Nuzlocke End and Start

Lilith wasn’t sorry she was retiring. She really wasn’t.

She’d miss the travelling but she wouldn’t miss losing friend after friend during the journey and after three league victories, she had earned herself a name and a reputation, one that had attracted the attention of Professor Cedric Juniper, who had asked her to move to the recently built town of Nuvema in Unova to help him raise the Pokémon for those who wanted to start their own Pokémon journeys.

His call had come in at the perfect moment too. She hadn’t long defeated Cynthia, earning herself the money that would allow her to set up her own Day Care Centre. Land in Unova was cheap and with her winnings from the three leagues she’d defeated, Kanto, Johto and Sinnoh, she could afford at least a couple of acres and still afford to set herself up comfortably.

She liked this plan.

Mostly because she could keep her Pokémon, as long as they stayed within her boundaries, she could do something she was good at, raising Pokémon, and she didn’t have to run the risk everyday of losing her best friends.

She wondered when she’d become so lonely that her Pokémon, especially her very first Pokémon, her Charizard, Firestorm, had become closer to her than her own family had become, she knew that it had been long before Kanto’s Elite had fallen before the power of Firestorm and Permafrost, but she didn’t know when.

It didn’t matter now. She had her victories, though they were pyrrhic at best, with each league costing her more and more of her friends and she had her surviving friends, Firestorm, her very first Pokémon among them, she had her money, money she hadn’t had when her mother had kicked her out of the door at age ten with no warning, and she had a future ahead of her that didn’t involve pitting her creatures against another Trainer’s for what some would call ‘sport’.

Alright she was raising other people’s for the same reason, but the league was changing, shifting. Already Pokémon Training was more popular than it had been  when she’d left home originally and been forced down the path of a Pokémon Trainer, which was the way that more Trainers than they’d like to admit had started their journey.

Oh she’d have to have her team checked all over again, but she was certain that with a Professor speeding the process along it wouldn’t be too long before she and her squad could settle down in their new home...

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It was perfect.

Her ranch, Green Ranch, was perfect. From its three acres of land, some of which was wooded to its white walled, thatched roof cottage it was perfect.

It was exactly how she had dreamed it would be and her Pokémon loved it, from her lake, to her forests, to her meadows upon meadows.

It was perfect...

It had cost a pretty penny too, but she had been able to afford it and get herself started up, though part of her funds for food were coming from the wages that she was earning breeding Pokémon for the Professor. Tepig, Snivy and Oshawatt, fire, grass and water, not so very different from Kanto and yet unlike Kanto in every way.

She was safe here. Safe from Team Rocket, safe from prats like Dean and Sam, safe from ever having to save the world again.

Her life was hers again. To do with what she pleased. She was one of those rare ones, the ones who didn’t fail their journey, who did something spectacular and then settled down and went into something else entirely, fully paid for by their years on the Pokémon Circuit.

And what was better was that she didn’t have to speak to her mother again if she didn’t want to and she really really didn’t want to. Nor did she want to speak to Professor Oak, who had both assisted in her expulsion from her home and outed her when she’d been hiding from Team Rocket in Johto.

Moving to Unova meant she’d never have to do either of these things again if she didn’t want to.

She was safe, she was free, she was home.

Home. It was a wonderful word. A little pre-emptive considering that there was a little work that needed to be done on the cottage before it was really ready to be inhabited, but it was hers and hers alone and while she was waiting for her home to be finished, Professor Juniper had allowed her to move into the room his daughter used when she was home from University.

Just one more year and there would be two professors in the Juniper family...

By the time Aurea came home for the holidays Lilith would be out of her room and into the ranch.

Just a couple more weeks...

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It had been years since she’d moved to Unova and this was either going to prove the best mistake or the worst mistake of her life, but she’d fallen head over heels for a Trainer who had been staying in her spare room and studying under Professor Aurea Juniper.

Cedric had left Nuvema over a year ago, and had tried to convince her to come with him, certain that a Trainer as skilled as she would love a chance to see new places and new Pokémon, and she had almost gone. Left the Day Care in the care of Professor Iris and just left.

Now she was glad she hadn’t... or rather she had been until the test results had shown themselves. Now she didn’t know what she thought or felt...

Not that she wasn’t used to having little ones running around, but those were Pokémon. She knew how to deal with Pokémon. She knew what they needed in their food, how to handle them, how to teach them...

A human baby was a completely different matter.

She had no idea how she was going to run the centre when she got too heavy to work. Technically it was already dangerous for her to push herself too hard and her morning schedule was being completely ruined by the sickness that struck with frustrating regularity...

It was more terrifying than going up against the Elite Four. That she knew how to do...

He’d promised. Promised that he would stay by her side and help her...

She would need the help...

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She’d thought her life was perfect before, back when she’d been thirteen years old.

Now, at eighteen she knew what perfection was. It was a beautiful blue eyed baby girl with thick dark  hair already coming through.

Her little girl, her precious baby, her darling Mara-Rei...

They didn’t need the brute that had left town three months ago with no warning and left her in the lurch. With Professor Juniper’s help they would be fine.

She hoped...

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She had hoped it wouldn’t come to this but Mara’s tenth birthday had arrived all too quickly and unlike her mother, she wanted to leave home and train Pokémon.

Her little girl wanted to go out and travel and see the world, just as her mother had at her age. Mara hadn’t seen the hardships of Pokémon training, only heard the stories of her Tri-Champion mother’s victories from fans and passing Trainers and seen child after child leave town with a Pokémon raised on her mother’s ranch.

They’d fought over this many times. Lilith didn’t want her daughter leaving home so early. She had been lucky. Her journey, while it hadn’t been easy, had been better than most. Hundreds of Trainers left home a year but only one or two ever made it all the way to the Elite Four and there was almost never anyone who defeated the Champion to win it all.

Mara didn’t see why, if her mother had left home at ten years old, she couldn’t do the same.

Eventually they’d come to a compromise.

Mara had to finish school but in exchange Lilith would provide her daughter and her two friends with Pokémon without squabbling the day after her daughter’s final exam.   

Considering Cheren and Bianca, it wasn’t the safest deal Lilith had ever made, but it could have been much much worse and it meant that Mara wouldn’t leave home until she was sixteen, which would be both an advantage and a disadvantage.

Lilith felt safer knowing that while her daughter may have resented the fact that her mother had prevented her leaving so young, her daughter had a couple more years in which to learn how to cook things that weren’t freeze dried and would be old enough to look after herself.

Hopefully by then she would have the common sense not to get involved in troubles like the ones her mother had gotten into when she was young...

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