There's always a choice, they said.

They said I could choose not to participate, but if I did, my life would be forfeit.

They said I could refuse to accept the pokémon assigned to me, a tiny aron that eyed me suspiciously, but if I did, it would be killed.

They said I could try running away during the tournament any time I wanted to, but the end result would be the same.

There's always a choice.

As long as the wrong choice looks good on the blooper reel, that is.

I huddle closer to the rough stone wall behind me, seeking some shelter from a sudden gust of wind. The weather here can be very temperamental in early April, and sitting halfway up the stairs to the champion's plateau on this artificial mountain doesn't exactly help.

It's the seventeenth tournament, and it's a huge media spectacle with constant coverage on twelve different channels, countless bets taken, and endless interviews with experts, celebrities and those former participants who aren't prone to start weeping hysterically at the drop of the hat.

I spent the bulk of my childhood hoping the tournament would fall out of favour before my tenth birthday, before I became one of the hollow-eyed teens from the slums repeating their tales of woe, or better yet, a corpse. If anything, it has grown more popular.

The goal of the tournament is simple: defeat all those trainers whose eyes you meet. Reach the champion's plateau. Defeat the champion. Become the new reigning champion, and defend your title until the end of the tournament. Don't lose.

Each of us was given a starter pokémon, and a limited number of pokéballs to catch more. If all your pokémon die, you're out. If you break any of the countless rules, you're out — and likely dead, too. And if you want to stay in, by the end of it all your pokémon will have slaughtered innumerable others at your behest.

Of course, there are always a few kids who can't wait to participate: the most wretched hoping for a better life, or those born without empathy. More common are those who just stop caring at some point of the tournament, bonding so strongly with their pokémon they will do anything to get out with them intact, taking their abilities as far as they can and either crushing the champion or, more shrewdly, finding a way to dally without looking bad and surviving to the end of the tournament without ever challenging the champion.

Many others just aren't cut out for the tournament: they panic, suffer from breakdowns, or even commit suicide right off the bat. Those who muster onwards often lose without winning a single battle. They are probably the lucky ones; losing at the tournament is only a death sentence to the pokémon and those participants who break the rules.

The problem with the rules is that above all else, we have to entertain the audience. If you are reluctant, obviously avoiding battles, obviously trying to get out, not trying hard enough, or even just competent but boring, more often than not you find yourself being punished. We are rarely given the benefit of doubt. The goriest results are often televisedto much acclaim. After all, nothing is more enjoyable to the ruling classes than to see the lowest of the low face death or mutilation.

Survivors are usually returned to whatever reform school or slum they were first picked up from, to live their lives if they still can. A couple of the audience's favourites sometimes receive gifts – small by their standards, life-changing by ours. Others are held back and made to re-participate in the next tournament, a fate worse than any punishment. The reigning champion and the audience's top three contestants, however, will spend the rest of their lives in relative luxury, basking in fame. And there are always those who think the reward is worth the carnage.

Most of us just want to make it through until the end without deaths on our conscience. There's one problem with wanting that, though – it's not a real option.

I look around. The landing seems sturdy enough, so I summon Ferra: a hulking monstrosity, a living mountain of steel, with razor-sharp claws and a maw powerful enough to snap bones in half. A beast with hundreds of kills under its belt. And my dearest and only companion.

I beckon Ferra to lower its head and stroke its forehead plate. It wasn't Ferra who killed all those other pokémon, ones just as desperate to survive as it was. That blood is on my hands.

Caring about your pokémon is poison. It makes you more desperate, more willing to kill other pokémon, more prone to breakdowns when they die. Of course, the organisers do all they can to encourage us to care about them, starting from forcing us to name them. And in the end, despite knowing how unwise it was, I couldn't help but care about Ferra. I knowingly fell into the trap.

The sound of bells rings from a nearby speaker affixed to the stone wall, far too high for me to reach it. A pleasant voice with a metallic tinge to it follows to give an announcement.

"The competition will end in one hour. The following participants will be disqualified if they are not to take action: 156, 158, 212..."

"Disqualified." Yeah, sure. We all know what that means, and so does the audience. What is even the point of the euphemism? Everybody knows they're actually saying that if the people listed don't make an effort they'll be lined up and executed after the tournament ends.

I rub my neck. Will my number be on the list? Probably, since I have stumbled so close to the champion without actually challenging them, but maybe, just maybe, getting there will have been enough...

"433, 448, 449..."

I sigh. Well, it was a pie in the sky dream anyway.

So, my options. I could sit here twiddling my thumbs for another hour and then let them shoot me in the stomach. I don't know exactly what they'll do to Ferra, but I do know it won't be pleasant.

No. I won't surrender us to them now, not after everything we've been through.

I could commit suicide. Surely I'm less than an hour's walk away from the nearest lake. I could just go there and drown myself. Heck, I could just throw myself off the stairs; it'll probably do the trick. But again, what will happen to Ferra?

Finally, I could climb up and challenge the champion. If nothing else, doing so will give Ferra a shot at life. Yet at the same time, I will also be following the path the organisers have laid in front of me.

But after all this time, does it even matter what choice I make?

I refused to capture any pokémon for my team, relying only on Ferra. By almost all accounts, it was a terrible move. As an aron, Ferra had two crippling weaknesses, and I certainly could have used other pokémon as backup. It would have saved me several near heart attacks, the most recent but three days ago, when a busy trainer spooked me out of my hiding place and sicced his hitmonlee on me. It came down to luck, like so many battles before it: the hitmonlee screwed up its jump kick twice in a row, just enough for Ferra to grab it in its maw and crush it.

Even that memory no longer stings. I still feel guilty, but now I can ignore it.

I avoided fights whenever I could, and when I couldn't, I did what I had to do to ensure Ferra's survival. Everyone left in the game right now is like that: all the others – many kids no doubt more noble, far more unlucky than me – have been long since disqualified.

Truly, I have been lucky, right from the very beginning. While I wasn't granted the strongest starter imaginable, at least it was a viable one. There was a trainer or two in every starting batch who was given a pokémon that could barely stand up, let alone attack. Apparently, this was considered hilarious by the audience.

My luck continued with my starting batch. Of the twenty-five people in my starting location, not one was given a ground or fighting-type pokémon. Back then, I didn't consider it luck. I didn't want to fight anyone if I could avoid it. No-one in our batch wanted to. As soon as the gong sounded, our eyes hit the ground and we began shuffling off to the nearest recovery area, fully intent on avoiding confrontation for as long as possible.

Well, all of us except for one. There's always a bad apple in a bunch, I suppose. His starter was a pikachu, and he went and yanked everyone he could catch, forcing them to look him in the eye.

As the rest of us ran, I accidentally clapped eyes with another trainer. The look of terror on her face no doubt mirrored mine.

What choice did I have? As soon as our eyes met, we were doomed. The sensors they had placed on our brows ensured that we couldn't even pretend we didn't do it.

She had started with an oddish, and there was nothing I could have done beyond prolonging the battle for as long as I could, constantly choosing defensive moves over attacks.

"Just do it."

"What?" And for the first time, I actually looked at her. She was tiny in stature, more like an eight-year-old than a ten-year-old, with long braided hair and an angular face. Her eyes bore on me, full of fire.

"Just do it. Attack. There's no point in dawdling."

I averted my eyes from her and looked at the oddish. "I don't want to kill it."

The trainer bit her lip. "It's going to die anyway. Just let it out of its misery." She jutted her chin out. "If you really care, kill it so it doesn't have to suffer."

So I did.

The memory of the tiny oddish lying on the grass, seemingly unharmed save for a few bruises, never again to open its eyes, will never cease to haunt me.

The trainer pocketed her now-empty pokéball, handed me her number token, and turned around, walking away. The bully tried to grab her, having been too busy with his own duels to notice ours, but she slapped his hand away and kept her stride, her chin held up high. She soon joined the stream of people who vanished into the defeat zone, and that was the last time I saw her.

I find myself often thinking about her. I hope she is okay.

I slowly climb the steps toward the plateau. There's still a long way to go, and each step feels like another nail in my coffin. Funny how my luck has ran out mere hours before the end.

Yes, fortune smiled upon me, yet I wasn't bold. If anything, I did my best to take the routes less taken, to be interesting without engaging in battles: adventuring, exploring caves, spending quality time with Ferra, stuff like that. After a certain point, after the thought of losing Ferra had become unbearable, I even considered capturing some more pokémon for my team, and scoured the place looking for a perfect partner in crime for us. Unfortunately, to accommodate for numerous different starting areas, all catchable pokémon were weak at best, useless at worst. There were rumours of much stronger pokémon hidden in secluded locations again this year, but if that was true, I was beaten to the punch, since I never saw as much as a beak or tail of anything worth training so late into the game during all my spelunking and adventuring.

Avoiding conflict as much as possible, however, didn't mean I scraped by with my conscience clean, as the string of plastic tokens hung around my belt attested to. While I probably ran into less of my peers than the average contestant, I still encountered more than my share, and with both tactics and sheer dumb luck always came out on top. Many of the trainers employed the same strategy as me by lurking around, exploring the surroundings rather than walking up the main routes. Others, though, waited down there specially to eliminate people like me, pegging us as weaklings and easy prey. Many of my peers no doubt succumbed to them just like they succumbed to each other. And yet, here I stand, somehow unscathed save for the burgeoning burden weighing down on my conscience.

Yet, what choice do I have?

Adventuring, by the way, wasn't all bad. Sometimes I even forgot my fear of bumping into another trainer, and fully embraced the happiness I felt exploring this artificial dream of wonder. They really had gone all out designing the place, and even though it was mostly for the audience's benefit, I did admire some of their creations. Like the crystal lair in the middle of a dank cave, filled from floor to roof with gorgeous crystal flowers – blue, pink, and lilac – with mirror-like walls that reflected every one of them in the light of my torch ad infinitum. There was another cave on the southern edge of our territory, in which waterfalls streamed upwards and the air was filled with dancing specks of light. The mountains had hidden statues standing on them, ranging from a foot tall to colossal monuments, each exquisitely crafted. In the eastern jungle, there were cottages masquerading as enormous trees, with grass floors and gentle green light that filtered through the leaf ceiling.

And everywhere, there were treasures to find: huge seashells, fossils, pearls, curious stones, scales, various artifacts of a time long past. Or at least imitations of such. Real or not, I treasured every find. They gave me a purpose, and allowed me to forget where I was and why, even if only for a moment.

And then, in an instant I would curse until the end of my days, I stumbled across the plateau. What was the committee thinking when it all but hid the champion's location deep in the wilderness? Where did the main route even lead to? Even from this height, I can barely see parts of the road, going in the wrong direction. Is this some sort of a joke? Did they laugh their collective asses off as they hid the champion area in such an obscure place that to find it, one either had to scour the whole game area or stumble across it by accident? And while I can't go back down mainly because time is running out, those who ended up here by accident earlier into the tournament had another obstacle to contend with: the lone bridge that led to the stairs was a drawbridge, and while it is down for now, it was no doubt raised several times to taunt and roadblock hapless children. And this was after making their way through a gruelling, murky cave, with floors covered in icy cold water. No doubt all of this was gut-bustingly hilarious to the people at home.

I now reach the final step. With a silent sigh, I climb it, and am met with sudden sunlight and a field of flowers. Flowers, of all colours and sizes, fluttering gently in the breeze, amidst vibrant green tufts of grass. I can even make out the distant cry of a pidgeot, an effect slightly marred when I realise it comes from yet another speaker.

And in the middle of this tiny field is a throne made of stone. Barely a throne, as it is obviously kid-sized, but still: it has carvings in an ancient language that I don't recognise, and an elaborate picture of Arceus above the champion. And a child sits on the throne: the child who conquered all that there was to be conquered, and reigns undefeated. The champion.

She stands up when she sees me, and takes a few steps forward. Her skin is dark, her hair cropped short, and she is wearing the same red and blue jumpsuit we all wear. Only the red bandana on her head with a shining emblem marks her as something special... that, and the calm, almost regal way she is gazing at me. She looks down and picks up her string of tokens from the side the throne. It's at least three times longer than mine, and a quick glance at her belt tells me she had five pokéballs.

I have already lost.

The champion inspects me the same way I inspected her, and I half expect her to smirk, seeing my lone pokémon and tiny headcount. However, not a single muscle twitches on her face as I approach her. A true champion, with nerves of steel.

"What is your name?" she asks. Her voice matches her demeanour: confident, composed, unshakable. She is shorter than me, but I feel my legs shaking just looking at her.

I pull myself to together. Remember, she's just another kid forced into this, champion or not. "I'm Alex."

"Sam." Silence ensues.

I look around. Championship matches are usually given a little more leeway on how long the trainers can talk before the match and how soon after making eye contact they have to call out their first pokémon. Not enough to avoid the inevitable, but enough to delay it. "How many challengers have you had so far?"

"Two." Sam places her hands in her belt. "No idea about how many champions there were before me, if that's what you're going to ask next." Fortunately, she doesn't seem to be in any rush to get the battle started, either.

"Not bad" is all I can think of to say in response to that.

Sam quirks an eyebrow. "Indeed." She eyes the pokéball on my belt. "I assume you're no slouch either, to get this far with only a single pokémon. Did the others perish on the way here?"

"Nah." I wonder about how much time we have left. A rubber band can only be stretched so far, after all. "Ferra's all I've ever had."

"Are you kidding me? The hell kind of a starter did you draw?" Sam glares at me. "I started with a rattata. Do you have any idea how hard I had to struggle when we first started out?"

I lower my head. "I can imagine."

"No, you can't." Sam keeps glaring at me, then sighs. "Not that it matters at this point. What matters is that I'm here now. That we're both here now. Are you ready?"

I take a deep breath. "Honestly? I'm not."

I expect Sam to glare at me again. Instead, she just shrugs. "Not everyone is. Are we going to do this anyway?"

I look at my feet. This is it. The true final step. Either Ferra will die, or Ferra and I will both die. If only there was a way I could ensure Ferra's survival, my own doesn't matter all that much. Ferra is innocent. I am not.

An idea, a brief glimmer of hope, crosses my mind. It won't necessarily work. But it might.

"Actually," I start, searching for words as I speak, "I came here to make you an offering."

Sam's eyebrow rises. "I beg your pardon?"

I swallow and unclip Ferra's pokéball from my belt. I hold it towards Sam with both hands, lowering my head. "This is Ferra. It's an aggron. I promise you it's well-trained, so please look after it."

Sam eyes the pokéball with suspicion. "Relinquishing your final pokémon is against the rules."

There it is, the potential kink in my plan. "Do you remember what the rules say about the consequences of it? I can't."

Sam strokes her chin. "The trainer is disqualified, obviously. And disqualified in the 'execution' way, not the 'better luck next time' way."

That I already knew. "But what happens to the pokémon?"

"Nothing. The offering itself is valid. The pokémon belongs to the trainer it was given to." Sam lets her hand fall. "Are you still sure you're going to go through with it?"

I barely hear her words: as soon as I hear Ferra will be okay, my head is filled with a warm, glowing light that briefly drowns out the real word. I force myself out of it to reply. "More sure than ever. Will you allow it?"

Sam considers it for a moment before shrugging. "Gonna have blood on my hands regardless. Might as well."

"My blood won't be on your hands. I promise you," I say as I walk to her and offer Ferra to her again.

Gingerly, she takes the pokéball and turns it around in her hand. "If you say so." She looks me in the eye. "I'll take good care of Ferra."

I nod. I trust her. "You really are the champion."

For a moment, Sam grins. Then, her stoic expression returns. "They will come to get you soon."

"Don't worry, I'll be gone from here before that happens." I bow at Sam, then leave, only glancing back once when I reach the stairs. Sam had summoned Ferra, and offers it her hand to examine. Ferra seems to respond well. I can't help but smile.

Good luck, both of you.

I continue down the steps, my head held high, my heart uplifted.

I gave up my final pokémon. I walked away from the champion after speaking to her. I am dead – the fact just hasn't caught up to me yet.

But Ferra is safe.

And I am free.

A/N: Edited as of 14/7/5, with the invaluable help of TJ Robinson.