’m fine.” Gloria shook herself out of her stupor, flashed a bright smile at the teacher. “That’s all I wanted to know, thank you.” 

She let herself out of the classroom before Miss McCarthy could say anything more.

-

Gloria felt sick to her stomach. Everything kept coming back to the Murdochs. The endorsement, the sponsorship, it was too much of a coincidence for her to brush it aside. The weight of what she’d learnt hung over her as she took a Sky Taxi home. She’d toyed with the idea of asking Miss Opal about Richard Murdoch, about the sponsorship, but that put her at risk of coming across Bede - and she wasn’t ready to deal with that just yet. 

In the meantime, she needed to think. She needed to figure out what to do next. She hadn’t told anyone what she was after. It was her own idea to go searching for whoever had set the trap that she and Bede had fallen for. Now that she thought about it, the letter handed to Bede, the Challenger accusing Gloria, it had happened the very night that Elliot had snuck into her house in order to- 

She didn’t want to think about what could have happened. What almost happened. She bit back the rising fear in her throat as the Sky Taxi landed outside her house. Her hands trembled, fumbled for the door, and she all about fell out through it in her desperation to get home. Despite being the middle of the day, Gloria shoved the front door open with a bolt of fear. Arcanine jolted awake at the sound. He leapt off the couch, ready to confront the intruder, and saw it was his Trainer. He bounded over to Gloria, jumping up to give her cheek a “welcome home” lick. 

“Perfect timing,” Gloria’s mother called from the kitchen. “There was a delivery for you. It’s in the lounge.” 

The thundering of Gloria’s heart eased at the sound of her mother’s voice. She calmed her shaky breathing, flexed her shaky hands, and tried to tell herself that everything was fine. Elliot was behind bars. No one was going to hurt her. 

“Thanks!” Gloria replied when she had enough control over her voice so it wouldn’t quaver. She turned to the lounge and gaped at the mound of flowers and letters propped up against the wall. Bouquet after bouquet, card after card, Teddiursa plushies holding hearts that had “get well soon” embroidered on the front, there were more gifts piled here than Gloria had ever received before. 

“What- What is all this?!” Gloria asked. 

“I think they’re gifts from the people worried about you,” her mother said. 

“But… there’s so much!” 

“Didn’t you say the livestreams got millions of views?” 

“I did, but…” Gloria stared at the gifts. A lump wedged in her throat. 

“There’s a lot of people that care about you,” her mother said, “and I think they wanted you to know that.” 

Gloria knelt in front of the mound, picking up an envelope. “To the Champion,” was handwritten on the front. She teased open a card attached to a bouquet of daisies, reading “To our Champion Gloria,” and a heartfelt message wishing her well inside. Each letter carried a similar message. Praising her courage, hoping she’s okay, telling her not to give up. All had a variation of “the Champion,” or “our Champion,” some with her name, some without. A few even had “our Hero,” or “the Hero of Galar.” 

At some point, she began to cry. Tears plopped onto the card she was reading, her vision blurring. Her mother came and sat beside her. Together, they read every card. Opened every letter. 

“What am I going to do with all these flowers?” Gloria asked at one point, when the reality that she’d affected the lives of this many people didn’t feel so overwhelming.

“You leave that to me,” her mother said. She planted a gentle kiss on Gloria’s temple. “Don’t worry about it.” 

Gloria sniffled, giving her mother a thankful nod as she reached for a letter that had been underneath some of the gifts. As she opened it, a photograph fell out. 

It was a picture of her and Rose. Gloria remembered the moment captured in the shot - Oleana had insisted that Gloria meet Rose at a restaurant in Hulbury after she’d defeated Nessa. Sonia had been there, but the shot was carefully cropped so that it appeared like Gloria was meeting Rose by herself. 

Everything else dropped away as Gloria scanned the letter. It was just as she’d thought. The letter had been typed, just like the one handed to Bede. It read, “I have more proof to come. Galar will soon see you as the fraud you are.” 

That was it. Two simple lines. 

Gloria’s stomach twisted. Was this a letter from a desperate fan of Leon who was unable to accept his defeat, or was there something deeper, something darker, at play?

“Where did they even get this picture?” Gloria’s mother scoffed, studying the photo. “Did you know someone had photographed you?” 

Gloria breathed out a heavy sigh. “No. They must’ve seen us from the docks. Whoever took the photo was outside.” 

“I’m not sure what they think this photo proves,” her mother said. “Everyone knows this would’ve been taken during your Gym Challenge.” 

“And that’s the point.” She wished she’d never taken up Oleana’s suggestion. Wished she’d walked right past the restaurant. Wished she’d never spoken to Rose at all. “It shows I met with Rose, back when he was the Chairman. They’re… trying to prove that I was a part of Rose’s plan from the start.” 

Gloria’s mother shook her head in disbelief. “But you weren’t the one endorsed by him!” 

That comment stung, but Gloria kept the pain from her face. “All part of the ‘plan,’ I supposed they’d say,” Gloria said. “After all, it does look… convenient, that Hop and I just happened to be able to call Zacian and Zamazenta, the Legendary Pokemon from centuries ago, right after Leon was knocked out by Eternatus.” 

“Oh, hun, don’t say that…” Her mother wrapped an arm around Gloria’s shoulder, giving her a sideways hug. 

Gloria relented to the hug, resting her head on her mother’s shoulder. It was too easy to twist what had happened into a conspiracy. She could see how someone who adored Leon like Samuel would believe it. 

“Hmm?” Gloria noticed another letter stuck under the gifts right where she’d pulled the obviously-from-Samuel letter. This one had a crimson “R” on the front. She opened it up and read the scrawled writing aloud. “The stunt you pulled yesterday was impressive. I hope you are as entertaining as that footage suggested. I can’t wait to see how you live up to your name, Hero of Galar. I’ll enjoy making you pay for what you did. Love, R.” 

“Did these two come together?” Gloria asked, holding up the “R” letter and Samuel’s. “They’re not stamped, or in envelopes.” 

Gloria’s mother frowned. “I’m not sure how they would’ve been delivered, then.” 

The red “R” on the front of the handwritten letter held Gloria’s attention. “Do you recognise this?” 

“No, why?” 

Gloria stared at it, twisting her lips in thought. “I swear I’ve seen it before…” 

“Could be a logo from one of your sponsors?” 

“No, I don’t think so…” 

“Well, what about someone who’s name starts with ‘R?’” 

Gloria’s heart thumped. Richard Murdoch. But it didn’t make sense. From what she’d heard, Richard Murdoch had been appalled by his son’s actions. The sender of the letter wanted revenge. She tried to think of something she’d done, something that would make someone come after her- and then her mind screeched to a halt. “Rose…?” it came out in a whisper. No. It couldn't be. He was in prison.

Unless… Unless he’d figured out a way…

Gloria shot to her feet. She needed to know. 

“Gloria?” her mother called as she whirled and headed for the door. “Where are you going?” 

“I need to make sure this isn’t from him,” she said without looking back. If Rose was involved in all of this- Gloria readied her Corviknight, climbing onto her Pokemon’s back and taking to the sky. 

She wouldn’t let him get away with it.

[prof-arjun]

Pokemon Sword by Tumblr decides my fate

Journey to the first badge: Masterpost

The text never ended, and while that was understandable with SwSh being the start of Gen 8. That makes repeat playthroughs a little difficult in the hand-holdy feel of the endless blocks of text and seemingly cookie-cutter 2-D characters. Like, Hop, hunny, c'mon. Can you not mention pages in your legend for five seconds?

But with our little Sobble named Xion, I tried to race through the opening establishing plot. Catching a Wooloo and naming him Meep to avoid the catching tutorial and telling Hop that no, this isn't my first time in a Pokemon Center. Cause, honestly, thank Arceus they added that... if only they'd keep it in every single game moving forward...

With Leon giving me plenty of Pokeballs, I instantly looked for a Nickit and Yamper, naming them Gigi and Lola respectively. After that, I caught one of every Pokemon I could find across Route 1 and 2. At least, I think I did. I wasn't looking at a guide.

Having done that before challenging Hop at Professor Magnolia's place meant I didn't have anything new to catch during his little "challenge". And the purple-haired twerp had the AUDACITY to be sassy about it as if I wasn't completing my Dex faster than his little butt ever could.

But I digress, it was time to get into the Wilds of Galar. Because you know the train just has to run into the one flock of Wooloo for no other reason than plot. And that was really the best thing ever as I poked my head into every Raid Den I could.

Well, sort of. I only caught the first 12 non-repeating Pokemon I found before moving over to the Isle of Armor. Klara gave me a little trouble since my Pokemon were barely over level 10, but I was able to win out in one attempt. And trying to run around to the various Dens on my way to the Dojo.

Honey was an absolute doll and Mustard was his usual partially shady self. But the Slowpoke he trained caused Xion to evolve into Drizzile. I still got the little G-Max Bulbasaur and named him Hashi. Since I didn't need to get Kubfu just yet, I stopped at the second trial. But when we get to the first gym town, we will finish that off.

But after repeating the 12 Raid Den scourge, I went on to the Crowned Tundra. Peony tromped me soundly and called me a softie. Like, sir, I could have been so much worse for you if I wanted to be. You're just lucky I need to get into the Tundra right now...

Ignoring the Dynamax Adventures for now, I ran screaming through the Tundra. Kinda loving and hating the new caves that can be spelunked to your heart's content, but the frickin' Dens hidden in the cave systems... Please, make those easy to find and leave the spelunkable caves to hold something more interesting, please? Rare spawns would be nice.

Though, speaking of Raid Dens, adding a Mienfoo named Mulan to the squad just to help round out weaknesses and give a nice, hard-hitting baby girl to make things interesting.

While setting up for future events, I went ahead and started grinding out that Pokedex and getting Madara the Kubfu to level 30 so we could climb the Tower of Darkness. Very simple projects in theory... but man was that a task and a half. Though I can't express how good it felt to whoop Bede instantly with Gigi. So many memories of my original disdain justified and rectified with one team member.

First of all, Klara and her Poison Types were a trial in and of themselves twice over since I had no real counters, other than Hashi clearing away the spikes. But I eventually got everything sorted out and then came training...

In the Crowned Tundra, I proceeded to complete a Dynamax Adventure and keep an Obstagoon. Suicune knocked out three Pokemon after the Hatterene before it had knocked out one but thankfully you don't need to beat it to progress the story. Instead, I used the Obstagoon to battle around the Tundra, running errands for a creepy Harvest King. (No, I don't like Calyrex... you see what it does to Peony? Bruh better keep his little noggin' to himself.)

But with all that cleared away, I flew back to Turrfield and the Gym Challenge... with a team in its early twenties and more than over-leveled. Add in the fact that herding Wooloo is rather simple and you have a recipe for a quick Gym badge right out of the gate.

Went in with Meep being paralyzed, but he fought through and took down the Gossifleur with a series of Headbutt. Then I swapped for Gigi knowing that I would be Dynamaxing along with Milo and his Eldegoss. Though side note; why didn't they give Milo an Applin for the first battle? It isn't a very strong Pokemon and would add a smidge of diversity to his team. Heck, add a Grookey so he has something other than just the same two Pokemon in his first battle.

Either way, we got the first badge, now to poke into some Raid Dens and hold a couple more polls...

Team:

Xion- Drizzile

Meep- Wooloo

Hashi- Bulbasaur

Lola- Yamper

Gigi- Nickit

Mulan- Mienfoo

[gcttacatchemall]

@faeriefound​ || cont? >yes

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

[🥀] Well now they certainly weren’t going to tell the Chairman that. After all, it would spell bad news for both of them.

“I may have made sure that your room was fully stocked with your favourite food in case he decides to ground you as punishment.”

[480pfootage]

SWSH Characters as Undertale and Deltarune songs

It's very long as I also added a reasoning on why i chose the song but-

I'll be making a youtube video with the songs n also sum small illustrations later probably...

Sonia - Lost Girl or Ferris Wheel Both songs are pretty similar and do play right after each other in the game, but idk they both fit Sonia. A feeling of waiting for someone to come back or to get noticed. Maybe wanting your childhood back to when everything was okay could be like how Leon and her just got further apart from each other as Leon continued being the champion. I know that Sonia is a more upbeat person but eh.

Leon - Song That Might Play When You Fight Sans Alright Toby Fox did work on his battle tower song so- Anyways- The song reminds me of when you’re battling Leon in the champion battle. There’s a sense of “oh shit I gotta win this” but still being playful and trying to give a show of not being phased (and also being cool for the fans watching in the stadium). Also the leitmotif of Papyrus being added in is just mwah. I could pull a lot of connections with Hop and Papyrus so just the connection between them in the song is yeah.

Rose - Wrong Enemy !?

This picture. Just this picture. You silly little fuck, Rose. (Also just wanted to add how Rose gives me Asgore vibes but he will never be as cool or as divorced as him).

Oleana - Attack of the Killer Queen Reminds me of the big battle you have with her to intercept Leon and Rose’s meeting. A sense of urgency and a sense to just make sure the player doesn’t get to interrupt them. Also it gives me of a slowly ticking bomb of Oleana exploding her anger onto u.

Victor - Alphys?? I’m not very sure for Victor tbh. I see him as someone who is shy, doesn’t speak much (haha silent protag), but none of the songs really convey that so he’ll have to be stuck with Alphys. Both him and Gloria are the protags so.. Nothing really canon about them and their pokespe vers…. scary.

Gloria - She’s Playing Piano  I like to imagine her happily (and aggressively) playing piano from inside her home and it can be heard all throughout Postwick

Hop - Field of Hopes and Dreams He is literally a field of hopes and dreams (that you crush). Upbeat sorta song n really gives that hopeful feeling Hop had before going thru character development (and also the admiration for Leon). I almost chose “Bird That Carries You Over a Disproportionately Small Gap” as an analogy for his journey but this song fits more.

Marnie - Spider Dance??? I'm so sorry I couldn't think of one with her. Spider Dance reminds me of battling Marnie n I guess her goal of being champion throughout the game. The little note stairs at the beginning of the song really fit her I think.

Bede - Smart Race or It’s Pronounced Rules Are you telling me this guy doesn’t remind you of Berdley. Especially during Berdley’s “Bluebird of Misfortune” part. With Bede being an orphan and all and also getting abandoned by Rose, he probably just wants validation and to do things right. But also “It’s Pronounced Rules” because the regal vibe just fits him during his snobbish asshole phase

Milo - You Can Always Come Home I would’ve picked “Home” for him, but idk this version speaks out more to me. It just sounds more homely?? Plus the new leitmotifs from Deltarune also add really nicely to it (not to mention I headcannon Milo to be able to play guitar n the little squeaks the guitar gives in this one rlly makes me think of him playing it to his wooloos)

Nessa - Mysterious Place Gives a very watery feel. We don’t know much about Nessa and she’s usually calm (only losing her cool when losing a battle but quickly recovering) so I think it fits. I would’ve chosen “Waterfall” but I don’t really think Undyne’s(?) or the Ruin’s leitmotifs fit her.

Kabu - Uwa!! So HEATS!!♫  I’m very on the nose with this one aren’t I. It just gives very old man vibes okay I’m sorry. Just him sitting in a hot spring with a lil towel on his head and this funky little tune playing. 

Bea - Stronger Monsters The song gives a very fighting game vibe and also the determination Bea has to become stronger. Also I feel like it could go over a training montage of her or somethin (with Machamp definitely in it).

Allister - Darkness Falls The chimes(?) give off a very Allister vibe. The song plays if you choose to give up after dying in Deltarune n I think that really tells of the trauma Al went thru to get his little ahoge ghost powers, though he didn’t give up in the end. Also just want to mention “Ghouliday” for him. Yeah. Don’t ask.

Opal - Oh! Dungeon Chaotic. Scary. @pechadream has inspired me to think of Opal as somewhat like Mettaton. The quizzes, puzzles, and dramatism that these two give are just…….. Yeah. The intensity of this song reminds me of Opal, very pink.

Melony - A Town Called Hometown Melony’s a mom so the feeling of homeliness is just really apparent with her. I like the little sprinkly noises in the song since it reminds me of snow and Melony is an ice type leader n all. Plus the leitmotifs of “Don’t Forget” during the “Don’t forget, I’m with you in the dark..” part in the song just- it’s just Melony and Gordie’s relationship okay- All the unconditionally love even with them arguing, yeah.

Gordie - Dogbass or Death by Glamour Gordie is a very eccentric guy, very cool guy also. Seen by how he backflips n does all those cool gymnastic tricks I think it fits in like a cool entrance song or something lol. Also I can see Gordie just jamming out to the little tune before striking a pose at the end. Death by Glamour is also something I can see Gordie jamming to. He is stirking poses any chance he gets, he is so cool. (also imagining him being dramatic to the song’s drops n stuff are just mwah).

Piers - Susie Includes a guitar, very rock and cool. Could’ve picked Vs. Susie but that has too many instrumentals and would’ve made it “too much work” for Piers. Sounds like a cool hero swooping in to save the day (post-game?)

Raihan - My Castle Town Okay this is probably not accurate at all but it’s my post I get to do what I want. I can see Raihan listening to this as he reads his books n studies about battling and history up in Hammerlocke castle. It’s not really the “battle side” of him and more of him just being him when he’s alone and not having to put up his persona. Also I just really love this song (I was top 1% of Toby Fox’s listeners because of this song on Spotify lol).

[bedeion-legion]

alright gays, its headcanon time

Gladion (note, im going off of anime gladion and not game gladion) - Asexual/Homoromantic - Trans FTM, who tf names their kid “Gladion”. im a trans guy, i can spot a trans name for miles - that red bit on his hoodie? its his red chest binder, ofc - His bangs are so whack because he had to cut his own hair, the more shaved bits of his hair are because he messed up and shaved off too much on the side and decided to just roll with it - He’s probably around 15 years old from my calculations - *slaps back of head* this bad boy can fit so many mental health problems and trauma (def has anxiety, depression, and insomnia at the very least) - absolutely helps Lillie braid her hair - he gave Lillie all his girly clothes, including the hat that Lillie wears all the time - He doesn’t usually show it around other people, but he has a strong love for pokemon and cares for them a lot. If he was by himself and a snom happily wriggled up to him, he would probably sob profusely while holding it - While he can be scary as hell and could absolutely beat the shit out of you, he’s secretly a lot softer than he likes to admit. He cares a lot for the people he’s comfortable around and would absolutely pick a fight for them - He really doesn’t like taking his hoodie off, even in the hot and humid Alola air. How he hasn’t died of heat stroke is a wonder - He’s incredibly smart and can quickly learn things, but guys, he hasn’t been in school for like an entire year. He’ll be able to debate complicated philosophical and social problems but ask him how to calculate the area of a sector and his brain completely breaks Bede - Asexual/Panromantic - Trans FTM but i think we all knew that one lmao, bro out here wearing the trans flag - Opal helped him feel more confident in his gender identity - He’s definitely way more thankful for Opal taking him in than he says. He may complain about her but he can’t help but thank her for actually being a good parental figure in his life IM LOOKING AT YOU, ROSE- - Gender norms are dead, Bede killed them - Hes probably a twitch streamer tbh - He has a snom that he doesn’t use in battle and instead just lets roam around the house. Its name is Snowcone (Whenever Gladion visits Bede, he usually steals Snowcone by placing it on his head. He’ll just keep it there until Bede walks into his room looking for Snowcone) - His hair is EXTREMELY soft, like a wooloo. Gladion likes to use Bede’s head as a pillow and Bede just has to deal with it - Every Saturday, all the teen Galarian gym leaders get together to go get boba and spill tea. Bede will occasionally drag Gladion along if Gladion is visiting Galar - He definitely says he’s a lot smarter than he actually is, but he’s still very smart. He’s pretty good at assessing situations and problem solving, which ironically he uses to piss people off Bedeion (Bede x Gladion) - Everyone thought that their competitive and rude exteriors would clash way too much between each other for them to get along, but plot twist! Because their trauma and personalities are so similar, they actually understand each other a LOT on an emotional level and get along really well. It still takes a while for them to gain trust in each other, of course, but they never have trouble getting along. Hell, I’d think it would be incredibly rare for them to fight about anything, even less anything serious - Bede was absolutely the first one to say that he had a crush on the other. Gladion would be internally panicking WAY too much to be able to say anything first - INDEPENDENCY IN RELATIONSHIPS ARE IMPORTANT AND WE SUPPORT THIS IN THIS HOUSEHOLD. while these two absolutely would be affectionate to each other after they gain trust in each other, they’re both different people!!!! with different lives!!!! they’re able to still do their own thing while loving and supporting each other!!!! - if they ever battled against each other in the Galar gym challenge, you better believe that it’ll be the most intense pokemon battle Galar has ever seen and property damage is inevitable. They cheer for each other when the other matches go down but as soon as they’re put against each other, their competitiveness activates and they can and will murder each other (affectionate) - Whenever they’re not visiting each other, they try and video-chat each other very often, usually at the end of the day

[cherryroselock22]

Out of curiosity, how would you describe the dynamic between Bede and Hop in the context of their romantic relationship? I think of that one drawing where Hop holds Bede's head in his hands and I crack up at the thought of Hop seeing Bede as an especially disgruntled wooloo

Hi hello i’ve been waitin for this ask forever. ALSO I WANNA SAY THANK YOU!1 i love getting asks like this (two ship charts under cut n explanation if you're interested)

The non-detailed way I see their dynamic is basically just that, grumpy x sunshine. Whenever I think about em I just think about that post that reads ‘’Hop and his boyfriend whom he needs to fight with constantly’’

But I do have some more in-depth thoughts/headcanons on their relationship, I have been hyperfixatin hard on em for the past 9 months;

To me, Bede’s the more physically affectionate, or clingy to be more accurate. He keeps affection in public at a minimum cause well, you know gossip travels fast. But in private? He’s constantly seeking out Hop’s attention. At first he was awkward about hugging n stuff, getting overwhelmed easily, which is why Hop waited for him to seek it out but he eventually got more comfortable and now Hop can’t sit down without him laying down on him.

Out of the two of them, I think that (surprisingly) Hop is the most touch starved, he always gives affection without receiving much himself. I think that at some point, Bede realized this and it’s half the reason for why he’s so clingy.

They bicker a lot, at some point it just becomes a love language. Bede’s still a little bit of a jerk and Hop has to keep him in check. I like to imagine Bede is flustered easily n Hop loves to take advantage of that.

I think that Hop is usually the one planning dates and hangouts, it’s either that or he shows up at Bede’s door at 11 pm with roses out of nowhere. He also almost always insists on paying. In turn, Bede randomly sends him gifts. I definitely think Bede spoils Hop

Even though Bede’s taller, and Hop’s shirts are too wide and short for her, he steals Hop’s clothes all the time. Hop keeps losing shirts. If you see him without his jacket means that Bede probably has it.

Hop fidgets with Bede’s hair methinks, he likes to run his hands through it and occasionally braid it. Reminds him of a wooloo lol.

I also think Bede is very easily jealous, not to a possessive extent but it is very clear when she’s jealous. She’ll glare daggers to anyone who’s a little too close to Hop and will act very affectionate towards him in front of said person

Also I just think Bede’s smitten with Hop to the degree it becomes everyone’s problem. Hop might have fallen first but Bede fell harder. Like. Idk I just think that Bede gets attached to people way too easily but acts like he doesn’t while Hop is the opposite way

Also I’d be very funny is Hop’s dubwool was borderline homophobic towards Bede (I have a hc that dubwool is very overprotective of Hop lol, he does not let anyone near him). Bede reaches to grab Hop’s hand and is instantly tackled by dubwool. I have this scene in my mind where they’re both up in a tree and when they’re about to kiss, Hop’s dubwool just begins to tackle said tree non-stop.

(Applying my gender hcs woo). Even though Hop’s not really a guy, Bede still refers to him as his boyfriend. Hop also refers to Bede as his girlfriend as much as he can to fluster her or try to cheer her up.

I find it funny to imagine Bede being horrified upon figuring out he has a crush on Hop. Also also Bede cooks for him a lot. Usually just sweets or baked goods since that's what he knows what to do best.

I think that the confession was a disaster. Like they were probably hanging out, Bede’s just starin at Hop not payin attention at all and without thinkin blurts out a ‘you’re pretty’ or something like that. Cue panic and Hop tryin to get a direct answer and Bede just denying everything. It works out somehow

I think Hop’s mum would like Bede, Leon would not lol. Opal is supportive not only cause Hop is a good match for him but also because Bede can’t stay at the gym all the time, Opal has to kick him out sometimes.

Movin onto the angst stuff:

I think that Hop would struggle with saying ‘I love you’ while Bede would say it too easily.

Hop is very observant, he notices when there’s a slight change in Bede’s behavior and when she’s nervous. Bede isn’t as observant and is usually a little awkward when it comes to comfortin Hop

I think both Hop n bede have scars. Bede has scars on his hands from the gym challenge and digging through caves to get wishin stars. He also has a light yet constant tremble to his hands, aka his hands are always trembling, can’t control it (I also have this and I get to choose which character to give it to). While Hop generally has scars from wounds he’s picked at, he has them primarily in his arms but some in his legs too. He also has a burn scar from eternatus.

I think Hop has low self-esteem and doesn’t think he’s a good person. I definitely imagine there’s times were he feels like he isn’t worthy or deserving of the affection Bede gives him. I also think his intrusive thoughts (I hc him as having intrusive thoughts cause I do lol) don’t help. Bede does his best to try to distract him from it

That’s all I have rn cause I’m sleepy n also my mom is yelling at me to go to sleep lol, have some charts I did. SORRY IF THIS IS KINDA RANTY, I’M NOT GOOD WITH WORDS

[xbunnybunz]

in the city of wyndon [hop x reader]

Summary: Hop is your best friend, and there's absolutely nothing you wouldn't give him.

Genres: Angst, Fluff, Friends to lovers

Date: May 2, 2020

-----

The bright lights of the stadium shone directly onto you, blinding in their intensity. The sands in the field shifted under your feet, the cascade of silky sand contrasting sharply with your pounding heart and blood-rushed ears. Each time your pokemon lands a hit, you take a step back in what you could only describe as sinking dread.

What were you doing here?

The crowd screams loudly, pulsing, alive- and you feel like you’ve been boxed into a death match, again.

You can’t look up into the audience without their faces blending together, their roars sounding monstrous and heavy with bloodlust. Dozens of drones hum loudly and sail above your head like war planes, reminding you of the world’s scrutiny. Millions of eyes all bearing down on you and all your pokemon, and Hop. Your best friend.

Dust rises from the stadium like storm clouds as he calls out attacks, and each blow sends a gust of warm air into your face.

You feel like a monster.                                                      

Does he, too?

The only thing you can see clearly are his golden eyes. You can see the air of confidence and unwavering strength weighing on him like heavy robes, that same façade he slips into every morning in the wake of the rising sun, quietly, fearfully, shamefully.

The audience loves the story of underdog trainers becoming heroes. It reminds them of themselves, Sonia had once told you. Everybody wanted to be somebody.

Strangers live vicariously through you two. Stories of two friends, both meek trainers from the same nowhere town, were whispered wherever you traveled. You and Hop found it somewhat novel to be icons in the beginning, though the retellings of each battle you and him fought began to sound foreign, and barren on the tongues of strangers far and wide.

The scrutiny had worn the both of you down. You had both shifted from being icons to becoming spectacles for entertainment.

The public glorification of the winner and shunning of the defeated sat lumbering in your minds whenever battle was mentioned, and the rumbling of your pokeballs eager to fight acted as a harbinger of worse to come. The chat of savagery owed to your battles with Hop dragged at your feet day by day, like shackles weighing you down resolutely.

The tale of two old friends turned to gut each other in battle was far more interesting than the underdog story, and broadcasts were all too quick to pick up on the reception. And so that’s what you two had become in the eyes of the public, half of them cheering you on while the rest sought to tear you down.

Both your names were all over the news, your characters brandished so thoroughly that you could no longer recognize yourself on the screen. Your story had been written for you before you had the chance to live through it. Every step you took was only to fulfill the forecast the media had championed you to become, and just like everyone watching you, you sought to chase unattainable perfection.

Slowly, the sound of you and Hop’s names on wagging tongues began to haunt you like a dreary nightmare you could not awaken from.

Debate of who was stronger, who was the fan favorite, who would win, and who had wasted their time seeped into the edges of your lives- staining it dark with the desire to come out victorious, along with the shameful urge to escape from the ever-smoldering spotlight.

Even your moments of strength were overturned and exploited. As you and Hop scaled the ladder to become stronger trainers and pursue your dreams, each reel released to television showed only the strongest and weakest moments you both dared to display, turning the two of you into husks of legends so mammoth you could only hide behind them. And so you hid.

This was never what you wanted.

Though everyone seemed to think you and Hop were superhuman, looking at him, you could only see your dearest friend and his little Wooloo guiding you through thick grass years ago, before you had your own pokemon. Maybe even more than just a friend, you had sometimes dared to think. His earnest drive was so strong you felt it resonate in your heart, thrumming painfully at the inability to express itself despite proximity.

But it wasn’t possible, you had thought to yourself one late and somber night, the dim glow of the television casting soft shadows in your room.

It was selfish, you thought as you embraced Hop, who was crying silently into your arms, every sob shaking his frame chipping away at your heart.

The news reporter replayed a clip of Hop’s earlier battle with Bede, never failing to capture every flash of frustration and disappointment on Hop’s face as Bede triumphed, broadcasting his human shame for all to see.

“Will Challenger Hop ever live up to his brother and crowned Champion, Leon’s name? Or will he prove once and for all that skill requires work and not just family? Stay tuned to watch Challenger Hop face off against his friend-”

The TV screen blackened, and a seal of silence draped across the room.  You quietly put down the remote and rest a hand on Hop’s head, combing through his dark, disheveled hair with cold fingers.

You feel him tremble and close your eyes, exhaling softly into the expanse of the night.

From then on, camera crew who flock to you asking about your victory were met only with an icy wall of silence and blank looks. Fans who cheered for you and implored you to win the next match were also ignored. How could you?  How could you feed yourself into this endless cycle that served only to fuel the egos of strangers, and add to the insecurity that only you had seen Hop buckle to behind closed doors?

You shut people out, and fans were quick to speculate on this. Word went around quickly that fame had changed you, and you had a good bitter laugh at the idea that they ever knew who you were.

Hop offered comfort in the night, a weary hand placed on your shoulder, whispering warm words as you stared out the hotel window bleakly, peering sadly into the city alight with life and bustle that echoed deafeningly in the dim hotel room.

In the day, Hop had taken to the light and shouldered the role you refused to uphold. He had become the young and voracious trainer everyone yearned for, and you quickly fell out of favor. Fansigns with your name were turned over and used to display Hop’s name instead, crowds surging with energy and disagreement whenever you took him down in another match.

Uneasiness wasn’t easy to read in his eyes, as he had learned well from his brother how to shine in the limelight. But you knew from the way his eyebrows drew together slightly, how his shoulders pulled into his body- you knew that his worries were reaching its peak. After all, how could the trainer who had fallen out of favor be the one to win the challenge?

News anchors made room for programs every morning to discuss the latest pokemon matches between the four up-and-coming trainers, you, Hop, Beedee, and Marnie, and there would only ever be discourse about whether or not you had deserved to win.

Leon and Chairman Rose sympathized with you, knowing that the scrutiny and gossip that came with fame was eating you away. Leon called after a particularly bad case of media thrashing, and recommended you try to work on public appearance by showing audiences what good friends with Hop you were.

You thanked him, but didn’t plan on taking him up on the offer. You and Hop both knew you were friends, and that should’ve been enough. You didn’t want to ruin the sanctity of your friendship with him by allowing the public to exploit it, even if it meant having a little bit of peace.

Chairman Rose summoned you a few days later and though Hop had wished to accompany you, you had to decline as per the Chairman’s orders.

In that large, white and sparkling office, he told you with a smile that the public eye was trained on you, and was extremely unhappy. You had known that for a long time now, but in that moment, you felt small in the red leather chair in the office that overlooked the world. The chairman shook his head, and for a glimmer of a second you might have imagined pity in his strange eyes.

“The people are cruel.” He said, turning to look down upon the city of Wyndon. “They only know how to take sides.”

You watch him fold his arms behind his back, a flashy designer watch catching the light offensively. “I’m sure you know who they’re cheering for.”

You realize then why Chairman Rose asked you to come alone, and feel weaker than ever when you catch yourself wishing Hop was here to defend you.

The days drag on.

Each battle you have with Hop ends the same, but you feel no satisfaction from beating him like you used to. When he congratulates you now, he makes sure to monologue about how important it is to not give up on his dreams, but you’re not sure if he’s even talking about himself anymore.

The night before the big tournament, you lock your hotel room door and pretend to not hear him when he knocks.  You lie still in your bed and listen to him tossing and turning in the bed next door, not sleeping even after he stops rolling around daybreak.

But the both of you have finally made it this far. You had beat Marnie and Hop had finally beat Beedee, making you the last two challengers standing in the stadium the size of your humble hometown, down to both your last pokemon.

The battle had been arduous and tiring, considering neither of you had a good night’s sleep yesterday. The bright lights bounced off the sand on the floor and stung your eyes. The unforgiving chanting coming from the stadium booths reverberated in your head and made your temples pound painfully.

Hop recalled his pokemon and activated his dynamax band, the cheers of his fans exponentially rising and shaking the court in their fervor. You follow in suit, withdrawing your very first pokemon and remembering how much it had grown since Leon had introduced you in the courtyard. With a hefty throw, your pokemon is released from the confines of the large pokeball, landing heavily on its feet and shattering the gravel underfoot.  Debris flies haphazardly and a large gust of wind charged with power blows past you. It screeches a monstrous battle cry at Hop’s gigantamaxed pokemon, who returns the sentiment and bellows throatily.

Hop’s last pokemon was also the one Leon had given him, and though it was strong, you had a huge advantage over him because of types.  You catch his eye from across the battlefield and he gives you a smile and a wink of reassurance. You shake your head, and wonder why he never learns from his past mistakes.

He orders an attack on your pokemon, and when the blow lands, It’s powerful enough to kick sand up off the floor to whisk into a storm in the air. You know your pokemon has enough stamina to survive one more hit- this was your chance to take him down with your signature move.

When the clamor from the attack dies down, you can hear the crowd chanting Hop’s name. Even he looks surprised, glancing at them with his mouth agape.

The world seems to stop moving for a second, even the sandstorm grinding to a halt as you watch Hop turn to smile at you, honey eyes gleaming with pride and more genuine happiness than you’ve seen from him in a long time. You can’t hear him, but you see his mouth move to form the words.

They’re finally cheering for me.

You feel a lump rise in your throat and bow your head and stare at your shoes, your heartbeat slow and loud in your ears. If you thought you had it bad, then what about poor Hop, who had been in his brother-the Champion's- shadow for all of his life? To be compared to not only your rivals, but your very own flesh and blood? You think back to all the nights he blinked back tears when talking about his own future compared to his brother's, and wonder how he hadn't crumbled under the pressure years ago.

You try to calm yourself, but realize you were never nervous. You can hear the crowd murmuring, wondering why you hadn’t called out a move yet.

You think about what the Chairman’s words, and they bounce back and forth in your head as you stare at all the pokeballs on your belt- all your pokemon that have worked so hard to get you here, all the training that you had put them through to be the best of the best. The cheering of the crowd ebbs into your thoughts, and you look skyward, the sun beaming down and into the stadium and warming your cold face.

You turn to your pokemon and call a move that immediately sends the crowd reeling. Hop looks confused too, dry lips parted and not daring to exhale for fear this is a dream. His hazel eyes shone with disbelief, flooded with relief and complete and utter betrayal.

Your pokemon turns to you with an expression that mirrors gentle disappointment, and you turn away, heart aching. You close your eyes as you hear it soaring into the air, far beyond sight. As soon as it had disappeared, it remerges from the clouds, roaring through the air like a jet plane and colliding violently with Hop’s pokemon.

The announcer’s words sound distant despite being blasted over the speakers- “That wasn’t a very effective move! Oh, what was Challenger (Y/n) thinking?!”

Your pokemon stumbles backward, each fluttering step shaking your soul and the ground below you tremendously.  Hop’s pokemon stands tall and sturdy, barely hurt enough to have a scratch. Recoil hits your pokemon, and it crumples onto its knees. Gravel flies into you but you do nothing to avoid it. It cries out one last time, loud, pathetic and pained. You feel tears pricking your eyes at the sound. The sound of it falling to the side, body slapping onto the concrete listlessly, makes you flinch.

You can feel your hair waving in the breeze caused by the sheer weight of your pokemon collapsing, but you only raise your eyes to lock with Hop’s. You told yourself when you did this you would smile, but you’re finding it hard to move the corners of your lips upwards without letting them quiver.

You can hear the announcer expressing his surprise at your carelessness before gregariously declaring Hop the brand new Pokemon Challenge Finalist. The surging applause from the audience thunders so loudly it almost shadows the throbbing pain you feel in your chest. The colorful confetti popping from all angles of the stadium rained down between you and him, seeming almost comedic given the heartbreak you could see in each other's eyes.

You take a shaky step forward to finalize the end of the challenge with a handshake, but before you can take another wobbling step forward, Hop charges at you with a running start and engulfs you in a choking hug, throwing the both of you onto the hard floor and tumbling a few feet.

He's warm and large as he envelopes your body with his, and his smile is wide and cheerful. He speaks, and his words cut you open like a knife.

“What did you do?” He asked, his voice hushed and warm against your ear. “How could you?”

The wetness in your eyes pools over. Hot, burning tears run down your face, and you can’t seem to stop them.

How couldn't you?

Hop presses your head into his shoulder, hiding your face from the drones and reporters snapping pictures. He curses under his breath and clenches a fist.

“It seems Finalist Hop is so overtaken by his happiness, he’s tackled his very own rival and enemy in a hug fit for a Bewear! Ladies and gentlemen, our Enigmatic Finalist, Hop!”

You feel him pull you closer, hands cold and clammy. A grin is still plastered on his face, strained only to you.

[a-tale-of-legends]

Maybe Bede grows out his hair as he gets older, right? Maybe Hop braids it into two braids and calls it "the wooloo braids". Perfect for the wooloo head ( Bede ). Bede.... actually doesn't hate them. But he is not calling them wooloo braids.

[rbbalmung]

Pokemon SwSh GPL AU: Character Headcannons P1

(From this point on, I am calling this Pokemon Sword and Shield AU the GPL AU after the Galarian Pokemon League). Here are my character headcannons! I am going to give each character and age and a general ethnicity even though A) time will pass in this au and B) obviously there are no countries in Pokemon. I will be giving them an age based on when the AU starts, at the beginning on Gloria’s Pokemon League Journey. 

GLORIA:

-Age: 16

-Ethnicity: Half English, Half Japanese (English father, Japanese mother)

-General Headcannons: 

o  She is an introverted extrovert. She loves meeting new people and making new friends, but she is on the quiet side due to her troubled relationship with her father. 

o  Going off of that, her parents got a divorce when she was 6 years old because her father was negligent. She has not been in contact with him since he left, but he is at the base of some of her social anxiety. That is why she mostly speaks either in short sentences or not at all (going off her interactions in the game). 

o  The thing that makes Gloria stand out as a Pokemon trainer is that she can pick up on her opponents nuances just by examining them. For example, if her opponent’s breathing quickens, she knows that they are nervous and will resort to mainly attacks. That is why it is so hard for her to beat Leon: He has an emotionless mask during his battles.

o  She picked up this strategy by watching GPL battles throughout her childhood. Gloria was often put in front of the television set to distract her from her parents fighting, and since she had to put so much of her attention towards the matches, she picked up on a lot of people’s ticks. 

o  Gloria is very clingy to Hop. She finds comfort in being near him, so she is often latching onto his arm, hugging him from behind, or holding his hand. The closer she gets to people, the more she hangs onto them. This is rough with Bede and Bea, so it takes a bit of work on both their ends to make sure they’re not making the other party unhappy. 

o  Gloria is ridiculously brave. She will go into pretty much any situation, which is why she just goes along when asked to join the dojo/go on an expedition. 

o  Speaking of expeditions, she looks up to Peony as the father figure she never had. She doesn’t outwardly tell him this because A) her relationship with her father really messed her up and B) the fact that he is related to Rose makes her a little wary. She knows how much Rose messed up Bede and does not want to cause more grief. 

o  Speaking of Bede, they actually become really close friends after the League wraps up and during Rose’s trial. Bede is one of the only people that can emphasise with her social anxiety, and luckily for him, Gloria doesn’t give up on people. She has to work on not being clingy with him because he does not like being touched. 

o  Gloria is the first female champion! 

o. Victor exists in this au, but not until way after Gloria’s first year as champion. He is her half brother; her father eventually remarried in Stow-In-Side and had Victor a year-ish later (making him 7 years younger than Gloria). They do not reunite until she is 20 years old, but she accepts him as her brother easily (she knows how terrible their dad is). 

o  Gloria’s full name is Gloria Park. She does not have a middle name. 

(I took the most liberties with Gloria because she is the MC and the game doesn’t give toooo much of a character. I know a lot of people head cannon her as super extroverted and confident, but I preferred this take for this particular AU).

HOP:

-Age: 16

-Ethnicity: Half Spanish, Half Black (His mom is Spanish, his dad is black)

-General Headcannons: 

o  Hop’s dad died when he was 2 years old, so he doesn’t really remember him. He never really had a father figure since Leon left to become Champion when he was 6. That is where is anxiety is rooted: Both his father (who was a firefighter and treated like a hero after his death) and Leon’s success makes Hop feel like he has to do something grand to live up to them. 

o  Hop actually befriended Gloria through their love of Pokemon battles! His mum invited her mum over for dinner, and while his and Gloria’s interactions were stiff at best during dinner, they really clicked after when they began watching the game on the TV. They’ve been inseparable ever since. 

o  I headcannon that Hop has ADD. He practically never sits still and has a hard time paying attention to things unless he is hyper focused. Hop is really booksmart, he just has trouble focusing. He also doesn’t really see the point in maintaining his grades when he’s just going to become the new Champion.

o  He played soccer when he was little as an outlet for his ADD. He joined the GJPL (Galar Junior Pokemon League), but since he was in a small district, he never made it to the big times like Bede. He did manage to score fairly well with his wooloo, though, making him one of the MVPs in the 76th GPL.

o  Hop is a nickname. HIs full name is “Hipoltio Henry Hoffman”. (Henry was his father’s name).

o Like Gloria, Hop is a really touchy person. They kind of rubbed off on each other, so he shows affection by linking arms, bumping shoulders, ect. 

o  After the GPL wraps up and he gets asked to be Sonia’s assistant, she gives him the opportunity to study abroad until he graduates high school. He takes this opportunity and briefly moves to study other Pokemon in Johto. He does come back to visit in the summer, which is why he ends up on the Isle of Armor around the same time as Gloria. 

BEDE:

-Age: 17

-Ethnicity: White 

-Headcannons:

o   He never met his parents, but he was told he was taken away from them by child protective services. This made him really bitter from the get-go because they never came back for him.

o   Bede has abandonment issues, but in a different way from Gloria. While she is willing to let anyone in, he is more prone to shut everyone out. He only starts to open up when he realizes Gloria’s life isn’t as perfect as he originally guessed.

o   Bede reeeeaaaallllyyyy doesn’t like being touched. He got into a lot of fights in the orphanage when he was younger because of his short temper. That is barely the tip of the iceberg: There was a lot of shady things that happened at the orphanage that only stopped once Chairman Rose started showing interest in him. Bede doesn’t talk about this to anyone.

o  Bede participated in the GJPL and made it to the championships two years in a row! He got to travel to Hoenn for one of them and meet the champion there. This was what brought Rose’s attention to him. 

o  The reason Bede didn’t join the league at 16 was because Rose didn’t sponsor him yet. Because of this, he decided to challenge Raihan for his position as gym leader of Hammerlocke. Sufficed to say, Bede lost pretty badly. 

o  He was very convinced that Rose was going to adopt him, which made his dismissal ten times worse than it originally was. He eventually comes to term with the fact that the Chairman used him and threw him under the bus when he realised that he could get in trouble for destroying the monument. 

o  Opal becomes his guardian when he accepts his new role as the Fairy Gym Leader, but she officially adopts him about a year later. He isn’t very good at talking about his emotions, but he does care deeply for the old woman and her acceptance of him brought him to tears. 

o   Bede gave himself his middle name: Steven, after Hoenn’s Champion Steven Stone. His full name is Bede Steven Doe pre-adoption, and Bede Steven Waltz post-adoption. 

o  He is super prickly, but after becoming gym leader, Bede mellows out a little bit. He is still haughty and self absorbed, but he is not as outwardly rude about it. 

o  He ends up forming a lot of unlikely relationships after he settles in his position as gym leader. He and Bea get along really well because of their proximity and similar personalities, Gloria won’t let him not be her friend (he has a soft side for her), and Marnie is one of the less eccentric gym leaders that he likes to hang around with at group gatherings. 

MARNIE:

-Age: 16

-Ethnicity: White

-Headcannons:

o   Marnie is the youngest of 5 children, and she is the only girl. Therefore, she was always coddled by her family. One of the biggest reasons she joined the pokemon league was to prove her true worth to her family.

o   Out of all her siblings, she is the closest to Piers. She doesn’t agree with his opposition to dynamaxing, but they are both passionate about restoring glory to Spikemuth. He also spent the most time with her when they were growing up because her parents worked a lot (Spikemuth is a poverty-stricken town). 

o   Marnie is quite the little activist. It is a little ironic because she is incredibly soft-spoken and will swear up a storm at the same time. 

o   She gains a lot of fans during her GPL alongside Gloria because they are both favourites to become the first female champion. Instead of forming a bitter rivalry with her, Marnie elects to befriend Gloria because she reminds her of her friend, Primrose. 

o   Marnie LOVES shopping. She never really had the chance to leave Spikemuth growing up, so a lot of her free time when not participating in Pokemon battles is spent in boutiques. 

o   One of Marnie’s special skills is that she can see right through a person’s core. That is why she is initially kind to Gloria, Hop, and Bede. On the other hand, she and Piers both constantly talk shit about Chairman Rose. She isn’t really a fan of Leon either, but she knows that he is a good person so she tries to be nice.

o   Speaking of Leon (to some degree), she immediately decides to befriend Hop when she realises he is also the younger sibling of a famous Pokemon trainer. They bond over their similar roles in life and their shared love of music! (Hop really likes Piers’s music and freaks out when he gets to meet him). 

o   Marnie can play the guitar and the piano! If she didn’t become a gym leader, she could definitely see herself going into music. 

o  I head cannon that Marnie is bisexual, but she is not currently aware of it. I will definitely talk more about this later in the AU or if I actually get around to writing a one shot. 

o  Her full name is Marnie Isla Lewis. 

Next Part: Gym Leaders! 

[watevermelon]

-> A/N: Hi!!! I got a request for daily texts with [tsundere] Bede and couldn’t resist the wooloo head trainer alkshdhejakab

-> Masterlist

[misskikuwrites]

A Helping Hand

Bederia Week 2021: Day 1 - First Impressions

Bede/Gloria (dressedinpinkshipping)

Tags: fluff, light angst, babysitting

Words: 7,612

@bede-x-gloria

-

Babysitting felt a world and a half away from training Pokemon. All her skills as the Champion were of no use here- there was no battle to be fought, nothing she could power through with brute force. She had to be delicate. Kind. 

 She had to figure out how to entertain a toddler when she'd never done anything like this by herself before. The living room was covered end-to-end in an array of miscellaneous toys, from plushies to colourful blocks and toy cars, none of which gave her any ideas for what to do. With Pokemon, they found ways to entertain themselves. She could explore with them. Battle with them. Train them. Even swishing a toy from side to side was a form of training with Pokemon, and the ball she’d lob across the campsite turned into a competition for her Pokemon to see who could retrieve it first. She couldn’t do any of that here- not with little Samuel. Not with his baby sister, Gracie, asleep in the nursery down the hall. Sitting on the carpet next to Samuel, Gloria tried to remember the times she'd accompanied her mother to watch over them. She’d tagged along for the fun of it, not expecting that one day she would find herself babysitting the two of them alone. 

 And, with Gloria's mother at work, she had no one else to turn too. 

 Samuel shuffled over to a crudely-made tower of blocks, immediately knocking them over. Gloria pursed her lips, stomach churning, and edged over to him. 

 "How about we build a tower?" she offered, and slowly began to reassemble the tower. 

 Samuel watched for a moment. He followed Gloria's movements as she stacked one block on top of another, balancing them precariously as the tower grew taller and taller. Without warning, he shoved the blocks again. 

 "Hey!" Gloria gasped in shock. "Don't do that, we're trying to build it, not-" 

 She paled as Samuel whimpered, his face scrunching up, cheeks beginning to flush… 

 "No, no, that's okay! You can knock it down!" Gloria hurriedly stacked another tower and deliberately toppled it. "See? That's loads of fun!" 

 Samuel squeaked a precious laugh. "Gen!" he said, staring at the blocks. "Gen!"

 "Gen? Oh, you mean 'again?'" 

 "Gen!" 

 She could do that. Wrecking the towers Gloria painstakingly constructed was a simple and easy way to keep Samuel entertained- at least, it was for the first dozen or so towers.

 "Gen!" Samuel said, his laughter trickling out. "Gen!" 

 "Again…?" Gloria sighed. 

 She'd lost count of how many she'd made - not that she'd been keeping track in the first place - and it had quickly become monotonous for her. How it still managed to amuse Samuel was beyond her. 

 "Why don't we do something else? Look, Mr Wooloo wants to play with us, too-" 

 She turned around to grab the Wooloo plush when Samuel let out a whine. 

 "Gen!" 

 "But I've already built a ton of towers-"

 "Gen!" His whine turned into a wail. "Gen! Gen! Gen!" 

 "Okay, okay, okay!" Wooloo plush thrown to the side, Gloria snatched the blocks off the carpet and stacked them for Samuel once more. "There, another tower!" 

 He knocked it over with glee, bubbling with laughter as the tower collapsed. His smile was so innocent and happy, Gloria couldn't help but stack tower after tower for him to knock down. As boring as it was, it kept Samuel occupied and - more importantly - content. She made another for him, and retrieved her drink bottle from her bag in the meantime. The tower collapsed, and Samuel burst into a fit of giggles as the blocks bounced left and right over the carpet. 

 His enjoyment was so simple, it made Gloria smile. She didn't understand what was so amusing about a tower of blocks falling over, but Samuel's laughter was sweet, his smile adorable, and she shucked off any grievances she had about repetitively making towers for him to knock over. It was worth it if it made him happy. 

 Soon enough, Gloria found ways to keep herself entertained as she made tower after tower for Samuel. She began adding different things to the tower- first, she placed the Wooloo plush on top out of sheer boredom. The blocks collapsed by themselves, and Samuel shrieked a laugh. When she went to build the next one, she stuck a toy car on top. Then the square-shaped toy ambulance in the middle of the next tower. Each odd addition made Samuel laugh, from the Rolycoly figure that wouldn't balance by itself, to the Wooloo plush Gloria placed on top of her head. He cackled when the Wooloo fell off Gloria's head, and she held back a snort of laughter. 

 Perhaps looking after Samuel wouldn't be so bad after all. 

 A slowly building cry reached Gloria's ears. She'd spoken - well, thought - too soon. Gracie had woken up. A quick glance at the clock on the wall told Gloria that it was well under the hour or two Mrs Jones had expected her daughter to sleep for. She got to her feet, swallowing her trepidation, and made for Gracie's room. 

 "I'll be back in a second," she told Samuel, "I'm just going to grab Gracie." 

 A whine followed her, silenced beneath the disgruntled cries coming from Gracie. Gloria braced herself before opening the door to the nursery, and was hit with a wall of noise. Gracie, still swaddled in her blanket and lying on her front, screamed for all her tiny lungs were worth. The tremendous volume that came from such a little girl was unbelievable, and Gloria had to stop herself from flinching as she swept the squirming baby out of her cot. 

 "Hey, hey, it's okay," Gloria cooed, holding Gracie close to her chest and patting her back. "I'm here, you're alright."

 She didn't know what else to say, what else to do, and dug through her memories to try and recall what her mother had done in situations like this. 

 The scream doubled in volume. No, that wasn't right- there was an echo now. A scream by her ear, another by her leg. Samuel had followed her, and was matching Gracie's efforts with his own wail. He planted his face against Gloria's leg, arms wrapped tightly around her, and howled. 

 Gloria's head spun. She tried to step towards the door, barely able to move and completely unbalanced by Samuel clinging to her. Both her hands were occupied by holding Gracie up. She had nothing to spare to calm Samuel, or even to try and pry him away from her leg so she could move more than an inch at a time. 

 "Samuel, what's wrong?" she asked, speaking over Gracie's cries in her ear with a grimace. "Hey?" 

 She couldn't kneel down with him stuck to her like a Komala on a log, and was paralyzed with one foot through the door. Despite everything in her body telling her not to, she forced the leg that Samuel was holding onto forward, tugging herself out of his grip. It made him scream louder, but Gloria had no choice. She hurried back to the lounge with Samuel howling at her heels. 

 "Look, look, we're back. I'll build you a tower again!" She knelt by the blocks, Gracie still crying against her front, and balanced the wailing baby on her lap so she had a free hand to stack blocks with. 

 Samuel stood, unbudging in the doorway, and cried. 

 "Sammy? Look, I've made a tower for you!" 

 He wasn't looking. 

 "Come on, I had to get Gracie up!" she pleaded with him, and resumed patting Gracie's back in a soothing rhythm when Samuel refused to look at her. "Shh, shh, it's okay," she said to Gracie. 

 Her head throbbed. Ears ringing. 

 Wait, no- that was her phone. 

 Now, of all times?! 

 In a split second of panic, she wondered if it was Mrs Jones calling to see how things were.

 Gloria wanted to scream. She overpowered the urge to throw her own tantrum and tugged her phone out of her pocket. On the screen, accompanied by a candid photo of him taken in the Wild Area, was Bede's name. 

 Bede?! 

 She almost didn't answer it, wincing beneath the onslaught of cries piercing her ears, and decided she needed to brush Bede off quickly so he wouldn't call again. Distractions were the last thing she needed right now. 

 Gloria hiked Gracie higher in her arms and answered the call, her Rotom phone hovering by her ear. 

 "Sorry, Bede! Now's not a good time," she said quickly, and shuffled on her knees over to Samuel. "I'm kind of... in the middle of something!" 

 She patted Gracie's back in a firm, steady rhythm, trying to sooth Samuel at the same time by wiggling the Wooloo plush with her other hand. 

 "I can certainly hear that," came Bede's voice in her ear, drowned out by the cries in the room. "What have you gotten yourself into this time?" 

 Gloria bit her bottom lip, the lump in her throat tightening in shame. Her inadequacy was crushing, dragging her heart into the pit of her stomach, and she didn't need, or want, Bede to find out. 

 She felt like a failure. 

 "Shh, shh, Gracie. Shh..." Gloria murmured, well aware that Bede could hear her, and kept trying to comfort the crying baby in her arms. Gracie hiccuped and whimpered, burying her face in Gloria's shirt. "There, there." 

 Samuel's wails got louder as Gracie's softened, and Gloria wished she had more arms to spare. She could only comfort one child at a time. 

 She could only talk to one person at a time. 

 "Look, Bede- I have to go," she said. Forced the words out. Pushed him away. "I've got my hands full right now." 

 Despite the throbbing of her heart, the need not to be alone. 

 "Sounds like you could do with some assistance." 

 Her brain short-circuited. "I- What?" 

 "I happen to have some spare time on my hands, so if you require some help-" 

 "Please!" Tears pricked her eyes. She held Gracie tighter, ready to crumble to the floor herself as her pride shattered, as her voice wobbled. "Please…" 

 A pause. 

 "Tell me where you are and I'll be there as soon as I can." 

 -

 Bede hung up, immediately calling a Sky Taxi for Wedgehurst. He exhaled a heavy sigh and dragged a hand through his hair as his racing heart began to settle. 

 That was not how he'd expected that call to go. The script he'd spent all morning preparing, the words he'd gone over again and again in his mind, had flown out the window the second Gloria had answered. Cries loud enough to make him flinch had wiped his brain clean. Desperation hidden in the Champion's voice had turned his attention away from the reason he'd called in the first place. 

 He couldn't very well ask her that when she was struggling enough for it to reveal itself in her voice. And, for a moment, it sounded as though she was on the verge of tears. 

 Bede climbed into the Sky Taxi as soon as it landed in Ballonlea, and repeated to the driver the address Gloria had given him for a house in Wedgehurst. His heart sank in trepidation as they took off. The question lingering on his tongue could wait- he would swallow it down for her until whatever was going on in that house was under control. 

 To reign in his desires was simple enough when it came to Gloria. For her, he would. 

 In the meantime, he had other things to worry about. Mainly, the screams of children he'd heard during his call with Gloria. He could only begin to imagine what was going on in that house, and hoped he'd arrive in time to prevent the chaos from getting any worse.

 -

 Gloria's heart lifted when she heard swift knocking on the front door. 

 "It's unlocked!" she called, hopefully loud enough to be heard over Samuel's tantrum. He refused to calm down, and Gracie was beginning to grizzle in her arms. She wouldn't stay put, squirming this way and that, and had taken to sucking on Gloria's shirt in her frustration. 

 The door swung open, and Bede strode into the lounge, his eyes widening at her. Gloria's breath caught. She stiffened beneath his gaze, waiting for his judgement in the form of a snarky comment, for him to scoff at her predicament. He said nothing, and walked over to her in silence. 

 "Here." He reached for Gracie and said, "give her to me." His eyes lingered on Gloria's for the moment it took for her to relinquish the baby to him. 

 He hefted Gracie into his arms and pulled her out of the blanket. He began to bounce her in a way Gloria had seen her own mother do in the past. 

 "Seems like she's hungry," Bede said, raising an eyebrow at the wet stain of slobber on Gloria's shirt. Gracie mouthed at Bede's Gym uniform shirt, as if to confirm his suspicions. 

 Gloria blinked, her brain taking a few seconds to catch up to reality, and she nodded. 

 "There's- uh, a note. In the kitchen." It was difficult to speak beneath her shock. "Her bottle's in the fridge." 

 "Alright. Leave that to me, then." He turned on his heels, Gracie having quietened completely in his arms, and made for the kitchen. "In the meantime, try making some faces and noises at him," Bede suggested, glancing over his shoulder at Samuel, who was now crying on the floor again. "The weirder, the better. I think you'd be good at that." 

 Gloria frowned at Bede, pursing her lips in confusion, before signing. He seemed to have a knack with Gracie, and she had little pride left to spare after failing spectacularly at babysitting, and so she wandered over to Samuel and sat beside him. 

 But… to make faces at him…? 

 Gloria quickly made sure she was out of Bede's line of sight, and took a deep breath. 

 Here goes nothing…

 "Hey, Samuel. Look at this!" 

 Samuel sniffled and peeked up at her. His eyes fixed on Gloria's face. He blinked. Sniffled again, and then laughed. He pulled himself off the floor as Gloria smooshed her cheeks, poking her tongue out at the same time, and made whatever weird noises she could. 

 And it worked. Samuel laughed.

 "What about this?" 

 Gloria dragged her palms down the sides of her face, pulling her cheeks and curling her lips into another strange expression. Again, he laughed. It wasn't long before Samuel had no tears left to shed. The room descended into amicable silence, into peace, and Gloria found that she could breathe again. She sighed, releasing the pent up tension in her chest all at once. 

 It was a miracle. No, more than that- Bede had worked some sort of magic. His mere presence had settled the torrent of nerves in her gut, and he'd known just what to do to calm Gracie down, picking up on the fact that she was hungry as well, and his suggestion for Gloria to pull faces at Samuel had worked like a charm. He'd gotten too much right for her to put it down to chance. This was more than luck. More than a good guess- Bede had experience with children. 

 He'd floored her completely. It was so unexpected, she didn't know where to start in order to comprehend what had happened. The chaos she'd been struggling under had lifted in an instant when Bede arrived. She sat on the carpet next to Samuel, pretending that the Wooloo plush was making weird noises and not her, with her gaze continuously drifting to the kitchen. Swift footsteps, the click of the fridge door, and the trickle of running water came from the room beyond what she could see. Her heart thumped warmly in her chest as her mind conjured images to fit the sounds that reached her. 

 She wanted to see, wanted to watch, Bede in action. This was a side to him she'd never seen before, and it set something fluttering away in her lungs. He never ceased to amaze her in ways she wouldn't have imagined when they first met. Who knew that the snobby, arrogant boy that had acted like everyone else was beneath him was hiding such skills? There were so many layers to Bede, so much she still didn't know. He continuously shattered the shallow first impression she'd had of him again and again, from their first battle, to meeting on the pitch in front of the world, to him leaving his past behind and taking up the role of the Fairy Gym Leader. 

 Bede had turned out to be so much more than she'd given him credit for. 

 Gloria was impressed, and grateful, but more than that- she was awestruck. Speechless in a way that left her breathless. Almost giddy. It made her smile like an idiot to herself. Her heart skipped when Bede returned to the lounge, with Gracie cradled in his arms and a bottle of warm milk in hand. 

 Arceus, it stole Gloria's breath away. She watched as he stepped over the discarded toys to the couch, and gracefully sank into it without jostling Gracie an inch. He lowered Gracie onto his lap so she rested against his arm, and brought the bottle to her mouth. She latched onto it and began to suckle away eagerly.

 "If you keep gawking at me like that, I'm going to take offence," Bede huffed. His eyes lifted to meet Gloria's. She sucked in a sharp breath and snapped her attention back to Samuel. 

 "Sorry!" she squeaked as her cheeks began to flush. 

 She'd been staring. Gawking, as Bede had pointed out. How could she help it when he was tending to Gracie so expertly? She was struck once again by how skilled he was with babies, both Pokemon and human. 

 "I was just surprised, that's all," Gloria said quickly. She nuzzled the Wooloo plush into Samuel's side, making him giggle. "It's like she's your own child or something, with how easily you calmed her down." 

 "Are you insinuating something?" He raised an eyebrow at her, unamused. 

 "No!" She flushed darker, darker than before as her heart leapt into her throat. "No, I just mean that you're such a natural with kids, it's- y'know, impressive!" 

 Gloria breathed a panicked laugh. Coils of embarrassed heat tightens on her cheeks, and she knew she was blushing hard. 

 "You're way too young to have your own children, for sure." She waved that suggestion off quickly. "Well, I know you're almost eighteen so it's not completely impossible- but that's not the point," Gloria said that last part in a rush, almost stumbling over her words as she realised where her mind was going. 

 "I just- what I mean is-" She couldn't think past the blood rushing to her head. 

 "Take a breath, Gloria," Bede said. He cleared his throat, focusing on bottle-feeding Gracie.

 Her heart pounded in her ears. Thoughts swirled into a mess in her mind, tangled on the idea of Bede having his own children and the insinuation behind that. She tried to follow his suggestion and catch her breath, to calm herself down in order to clear her muddied thoughts. 

 "How come you're so good with kids?" Gloria asked instead. 

 There was no point trying to figure out what she'd been trying to say in the first place, all she could think about was that in the future, perhaps Bede would be doing this with his own child. A baby with platinum blond hair like his, soft curls framing round, pink cheeks. It made her heart ache. 

 "Your wife will be super lucky…" she mumbled. 

 Bede coughed. "I don't have a wife." 

 "Y-You heard that?!" 

 "You're hardly quiet enough for me not to hear."

 "Sorry…!" She peeked over her shoulder at him to see his gaze skip away from her. Pink coloured his cheeks, the sight making Gloria's blood sing through her veins as her breath caught. 

 Arceus. When he blushed like that, her heart danced something wild in her chest, fluttering and dizzy, and she wanted to fix that image into her mind forever.  

It made her want to say something more. 

 "It's… it's true, isn't it?" Gloria continued, "since you're great at cooking and with kids, you'd make a great husband- unlike me! You've already seen my attempt at babysitting today, and I'm horrible in the kitchen." She laughed briefly at herself. "I'd need someone like you if I was ever going to get married, 'cause I'm hopeless otherwise!" 

 Bede's eyes shifted back to hers. He held her gaze for a moment of silence, and something unreadable in his expression made her pause. 

 "Woo woo," Samuel sounded, and Gloria turned to tickle him with the Wooloo plush. 

 "...Someone like me?" 

 It was the depth to his voice that stole Gloria's attention back. Bede's words were soft, his tone low and thick, and the intensity in his gaze made the Wooloo plush slip from her fingers when their eyes met. Heat swam behind those violets that pinned her to the spot. 

 What was he saying? 

 "Sorry?" Gloria blinked at him. Nerves flittered about in her stomach as though she was missing something. Something that she'd said, something that had happened, and it sent her heart racing. 

 "You said you'd need 'someone like me,' if you were to get married," Bede said slowly. 

Silence fell. Gloria couldn't think. She couldn't breathe. There was so much more to his gaze, to his expression, than she'd realised. 

 "I…" Had she said that? 

 "Someone like me?" 

 It was a question. A deeper meaning to those three words. A suggestion. 

 Was there more to it? 

 An offer? 

 "It doesn't matter since I'm never getting married anyway," Gloria said quickly. She tore her eyes away from Bede, swallowing the lump in her throat and the rising panic building in her chest. "I promised I wouldn't, and I'm not going to break that." 

 "You promised?" 

 Shit. 

 She'd said too much. 

 Her heart plummeted. It drained the blood from her face, froze the nerves in her stomach, and bled ice through her veins. Chilled her to her core, to the marrow of her bones. 

 Heavy. 

 She felt heavy. 

 "Gloria?"

 "Forget I said that." She stood. Turned her back to him. 

 "Why? Who did you promise that to?" 

 "I said- forget it!" 

 Too loud. Hands trembled into fists at her sides as Samuel whimpered. Pain prickled behind her eyes. Tears.

 An apology lodged in her throat but she had no voice to give it life. Her lips wobbled. She pressed them tightly together for a moment, forcing her breath down. Held it in her lungs until it burned. 

 She exhaled it all at once. 

 "I shouldn't have said anything."

 It hurt to speak, to step dangerously close to the precipice of what she'd buried for so long.

 Terrified to fall. 

 "I can't- I don't want to talk about it," she said. The tremor in her voice began to fade. She shook her head, pressed her hands against her face with a breath of shame. "I'm going to the loo." 

 Gloria hurried away before Bede could reply- if he was going to say anything at all. She shut herself in the bathroom and doused her face in cold water until she could think again, until the shadows receded from her heart. 

 The promise she'd made years ago had surfaced as it did sometimes, but never had it hurt like this. Like a void had encapsulated her heart. It ached. Something had shifted, and what had been a lifelong promise that she'd always been eager to uphold now felt like a looming wave towering above her, about to crash over her life at any second. To destroy everything. 

 Gloria swallowed, letting water drip from her face as she measured her breathing. In and out, in and out. 

 Everything was fine. She was fine. 

 She wasn't in love with Bede, so there was nothing to worry about. Her promise was still in place, still intact. She hadn't broken anything. 

 The memory of that night came back to her. Her mother's tears. Being held too tight in trembling arms. Hearing those words, unable to comprehend what it meant, unable to believe it. 

 "He's gone." 

 The echo of her mother's voice tightened the knot in Gloria's throat. Droplets of water, of tears, fell from her cheeks. 

 "He's gone… Papa's gone…" 

 Air hissed through her teeth. She squeezed her eyes shut to force back the heat building behind her eyes. 

 "I'm here," her own voice replied. Ten years younger, it still sounded like her. "I won't go anywhere. I promise." 

 A simple promise made the trembling stop. 

 "I promise." Those words she would keep. "I'll stay with you forever… no matter what." 

 I won't leave you.

 Gloria wiped the water off her face, stealing those memories away. A lingering ache in the hollow of her chest remained, but its blade had dulled. She could endure it. 

 She had to. 

 Even if it meant closing off her heart so she would never experience the pain of that day again, she would do it. She saw what it did to her mother. The kind of pain that love brings. 

 And Gloria wanted none of it. 

 -

 The air was stiff and awkward in the lounge when Gloria returned. She sat beside Samuel as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn't left at all. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw that Gracie had finished her bottle and that Bede had propped her up on the couch using the cushions to steady her. She was currently sucking on a ring of brightly coloured plastic keys. 

 Gloria desperately wanted to break the silence, to say something, anything, but she didn't know where to begin. The weight of her memories remained over her shoulders. She'd snapped at Bede. Regret and shame swallowed her voice, guilt sitting in the back of her throat so she couldn't form any words. 

 He'd come to help her, gave up his free time out of his own volition, and she'd snapped at him. She couldn't get any more pathetic if she'd tried. 

 "What have you got there?" Gloria asked Samuel. He pushed a toy car back and forth over the carpet, trying to blow a raspberry between his lips to mimic the sound of the engine. 

 "Cah!" he said, before returning to his noise making. 

 Her heart throbbed. She picked up the angular ambulance and pushed it alongside Samuel's car, but her energy was spent. She couldn't fake enthusiasm when her chest felt so heavy. 

 "How did you end up with these two?" Bede asked. 

 Gloria looked at him out of reflex, out of surprise. He'd broken the silence so easily, and raised an eyebrow at her curiously. 

 "They obviously aren't your own children, and I assume you haven't acquired two new siblings in secret… which leads me to believe that you're babysitting for someone else." 

 She blinked at him, nodding slowly at how succinctly he'd come to the correct conclusion. 

 "Oh, right. I never explained, did I?" She pursed her lips sheepishly before gesturing to the two young kids. "This is Samuel and Gracie. They're the kids of my mum's friend, Mrs Jones. She needed someone to babysit on short notice since her sister went into labour a week early and there's no one else to take her into hospital. The rest of their family is in Kanto, and her sister's husband is away for work, so…" 

 Gloria shrugged. "I've helped my mum babysit them in the past, but she's at work, and Mrs Jones really needed someone… I've never looked after them on my own before." 

 "That much was fairly obvious. It was quite chaotic when I called you, from what I heard." 

 Gloria scoffed in indignation. "That's only because I had to get Gracie up! She was crying in her room and I had to leave Samuel to get her, and then he started crying too!" 

 She huffed at Bede, folding her arms in protest, when she spied the slight tilt to the corner of his mouth. It was the barest hint of a smirk. Soft amusement lit up his eyes, and it made Gloria realise what he was doing. Riling her up so she'd bark at him and fall into their natural rhythm. The air that had been suffocatingly thick had eased away, lifting the hold of silence over the atmosphere. Bede had coaxed her into speaking her mind to him again. Into returning to normal. 

 She sank in surprise, and the heat of her protest died. Finally, she could find the words that she wanted to say. 

 "Look, Bede, I'm… sorry about what happened before," Gloria said. "I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. It's just… it's a subject I'm not comfortable with. I hadn't meant to say anything about it in the first place, but then…" 

 She trailed off with a sigh.

 "That's alright. I see now that I shouldn't have pressed you about it," Bede said. "I'm sorry about that." 

 A sliver of pain dug into her heart at his words. 

 "The promise I made as a kid, it still means a lot to me, and…" She swallowed. Took a breath. "I know most people would probably think it's stupid and ridiculous, and it's hard for me to explain, I haven't told many people about it before-"

 Her voice stuck in her throat. 

 "You don't have to explain," Bede said softly. 

 "But…"  

"If it puts you on the verge of tears to even think about, you don't need to explain it to me." 

 He'd noticed the tears building in her eyes. 

 "I'm sorry…" It came out as a whisper, but in the quiet, she knew he'd hear it. 

 "For what? I can't see that you've done anything wrong here." 

 "You don't even know why I snapped at you and you're being so kind," Gloria sighed. "I feel like I owe you an explanation, at least." 

 "Only when you're ready for it." He shrugged and said, "everyone has something they're not comfortable talking about- I don't want you to have to force yourself to explain it to me because you feel like you should." 

 She nodded slowly. 

 "Besides, I may have an idea about what it is anyway, so I'm not completely in the dark as to why it upsets you so much." 

 Gloria blinked at him. He turned his gaze away from her to dangle the drool-coated keys in front of Gracie's grabbing hands. 

 "You do?" Somehow, the fact that he already knew something about it loosened the jumble of knots in her gut. 

 Gracie caught the fluorescent green key and tugged it towards her mouth as Bede nodded. 

 "You've mentioned a thing or two about it previously," he said, "if what I believe you're talking about is correct." 

 All the bits and pieces she'd let slip in the past. The words that had spilled out in vulnerable moments, hissed under her breath, fragments of pain that had broken through her walls. 

 He'd remembered them.

 "Probably," she said quietly. 

 How much he knew, how much he'd pieced together, she couldn't tell. Perhaps he'd gotten the wrong idea completely- but knowing Bede, that was more than unlikely.

 "Then I don't need to know any more," he said. "If it makes you uncomfortable to speak about, then don't force yourself on my account. I don't need to know every little thing about you in order to be your friend."

 His words softened her heart. She filled with warmth, with a sense of peace, and it made her smile. 

 "Thanks, Bede," she said, tilting her head as she smiled at him. "That's really sweet of you to say." 

 His expression froze for a split second, and Gloria wondered if she'd said something wrong when he cleared his throat and focused on playing with Gracie, jangling the keys in front of her when they fell from her mouth again. 

 "How come you're so good with kids?" Gloria asked, realising she'd never got an answer from him when she'd asked previously. 

 It was like he knew exactly what to do- when to give in and let Gracie grab the keys, when to tug them away from her and keep up the challenge. The self-satisfied look he gave Gloria, the pride glinting in his eyes, made her heart skip. He was so damn attractive even when gloating, and she folded her arms as if that would protect her heart from the influence of his smile. 

 "This is nothing special," he said, and shrugged. As if his smirk didn't clearly say otherwise. "Just the basics everyone knows, really." 

 Gloria scoffed, despite the way her chest fluttered from the mirth in his voice. His words dripped with amusement, teasing her and making her heart dance like a puppet on a string, and Arceus, it made her pout at him in return. Protesting how easily she reacted to him, although she found that she didn't dislike how it made her feel. It was a rush, a spark of emotions through her body. Strange and foreign as it was, it wasn't a bad feeling. Not one she hated at all. 

 If anything, it actually felt pleasant. 

 "What does that make me, then, if I don't even know the basics?" Gloria said, throwing those words back at him with a huff. "Since everyone knows it?" 

 She raised an eyebrow pointedly at him, not about to let him off that easily without an explanation. 

 "I may have picked up a thing or two somewhere," Bede said. 

 "Uh-huh." 

 She gave him a blank stare. Unimpressed, unbudging. She wanted to know. Her curiosity had built into a fervour, a blooming desire to figure out this secret of Bede's that he was taunting her with. She feigned hurt, and turned back to Samuel. He burst into giggles when she pushed the toy ambulance up his back and let it topple forward off his shoulder. He picked it up and tried to place it where she had to make it fall again. Movement in the corner of her eyes made Gloria turn. Bede sat beside her, laying Gracie down gently on her back on the carpet, and placed the Wooloo plush square on her stomach. He gave the stuffed Pokemon a wiggle, making the legs flop wildly, and Gracie broke into a smile. 

 It was so unadulteratedly cute to see Bede play with Gracie like that, and Gloria's heart squeezed firmly in her chest as she watched. He glanced at her for the briefest of moments before focusing his attention on the wriggling baby in front of him. Gracie gave a squeak of laughter when he booped her nose with the Wooloo. 

 Gloria felt giddy just watching him. 

 "The orphanage was short-staffed at times," Bede began. He spoke while playing with Gracie, not once pulling his attention away from her. She was completely enraptured by the Wooloo plush. "Those of us old enough to take care of ourselves were enlisted to help with the younger children. It was easier to learn how to amuse them than be surrounded by screaming babies all day." 

 "Oh." She didn't know what else to say. His explanation, his experience, was far from anything she'd imagined, and a wave of guilt crashed over her for trying to drag that out of him. 

 Especially when he'd been so understanding to her. 

 "Children are easy enough to amuse. What works for one usually works for another," he said with a shrug, "as long as you aren't too worried about your pride." 

 He leant over Gracie and blew a raspberry at her, and she laughed. A sweet, innocent laugh that made Gloria want to melt. Her insides were turning into goo. 

 "You'll pick it up over time, don't worry." Bede turned to Gloria and quickly booped her nose with the Wooloo plush. Samuel laughed, and he received a boop as well. 

 Gloria bit back her laugh, her lips trembling with mirth. Bede looked so free, so full of life, that she didn't dare laugh - even out of adoration - in case he thought she was laughing at him. She wouldn't risk spoiling the moment. 

 "You think so?" she asked. 

 He looked at her, his violet eyes softening with his smile, and said, "of course I do. Anyone can learn how to take care of children, or how to cook. It just takes time- and a bit of advice." 

 Her mouth twitched into a smile, and without thinking about it, she leant over Gracie as Bede had done, and blew a raspberry of her own. It brought a string of giggles out of Gracie, and Gloria's heart lifted. 

 "You're a quick study," Bede noted. 

 She beamed at him in return. "It helps that I've got an expert teacher." 

 -

 Time passed easier after that. There was no more crying, no more grizzling- Samuel and Gracie were content at last as Gloria fell into a natural pace with Bede. She followed his advice, taking note of the slight difference in the way he played with the two children. Often, they shared silent glances. A smile, a knowing look, as Gloria mimicked the little techniques that Bede used. After a while, he picked Gracie up when she'd had enough of lying on the carpet, and sat her in his lap. She jangled the plastic keys in her hands, happy once more. 

 Gloria's heart swooned in her chest. Bede was so utterly endearing with the kids, so sweet and kind and adoring that she could hardly take it any more. Her lungs were filled to the brim with delight, and Arceus, she was almost overcome with the desire to hug him. It was impossible to contain how she was feeling. Giddy and breathless and flustered all at once, she focused on making Gracie laugh by playing peekaboo behind the Wooloo plush instead. 

 Anything to keep her wandering gaze from returning to Bede. It was completely unfair how he made her feel- he was gorgeous and adorable at the same time, great with kids and skilled in the kitchen, seemingly perfect despite the flaws she knew he had. 

 He was so damn attractive in every way. 

 She huffed to herself and swallowed that thought. 

 This isn't a crush, she reminded herself. Stop thinking about how amazing he is and pay attention to the kids! 

 The fluttering in her chest refused to abate. It was a strange kind of nervousness, one that she hadn't felt before until recently, one that only occured around Bede. It made her lungs feel like they were too full of air, too light. She was weirdly self conscious. Overly aware of every movement, every gesture and noise Bede made, all her senses had honed in on him. 

 The space he occupied in her mind, in her heart, had grown immensely without her knowing. 

 Gloria couldn't tell if that was a good thing or not. 

 Footsteps clicked up the driveway, stealing her and Bede's attention towards the front door. It swung open, and Samuel shot to his feet. 

 "Ma ma!" 

 He tottered over to his mother as she took in the surprise visitor in her house. Her eyebrows lifted curiously. 

 "Mrs Jones, this- this is Bede," Gloria said quickly. 

 "Oh, yes. I thought I recognised you!" Mrs Jones clasped her hands together as she nodded at him. She swiftly picked Samuel up and sat him against her hip, planting a kiss to the top of his brow. "You're the Fairy Gym Leader, right?" 

 Bede stood, carrying Gracie, and stepped over to Mrs Jones. He extended a hand to her politely. 

 "That's correct," he said. "It's lovely to meet you. We had no trouble with Samuel and Gracie at all- I hope you don't mind that I assisted Gloria while you were away." 

 Gloria got up and dusted herself off while Bede greeted Mrs Jones, slightly flustered by his white lie. 

 'No trouble at all' was not how she would've described the way things went before Bede arrived. 

 "I don't mind at all," Mrs Jones said. She set Samuel down and took Gracie from Bede. She smiled pleasantly, and Gloria was once again amazed at how easily Bede slipped into his Gym Leader persona. Polite, graceful and charming, he made first impressions count. 

 "My sister's husband caught the next flight back, so I was able to come home early," Mrs Jones continued, "but it looks like I didn't need to worry about these two at all."

 Gloria beamed a smile, trying to make it as genuine as possible. Next to Bede's confidence, she felt too stiff and forced. 

 "Everything went well," Gloria said. "Gracie woke up a bit early, and had her bottle at… about eleven thirty, I think."

 Mrs Jones nodded. "I'll make sure she has her afternoon nap, then." 

 She gave her daughter a kiss on her round cheeks, making Gracie smile. Samuel pottered around after his mother as Gloria gathered her bag and swung it over her shoulder. As foreboding as babysitting had felt when she'd first begun, she no longer wished to flee the two adorable children at a moment's notice. It had been an experience she wasn't likely to forget for some time. With Bede by her side, she felt like she could conquer anything. 

 Well, almost anything. The emotions fluttering in her gut weren't something she wanted to tackle, or acknowledge, for now. 

 -

 After a quick goodbye to Mrs Jones and her two kids - Samuel whimpering when he realised they were leaving - Gloria and Bede exited the house and stepped into the streets of Wedgehurst. The lazy afternoon sun bathed them in warmth, and Gloria stretched her arms high above her head and breathed in the moment of peace. 

 "I'm glad that's over," she sighed. 

 They headed down the street, passing cozy houses adjourned with blooming gardens. In the distance, bleats from Wooloo and Dubwool filled the air. 

 "I don't know how I would've managed without you," Gloria said. She shot him a smile. "I thought you had terrible timing, calling me when you did, but it turned out to be perfect." 

 Bede stopped. "About that…" 

 Gloria turned to face him. A few feet behind her, he paused. "What is it?" 

 "The League Gala is happening the week after next." Bede held her gaze. His voice, softer than before, sent her heart racing. "Are you going with anyone?" 

 She froze, jaw hanging slightly open. Then swallowed, fumbling with her tongue to form an answer. 

 "Yes, I- I'm going with Hop," she said. 

 He looked away. "I see." 

 Gloria's heart plummeted into her churning stomach. "Why- Why do you ask?" 

 Did he not have anyone to go with? 

 Did he, perhaps, want to go with her…? 

 "I thought I'd ask in case you had forgotten about it," Bede said, shrugging. He continued walking, and passed her with quick strides. "You tend to get distracted quite easily, after all."  

She skipped to catch up with him, and glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes as they walked. 

 "I wouldn't have forgotten about that," she said. 

 Gloria let out a huff. It was foolish to think that he'd brought up the Gala for any other reason. Foolish to think he'd ask her to go with him, when he'd be attending with Ms Opal as he had last year. 

 Besides, Hop had already agreed to go with her. The strange weight in her gut persisted, despite reasoning with herself that she was being ridiculous for getting worked up over it. 

 She wondered how she would have answered if he had asked. If she hadn't been babysitting, if Samuel and Gracie hadn't been screaming their lungs out when Bede called, would he have asked her? 

 Would she have wanted him to ask? 

 She slowed, gaze following Bede as he continued on ahead for a few steps. He stopped, and turned not a moment later when he'd realised she wasn't beside him. The question in his eyes gave her no answer to the thoughts clouding her mind. She shook them off, stepped up to Bede as though she'd never left his side. 

 Some questions aren't meant to be asked, she decided. 

 It was better this way. She already had enough to deal with- the warmth in her chest, the fluttery feeling that spread through her veins, returned as she walked beside him. She felt comfortable at his side. It felt natural, normal, to walk in amicable silence towards the station where Bede would catch a Sky Taxi to Ballonlea. The time they’d spent babysitting together had turned what could have been a disastrous and exhausting few hours into a cherished memory for her. It felt like she’d discovered some hidden nugget, a buried treasure, behind the carefully crafted walls Bede always functioned behind. He probably didn’t realise how much that meant to her, that he’d let down his guard - whether deliberately or not - and revealed another side to himself that few had ever seen. 

 It made her feel… special. Trusted. Valued, even. It reaffirmed in her mind what Bede truly was to her- a friend. He was someone she could rely on in a pinch, someone who wouldn’t judge her for her failings, for her idiosyncrasies, for the secrets she couldn’t yet voice. He may not have asked her to the gala, but she knew he would be there, and that fact alone eased the trepidation she felt towards it. 

 Gloria smiled to herself as they walked, cementing that feeling in her heart.