After Dawn messes up at their latest concert, Lisia decides what she needs is some good old-fashioned confidence building. Where else to go, but away from it all?
“Alright…It’ll be okay,” Dawn muttered, the curtains before her muffling the connection between audience and stage. Only the shadowy silhouette of the crowd warned her of what waited on the other side as their excitement rose to a fever pitch, screams scraping at Dawn’s ears and sending her pounding heart into a frenzy of its own.
Lisia stepped up next to her—costume ready, smile donned. She looked at her friend and reached over to pat Dawn on the shoulder.
“It’ll be okay,” she said. “We’ve practiced so many times, there’s no way we’ll be leaving this crowd disappointed!”
Dawn swallowed her fears and nodded back, though deep down, those words did little to assuage her anxiety.
How long have they been an idol duo together…? Ever since their first live show, the pair’s garnered more dedicated fans. Not just there to see Lisia, but Dawn too, showing their support in all kinds of ways.
It felt so surreal. Not to say Dawn’s never had fans before, given her contest performances, but the presentation of contests and sharing the spotlight with your partner Pokémon meant a less personal experience—nothing like a live show. Being able to reach out and get close to the audience took more finesse, a different kind of charisma and showmanship.
Lisia had it all.
And Dawn…
She worked on it every day.
So she reassured herself as she stepped off the stage. Nothing would go wrong! Dawn never wanted to hold her friend back. As long as she showed the audience how she truly felt through song and dance, then the worst she could do was stir a little disappointment.
Right?
The bump on Dawn’s head and the big bruise on Lisia’s shoulder said otherwise, twenty minutes later. A mid-show cancellation already cleared out the crowd as the two idols sat on the edge of the stage, Dawn’s head in her hands while Lisia pressed an ice pack to her own injury.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lisia reassured her. “Like I said, accidents happen.”
Dawn sniffled. “But how could I mess up that badly!? I practiced so many times, and I couldn’t even slip without ramming into you! What if I— What if I made you fall too, or you broke your leg, twisted your ankle—”
“But you didn’t!” Lisia yelled. She winced at her volume, then cleared her throat and continued. She couldn’t even tell if she surprised Dawn. If anything, the lack of reaction seemed much more concerning. “You didn’t, okay? We’ll both be fine after a good day’s rest, just in time for tomorrow’s show.”
“But— I don’t think I want to do tomorrow’s show.”
“You don’t?” Lisia said. “Dawn…”
“I can’t do it,” Dawn repeated, “not after this.”
Lisia looked away, face wrinkled in contemplation. She understood how Dawn felt—even being the more experienced of the two, she had her down days and moments where she wanted to quit and run into the mountains, never to be seen again.
Run into the mountains…
That was it.
“Then we’re not gonna do it.”
Dawn’s eyes widened. Mouth agape, she failed to muster a word before Lisia continued, throwing a fist in the air.
“We’re gonna cancel it, and try something else! A change of routine may be just what you need to get your confidence back up!”
“Um…” Dawn began, then trailed off. She reached up to wipe away a few stray tears still on her cheek. Even if she struggled to match Lisia’s enthusiasm, she figured the other girl wanted to do everything she could to cheer Dawn up. The last thing she wanted to do was ruin that cheer. “...I guess we could? Did you have something in mind…?”
“Yeah!” Now, Lisia threw up a peace sign. “We’re gonna run away into the mountains together!”
“Wait, really!?”
If Lisia knew how much effort this would be, she would’ve had a better internal metaphor to make a training camp out of.
Armed with sleeping bags and non-perishable foods, Lisia hauled her portion of the supply over her shoulders while Dawn trailed behind with the tent, clothes and water. The former steady, the latter wavering, they arrived at their campgrounds before noon and finally earned a moment of rest.
“Augh…” Dawn collapsed as soon as they arrived at the campsite halfway up the mountain, a grill and a pit set up for cooking. A couple logs made up a seating area, something Dawn took advantage of as Lisia stretched her limbs and started to pitch the tent. “Sorry, I think my legs need a moment…”
“No worries,” Lisia said and gave Dawn a thumbs up. “Consider the trip up to be part one of Lisia’s super intensive, super passionate idol training camp!”
Dawn grimaced as she slouched over, body splayed out over the log. “I think I might need a few hours before part two…”
“No time for that!” Lisia pulled the tent up once she had all the stakes down, satisfied. “We’ve only got this place for one night, so we need to make it count!”
“Nghhhh…” After another groan, Dawn pulled herself up, shaking her head and slapping her face until she regained some sense of stability. “Okay. I’ll do my best. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up, but—”
Lisia scooted next to Dawn and put a hand on her back. “But don’t worry about it! Trust me, once we’re done with this training camp, you’ll see you never had anything to worry about.”
Dawn smiled. Though Lisia long since learned to discern Dawn’s forced smiles from her real ones, she hoped that’d change once this ended. Lisia just needed to work her magic.
After a short rest break, Lisia all but dragged Dawn away from her seat. The hike served as a good warmup, but if she really wanted her friend to get her confidence back, Lisia knew they needed a bit more than some exercise.
“Riiiiight…here!”
They stopped. Dawn squinted, faced with the reflection of the bright body of water before her. The path they took opened up to a clearing where a deep lake resided, a waterfall off in the distance. A ring of bright green trees protected the area, a treasure of nature from prying eyes.
Lisia grinned and handed something to Dawn: a swimsuit.
“There should be a place to change nearby, so come on!” she said as she dragged Dawn behind her. Once the two prepared to enter the water, Lisia started with some stretches, Dawn joining in until they finished and Lisia spoke. “So, you’ve seen this in the movies before, right? Black Belts positioned in the water, strengthening their will by meditating under the crushing waves?”
Lisia turned around and got behind a flustered, confused Dawn, before she shoved her around the lake. Despite how abyssal the water levels reached seemed in the center, around the edges where the waterfall roared and broke the surface with all it had, the currents lapped at shallow grounds.
So it’d be totally safe. So Lisia thought.
“Hey, wait!” Dawn dragged her heels in the dirt. “Wait, so you want me to sit under the waterfall!? I think that’s, like, way deadlier than the movies make it out to be!”
“Aw, I think it’ll be fine! The waters don’t look all that bad from here! I…think?”
“That’s ‘cause we’re so far away!” Dawn grit her teeth, channeling all the strength she had to keep herself on dry land despite Lisia’s best attempts to get her away from it. No matter the effort spared, though, she moved inch by inch closer to the edge of the lake. “How much pressure does a waterfall put on your body anyways? Don’t you need muscle for that? Or some kind of, uh…diving suit? Anything so I won’t get hurt?”
Lisia paused, dragging arm falling limp before she pumped her free fist and yanked, bringing Dawn forward with a renewed passion. Dawn tried—tried as hard as possible to keep position—but her legs wavered and she soon found herself tugged along with little hope of escape.
“All you need to do is believe in yourself! That’s what this camp’s all about, right? Restoring your confidence, no matter what it takes!”
“Maybe I’m fine with some exceptions to that!”
Dawn winced as small sprays of water dampened her face from where she now teetered close to the edge. Lisia flashed one last thumbs up before she shoved Dawn forward, who stumbled, tottered, and finally landed in the middle of the gushing waterfall.
Where she stood…
Proud, tall…
For all of five seconds before she collapsed. The pressure smacked Dawn’s skull with the force of ten mallets, a hard hit that echoed through every nerve and bone in her body before she slipped underwater, her last memories being of Lisia swimming towards her, yelling something she failed to understand.
Several hours later, Dawn felt no closer to this “confidence no matter what it took” goal. By the next afternoon, Lisia exhausted an entire list of planned activities that ended in some sort of mishap. From mushroom identification to log gathering, Dawn struggled to find her footing and messed up enough that Lisia always stepped in to help.
She enjoyed having fun with her friend like this, but…
“That wasn’t really the point, was it?”
Dawn, sitting on the log bench at the campsite, reared her head back and focused on the dapples of light leaked between thick green leaves, which worked together to cast the forest in a dark gloom.
“Maybe not, but I had fun,” Lisia said, “especially when I had to rescue you from drowning."
“I wouldn’t have ended up like that if it wasn’t for you,” Dawn said with a pout. “...Sorry.”
“Huh?” Lisia frowned, going over to sit next to Dawn. “Don’t be sorry. This was my idea. If it’s a dud, it’s a dud. We’ll go back and try again like we always do, right?”
“...”
“Right?”
Dawn said nothing. Lisia looked away and huffed. The conversation—the trip as a whole would have ended there—if an idea didn’t occur to Lisia. She jumped out of her seat and grabbed Dawn’s arm, dragging her up with her.
“No—It’s not over yet. There’s still something we haven’t tried.”
“Huh?” Dawn stared at Lisia, begging her without words to elaborate. A big smile stretched across Lisia’s face.
“We’ve been missing something important this whole time,” she said, then pointed to Dawn, “so we’re gonna fix that here and now! We still have an hour until we need to pack up, so from now until then, we’re holding a last minute scavenger hunt!”
“A…” Dawn frowned. “Why? We’ve done a lot of foraging already…”
“Not foraging, scavenging! I’ll plant a prize you’ll need to find before we go.”
Lisia reached inside her pockets, and pulled out a pokeball. “With one important rule added: you’ll be able to use whatever Pokémon you have on hand to help you.”
Pokémon…
Ah, right! Dawn searched her pockets until she retrieved the one Pokémon she’d brought on the trip. Considering it’d been planned for Dawn’s development more than anyone else’s, she didn’t plan to bring more than one (and even then it was a matter of habit, going without a Pokémon would be like going without packing food and water).
Which one was it again? She tossed the ball—and out popped Oricorio, a friend she hadn’t brought out in ages.
Dawn shut her eyes.
Then, hands clenched into fists, she looked off into the distant woods. “All right. Go ahead and get ready. I’ll be waiting for when you get back to start.”
Lisia looked on. A warm blanket of pride enveloped her as she nodded and ran off. About ten minutes later, she returned and signaled for Dawn to start, to which she took off in the opposite direction Lisia returned from.
Call it overthinking, but Dawn had a feeling Lisia would mix her up by taking an odd path back. Her Pokémon friend at her side, only barely keeping up with the pace of its trainer, she first thought about what she was looking for in the first place. She hadn’t gotten any hints…
It couldn’t be something which blended into nature. Dawn thought Lisia wouldn’t go for something that hard with so little time, or anything too obtuse or unrelated to the trip. It needed to be something special, something Dawn knew the importance of.
“Something related to our performances, maybe?” she wondered aloud, while Oricorio peeped sounds of encouragement at her side.
Dawn glanced around—nothing stuck out. She turned and moved in a wide circle around the area, but as foliage crunched beneath her feet and the lights danced about with the passage of time, doubt gnawed at her gut again.
There had to be something. Dawn’s heart thudded as static filled her ears like cotton, shutting out everything but the snaps of her footsteps and the sight of dull greens and browns surrounding her with no break in sight. Nothing out of place.
Nothing at all.
A breeze hit her, and she winced and turned around. A Pidgey flew too low and almost banged its wing against her face, but as it regained its balance and flew through a gap between leaves back into the sky, Dawn gasped.
She bent down and faced her Pokémon partner. “Oricorio, can you check everything from above?”
With a confident shake of its head, the bird bared its wings and took off into the gap as well. Not a minute passed before it flew down once more, guiding her towards a tree close to the campsite. Plenty of branches sprouted out of the side, large and sturdy and good for climbing.
Dawn huffed, and with a heave, clamoured onto the first branch. Minutes to the end of her time limit, she crawled onto the topmost branch, where she found…
A costume, dangling at the edge. Tangled, a little frayed, but still holding on.
Of course, of all to pick, Lisia chose the one Dawn wore during their very first concert. She’d been so new, so clumsy, made so many mistakes, but she didn’t let that bother her.
She knew how to have fun with it, how to smile even when she wasn’t sure it’d be worth anything. Dawn scrambled to scoop up the outfit and held it close to her chest as Oricorio snuggled against her side.
The sharp, cold breeze, infused with the calm of the forest, glided past her, brought the wishes from everyone below to her.
Dawn followed it down.
Once her feet touched ground, she saw Lisia, who waved with a sleeping bag under one of her arms.
“So, you think you’re ready?”
Dawn looked to her Pokémon–to her costume, then to Lisia—with a smile brighter than all the stars.
“I think so! I mean…I am! I definitely am!”