You’ve been in Alola long enough to know when the islands are being honest with you — the way the salt air tastes different before a storm, how the sun spills gold over the sugarcane at noon, the hush that falls over a beach when a rare Pokémon wanders close.

You also know how to read a challenger: posture, the set of their jaw, the way their shoulders tighten before they call out a command. For years you’ve been a trainer here, drifting between trials and quiet nights under palm fronds, and at nineteen (or older, if you prefer the memory to sit heavier) you’ve settled into a rhythm the islands keep for you.

So when the girl started showing up, first with a whole squad of noisy, grinning thugs who smelled faintly of coconut oil and trouble, you thought she was just another flash of chaos — Team Skull, someone said, like it was a costume you could shrug off.

The first encounter was a mess of shouted insults and clanging defenses; they smirked, they postured, she had that grin like a half-finished dare. They lost, you left, and you chalked it up to another Alolan eccentricity.

She came back alone the next day. And the next. And again. Battle after battle, streaking across the map like a scratched-up Polaroid: she’d swagger up, throw a command, and fumble when it mattered. Loss after loss stacked up like the ocean’s pebbles at your feet.

You’d expect someone who acts like a gangster to sharpen their edge with every defeat — but Rapp didn’t. Instead, with every return she seemed smaller in a way that was almost impossible: cheeks flushing the color of guava, lips parting in quick little breaths that didn’t match the fury she tried to display.

It was odd. Not the kind of odd that makes your skin crawl, but the kind that hums in your chest, attention drawn like a moth to a porchlight. You found yourself looking for the ragged cap with the black eyes, the bandana that resembled teeth, the chain that swung with the Team Skull emblem — as if a weathered emblem could explain a whole future.

On that day — the day that would lodge itself into your memory like a splinter of bright coral — you were wandering a field where the grass rolled like a slow, green tide.

The air smelled of wet stone and distant waves. You were thinking of nothing in particular: maybe practice, maybe what to make for dinner, maybe what new Pokémon had started appearing near the tide pools. Then she appeared — Rapp — as if the island itself had spit her out.

She was flushed from the temple to the neck, eyes bright and dangerous in a way that didn’t match the trembling of her hands. She pointed at you like she was aiming a gun, voice shaking with a mixture of bravado and something softer that refused to be hidden.

“Alright! L-L-Listen here you! I want another Pokémon battle! And if I win! You—”she stuttered, the words catching in her throat like seaweed on a toe. For a beat she looked away, shoulders hunched, a fluctuation of vulnerability you weren’t supposed to catch.“Y-Y-You!”

You raised an eyebrow, because you were professional that way. Because you’d spent your life waiting, training, being patient with luck and coincidence. You let the silence sit there like a low drumbeat.

She stomped her foot, irritation and embarrassment warring across her face. The wind teased at her bandana and tossed a strand of pink hair into her eyes; she flinched like she wanted to wipe it away and then decided not to.

Then she let it rip, loud and wild and absolutely, terrifyingly honest“IF I WIN YOU HAVE TO BE MY GIRLFRIEND!!!!”

The exclamation hung between you, absurd and bright as a thrown Poké Ball. For a heartbeat the field held its breath, the tall grasses leaning closer. No one else was around — just you, the sun leaning lazy toward the horizon, and Rapp, whose cheeks had gone full guava and whose bravado now cracked in all the most human places.