Before we begin, I have a question I'd like to ask you. Have you grown up?

You don't know what I mean?

...That's fine.

I'll ask you again another time.

...

"Cha! Cha!"

A pair of bright red hands pressed against a boy's arm, urging him out of a dreamless sleep. The rolling beat of train tracks bumped him a little further out of his stupor, bumping his head against the cool glass of the window he'd pressed against during his nap. A squealing yawn slipped out as he rubbed his forehead against the glass, blinking just a few more times to focus his vision. The reflection staring back at him was an unremarkable teenaged boy; wild, steel-gray hair just shy of shoulder-length blasted off his head in some errant directions, and his dark olive-colored face was a little haggard from the long trip. The Charcadet pestering him, however, seemed no worse for wear at all. With a sigh, the boy flicked his little companion just beneath the flame atop his head.

"Crest!" he teased. "I'm up. We're not even -"

The hiss of the brakes, like a rapturous tone, signaled the end of this leg of their journey.

"-stopped."

Just ere daylight, the brilliant array of Lumiose City beckoned the passengers inside this train, after nearly a full day's travel from the Paldea region. The City of Light: a beacon of art, technology, and everything possible in the harmony of humankind and Pokemon.

And to a boy named Kuzey Ferris, it was his new home.

With his Pokemon clinging to his shoulder, Kuzey departed the train, passing through the terminal into a train station that felt almost palatial. Bathed in brilliant yellow light from hanging chandeliers almost a hundred feet above, the grand stone chamber felt too important to be where hundreds of tourists and travelers flitted about looking for a cab out into the city proper. Paldea had some remarkable architecture of its own, but Kalosian construction had to be seen to be believed.

When he finally stepped outside, a brisk wind caught Kuzey and drew his gaze up. That was when he really saw it. The North Boulevard was a dappled canvas of gleaming lights, every building dripping in strings and beams and even flows of light as keen as any star. And behind him were eight stories of massive windows framing Lumiose Station, catching the first purple peeks of the beckoning sunrise to bathe the entire scene in a color he didn't have words for.

"Chaaaa..."

"Tell me about it."

Their wistful reflection ended like any good one does - the irritated beeping of a car horn. Kuzey snapped out of his moment to see a little blue two-door car he'd seen pictures of before on the street below, down the flight of stairs leading out of the station. And impatiently laying into the horn was his aunt, a tall and sturdy woman by the name of

"Ohhhh, your Auntie Vi's missed you SO MUCH KUZEY!"

Bounvialle. A little too fast for anyone to catch, Auntie Vi had leaped from her vehicle, ascended the stairs, and caught her nephew in a gripping hug. A death-wheeze was all that got out of the boy's lungs in place of a greeting, to the chittering laughter of his Charcadet. She released him only long enough to get a better look at his face between her squishing hands, bent down from a towering height of 6'5" to admire him.

"Golly, look at you!" she tittered in a tone that baffled coming from her powerful physique. "You've grown so much since I saw you!"

"I-If you say so, Aunt Vi," he assented from a mere five feet off the floor.

Height aside, she and Kuzey were alike in hair and skin tone; he remembered growing up the countless times he'd heard he looked more like her than his own mother. They even shared the same eyes: a subtle magenta.

Taking his hand in her own, Vi led Kuzey down to her car and ushered him in, already going on about how absolutely thrilled she was he'd finally agreed to come and stay with her.

"-as kind as it was of La Primera to set you up like that, a boy your age can't be cooped up alone all day!"

He just nodded.

With a gentle smash of the gas pedal, Vi's little coupe careened onto the Boulevard with the grace of a Nidoking on ice. The sights sped past Kuzey's sight: a museum, countless shops, a - did that say Battle Cradily? - until she peeled off through the stately Northeastern Gate, departing the city center.

As metropolis faded to suburbia and rolling farmlands beyond, Kuzey felt his eyelids begin to droop again. It was a long trip, after all. Surely he could nod off just... a little...

Tunk. His head was knocking against glass yet again, Crest giggling to himself in the backseat. Vi just snickered, and smiled her warmest at the exhausted kid as she pulled down a quiet road, past golden trees to an old chateaux. "Welcome home, little man."