The dull patter of footsteps echoed through the empty valley, as a figure ran down its narrow gullet, the lush emerald forest on either side slowly beginning to swallow it whole. Pausing for breath, the figure collapsed against the strong, comforting bark of a great oak; small rivulets of salty water falling down its warm cheeks, evaporating in an instant. It hadn't wanted to run away... running away just seemed so much easier than staying and accepting the un-wanted truth.

As the bright gleam of the morning sun began to slide over the steep mountainside, the light it cast highlighted the creature's features. It had a form that could almost be compared to that of a human child; standing on two stubby legs which quickly led up to the body which then met the head. However there were more noticeable differences that showed the creature to be reptilian in nature, possibly draconic.

Its skin (or lack of) was one thing; its small body being covered in thousands upon thousands of lightly armoured scales. However much more noticeable were these scales hue; a vibrant gold that shone magnificently in the waxing sunlight. Other small differences also existed, such as sharp ebony claws on either hand, a rather more angular jaw in which resided the teeth of an accomplished predator, and its eyes. The eyes truly were something, even when compared to the odd colour of its skin; its eyes had a singed orange hue that could be compared to two miniscule stars. However, their usual sparkle of innocence replaced by a look of such loss and devastation stained by the tears that they omitted.

Its... his name was Ember, not exactly an original name which even he would admit, but that's what happens when you leave it to a hatchling to come up with its own name. He was a young Charmander, which he had only found out recently when a few of his own species had briefly passed through their village. This revelation had not been a happy affair, as it had only deepened the loneliness that now so encompassed him. It had confirmed that he was different, even for his own species. For a child such as he to endure such a revelation without the support of a parent had been extremely painful. But this had not been why he ran away.

Ember sighed pitifully, recounting the conversation over and over again in his head. It had been with the only friend he possessed, someone named Vi. And it had taken away his last refuge. Until now, whenever he had found things too difficult, the loneliness too hard to bear he would retreat into an imaginary world. Here, he was a hero, praised and loved by all, despised by only his enemies. Sometimes Vi would even accompany him; in fact that was how they had first met, as children of perhaps five years old they'd met and started to play with one another. But this didn't last as he had hoped it would.

"It has to end, Emb." She had said, her voice so calm and sincere... almost bewitching. But when he refused, she got angrier and angrier until she'd resorted to shouting. For his age, Ember was relatively bright... so he understood why he should stop... but he also was bright enough to see that there was a big difference between knowing to stop, wanting to stop and actually stopping. But when he voiced this thought she had said the word that caused him to run.

"Fine" she had said, and then left. That single word had been so potent...to Ember it seemed like in that one word she had ended their friendship, and in walking away had shown that there was no way to stop this rift. He knew that this sounded very farfetched, but even the existence of a small chance of this happening sent tremors through his body... he had never realised how much her friendship had meant to him. A small cynical smirk escaped its lip, his mother had told him the same thing, you don't know what you have until you've lost it. It seemed strangely ironic that the same had applied to his mother...

Fresh tears threatened to break through the meagre defences that he'd been trying to put up, and the salty water vapour was beginning to sting his eyes. He stood up, brushing away the tears, and kept walking forwards. There was one place in particular that he wanted to go as he needed the comfort of a familiar place...and he had begun to get the feeling he was being watched. Picking up the pace, Ember trod on through the undergrowth of the forest, never being able to shake the feeling that he was being followed.

Thankfully, he arrived at the sacred place faster than he had hoped, and with a cautious look behind him, began to take in the wonderful scenery of this place all over again. He was in a small clearing on the forest floor, one of few places where the sun broke through the trees fully. He was standing on an elevated area of grassland, dotted with flowers of varying colour and intensity. Tto his right a river quietly flowed... until the water cascaded downwards to the azure lake below. Yet amidst all this beauty, there one thing that was out of place; towards the edge of the cliff, a small Oran tree grew, ripe and ready to harvest. Below this Oran tree...were the remains of his mother... who he had buried when he was seven... alone.

Ember didn't really understand why he liked coming to a place drenched with such solemn memories, when he thought about it, the whole idea seemed rather odd... that coming to a place where he had watched his mother die...comforted him. It was almost as if he could feel her presence here... among the natural beauty that resided here, he didn't feel so alone. Sitting down beside the Oran Tree, he gazed down to the sparkling waters below, seeing his reflection clearly in its rippling surface.

There were times when he hated himself for how he looked, truly despised his mother for not killing him at birth. But right now, he couldn't help but admire his colour, and the effect the sun had upon it, it reminded him of the human tales of knights in shining armour. Maybe one day he could be like one of those...

"No...I don't see it..." A deep voice said from behind Ember, startling him out of his daydream. He quickly whirled around. "Pretty sure knights in shining armour are taller anyway," the voice said teasingly, seemingly coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. He instinctively tried to back away, only to be reminded that he'd been sitting on the edge of a forty foot drop. Heart thumping against his chest, he desperately tried to find where the voice had come from. But then he felt warm breath on the back of his neck, causing him to freeze in terror.

"Boo."

Screaming, Ember ran towards the tree line, hoping to find somewhere to hide, but managed to trip on perhaps the only stray root in the clearing.

Hitting the ground hard, he didn't even try to get back up, and simply lay still, attempting to play dead...but his shaking had probably give him away. Yet instead of feeling the teeth and/or claws that he'd been expecting, a soft, pleasant laughter echoed through the clearing. "Wow, Emb, some knight in shining armour you are!" The voice had made a distinct change, from the deep raspy tone to a much cuter, more feminine tone...one that he easily recognised. Twisting around where he lay, he stared in disbelief at the Mew before him, happily levitating over his prone body.

"Vi?!" His voice was a strange mixture of disbelief and anger. She looked down to his face, a smirk dominating her features.

"Sure as hell got ya that time, huh?" She stated proudly. Ember however was still in such a state of shock at seeing her again that he couldn't even come up with a half-decent retort.

"N-no!" he stammered, "I knew it was you all along!" Vi simply giggled again, and tapped her head.

"Go ahead, lie to the psychic type some more, I've got all day," He stiffened, having forgotten about her annoying ability to constantly probe his thoughts...but soon he dropped this act, and was quickly overwhelmed by the happiness at seeing her again. Wrapping his stubby arms around her neck in a tight embrace, tears started to drip down his face.

"I-I thought...you didn't want to be my...friend anymore!" he whined. The hug had completely taken Vi off guard, however, and she blushed slightly, before trying to shake him off.

"Well...if you keep...strangling me...I won't!" He let go in an instant, allowing her to breathe once again. "Eww, you got your tears on me!" Ember ignored this complaint, and instead simply gazed up at her. He'd been so convinced that she didn't want to be his friend any more, and the fact that she'd followed him all the way up here meant that she did. The happiness that came with this was intoxicating. Vi looked at him curiously. "Emb...sometimes you can be really stupid. I mean, thinking that I wasn't going to like you after one argument? That's pretty retarded...even by your standards!"

"Yeah...I kinda thought that...bu-but you seemed so mad... and-" Vi waved him off with a paw, rolling her sapphire eyes.

"I get mad all the time," she explained, "But what I said was important...you did understand, right?" The Charmander nodded slowly, he had understood...but he'd decided that he couldn't act on it.

"Yeah...but...but I don't want to stop going back there. This world sucks in comparison..." Ember muttered sheepishly, looking at the ground. Vi sighed.

"Sure this world sucks, but hiding from it isn't going to change anything. If you want to be a real hero you're going to need to work for it!" she exclaimed, fist pumping the air, hoping to get Ember pumped for the challenge. Ember paused, sending that idea through his head.

"...That sounds like an awful lot of hard work..." he murmured, to him it simply sounded too much to expect from a 'mon his age. Vi twitched slightly, pissed that he'd completely ignored what she'd said to him. Ember saw this and braced himself.

"Arceus Ember! Get your ass into gear! Where do you think our race would be if every time something bad happened we'd just sit down and complain? Nowhere! That's where! If you're just going to sit on your scaly ass everyday and imagine you're some hero then you deserve to be on your own!" Having gone a little red in the face from the rather long rant, the silence that befell the two after was interrupted by her panting. Rather surprisingly, it was Ember who broke the silence, although his response wasn't exactly...what Vi had been expecting.

"...My ass isn't scaly..." he then murmured, keeping his eyes firmly on the ground. Vi sighed, for the moment feeling defeated.

"So not the point, Ember!" After she saw that this didn't work either, she decided to change tactic, opting for a more "elder sisterly" approach.

Ember could hear her moving closer, but felt too ashamed to look up at her. Of course he knew that what she said was right, Vi was nearly always right in these sorts of disputes... but every time he considered it, he remembered how much of an "alien" he felt in their village... how different he was to everyone else.

The 'mon in the village weren't exactly unfriendly to him...but they just usually kept out of his way. When he thought about it, he understood why he was so alienated... he had suddenly appeared in the village looking like he did, there was ample reason for everyone to mistrust him. In fact, he was lucky that they let him stay in the village. In times like these...strangers were often threats. Retreating to a world where everyone loved him...whether real or not...just seemed preferable.

But two soft paws quickly drew him out of these thoughts, gently urging him to look up, which he allowed. Vi's expression had changed completely, back to the one of comfort and compassion that Ember had been hoping for. For a few seconds, Ember simply stayed into her deep blue eyes, feeling himself get lost in their seemingly infinite expanse. Vi had always been good at this, Ember noted; she'd always been an expert at conveying a sense of calm through, whether through psychic powers or just natural ability, he was unsure..

"You're not alone, Emb" she assured him, "Remember, you've always got me...and I won't be going anywhere, no matter what you think." These words bounced through Embers small frame, instantly banishing the feeling of loneliness that had been weighing him down. "Now close your eyes...here's something that might help."

Still in a state of euphoria, Ember closed his eyes as told, not sure what he was expecting. What he certainly wasn't expecting was the blow to the top of his head. Recoiling from the sudden attack, he cradled his head in his arms, not so much out of pain but from the shock.

"Y...You hit me!" he exclaimed, shooting a venomous glare at the Mew who was giggling softly, cracking the knuckles on her paw.

"Damn straight I hit you! Hopefully it'll knock some sense into you!" Ember was about to make up some sort of retort, but thought better of it when he remembered the pain on his head. But somehow this had seemed to (rather literally) knock some sense into him, he suddenly felt like he could achieve becoming a hero...or maybe that was just the haemorrhage talking.

"...Thanks Vi," he ended up saying, looking back up at her. She giggled cutely.

"Any time Emb. You know how much I enjoy hitting you!" Ember rubbed his now painful head, she sure did seem to.

They sat in silence for a little while which Ember was grateful for, as it gave him to mull over how he was going to "grow up". Well, he knew that school was going to finish soon... so maybe he could try to join the Guild like he had done in his imagination. But the reality of doing such a thing was pretty daunting...he'd rumours from several 'mon that the entry examination was gruelling, and something that many full-grown 'mon had a lot of trouble with.

"Vi..." he asked, looking back up to her.

"Yep?"

"Do you reckon that we could get into the Guild?" To answer this, she drifted up close and made a show of evaluating his body.

"Well I know that I could...but I dunno about you, right now you seem to be a lot more flab than muscle, and we both know how much you suck at fighting..." Ember felt the blood fill his cheeks at that...sure, he knew he wasn't exactly fit or anything, but he wasn't exactly out of shape! "Yeah, you keep telling yourself that Emby," she added slyly, causing Ember to stiffen in embarrassment. It also further bolstered his new found resolve...she might say that he couldn't get in...but he'd prove her wrong!

"Anyway, we better head back to town, looks like a storms coming, we can talk about your lack of fitness later," she teased, moving towards the edge of the clearing.

Ember looked up at the sky, shocked that the sun had been obscured by black clouds already, it sure did look like this was going to be a bad storm. Taking one last look at his mother's grave, he followed Vi out of the clearing and into the woods, thoughts of becoming a real hero now dominating his mind...

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Vi giggled as the two moved through the forest. Males were all so easy to manipulate, and Ember was no exception... all you had to do was criticise their manliness, and they'd instantly try to prove you wrong...Chapter End Notes:That chapter took waaay too long to write... I swear I wrote like five different versions before I settled on this one. Oh well. Yeah...I kinda felt this was missing something... but not sure what! If you have anything to say, just post it in a review as its the only way I can improve. Other than that, thanks for reading