The Game of Champions Chapter Two: Tradition and Lenience

Here's 9k to hold you over until I finish the chapter. Enjoy.


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The Game of Champions
Chapter Two
Tradition and Lenience
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“Fall seven times and stand up eight.”

-Ancient Japanese proverb, preserved through oral tradition in traditionalist homes

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They searched his effects, of course. His pokeballs were not among them. He had come alone.

His pokedex flushed itself when they released their porygon, disappearing to some unknown backup drive.

His journal was written in unintelligible numeric code, which they had no hope of decrypting without the cipher and key.

The many inner pockets of his coat had been filled with sundries. Worthless, meaningless miscellanea.

A ballpoint pen, ink burst. One of them mussed their hands and scowled. They set that aside.

A coin-purse and wallet, complete with trainer ID and a few hundred idols. The ID listed only his nickname. Frustrated, they set these aside as well.

A bag of catnip. A pressed flower. A wooden grave talisman. A sheriff’s star. A piece of obsidian glass.

Curios. Souvenirs. The modest collection of a quiet boy. It told them nothing. Moreover, it unsettled them.

How could a boy have done so much?

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To tell you Pikachu and I had a rocky start would be something of an understatement…what?

A nickname? No, I could never. I can’t explain why personally, but you’ve heard of the naming threshold, of course. You have probably even discussed it on hand. Getting a pokemon to respond to a nickname is a trial every trainer must overcome, because they never really think of themselves as that name. Even Psychic-types admit that they refer to themselves as ‘Kadabra’ or ‘Xatu’, and to others of their species as the same, without any confusion. It’s actually the reason why trainers are required to name their pokemon, on official record at least; in the middle of a battle between two pokemon of the same species, calling them by their pokemon name has been known to distract both pokemon, rather than your own, which falls under heckling which is of course illegal.

I suppose one reason is that I’ve never had that problem with communication. I turn to look to my pokemon at the same time they turn to look at me. It’s eerie, sometimes. I suppose it has to do-

Oh. I see what you’re doing. No. The story will continue in its natural order, no skipping about, though I applaud your subtlety. I wouldn’t have expected it from you, sir.

The first stage of domestication is domination, showing the pokemon you have control. The degree of force needed varies with each pokemon.

I was one day into my journey, halfway to Viridian City. Route 1, by merit of being the link between one of the most famous cities in Kanto and the ranch of its Pokemon Professor, had received exorbitant aid from the regional coffers.

This had gone into increased ranger patrols, better roads and the halfway house where I had stayed the previous night. It was lavish, so not free, but trainers received discounts and it was better than sleeping outside and trusting luck to save me from a rabid raticate gnawing my feet off.

One attractive feature of the halfway house was the ranger barracks right next to it. Sleepy Routes like 1 were nicknamed ‘ranger nests’, and typically were staffed with young ‘baby bird’ ranger trainees learning the ropes and older rangers teaching them while waiting to pick up their ‘nest egg’ pensions. Coincidentally, both types were characteristically bored out of their skulls. You couldn’t live in this age without knowing a story about the infamous pranks they played to amuse themselves. The plausibility of the few stories I knew was suspect, but the rangers I met there were indeed as bored as legend, and more than happy to chase away the doldrums helping a rookie trainer with his feral starter.

It was a hot, sticky day. We’d found a sequestered copse away from the barracks, so as to minimize damage. Three rangers had offered their assistance: A captain in his mid-fifties, with a twangy drawl that spoke of many rural posts, his charge, a young man not much older than me, despite his bulging muscles, and the medic, a silver-haired woman with a slender frame and disapproving lips pinched tight enough to squeeze a nail in two.

The older ranger held my pokeball in hand. Nearby, the grinning trainee had released his poliwhirl, which was curling and uncurling its leathery white fingers a few feet away. The barracks medic was watching some ways back, arms crossed.

“Alright, kid, so whatchu got here?” The veteran ranger asked. I told him. He frowned. “A pikachu? Ain’t they mild as Moomoo milk most times? You didn’t go and pull its tail, didja?”

I admitted that I may have stepped on it, just a little bit.

He whooped a laugh. “Whoo! This rat’s gonna be pipin’ mad, then! Private, switch to the monkey, you don’t want that poliwhirl getting fried by a stray bolt.”

The trainee obliged, grinning wider, recalling his poliwhirl and releasing a primeape, who landed in a hairy, pig-nosed fury, beating the ground with its ham-like fists. The trainee grabbed its ear and twisted, barking a short rebuke. The primeape snarled, and the trainer knelt and spoke in its ear, turning it towards me. I quickly avoided eye contact. Primeapes were the only pokemon worse than Dragon-types, in that regard. It bayed, straining to be released.

“All right now, rook, here’s how it’s gonna go: I’ll release your pikachu, and you go ahead and pin it. You got some insulation?”

I pulled out a pair of rubber yellow dish gloves and tugged them on pointedly.

“That’ll do. Grab it by the cheek-spots. Why does he want to do that, private?”

The trainee piped up, straining to be heard above his primeape’s snarling. “The electrical sacs, captain!”

The veteran nodded. “That’s right. Pikachu store their charge in their cheek sacs, so you grab on and let it shoot its payload. Once it’s all gone, that pikachu’s just a big yella’ rat. You ready?”

I checked my gloves and said yes.

The ranger thumbed the button. The rim of the pokemon sprang open, and red pokepower exploded outwards with a gulping, whiny blast. As soon as the pikachu had reconstituted itself, I leapt.

I was lucky. The pikachu was disoriented, this being the first time it had been released. Ignoring the trainee’s gleeful hooting and the frothing of the primeape, I lunged forward and seized it by the fat of its cheeks. I smiled for a fraction of a second, thinking I had decisively managed the situation. Oh, naivety.

The pikachu, rather than try to jerk away, dug all four of its sharp claws into my vest, squeaking a terrible war-cry. I saw the two cheeks light up and felt the lightning escape, heating the gloves as the bolts cracked and popped like giant popcorn kernels.

You wouldn’t think such a small creature would hold so much voltage (or fury), but the pikachu bucked and twisted like a spooked ponyta at a rodeo. The temperature of the rubber rose to almost painful degrees. My vest would have been shredded had it not been made out of twice strong flaffy wool. As it was, I got raked several times, drew a long, nearly bloody cut under my chin and developed a much deeper respect for rodents, staring into the pikachu’s slobbering maw as it expended its body’s electricity against me.

As soon as the torrent ceased, I dropped the rat pokemon like a hot potato, yanking the partially melted gloves off of my hands.

“Herc, subdue him!” The private barked, releasing his primeape.

The pikachu landed like a coiled spring, leaping away, but the primeape tackled it midair. The yellow rodent resumed his struggle, but the fighting pokemon pinned him in seconds and let out one long, enraged scream in the pikachu’s face. It went wide eyed and still. I could see his chest beating frantically, eyes rolling in fear.

The captain tossed me my pokeball. “Boy, return that thing before it has a heart attack.”

I thumbed the return switch along the rim, and the pokeball’s titanium release button twisted open in the middle, revealing a small lens. A red laser lanced out and hit my pikachu’s left ear, rapidly twitching. The laser activated the biological marker which the pokeball had written into the pikachu’s genes upon capture, causing corresponding neuro-chemical pathways to fire, prompting the entire body to break apart at a subatomic level. In less than a second, the pokemon had disintegrated into a mass of red pokepower energy, which traveled along the path of the laser, devouring it, until it was inside; at this point, the titanium lens cover slid back in place, and the tiny self-wiping computer saved the previous physiological state of the pikachu and froze the chaotic pokepower into stasis, awaiting the next release.

The private did the same for his Herc, who had settled back on his haunches after the pikachu disappeared to let his testosterone and adrenaline fueled rage smooth out into general simian hyperactivity, hooting and shitting and doodling in the dirt. The captain’s nose wrinkled. “You see that gets cleaned up, private, I don’t want some house guest steppin’ innit.”

“Yes sir,” The private replied, running off after the medic to the barracks to retrieve his poop scoop. The captain turned towards me and wiped his forehead absently, giving me a once-over for injuries.

“You all right, son?” I assured him I was. He nodded. “Well, you know the next step, I hope. Put him in a closed room and see that he calms down.” A grin. “And give yourself a pat on the back, while you’re at it. In all my years, that’s got to be the biggest, meanest pikachu I’ve ever seen.”

I took the pokeball back to my room and prepared it. I locked the doors and windows, and closed the shades. I put on one of my long-sleeved shirts, and made a mental note to buy gloves when the opportunity presented itself: I seemed to be damaging my hands a lot recently. I placed my more delicate possessions in the closet and closed it too. Then I let the pikachu out.

He appeared on his back, as he had been returned. The rat quickly righted itself, huddling in on itself, shivering with pupils wide as saucers. I reflected on the fact that this was the first time the animal had ever been inside a human dwelling. What smells and sights and sounds seemed normal to me – the soap and detergent, the ambient light, and distant sound of a vacuum down the hall – would be harsh and strange to the feral beast.

My very first twitch got the pokemon’s attention. Moving slowly, I lowered myself down to his eye level, decreasing the threat I posed. I then effected my lowest bass tones, knowing that lower frequencies seemed more comforting on a primal level, to inform him verbally that everything was all right, throwing the sign for ‘all clear’ as an afterthought.

For a brief, pregnant moment the pikachu didn’t respond at all. Afterwards, I would wish he hadn’t at all.

Because then, he began to pee.

It took me a second to deduce the origin and meaning of the gushing sound, which made me leap up and back with an exclamation. I will admit I had, in my dismay, completely forgotten a cardinal rule when dealing with spooked pokemon: do not excite them. Especially when they are already urinating.

The pikachu, of course, took off immediately, bolting across the room. I, of course, had no choice but to pursue, as that was my room and everything was going completely wrong and I was regretting not paying more attention to the biology of pikachu in my study late last night because I was fairly sure that there was no way one little rat could possibly hold this much pee.

It took me the better part of a frenzied, shouting minute to finally corner the pikachu and ball it, by which time my pokemon and I had trashed the room, I had attracted the cleaning and kitchen staff, and I had managed to get liberally sprinkled in rat piss. It was quite a scene the house manager walked into when he was eventually notified, and I do not blame him one whit for ordering me to collect my things and leave immediately.

It was in that exact state I made the rest of my trip to Viridian City, which was uneventful except for a few beedrill I saw a ranger drive off the Route in the distance and the passing of a car, which were rare enough even without the shiny paint job and shaded windows I spotted.

And it was in that exact state that I arrived at Viridian City: of marginally better mood, much wearier legs, determinedly optimistic and covered in rodent urine.

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The sun had passed into the latter half of the sky when I finally took my place in line at the Viridian City security checkpoint. The walls of Viridian loomed high up above us, casting us tired travelers into a pleasant shade that made the wait slightly more tolerable. Nearby, Viridian militiamen stood at attention, or walked the checkpoint line, asserting their presence and reminding us that we were now safe.

So tired was I, that it took me nearly five minutes of standing in line to notice the separate line for trainers, which I deduced from the multiple pokeballs each person carried, and the pokedexes they were flashing to the one guard there, who looked decidedly less beleaguered and overstressed than the one at the front of the line I was in. I stepped out and crossed the checkpoint to my proper line, just behind the last person left, an elder man in hunting leathers with pokeballs painted green hanging off a bandolier slung across his chest. His pokedex showed up clean, and I stepped forward, pokedex at the ready.

The guard wrinkled his nose, though out of confusion or the wind blowing my smell his way I couldn’t say. “The hell is this?” He asked, exasperated. “Sir, I’m not trained to operate self-built models.”

I explained that it was the generation two beta, and asked him to keep it on the down low, I added, hoping to increase my credibility.

He frowned and opened it. After a moment of fiddling he grew interested, even excited. I sensed a hobby. “Wow, this is the real deal. Notebook, keyboard, note-taking, sketchboard,” I smirked. Blue really had a knack for people. The guard pointed the identifying camera at the drug-sniffing growlithe at the front of the traveler line and his face opened into a small ‘o’. “The scan time has been nearly halved!”

I dug out my laminated trainer’s ID and handed it to him as well. As interesting as it was to hear about my new machine, I was much more interested in a hot shower. The guard took it and handed back my pokedex, looking a bit guilty.

“’PKMN Trainer Red’. Birth date, ID #, licensing location…Well, this looks legitimate, even if I can’t verify it in the database.” The guard glanced back at the militiaman holding the growlithe, and leaned it. “Tell you what. You put in a good w-word for me being on the next b-beta test, maybe I’ll forget to call my supervisor.”

He was young, a little older than me. His voice got rather wobbly towards the end, which told me he wasn’t much of a liar or a cheat. That in turn told me he wouldn’t do very well in the law enforcement sector. I assured him I would. He preformed a cursory bag check, which I passed and then moved on. I never did get around to it. It probably has something do with how little respect I have for people who don’t make their own futures.

Blue was different. He used his name, yes, but as a tool, a bludgeon. Never a shield. Blue could have had a life of luxury and mindless hedonism, but he didn’t. Blue could have taken a safer route to his goals, but he didn’t. Blue could have done any number of things to ease his passage into the trainer world, but he did not, and that is what makes him my rival. He knows the urge we both share, to throw ourselves against the wall of the world and test our own mettle. To take extra money to start out, or fortify ourself, or even wait until after a stay at a trainer school, or a stint in the military to strengthen ourselves would have cheapened the experience to near worthlessness. There is pure metal in the heart of every person, and it is blasphemy to pound away at it cold before you expose it to the open flame.

Me? Mine is the name of a bastard. To add it to my ID would have needlessly sentimentalized my journey. I am, was and shall be Red, ever since that day in the park. Anything else is extrapolation.

The evergreens for which Viridian is named open like gates into the heart of the city, a sign nearby bidding me welcome. Of the many ways I can describe walking into a city the first time, especially a tourism hub like Viridian, the single most apt word I can think of is busy.

People are rushing, shouting, running, howling everywhere. Vendors sit in stalls, or walk the streets, hawking their wares from tables and boxes and sidewalks. Demagogues and rabble-rousers stand atop stairs or podiums or crates, preaching their stories, of the god Mew or the god Arceus, of holy Moltres and the shining Ho-Oh, living legends and nightmares that walk the land among us to this day.

I could look around and see every class of person from every walk of life on the streets. Businessmen in suits, students and soldiers and student soldiers in uniform, women in dresses, in shawls, in the occasional kimono. There was no distinction between social statuses; everyone simply had too many places to be, and all of them were late. Not a melting pot, but a melting sea, ever shifting, ever mixing.

And there were pokemon. A rich socialite with her well-groomed espeon. A gaggle of street children chasing dirty ratattas. A deliveryman with an aipom riding his shoulder. Caterpies and weedles and wurmples and spinaraks in a silk store. Pidgeys flying endlessly overhead, holding messages or simply wild. A city wasn’t considered civilized until it could keep the pokemon out, yet you couldn’t civilize a city without pokemon. It was a paradox.

And it all came together for one reason. The four’o’clock bell rang, and all heads turned west, towards that beaten mountain path to Victory Road, where yet another batch of challengers would be releasing their initialed pokeballs down the Tohjo Falls and heading forward to take their swipe at fame. Victory Road was open all year, right up until a week before the Championships. A Pokemon League official vetted beyond all shadows of a doubt would be waiting at the end, to take your name and put it down for the Preliminaries. There were other ways to the Indigo Plateau for spectators, certainly, roads and transports. But you couldn’t enter the tournament without going through Victory Road. There are no shortcuts to deification.

For whom it concerned, the belled tolled one fourth and final time, and the city resumed motion, bustling, sprinting, screaming.

It took me an hour to find the cheapest motel I could that still had a shower, and another hour still to freshen up and find a decent meal. By the time I returned to the streets, the sky was darkening rapidly and the lamps were just being lit. True electric lights were saved for the center of the city, to discourage attacks; my dwellings were near the outskirts.

Viridian was a tourist’s city, built in layers, wide instead of tall. The tallest structure in Viridian was the city hall, a seven-story building, atop which you could see the holy fire* burning brightly on the spire even from where I was. Skyscrapers were a rarity in Kanto, due to the way they attracted strikes from flying and electric pokemon like moths to a flame – only corporations with the money and power to safeguard them were allowed to build them, and only then under stringent standards. They weren’t completely extinct, however. I had heard of the PokeMart headquarters in Celadon, and of the many man-made mountains that dotted the skyline of Saffron. And, of course, the Pokemon Tower in Lavender, but it was as close to universally sacred as existed in Kanto.

Originally, my plan had been to buy camping equipment and supplies for my trip through the great Viridian Forest, but I found my feet leading me elsewhere as I made my way through the narrow, crowded streets. There were few parts of Viridian that slept. Call it the country bumpkin in me, but the mass of people was rather intimidating at the time. I count myself lucky that I had the foresight to keep Pikachu’s pokeball and my trainer ID in a zippered inside pocket. I was pickpocketed no less than three times on my way to the Viridian Gym, for the change in my pocket alone; had I not left my wallet under my mattress in the motel, I might have ended up broke.

The massive dome of the Gym skirted the edge of the city, built atop a sharp incline which only made the largest building in Viridian City more impressive as you ascended the steps to its courtyard. Deviating from the razzle-dazzle style of the tourist trap it was associated with, the Viridian Gym was an elegant fortress: solar panel roof, walls of steel and stone overlapping angularly in tasteful modern style married to Roman decorations. Columns lined the courtyard, and am expensive fountain gurgled between the last two winding sets of stairs to the entrance. It was practical but unashamed of its finery. I couldn’t help but admire it.

I arrived alongside the lamplighters working to illuminate the edges of the city. I noticed electric lights on the outside of the gym and pegged them for emergencies; no doubt the Gym held a shelter beneath it. The food vendors who normally set up shop outside to catch the spectator rush had long since packed up and left, leaving only loose flyers and wrappings behind. A new van was parked at the edge of the courtyard, with a scruffy man in a blazer and glasses sweating in the warm night outside it in a folding chair. An abandoned camera sat next to another chair. He waved at me as he passed.

“It’s closed.” He told me, confirming my suspicions. I nodded and waved back, but moved on regardless.

I couldn’t have told you what made me come in the first place. It wasn’t as if I expected to catch the former Grand Champion at closing time. Giovanni was notorious for his refusal to attend anything but the bare minimum of hours required of a Gym Leader.

I stopped at the heavily engraved front entrance and tested the handle. Locked, naturally. I pressed my hand up against the wood.

A thousand challengers had passed through these doors. At least. The Viridian Gym had held its position as the toughest Gym in the Indigo League ever since Giovanni had taken his position, which was even more impressive considering one of the Gyms only employed Dragon-types. This, coupled with Giovanni’s many absences, had decreased the popularity of the Gym, as many trainers only sought to win their required eight badges to enter the Championships and had no wish to punish themselves. But there were always those few who went the extra distance, those special, ambitious trainers who battled for the challenge first, the glory second and the money last. ‘Battle-chasers’ and ‘adrenaline-junkies’ the media called us. They couldn’t possibly understand.

I would challenge this Gym, I knew then. I would walk through these doors and claim that badge from the man the Japanese called Tenkaichi, or I would not face the Grand Champion at all.

Impulsively, I pressed my ear to the door, to see if I would hear them; the victors and glorious dead.

Of course not. Additionally, my face was now up against a door people had been putting their unwashed hands over all day. I stepped back and self-consciously tipped my hat to hide my embarrassment.

I walked back across the courtyard and down the stairs, stopping to rub some water on my face out of the fountain. Hundred of coins winked at me from the bottom in the flickering lamplight.

“You’re out late, kid.” The newsman commented, picking a piece of chicken out of his takeout meal. At some point he had been rejoined by his cameraman, sifting through his takeout with chopsticks.

I told him the same.

He and his cameraman shared a weary laugh. “Ain’t that the truth. Our editor heard that the Pokemon Professor’s grandson was coming to town, tells us to wait down by the gym, since if he’s coming he’s bound to stop by. Only, he never shows. Cheeky little fuck. I don’t suppose you’re Gary Oak?” I shook my head, and the newsman snorted. “Of course not.”

“I’m about done, Richie.” The cameraman informed him dully. “If the boss wants to meet baby Oak so bad he can chase him down himself. I’m going home.” He pulled his keys from a pocket and jingled them. “You comin’ or you walkin’?”

The newsman chewed his meat reflectively for a second. “Nah, you’re right. I’m coming.”

I told them they had missed Blue by several days and that he was probably halfway through the Viridian Forest by now. The cameraman was busy pulling open the door to his van, but the newsman – Richie – heard me, and paused in the folding of his chair.

“Really?” His tone was even, but interested. “And how would you know that?”

I told them Blue had told me personally a few days ago, and that I knew him because we had graduated together. It was close enough to the truth. I showed him my trainer ID, which he squinted and cleaned his glasses to read in the dim firelight.

“Huh.” Richie muttered. “Serendipity. I’ll take it. Red, is it? You want a ride back your hotel? Just a warning: Charlie drives fast, and we only accept payment in the form of stories.”

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I looked for Richie’s article in the paper the next day, but it wasn’t there. I supposed that one anonymous testimony wasn’t enough for an article. More interesting was the article on the front page, capitalized letters screaming across the front page.

VIRTUAL POKEMON CREATED: A NEW POKEMON EVENT HORIZON?

My eyebrows rose right to the brim of my hat as I read the shocking news. Apparently, by studying electronic history records of forays into artificial intelligence technology, Silph Co. funded Cinnabar scientists had managed to recreate and successfully complete said efforts. Putting aside my papery bread and lukewarm scrambled eggs, I took the remote – there was no one else in the sleepy motel breakfast room – and turned on the television in the corner, flipping to Cinnabar Island News. I waited until after the castform weather report to see the interview.

The reporter was young, blond and pretty. The head scientist, an eccentric looking elder man with an unexplained scar disappearing under the eye patch covering his left eye, obviously had trouble keeping his one remaining eyeball from dropping down her shirt as they spoke.

“We call it porygon. It’s truly quite- quite astounding, I would say. The br- the best work we have done so far.”

It cut to a scene of a holographic creature being projected from metal stand. It had a hot pink polyhedral body with steel blue triangular prism feet and a blue rectangular prism tail and stomach. As far as appearances went, it was strikingly bland.

The scientist’s voice narrated over as the scene changed, to him and several other men in labcoats testing the porygon’s capabilities from behind a reinforced glass wall. “The porygon is capable of reverting, of breaking down completely into programming code to enter computer and wireless networks. No pokeball is necessary. It is, essentially, a corporeal artificial intelligence.”

The screen cut back to the young reporter and the head scientist in his office. “But Dr. Fuji, if that’s the case, couldn’t it simply be copied endlessly?”

“Not so, for several reasons, one of which is the copyrighting code we wrote on behalf…”

I watched for a little while longer, impressed. A fully artificial pokemon. New evolutions and pokemon were discovered frequently, but it had been a very long while since a discovery of this magnitude had been discovered. I waited and listened to the expected limitations: cost, the complexity of construction, beta-testings, and the danger of too many AI running around in the system, waited and wondered.

How long? How long until before technology outstripped and dominated all pokemon? Until the Legendaries were kenneled, until settlements covered Neo-Japan, until humanity once again became the apex predator of Earth? People talked of it like a glorious thing, the impending conquest. I wasn’t quite so sure.

Ironically, that was right when the news cut to a Team Rocket recruitment commercial. A series of attractive celebrities smiled and talked about advancing the human agenda, eventually segueing into that favorite story about how our ancestors traveled the stars in rocket ships and how we could again and ending with the motto playing out – “Blasting off at the speed of light!”- right under the big red R.

I got bored and turned off the television. At the time, Team Rocket was nothing more to me than what it seemed to the public: that pro-human non-profit group you always heard about holding bake-sales and conventions in the cities, lobbying for settlement expansion and the colonization of new regions. Team Rocket was also popular in Johto, and had sparked a number of copycat groups in other regions such as Sinnoh and Hoenn, with rumors of another starting up in Unova, though their causes and goals varied wildly from the original.

Ha. I couldn’t possibly have known, could I?

I left the paper on the table and headed out, checking out in the motel lobby. I had errands to run. Reading the porygon article had lit a fire under me. The world was not going to sit still, and neither was I.

I browsed through several outdoors and hunting stores but ultimately decided to pack light, foregoing buying the compact gas stove which had looked so appealing. I knew how to make fire. There is more comfort in memory than in technology, because of the two, only one will not fail you on a rainy day. I bought two pairs of fingerless gloves, one red, one black, with rubber pads and knuckle-guards.

My second errand was of far greater importance. I bought a knife. Nothing large, nothing great and threatening. A sharp, sure pocketknife.

There is a tradition to follow when one becomes a trainer in the Indigo League. A superstition which transformed itself into proper unwritten law through mass replication.

It took me no more than ten minutes to carve my name into the red half of one of my five free pokeballs, issued with my license. Some bought special balls for the occasion, or paid for their engraving, or a did a hundred other things extravagant and strange. Not I. Make no mistake; there is a clever magic in simplicity.

I wrote no more than what was required. PKMN Trainer Red. The top two prongs of the K were a little bunched together, and the loop of my R a bit too circular, and it was absolutely perfect. I stuck it in my pocket and headed out.

The twelve-o-clock bell rang as I began my trek down the notoriously and intentionally short Route 22. I felt a brief moment of annoyance at the coming wait which was crushed to a pulp under the bulk of my anticipation. Not once did I feel an inkling of danger. Route 22 was the most ranger-patrolled Route in Kanto, and for good reason – no one wanted to see their would-be champions get buried under a swarm of beedrill before they could compete. The only safer Route in existence was the not-Route, 23, spanning from Victory Road to the Indigo Plateau. There wasn’t a pokemon within fifty miles, there.

I was far from alone. Midday was always the busiest time at Tohjo Falls. Route 23 swarmed with spectators and trainers traveling to and from the Falls. I along with several other trainers managed to catch a ride on an elderly couple’s ponyta-driven carriage for the price of a meat bun and company. Their bickering was an art form.

“Huh!? So you punks you think you have what it takes? Ha!” The old man’s face, already leathery and wrinkled like a squirtle, bunched only further in disdain as he regarded us. “I can tell what it takes to be a champion, and none of you chuckleheads have got it, I tell you what!”

“Oh dear, leave them alone,” His wife said resignedly, out of habit more than any real belief he would stop. Her hair was shock-white and pulled back in an intricate bun. “You promised you wouldn’t get all riled up if I let you have your coffee early this morning.”

His chin rose proudly, displaying a mottled scar in the bunched flesh of his neck. “I ain’t getting riled up, I’m just telling the truth, honey. There’s a certain kind of person with the potential to face the Elite Four, and I just-is that a sling!?” His voice exploded with such indignant rage that the trainer he skewered with his furious scowl actually shifted back a little. A leathery sling hung from a loop in his trainer belt, next to three pokeballs hanging on magnetic clips. “A pokeball sling!? You’ve got to be shitting me! What next, a goddamn pool cue?”

“Language, dear!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry but that is just the limit!” The old man raised one crooked finger and jabbed it at the sling trainer, who was trying valiantly to hide his growing amusement. “Son, any trainer with a lick of sense knows you throw your pokeballs, or at least keep’em in hand. A sandslash will rip you ten new orifices before you have that thing halfway up to casting speed!”

“I have better range with this.” The trainer pointed out.

“Range? Range!?” The old man sputtered. “What, you think because you know a little woodcraft that you can sneak up on a real pokemon? And what then, if you do? You’re not going to surprise it into a capture, that’s for sure! That thing’ll be out of that ball and halfway up your ass in seconds!”

“Dear!”

“You see that tree? It could be a sudowoodo in disguise! It comes at you! This meat bun is a pokeball!” The old man winged his bun, which squished against the rough bark less than a second later. “That sudowoodo is now trapped for a minimum of three seconds, more if it’s weaker and closer to bonsley age. That’s three seconds which you can use to run, or summon your own pokemon to fight it, a Water-type or Grass-type if you’re smart! Those three seconds are the difference between life and death! What’s more expensive, one wasted pokeball or having your arm off from a razor leaf attack?”

The slinger opened his mouth to protest. I stared. There had been more to that throw than met the eye. How good could this old man’s eyesight be at his age? His reflexes, his throwing arm? Yet he’d instantly compensated for weight, thrown with perfect form, and hit a tree nearly forty feet away with perfect accuracy.

I truly saw at the old man now. The scar on his neck, his wife’s already snow white hair and his strangely in-depth knowledge of pokemon and pokemon training, more than anything you’d pick up from hearsay or rumor. The ring indent on his middle finger, next to his marriage band, only confirmed my suspicions.

I asked him what year he’d become a champion.

The old man drew back, like someone had flicked him in the forehead, and the other trainers looked at me strangely. I saw the driver’s wife quietly rub his leg in comfort. Eventually his natural scowl reasserted itself, and he spoke again, almost reluctantly this time.

“Forty-seven years ago. The fifth Indigo League Championship.” He growl, a grudging admission. He rubbed his bald head uncomfortably. It was strange to see the previously obnoxious man so subdued now. “I retired when I made third-ring, four Championships later, when my first son was born.”

The other trainers who had previously been doing their best to feign sleep or drowsiness (which was impossible on the bumpy cobblestones), instantly sat up to full attention. The slinger, perhaps feeling slighted from earlier, scoffed. “As if, grandfather. Who ever heard of a champion selling meat buns? Where’s your ring, then? Your pokemon team? Your champion stone?”

“I sold the ring to pay for my land and marriage.” The old man replied evenly. “My team died off three decades ago – bird and bug pokemon don’t have much of a shelf life outside of a pokeball. We already passed my stone aways back; you’re welcome to go back and search it out if that’s your pleasure.”

“Sure.” The trainer said sarcastically, before crossing his arms and looking away.

The old man’s face didn’t change, but he turned back to the front and took the reins, his previous energy evaporated. His wife turned around and smiled at us warmly, retrieving a foreboding set of pictures from her purse. “Who would like to hear about our grandchildren?”

Forced smiles and gritted teeth.

The rest of the ride actually turned out better than expected. Her two grandsons, apparently, were hosts of two different but decently popular television shows. The trainers actually began to show some real interest near the end of the ride, and when we pulled up to the checkpoint at Tohjo Falls, a few of them actually lingered to say goodbye before dashing off to the cliffs. I politely waited with the old couple and helped them wheel their meat bun cart out despite their protests. The guards waved them through, obviously recognizing them as regulars. My wait cost me, however. When we finally made it to the main overlook area, the edge was jam-packed full of trainers, and the automated timer was in the last thirty seconds before the one’o’clock release. There was no time to squeeze to the front.

Strangely, I felt no disappointment at this. I didn’t need to see my target to hit it.

I turned to the old man and asked him how to throw a pokeball. I saw him smile for the first and last time. Months later, in Saffron, I would read his obituary in the newspaper and order a bouquet of red roses flown by dragonite to his funeral.

“There’s nothing to it at all,” He said, and told me.

The timer buzzed. The people cheered.

I let my pokeball fly high up into the crushing blue sky.

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I had tarried far too long in Viridian. Blue could – no, would – be in Pewter by now. He’d be working his way through the gym disciples at that very moment. Or perhaps, even worse, he’d already be facing Brock himself. Others would ask how a rookie trainer with only an eevee and pidgey, perhaps pidgeotto to his name could hope of defeating the Ainu gym leader’s legendary onix, Sky Eater. Not I. With Blue, it was not a question of how, but of when.

For this reason I ignored the unwritten tradition of heavy drinking after throwing my challenge ball and stopped only to buy a compass and some very special rope before hitching a ride to the Viridian Forest checkpoint on one of the bug catcher trucks.

There was a line at the desk when I walked into the checkpoint building, and two rangers barring the door to the Forest. Puzzled, I waited my turn in line behind several grumbling men in galoshes and butterfree face-nets. The guard behind the desk was in no better a mood, from what I gathered of his flat tone and humorless countenance. I minced no words and slid my trainer ID through the double-strength glass slot. He returned it shortly with a paper form and a pen. “Sign here, please.”

I frowned and skimmed it. It was a legal release waiver. I asked, as politely as I could, the reasoning behind it. I had never heard of trainers holding other trainers accountable for their own safety.

Thankfully, the man was in an informal mood, and I had just jammed my thumb down on his bitch button. “Happened a couple months ago. Some whiny youngster blueblood wandered into a beedrill nest and got his team killed escaping along with a few decent holes in him. Next thing you know, we’re up to our balls in lawyers and reporters squealing about proper ranger sweeps and negligence. Our supervisor gets fired, everyone’s forced to attend some fuckin’ seminar, and now every guy that wants to pass through here has to sign this,” He slapped the pile of waivers next to him. “-fucking piece of trash. Man, what the fuck happened to personal responsibility? It seems like everyone in this new generation is born with a silver spoon in their mouth these days. You think just because have a license and a fighting pokemon that you own the whole damn world!?”

“Eikichi.” One of his coworkers said warningly, touching his arm. He shook them off brusquely.

“Alright, yeah, okay, chill. Lemme just finish with this kid and clock out. Good? Good.” I signed my form quietly and handed it over, where he threw it into his pile and stood up. “You get into trouble, trainer, you cover your own ass, ga wakarimasu?”

I nodded mutely. The guard grabbed his coat off a rack and left. The checkpoint was subdued after that, and was still quiet as I walked out the door into the Viridian Forest.

It’s hard to describe the Forest the first time you walk in. At first glance, it seems like a typical patch of Kantoan deciduous forest. There are evergreens, oaks and maples. You can hear shrieking cries of squabbling between spearows and pidgeys and the sound of running water. But these are things you see whenever you hear the word ‘forest’. Viridian Forest is another beast entirely.

What to call it? What words can you use to describe something when it’s very air reeks of defiance, of untamed mystery? Attempts had been made before to domesticate the Forest, fences built and buildings planned. All of them ended in miserable failure. Contractors would scoff at the mention of curses or haunting, yet refuse flatly to even consider a project investment in the same breath. It was as good as law: you did not cage the Viridian Forest. The very best pokemon rangers had been able to do was set up warnings and markers at the edges and keep the beedrill population low, and still great numbers of people, trainers and civilians, went missing without a trace every year.

There were no maps for Viridian Forest. Some people claimed that the very trees uprooted themselves and moved around at night. Those prone to rationalization reasoned that it was just a natural maze.

I will set the record straight. There are several sure signs to follow. Pewter City is north. If you climb a tree, you can see Mt. Moon in the distance. Stay away from flowers and fruit, as their presence suggests the presence of beedrill nearby. As long as one keeps a steady head, it is very much possible to pass through the Viridian Forest without incident. All the trouble with trade caravans and travel stems only from the leaders of said groups being sheltered shut-ins who have likely never been outside a settlement in their entire life and hearsay.

I made good progress into the Forest by dusk with the aid of my pokemon repellant, passing several bug catchers on their way out who were happy to point me in the right direction. Perhaps if I had come earlier they might have offered a battle, but the day was getting late and their teams were no doubt tired from the capture of many caterpie and weedle to sell to the tailors and seamstresses of Viridian City. I picked clean the few unpicked berry bushes I found and took a few pictures of the landscape and some rare pokemon I glimpsed before they rushed off into the brush with my pokedex, repelled by my chemical stench.

I gave myself plenty of time to set up camp as I stopped for the night. I checked the surrounding area for ariados webbing, leech seeds and shroomish spores. I constructed a small canopy using some spare kindling and a tarp. I then coaxed a fire into existence, using a gas lighter, dry leaves and dead branches I stripped off of a lightning-stricken tree near my campsite. I soon had a comfortable blaze going, enough to finish my final chore of the day.

I retrieved the long length of rubber cable I’d bought earlier that day from my backpack and set it on the ground. It took me five minutes of searching to find a rock heavy and large enough for my purposes, which I tied one end of the cable around and buried a foot deep. I packed the dirt down tightly and threw a few smaller rocks on top of the mound, just in case. Then, I fashioned the other end of the cable into a simple, self-tightening leash.

With that leash in hand, I retrieved my pokeball and released Pikachu.

Immediately as he appeared, I leapt upon him and noosed him around the neck. I’d released him quite close to prevent any quick escape. Immediately, the yellow animal raised up quite a din, snarling and leaping at me, snapping and biting. I quickly retreated to the other side of the campfire, beyond the slack of the cable.

I barked a warning and held up the pokeball. Pikachu instantly shrank back, eyes dilated and fixed on the glass slide from which the laser would issue. No, this rat was not stupid, no matter his crude nature. It had already recognized the power of the object I held in my hand.

For my next display, I used a combination of hand gestures and words to get my meaning across, hoping to adjust the pokemon to human speech early. Hand gestures are very helpful, but they are not very good for specifics.

In no uncertain terms, I informed Pikachu that I was his leader now, and that whether he accepted it now or later was his choice. However, I said, it would be better if he did so sooner, as we happened to be in the middle of a giant forest filled with hungry pokemon and they wouldn’t think much at all of snapping up one tasty morsel of rodent, especially all trussed up as he was. So it was his decision, I told him. He could wait for me to go to sleep and shock me to death in my sleep, or he could keep watch tonight and raise an alarm if he saw anything malicious coming our way.

Pikachu hissed at me in response.

I sighed. Of course it couldn’t be that simple. Oh, I was fairly certain the rat had gotten the message. I simply had my doubts as to whether or not Pikachu gave a fuck whether he lived or died as long as he could take me along with him. He is still the coldest, most vindictive little monster I’ve ever born witness too.

As a peace offering, I brought over some oran berries I had found while foraging. He tried to bite me when I dropped them, and I ignored me when I tried to communicate that food wouldn’t be a problem now that he was one of my fighters. I gave up for the night and settled back under my canopy to explore my pokedex and actually do the job which had earned me my license.

I decided to test the word processor feature. I’d always toyed with the idea of keeping a field notebook. I had never had trouble remembering things, but it was always good to keep a record, for clarity. The program lay open and waiting on my lap. But what to write?

In the end, I decided to recreate my journey projection from memory. You see, years ago I had planned my travel route as a trainer out in my head. It wasn’t any casual thing, however. It had taken weeks of research. I had studied indigenous pokemon in each area, recorded levels of pokemon attacks and trainer concentration levels. I had pored meticulously through settlement economies, seeing which cities would be the most expensive. I had checked gym difficulty ratings and reviews, sifting through the biased reports to the hard statistics. The result was a pilgrimage, from city to city, each one gradually more difficult and costly than the last, in the hopes that I would be able to grow in strength quickly without being stuck at any one place too long. Certainly, it had gotten somewhat convoluted around Celadon, Fuschia and Saffron, but the logic and calculations were still sound. I wondered if Blue had done something similar.

Pallet to Viridian. Viridian to Pewter. Pewter to Cerulean, to Vermillion, to Lavender then Celadon then Fuschia and Saffron. To Cinnabar. And then to Viridian once more. Trying for Johto badges had never been an option – passports were hard enough to get for trainers in good standing, let alone vagrants like me. Perhaps if tensions eased some between Kanto and Johto I would consider it. Perhaps.

It was a good mental exercise, dredging up the old facts from memory. I was just getting into the effects the dystopian politics of the infamous Route 17 - AKA Cycling Road - had on economics of nearby Celadon when disaster with a sharp electromagnetic snap.

A venomoth had emerged from the forest, attracted by the light of the fire. Pikachu growled and sparked, but I realized with horror that he had no charge left, having been kept in his ball since I had drained him. Even as I spoke, the poisonous pokemon’s mandibles chattered in warning as it’s wings beat frantically.

I immediately seized a handful of my shirt and pressed it to my mouth and face, turning away. A cloud of poisonous dust exploded from the venomoth’s scaly wing sacs. Pikachu squealed knowingly and leapt out of the way. I squeezed my eyes shut and felt the poisonous gust buffet me.

The dust settled and I felt my skin begin to itch irritably. I knew I had a matter of minutes before the poison incapacitated me, through pain or numbness. Heedless of the heat, I kicked the fire in the venomoth’s direction, sending up an incandescent and regrettably harmless spray of sparks and small coals at the bug pokemon. It clacked and nattered furiously, retreating. I took advantage of the delay to recall Pikachu and beat a hasty retreat into the woods.

The Viridian Forest was dark and menacing now, full of malicious, tripping branches and snatches of revealing moonlight which I strayed back from as I flew through the woods, heart pounding. My wits came back to me in the gaps between panicked breath: poison. I was covered in poison. I had to cleanse myself.

I forced myself to a halt and directed all my attention to my ears, listening desperately through the ambient sounds of the Forest and subliminal pounding of blood for the sound of the strong brook I had marked earlier in my perimeter patrol. I heard the water rushing over the stones after a second’s wait. I waited a moment more. I didn’t want rush off on a hopeful impulse. When the noise persisted, I loped off in pursuit.

My skin was burning when I finally found it. Not even bothering to strip off my clothes, I leapt.

I gasped in relief as the water soothed my screaming dermal cells. I rubbed furiously for a tense minute until the enflamed areas finally began to fade in intensity. After a brief self-physical I determined that I was in no immediate danger, and slowed down my splashing to a much less attention-drawing noise level.

I realized my mistake almost instantly. I had been sticking to the routine checklist of camp-building memorized in my head, ignoring the very first and most important rule of being a pokemon trainer, which had been drilled into my head time and time again in my classes: there is no set routine that will protect you in the wild.

Despite how far we’ve come, the Pokemon World is still a strange and mysterious place, full of a thousand things our species has learned to expect and a million more we’ll never see coming until they hit us. Perhaps my camp setup had been safe in the woods around Pallet, but this was not Pallet. I then put lighting a fire under my checklist of things to do under no circumstances in undomesticated pokemon-infested territory at night, right under the most glaring and obvious of them, that being trying to travel.

I pulled myself out of the water and shook myself off as best I could. I had learned my lesson of the Viridian Forest – respect and vigilance. Now, it was time I taught the Forest a few things about me.

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How many of you thought this was an update? APRAL FOOHLS

I keed, I keed. Here's the rest of the chapter, the meat of it, at least. I'll get the pokedex entry and notes up sometime. Who knows when. I'm in a play and college at the same time. You faggots don't even know what 'busy schedule' means until you're rushing from four hours of classes to five hours of practice and then all over again.

But, yeah, I write like I write. If it doesn't happen organically it's usually a piece of shit. I've only got three nights of performances left so I should have assloads of free time to write soon. Or not. Finals and scholarships and essays what not.

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Two venemoth fluttered in tandem above the glowing fire. It had called its mate. Together, they dove and swooped in the ambient light, plucking the mosquitoes and moths and fireflies from the night air, lured here so gullibly by the illumination. I was not surprised the first one had not chosen to pursue – venemoths were no carnivores, despite their aggressiveness. This one had simply seen the large abundance of food there for the taking and taken it, no doubt for his female, swollen with an unlaid venonat brood. It was almost touching.

I waited until she dipped low, lower than she already was, bearing the heavy weight of her pregnancy.

Then I leapt from the shadows and crushed her skull with a big stick.

Lesson one: I grew up chasing pokemon through the streets and fields of Pallet Town. I had never once ridden somewhere I could access on foot in my youth. I was no limp-wristed student – I was a born trainer, strong and fast.

It didn’t take the first time, of course, despite strong arms and good connection. Bug pokemon are not quite as frail as bugs. It was more than sufficient to throw her to the ground, where one vicious twisting stamp ruined the venomoth female’s hopes of ever flying again.

The male attacked immediately, or would have, had I not brained him with a pokeball after my first swing. The old man had been rather pessimistic, in my opinion. I was able to bash the female’s head in, properly this time, calmly drop the stick, and take two things out of my pocket and raise them before the enraged venomoth male struggled his way out of my pokeball. Five seconds at least.

Lesson two: Pallet Town was no walled city. It was sleepy, which meant that the number of people who died from wild pokemon attacks only had two digits. Most of said deaths occurred on the ranch where I worked. Our world was brutal and violent and uncaring and cold. I could be no less if I wished to live in it.

Five seconds. Then, I pulled the trigger of my gas lighter and depressed the pokemon repellant bottle’s spray button all at once. The venomoth broke free to a world of fire.

I directed the flow of chemical flame in slashing sweeps, advancing slowly but steadily. The venomoth, blinded by pain, flew wildly and without prudence, swooping straight into the ground, and then into a tree. I didn’t stop until my repel ran out. Then I took up my wooden club once more, tracked the burning pokemon down and shortly thereafter murdered it.

Among pokemon, Bug-types are by far the most individually fragile and weak. There are exceptions to every rule, but few to this one. Their main use in pokemon battles stems from their rapid evolution and learning curve, many esoteric poisons and powders and the fact that they are easily replaceable. In swarms, they are the subject of nightmares. Alone, or in pairs, they can easily be neutralized with the use of nothing more deadly than a net.

Perhaps in a better mood, I might have tried to capture them, or simply drive them away. But that was lesson three.

Lesson three: I was not a good loser.

I extinguished the burning carcass with a few scoops of dirt and dragged it back to my camp. The fire was gone but for glowing coals, now. I stamped out the remainder and tore down my tarp to lay out the two dead venomoth; I would have to move camp locations anyway to avoid the attention of the scavengers who would undoubtedly come to investigate the commotion. I retrieved my backpack and unclipped the small carabineer flashlight attached to a loop looked over my spoils as I reviewed venomoth salvage in my mind.

I bit the flashlight and took out my knife, sawing away at the junction between the thorax and abdomen of the male. I made sure to use to use the tarp to grasp the abdomen, to avoid touching the downy soft fur that covered it, which naturally was coated in paralytic poison. Venomoth fur was valuable. Once it was thoroughly cleaned and had the razor sharp ends clipped and treated, it was one of the preferred coat linings for expensive garments and other fabric products.

After some twisting and sawing, I managed to separate the abdomen. I discarded the upper half – there was some inroad into the use of venomoth wing powder as makeup, but I doubted I’d find any buyers in a rural city like Pewter. I surveyed my prize critically. The fire had done damage to the delicate pelt, but there were still parts worth saving. I propped the abdomen upright and tore a slit down the side, dumping the venomous guts out onto the forest floor. They smelled positively foul. After a few shakes, I managed to dislodge most of the innards and slime, after which I folded the gutted abdomen up on the tarp.

The female was by far the greater prize. Fetal venonat was a delicacy, which, cooked properly, could send a man’s tongue to heaven with a single bite. The aftertaste of burning, neutralized poison, the soft, gooey flesh, eyes that crunched like ripe chestnuts. I felt my own self begin to salivate. I had tasted one once, at a fundraising dinner Professor Oak had brought the Pallet school class to. It was an effort to remind myself that improving my monetary situation was a more pressing concern than self-indulging.

With great care, I slit the venomoth female’s abdomen open and scooped out the fetal sacs with the edge of my knife. I knew the uterine acid would etch the steel irreparably, but with the money I made I could buy two dozen new knives to replace it.

I was careful but harried. I dumped the unborn venonats in my stainless steel leftovers container, dumping the previous night’s supper out and cursorily wiping the residue. I could go hungry one night for this. Then I stripped the female’s abdominal fur as well and gathered my rubber cord and tarp before beating a hasty retreat to my fallback site, a dead overturned tree surrounded by many dry leaves which I had, ironically, passed over to due the fire danger of my creation spreading while I slept.

I grounded the rubber cord and laid out my camp once more, this time sans the attention grabbing heat-source. Then I released Pikachu and collared him. It went much more smoothly this time, despite his foul attitude, which I suppose is possibly because I was sporting a mood just as grumpy at the time. I contemplated the idea of finishing my map, but discarded it – I was too badly jarred by last hour to recall memories that distant reliably. I devoured a cold dinner of biscuits and trail bars before I went to sleep.

I awoke with a start next morning. I had not had easy dreams, or easy sleep, despite long practice of bedding on the hard ground.

The commotion, of course, woke Pikachu, who appeared to have been lightly dozing. He immediately stretched and shook the dirt off of him. His ears flicked back, clinging mistrustfully to his back as I approached. A cord of electricity cracked out from his left cheek, a warning: he had taken the night to accumulate static and recharge.

I did not flinch. Fear was the mind-killer, and also would probably get me literally killed as I was positive this pokemon would kill me cheerfully if he thought he could get away with it. I retrieved a handful of berries from my backpack and set them on the ground where I stood, before moving back.

At first, Pikachu did not move at all. He was, and is, all together too proud and stubborn for a rat pokemon. I moved back a tad further and sat on a large rock, watching but not moving. I knew he would come. Pikachu hadn’t had much time to eat before the incident last night, nor the charge to properly prepare his meal. An entire night standing guard would have him starving.

Then, finally, grudgingly, Pikachu came. Padding silently over to the berries, he kept a canny glare on me the entire time. Diplomatically, I moved back as he advanced, taking a seat on a stump. He sniffed the berries once. Then, his cheeks glowed, and he fried them to a crisp. I watched in rapt attention, listening the sharp snap-cracks as the berry skin cracked and boiled. It was one thing to read the scientific description of how Electric-type pokemon were able to divide and control their chaotic and normally unpredictable namesake with seemingly no effort. It was an entirely different thing to see it.

Judging his meal sufficiently blackened, Pikachu began to eat, snapping up whole berries in single bites. He stopped immediately of course when I moved to pack up camp, but slowly resumed as I continued. I doubted it was any measure of trust; rather, Pikachu likely just felt he had ample time to react should I try anything.

I took advantage of his voluntary distraction to edge my way around to where the other end of his rubber leash was buried. Pikachu caught on fast as I began digging it up, but one flash of his pokeball sent him hissing back. I tied the rubber cord securely to my belt and stood. Pikachu finished his berries and we left.

I was troubled by the pokemon’s resistance. Rat pokemon were rarely recalcitrant, even with cause; they were still more likely to run than fight. There was no precedent for the kind of fierce defiance the feral had displayed thus far. He wasn’t rabid, and I couldn’t see any physical signs of abuse or previous ownership. By all conventional logic, he should be starting to adapt to ownership by now, or at the very least losing his recalcitrance.

Conventional logic be damned. I had to drag that rat all the way through the rest of the Viridian Forest, snarling and shooting sparks everywhere. I was finally forced to pokeball Pikachu when one of his stray bolts came too close to hitting a laboring bug catcher, as well as give up one of my venomoth pelts to placate said worker.

I was tired, furious and entirely regretting my choice back in Professor Oak’s lab when I finally made it to my destination.

Pewter City: a quiet city between rugged mountains and rocks, the city of my first gym victory, and the birthplace of my revolution.

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Kanto Pokemon Encyclopedic Index Entry #25 (J. # 22): Pikachu

Basic Characteristics: Electric-type, quadrupedal mammal, avg. height 1’04, avg. weight 13.2lbs.

Description: Small, warm-blooded rat-type pokemon. Shares geneology with plusle, pachirisu, emolga and minun family trees. Covered in predominantly yellow fur accentuated by broad brown stripes across the back, whose wideness can determine age and nearness to evolution, such that the nickname ‘brownback pikachu’ is given to a specimen who is particularly near raichu age. Possessing of long ears tipped in black, capable of detecting sounds from great distances and limited echolocation and a jagged tail used for grounding electrical charges. Pikachu collect electrical charge in the glands located on their cheeks – the size and carrying capacity of these glands is dependant on the frequency of discharge and size. This pokemon is an omnivore, capable of sustaining a human diet with little difficultly.

Nickname(s): The Mouse Pokemon, the Electric Rat Pokemon, pikas, joltrats, shockmice.

“…Known to be popular in pokemon contests and as household pets, pikachu are an extremely common, social species whose electric abilities and size allow them to outcompete many other rodent and pest types in urban areas. Typically timid, they are known to become hostile when touched around the tail area or cornered, and are capable of significant damage when attacking in collusion with others of their species. Of their species, not many are used in pokebattling – while they do occasionally demonstrate power disproportionate to their size or initial appearance, trainers typically prefer to wait until brownback age at the very earliest in order to fully utilize their electric potential, if not raichu years; alone, they are pests at the worst and can be safely ignored in most cases…”

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1 ) Pokepower: The informal term for the energy into which a pokemon is broken down when they are held in pokeball stasis.
2 ) Holy fire: The fire that is kept lit atop the town halls or capitol buildings of all cities in Kanto. This is meant to symbolize the favor of Moltres, Kantoan god of dawn, dusk, fire and spring. Chemicals are added to make it burn blue during the Indigo League Championships, and it is extinguished during times of war or aggression, dating back to elder pre-region customs of putting out lights when in aggression with another colony in order to avoid discovery.
3 ) Tenkaichi: Best on Earth. Both a pun on the gym’s chosen type and a sign of respect, the Japanese gave Giovanni Vittore when he became the eleventh Indigo League Grand Champion. Cited first and foremost as reasons for this are his seriousness, attention to tradition and personal responsibility, all traits which are admired by the Japanese cultural leadership. Even more surprising was their continued endorsement, even after he voluntarily relinquished the Champion’s Crest to Lance.
4 ) Ga wakarimasu? : “Understand?” in imperial Japanese. Many imperial Japanese phrases and expressions are used in common conversations, especially by those with Japanese heritage.
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