Aya sat on the bench in the school playground, eating her lunch, talking to her best friend, Leanne. The weather was cheerful, and her day at school was going well. She had even gotten to read her essay out to her class, as she hoped to do.

"So, what Pokemon are you going to pick?" Leanne asked.

"I'm still not sure," she started, eating her passable chicken sandwiches. Her father wasn't the best cook in the world, but he was defiantly better than her mother. "I like them all, but I think I may pick Squirtle. I really love water Pokemon, and it'll be easy to beat Uncle Brock brother with when I get to Pewter." Aya bit into her sandwich, causing a drip of mayonnaise to land square upon her red tie. She looked down at her neat black uniform. "Oh, darn. My dad's gonna kill me. He just washed this."

As she cleaned the mayonnaise from her tie, a dark shadow came to rest upon her, blocking out the sun. Aya looked up to see whom it belonged to. Chris, the typical school bully; a little beefy, with a loosened tie around his neck and scuff marks on his elbows and knees. He seemed to have made Aya his pet project lately, as she was the only person who did not seem to be affected by his taunting. But today he looked smugger than normal.

"What do you want, Chris?" she said, her disdain evident.

"Oh, Aya," he began, sarcastically. "Your essay about your mum was so touching," he wiped a pretend tear from his eye. "You made her sound like a true saint."

She smiled. "Well, I'm sorry, but that's how I feel about her."

He tutted. "I can't believe it. How you can be so proud of your mother after what she did to you and your dad?"

Aya sighed. He would say anything to try to annoy her. "What are you talking about, Chris? I don't have the time for this."

"I'm talking about your mum walking out on him when she found out she'd gotten pregnant with you."

That hit a nerve within her.   People could criticize her as much as they wished, but she would not stand for it when they involved her family.   She stood up, furious that someone would even accuse her mother of such a crime. "My mum would never do that! She loves my dad! You're just trying to bully me!"

Chris' already substantial smile widened even more. Finally he had something that he could affect her with. "Well, my mum told me it's true. She said that the mother you're so proud of left your dad without even telling him she was pregnant, and it took him three years to find her again. He didn't even know that you were born," he laughed.

"You're lying. I don't believe you!" she screamed. "Shut up!"

"Awww, did I hurt teacher's pet Aya Ketchum," he said in a belittling tone, but then became wholly serious. "If you want me to shut up, then make me."

That was the last straw. Aya couldn't let him get away with badmouthing her mother. She snapped and punched Chris straight in the jaw, knocking him off his feet and onto the hard ground. She had never hit anyone before, but it felt good to wipe that smile off his cubby face.

At the sound of the impact, almost every other kid in yard turned to look at the spectacle. Chris raised his hand to his wounded face, and looked up angrily at Aya. "I didn't think you had it in you, Little Miss Perfect." Then, with a speed his build looked incapable of, he jumped up and grabbed Aya by the arms, beginning to shake her, causing the other kids to cheer with excitement.

"Aya, stop it! Chris, leave her alone!" Leanne yelled.

They both began to struggle, Aya trying to stop him from hitting her, but she failed. With a smack that she was so sure was stronger than hers, it was her turn to fall to the pavement.

"Aya, I can't believe this," her mother began. "You getting into a fight in school. You've never done anything like this before. I thought we taught you better than that."

She slowly raised her head, but the look of shame in her parent's faces made her look again at the carpet. "I'm sorry, but you also told me to stand up for what I believe in," she put nervously.

"What?" Ash asked, confused.

"I was standing up for mum. Chris was saying really bad things about her."

Ash and Misty looked at each other. Why would this boy be talking about Misty? It couldn't be... "What was he saying, sweetie?" Ash asked.

Aya, thinking back to Chris' words, felt tears begin to roll down her cheeks. Forgetting their anger, Ash and Misty pulled their daughter into their arms, setting her in between them on the sofa. Aya just sat for a few moments, crying into Ash's shoulder, before she could begin talking again. "He...he said that mummy...didn't tell you when she was pregnant with me. That...that she left you and you didn't...see her again for three years, and...and that you didn't know about me," she said looking up at her father, before she turned to her mother. Both of them looked shocked at her revelation, and almost had a aspect of panic on their faces. "But I know you wouldn't do that, mummy. Why would you? You love daddy." She buried her head in her mother's lap. "Why would he say such horrible things?"

Ash and Misty looked at each other, dismayed at what their daughter had said. 'We have to tell her,' Misty mouthed to him, not wanting Aya to hear her words, tears beginning to cloud her eyes.

'No. I don't want her to know.' Ash looked down at his daughter, pulled her from her mother's lap so she could see his face. "Aya, don't worry. None of this is true. He just made it all up," he said, gently combing his fingers through her hair.

She stopped her sniffles, and her expression became one of annoyance. "He just said it to hurt me. I really hate Chris."

Aya put her pencil down. She wasn't in the mood for homework right now. She walked from her room into the hall, planning to walk down to the kitchen for a drink of juice, but she stopped when she heard voices coming from her parent's bedroom. She stopped outside their room, looking in, past the ajar door, to see her father with her mother in his arms.

"Ash, I want to tell her. It's not fair to keep the truth from her. She has a right to know."

"We agreed eight years ago to keep this secret. We promised."

"But other people do know about what I did. It's not a national secret. I'd rather her hear it from us that some damn bully."

"Misty, I won't tell her," Ash said firmly. He leant down and kissed her on the forehead. "I don't want to hurt her. She doesn't need to know."

Giving up, she agreed with him.   "Okay." They kissed each other quickly on the lips before starting for the door.

Aya, noticing their movements, ran back to her room, slowly closing the door behind her. She stood there for a moment, unsure what to think. What would her parent's not want her to know? Was it about what Chris had said? No, it couldn't be. How could that be true?

She walked to her desk and pulled out the top drawer, searching under the countless pieces of paper for her birth certificate. There, at the bottom, she found it, and slowly unfolded the document. Scanning it she looked at the section for father's name. And there it said, as she suspected, Ash Ketchum. Maybe she had been right. Her mother would never do that. She was stupid to even consider that what Chris had told her was true. She placed the birth certificate back into the drawer and sat back in her chair, breathing a sigh of relief.

Casting her eyes in front of her, she looked at the collection of photographs she had. She picked up the one taken mere hours after her birth, her sleeping in her mother's arms. She looked into her mother's beautiful face. She was smiling, but Aya could tell there was a melancholy aspect to her expression. She could always read her like a book.   Why did she look so sad when she always told Aya that it was one of the three best days of her life (the other two being the wedding and the day Kai was born)?

She looked at the other pictures of her as a little girl. There were several others where she was with her mother, between the ages of a few months and about two years, one with her aunts and another with a couple of friends. She looked at the other pictures, looking for the ones where she was with her father. First she came to the picture of the three of them at the wedding, and then to one with her father hugging her on the day he became a Pokemon Master. The next was of their whole family, taken when Kai was only a baby.

But why was the earliest picture she had on display of her father and her the one taken on her parent's wedding day? That was when she was two and a half years old. She had several of her and her mother, and of other people, from before then, so why not of her father?

She left her room again, making sure no one was in the hallway, and entered her parent's room. She opened their closet doors and looked for the family photo albums that were always kept there. She picked up the one entitled 'Aya Ketchum' and opened it at the first page. There were a few photos of her mother while she was pregnant with her, and several taken shortly after her birth, whether they were taken in the hospital or in the small apartment they used to live in. But again, her father was in none of them. She flicked the pages, one by one, scanning each picture they showed, but she didn't come across any of her and her father until she was about two and a half years old.

She put down her album and looked at the one that belonged to her parents. The first couple of pages contained photographs of her parents as teenagers, during their several years of travelling, including several taken after they had began dating. She turned the page and saw a few more wedding pictures.

Wait.

She turned back the page, checking in case she had skipped a few leaves of the book...but she hadn't. The photographs went from her parent's being in their late teens, when they were dating, to over three years later and their wedding. Where did the pictures go from between that period? Her parent's were almost fanatical about recording their lives with photographs. It wasn't like them to leave such a gap.

"Aya, dinner!" her mother called up the stairs.

She quickly put the photo albums back into place, closing the closet doors, and ran from her parent's room. Lending over the banister, she shouted back, "Coming!"

Golden Smile, Silver Tears - http://pokemon.raging.otaku.com
Raging Otaku - http://www.raging.otaku.com