On a field of grass which stretched far beyond the eye could see, a gaunt kid with worn out, shabby oversized clothes was sprawled on the ground, his brown eyes reflecting the clouds passing by in the sky and his black hair ruffled by the wind.
He was fiddling with a daisy, ripping off petals one after another. His eyes were fixed on the sky, on a flock of pidgey flying off to be precise, trying to imagine the life and dynamics between the group of bird Pokémon.
All of a sudden he turned around and stood up, his face impassible.
'I'm not autistic Mato, I have superpowers you fool'
A kid around 12 year old was approaching the spot where the ordinary looking boy was laying seconds ago.
"Here you go again, scampering off on your own to the middle of nowhere, ditching work again Kotami"
The taller but also gaunt kid said as he stopped.
"I'm done with my share"
As he said so, Kotami turned around and started walking back to the road which lead to Loneleaf village, the other boy, Mato, turned sighed and also left after him.
A short walk later Kotami came upon a dilapidated hut situated close to other modest houses on the outskirts of loneleaf village.
He opened the creaking door and sat on the hay bed in a meditative position.
"These powers are killing me… I keep hearing other people's thoughts and going through visions and dreams."
"I don't even know what is real anymore."
Kotami struggled as his mind was stretching and bending and shrinking as he tried to calm down his surging emotions.
He reminisced about his parents death.
Four years had already passed since that terrible incident, he had been only 7 years old back then when a Pokémon stampede killed both his parents.
He was too young to understand it all, but old enough to remember it clearly.
That day something awakened inside of him, as his parents were killed in front of his eyes, a powerful wave surged out of his shock reeled mind and nearly rendered brain dead all the villagers of loneleaf town, whom fortunately believed it to be the attack of a ferocious psychic Pokémon.
Moments later the rangers and league trainers arrived and subdued most of the Pokémon, ending the stampede. As they sat out to try and rescue the villagers from under the rubble and tend to their wounds, all they came across was a kid staring with empty eyes at his mother's corpse and the surviving villagers around there all passed out.
Ever since then Kotami had visions, fluctuating emotions so strong they nearly drove him mad and heard the countless thoughts of other people and Pokémon.
Co-living with his trauma and new powers wasn't easy at all, he had just been an ordinary boy in a poor village who was destined to help his father in the fields when it all came crashing down.
Now all he had was the support of his friend Mato and his widowed father Shibu.
Their situation was dire, struggling to get something between their teeth everyday and toiling in the fields.
They also had to bear the suppression and extortion of the local gang of thugs who were buffer than them and thus could force them to abdicate part of their already meagre earnings.
What could they do though? Send a request for help to the league?
No. That would never work.
Hell, they would starve well before they even got halfway to the nearest city.
Furthermore they sure wouldn't come all the way to loneleaf village, a poor farming village totalling barely fifty people, traverse or go around the whole viridian forest whilst war with johto was raging on…
They were used to it anyway. People at the bottom of the food chain possessed a remarkable adaptability and strong will to survive, so on they had lived up to now.