4780 - Pokemon Heartgold -u--xenophobia- -

He was from Kanto. That was the first strike.

“It’s fine,” he said quietly. He returned Typhlosion to its ball. “I’ll take the Magnet Train back tonight.”

“We don’t eat that here,” he said flatly, though they absolutely did.

The xenophobia wasn’t a scream. It was a low, constant hum. 4780 - Pokemon Heartgold -u--xenophobia-

Lyra had never questioned the soft, familiar rhythm of Johto. The whistle of the Magnet Train, the scent of apricorns ripening in Route 37, the way the bells of the Brass Tower chimed at dusk—these were the truths of her world. So when the boy arrived in New Bark Town, he felt less like a trainer and more like a splinter.

Gold proved difficult to hate. He was a brilliant battler, his Typhlosion a furnace of controlled fury. He helped the old man in Azalea Town chase off Team Rocket. He returned the stolen machine part to the Power Plant without demanding a reward. He even bowed—actually bowed—to the Elder in the Sprout Tower.

Professor Elm introduced him as “Gold,” though he wore the sullen silence of someone who’d lost something. He spoke with the clipped, efficient vowels of Saffron City, and when Lyra offered him a Rage Candy Bar, he stared at it like it was a foreign insect. He was from Kanto

“He’s not the enemy,” she said.

Gold had just defeated the Red Gyarados—a monstrous, shimmering thing driven mad by forced evolution. Exhausted, he knelt at the water’s edge, washing the crimson scales from his arms. Lance, the Dragon Master, clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve got the heart of a true Johto trainer.”

The breaking point came at the Lake of Rage. He returned Typhlosion to its ball

Lyra stepped forward. She had known Gold for three months. She had seen him weep when his Togepi hatched. She had watched him give his last Revive to a stranger’s Rattata.

“Keep your distance,” her mother warned that night, darning a woolly Slowpoke-tail sweater. “Kantonese have no respect for tradition. They took our Slowpokes during the war. They’d take our souls if they could.”