Chapter 1 – Catalyst
“Alright, try one more time. Ready? Use leech seed!”
The chikorita nodded in acknowledgement and begun to rapidly spin her leaf. A small glowing green seed made of grass-type energy formed at the tip. The little pokémon then whipped her leaf forwards, flinging the seedling at her target. It sailed through the air, difficult to see in the afternoon sunlight, and just missed the bulls-eye pinned on a tree several meters away, instead landing in the dirt. Small vines erupted from the seed upon impact, but upon finding nothing to latch on to, the seed’s glow faded and it popped out of existence, its energy returning to the earth.
“Ri…” the little grass pokémon whimpered.
“Ah, don’t worry about it, you did great!” the teen male behind her encouraged. He stepped towards her, kneeling down to pet her leaf. “You’ve learned a move that most other chikorita will never know, and you don’t even have a trainer yet. You should be proud of all your hard work! Aiming it will come in time, with practice.”
This seemed to cheer up the sad pokémon. “Chiko chi!” she said with a grin, leaning into the human’s hand.
The door to the building behind them opened slightly, and the boy looked over his shoulder to see a young woman peeking her head around it, her long golden blonde hair, tied back in its signature ponytail, dangling low to the ground. “Are you at a good stopping point? Luke and I are taking a break for lunch now.”
The boy stood up and straightened his shirt – black with frayed edges at the bottom and the sleeves – then moved towards her. “We’re about done for now, yeah.” With a hand gesture down at the small pokémon following him, he said, “You should see her in action, she’s really got the hang of it now.” The chikorita continued to follow him, while the girl ducked back inside the building to let her friend pass.
As the couple entered the adjoining room, another man greeted them. “Ah, Alex! I saw that last try from the window. The little one has made some remarkable progress. Your training ability is becoming quite sharp.” The balding man grasped the front of his white lab coat and tugged at it, as though it were too tight on him. That, the others knew, was just a subconscious action he did whenever he was giving someone a compliment – although that didn’t mean he wasn’t bordering on the ‘overweight’ category.
Alex brushed back his untidy dirty-blond hair sheepishly, saying, “Thanks, professor. She’s the one with the skill, but I think training is too strong a word. I just… encouraged her.”
“Nonsense, that is exactly what pokémon training is, boy. Just do not forget all of the other pokémon you promised to teach a new move, as well.”
“Yeah, I know…” He looked over at his girlfriend desperately, but she was paying him no attention; she’d picked up Alex’s guitar and was plucking at the strings. “Wanna help me after lunch?” Alex asked. When she looked up to reply she rolled her eyes.
“Don’t look at me; you took on the extra work, not me.”
“Come on, Kimiko, don’t you want to feel that trainer feeling already?”
“Of course,” she said with a frown. She plucked one of the guitar strings a little too harshly. “I just think there’s something… not right about training a pokémon before it’s yours. Especially one that’s supposed to be given as a starter to a new trainer.”
“That’s why I’m teaching them
all moves, remember? So it’s fair.”
“Again,
your decision. What’s not, though, is what’s for lunch, and I need pizza.”
“Naturally.”
Kimiko turned, careful not to drop the instrument, and asked, “Professor Spruce, have you seen Luke? He followed me out of the incubation room, but…”
The professor, busy watching a news channel while trying to gather tableware from a nearby cupboard, replied without looking back at her. “He’s gone to pick up your lunch.”
“Apparently I’m not the only one who knows you too well,” Alex said, half teasing and half serious.
“Stop that,” his girlfriend demanded. “Maybe if you’d give me a ring, you wouldn’t feel the need to get so jealous.”
That got Spruce’s attention, at least briefly – Alex saw him turn with a hearty laugh, probably from seeing the boy’s furious blushing. Alex gaped at his girlfriend as though trying to say something, but unable to make coherent sound come out, instead forming only disjointed babbling.
Masked by the noise, a tiny redheaded child toddled around a corner and into the room, carrying a togepi. “He wants to, he’s just trying to figure out how to ask.”
“
Michelle!” Alex cried, mortified, his glare turning towards the newcomer; Meanwhile, it was Kimiko’s turn to look surprised.
The little girl, upon being scolded, realized she probably shouldn’t have revealed that information. Then, deciding it was too late, she said, “Well it’s been a year already, she probably already knew. You should have told me if you didn’t want me to tell her.” And with that, she climbed up into a chair at the table, setting the togepi on the floor next to the chikorita, who looked completely lost by the entire exchange.
Before Alex could reply, Kimiko rounded on him, now blushing herself. “You’ve been talking to
my little sister about
marrying me? How long has that been going on?”
“I-I mean, it’s not like you and I haven’t discussed it before!” Alex finally coughed out, hands up in the air in defeat. The pair of them were just shy of sixteen, and at least as far as he knew (he’d only ever had one real relationship, and it was with the girl now in front of him), it was normal for couples to discuss their future together. Just because they were still young didn’t mean he wasn’t serious about it. He just hadn’t intended to reveal just
how serious quite yet.
Kimiko crossed her arms over her chest, and Alex couldn’t help but stare and look her over. She was gorgeous, and especially now that they were on the marriage subject, he smiled at the sight of her, wondering how he got so lucky.
Then she sighed, bringing him back to reality, and he saw her smiling at him. Her green eyes sparked, and he had to smile back, although he knew it looked far more awkward. He never was good at smiling.
“Pardon for interrupting,” said Spruce, and then he cleared his throat. The young couple turned their attention to him, both of them still blushing, though now due to the realization that they just had that discussion in front of their mentor-slash-employer. “What do the two of you make of this?” He turned up the volume on the television and stepped to the side so they could see it.
On screen was some sort of breaking news story. Alex immediately recognized Cynthia, the Sinnoh league champion. She appeared to be in her battle arena, but there didn’t seem to be a battle happening at present, although there obviously must have been somewhat recently. Instead, a young man was in the room shouting something at her. He was surrounded by various pokémon; Alex could make out a garchomp, a medicham, and a magmar in the frame. Whoever he was, he didn’t sound happy.
Kimiko set down Alex’s guitar and crept closer for a better view; Michelle, suddenly at her feet, demanded to be picked up so she could see too. The four of them watched as the boy continued ranting – screaming, really – at the woman across from him. He shouted something about two killings by a monster, and then about how Cynthia did nothing to prevent it. He followed that up by declaring that she had done nothing to protect any of the trainers in her region and how she wasn’t a
real trainer.
Then suddenly there was chaos. The room was on fire, courtesy of the magmar, and the feed was momentarily blurry as the cameraman filming the scene presumably had to scramble out of the way. The garchomp dove straight at the Sinnoh champion – Alex had assumed it was Cynthia’s famous one until she threw her pokéballs down and her own dragon emerged from one of them. Alex heard Kimiko gasp, and the professor whispered, “Oh, my…” as the pokémon began battling each other in a free-for-all, brutally and generally without direction from their trainers.
Apparently, the cameraman and a news reporter were there to cover a battle after all, as Alex guessed when he noticed two more people enter the visual and throw out pokéballs of their own to aid Cynthia. One of them was obviously the news reporter, and judging by the beaten up empoleon the other boy sent out, he had probably been the challenger that had been being filmed – and an unsuccessful one at that.
Kimiko had seen enough when Cynthia’s milotic exploded – there was really no other way to describe it – spilling blood everywhere. “Okay, that’s enough for you,” she told her sister as she set the little girl down, as though she only just remembered the five-year-old was in her arms and was witnessing a murder. “Go take the togepi and chikorita and play for a while before lunch.”
“Awwww, just when it was getting good!” Michelle whined, but Kimiko gave her the ‘
don’t you dare argue with me’ face. She’d only had to ever use it twice before, and Michelle knew enough to recognize that something serious was happening, so she picked up the togepi before leaving the room, chikorita trotting along behind.
By the time Kimiko had looked back, Bertha – one of Sinnoh’s elite four members – had arrived and joined the battle against the nameless boy. And then the news feed cut out.
Alex and professor Spruce simply stared at the static screen in shock. Only Kimiko was able to find the will to ask the question they were all thinking; “What… just happened?”
Five Years Later – Present Day
“Really, I can take care of myself!” the now ten-year-old girl insisted. “
And auntie!”
“I thought you wanted to be a trainer?”
“I do,” she replied. “But so do you. You’ve taken care of auntie and me for so long. You’re never going to get to go if you keep waiting. Just imagine all the funny looks you’re already going to get now. And how many more you would get if you waited
another ten years.”
Kimiko frowned down at her little sister. She couldn’t help but admire just how much the little girl had grown in the last few years. She supposed the disappearance of their father, and then the incident in Sinnoh, had both been factors in that. Still, just because her sister was ten now did not make her a responsible adult. Hell,
she hadn’t felt like a responsible adult at ten, and she’d still had both her parents’ guidance at that age.
“Michelle, I’ve been taking care of you two because it’s a lot of work for one little girl. Auntie is weak. There’s only so much she can do for us. We have to do our best to take care of ourselves, and you’re too little to do that all on your own. Even for me really, but I’ve had help from Alex, and even Luke and professor Spruce.”
“And they’ll continue to help me even when you’re gone. Well, except for Alex,” Michelle said, hands on her hips. “He’s been waiting for you, you know. That’s the only reason he hadn’t left with Lillia when she left.”
Kimiko frowned at that, crossing her arms. That stung. She had no response for that accusation, because she knew it was true – she’d already been trying to convince herself it wasn’t her fault for years – and hearing it aloud, and from her own little sister,
hurt. Even before they were a couple, they had promised each other that they would go on their journey together. Now, Kimiko was fully aware of how she was holding her boyfriend back. Not that she didn’t want to be a trainer too, but she had other things in her life that demanded her attention; she had all but given up the hope of going on a journey years ago. That was why she and Alex had gotten their apprenticeship at Spruce’s lab, instead; they could still work with pokémon even if they weren’t officially trainers. Alex, though, simply refused to leave on his journey without his girlfriend, no matter how hard she pressured him to. She knew he was disappointed with not being able to leave, even though she was aware that it was a conscious choice on his part, but that did absolutely zero to ease her guilt about it. She tried not to think about how Lillia, their mutual friend, chose to leave at ten without them, which was difficult with her constant calls updating them on her travels.
“Look,” Michelle continued, oblivious to her older sister’s inner turmoil. “I’m ten now, so legally I could go off training on my own if I wanted to. I could go out and get my license and just leave and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” Kimiko nodded; she wondered why her sister wasn’t doing just that. “But that wouldn’t be fair. You’ve waited, like, over ten years for your turn, and because of…” The redhead faltered at the memory, but after a moment’s hesitation, she plowed on ahead; “Because of dad… and then taking care of me and auntie, you had to put your entire life on hold. Because of me. Because you had to look after me. But now I wanna do something for
you. I’m old enough for that now. I can look after myself, and I can look after auntie. I already go food shopping all by myself. Auntie doesn’t even need to leave home. You don’t have to worry about us anymore. I can do it!”
Kimiko wasn’t sure what to say, so instead she just stared wide-eyed, willing herself not to cry. She had never heard her sister sounding so mature. Not only that, but she was touched at how her sister was thinking of
her, and not herself. “I’m always going to worry about you, Michelle.”
The little girl actually rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, but do it somewhere else! Really, I don’t need you here, I’m not a little girl anymore.”
She knew Michelle didn’t mean it that way, but Kimiko couldn’t help but feel a little hurt at that, too. Still, she smiled, and asked, “Are you absolutely sure about this? Once I leave, you’re going to be all on your own.”
“You talk like I haven’t thought this over.” Kimiko refused to admit that that was exactly the thought going through her mind. “I mean it, we’ll be fine. I’m dying for some privacy anyway. Besides, you deserve to be happy, too.”
Wasn’t she? Kimiko had to think about that. She had wanted to be a trainer, once upon a time, but she certainly didn’t
feel unhappy with the direction her life had taken. She had her sister, and Alex, and her work at the lab… but it was true that it wasn’t the same as the experience and freedom that traveling and training offered. The constant reminders from Lillia over the years proved that much.
“Okay already, you win.” The blond pulled her little sister close in a tight hug. She could rest her chin on the younger girl’s head now – when had she gotten so tall? “I love you, Michelle, you know that?”
“Gross, don’t get all sappy on me!”
“Now are we sure we have everything this time?” Kimiko asked Alex teasingly, winking at him from his bedroom doorway. “Food? Money? Brain?”
“Yes, mom,” he replied, also in a joking tone, as he stood up and shouldered his backpack. Kimiko walked up and kissed him quickly before turning and leaving, heading downstairs. Alex waited until she had started down the stairs before heading to his desk and hastily retrieving his house key, which he had indeed almost forgotten. He really was glad Kimiko tolerated the memory loss that had a habit of plaguing him whenever he was near her.
Crescent Town was a fairly small and quiet place, to the point where most of the few inhabitants knew each other. A week had passed since Michelle had all but kicked her sister out of the house. Alex and Kimiko walked hand-in-hand through the town’s main road in the chilly morning breeze, though the silence was awkward and unusual. Alex knew his girlfriend was just as excited about today as he was himself, what with waiting more than ten years after the normal age children usually start their pokémon journey, but he couldn’t help noticing her lack of enthusiasm since she left him back in his bedroom. He glanced at her through the corner of his eye; she was actually frowning now, her eyes rather unfocused, seemingly lost in thought.
“What’s wrong?” he immediately asked.
“Nothing,” she said quietly, then, knowing her boyfriend wouldn’t let this response stand, she elaborated; “Thinking about my sister. It’s gonna be weird not looking after her anymore.”
“She’ll be fine,” he replied, and squeezed her hand reassuringly, but she didn’t appear at all comforted. “She’s ten now, so yeah, she can legally go off on her own if she really wanted to. And like you said, she has Luke and the professor to look out for her, and your aunt for company, and a roof over her head. And if things get really bad, we can send Lillia down to check up on her. Or just go home and visit her ourselves.”
“I know, I know… it’s just… weird to be thinking of her so grown up, you know? I mean, you don’t have any siblings, so you don’t know what this feels like. She’s still just a kid. Hell,
I’m still just a kid. At least, that’s how I feel.” She did smile slightly at that, but only for a moment.
“We’re almost twenty-one,” Alex replied. “Considering most kids start their journeys at
ten, I think we have more than enough life experience. Besides, how long have I known you? Michelle is basically my little sister, too.”
“Point conceded,” Kimiko deadpanned. She looked down at her feet as they walked.
“We can do this another time,” Alex said, forcing himself not to sigh. “We’ve had to wait this long, another month or so–”
“No!” Kimiko said fiercely, stopping in her tracks. “Not a chance. I’ve made you wait so much longer as it is.”
“You didn’t make me wait,” he reminded her, also stopping. “I chose to.”
Kimiko looked away and muttered something under her breath, but it did not go unnoticed by her partner, having been so accustomed to this behavior over the years.
“It was
not a stupid decision,” he said, regretting his suggestion to postpone their journey further. He put his hand gently under her chin and made her look into his eyes. “We’d promised to do this together from the beginning. It’s not your fault that your dad was murdered and you had to take care of your sister and then your crippled aunt. And there was never a chance of me traveling the region without you, you know that, so please don’t start this again.”
They stared intensely at each other for a few moments, during which Alex wondered if he pushed too far in mentioning her father. She had always been relatively guarded with her emotions, and he wasn’t always able to tell what she was feeling in response to his words. She appeared to be chewing on her bottom lip, but he had no idea what that meant. Eventually, Kimiko broke the silence.
“You’re so damn stubborn.”
Alex laughed loudly. “Ha! Look who’s talking,” he shot back. Kimiko smiled weakly before leaning over and kissing him, which he eagerly returned.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I just… feel bad, you know? I know it bothered you enough having to wait…”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like it was any easier for you, right?” Alex said, smiling again also. “Besides, working at the lab made it less painful.”
“You spent a lot of time caring for that chikorita,” Kimiko pointed out suspiciously as they started walking again, still hand-in-hand. After all the years and all the starters he’d helped in the lab, she never quite got over her old doubts. “Do you really think that’s fair?”
Alex was glad she was in higher spirits so quickly, and his smile only widened as he replied, “I can’t help it if the pokémon I was going to pick anyway became attached to me. Besides, it’s not as if she has any real battle experience, I just helped her learn a few new moves. And don’t forget, I taught all of the starters in her batch at least one new move, too. So it’s not really as if she’ll give me a huge advantage over any other starter.” He didn’t mention how the last time he’d trained a batch of starters was a few years back. Few of those were still at the lab by this point, and it was coincidence that he had worked with this batch just prior to their journey, anyway.
Actually, if he thought about it, quite a few of them
were still there, just no longer eligible to be starters. Ever since the Nick Sayre incident in Sinnoh – the Champion’s Tragedy, as they called it over there – there were fewer kids becoming trainers all over the world, and Vidiva was no exception. None of the starter pokémon had any real battling experience in any of that time, though, short of mock battles for exercise, most evolving due to age. A few of the older ones were itching for more, that much was obvious, but where could they go for that, now? Spruce had considered selling them off to breeders, who were always looking for rarer pokémon – apparently, he knew a good one, coincidentally living in Sinnoh.
“I guess,” Kimiko continued, “but you and she already have a sort of… I dunno, a bond or something already.”
“I think you’re just jealous,” Alex teased. “She just wanted to be the best starter she could be. It’s only natural for her to bond with whoever it was training her so intently.”
“Maybe I am…” Kimiko admitted. “I mean, I am kind of sad that I never got that close with any of the pokémon I worked with. But that’s just it, though. Normally a trainer doesn’t get to bond with his pokémon
before he owns it.”
This wasn’t the first time Kimiko had brought up the topic, but now that they were about to start their journey for real, Alex found himself seriously contemplating it this time. While it was true that most trainers don’t even meet their starter before they obtain it, was it really like cheating to befriend and help train a pokémon, knowing it would become yours later anyway? He tried to convince himself that there was nothing wrong with it, that he was only helping the pokémon at her request, not for his own gain. Surely there was nothing wrong with that.
“My, you two are cutting it close,” came a deep, raspy voice as Alex and Kimiko entered the lab a short while later. After looking around the familiar sitting room that looked like it belonged to a house rather than a pokémon lab, the couple headed to the room beyond the door at the back, assuming that was where the voice came from.
“Sorry Luke, there was… something we had to take care of. Today of all days,” Alex replied as they entered, although he was at a loss as to Luke’s comment. They had no timeline that he was aware of.
The owner of the raspy voice – Luke, in his early thirties – sat off to the right at a desk, engrossed in whatever paper he was looking at. He marked something on it with a pencil towards the end, perhaps the point where he stopped reading, and looked up at the new arrivals. He looked as if he’d been up all night – his white lab coat was unbuttoned, open, and stained with what looked like coffee, and the red tie he was wearing was actually untied and lazily thrown around his neck. His dark brown hair was ruffled and sticking out in places, as if it had been pulled at multiple times. The man’s glasses were ever so slightly lopsided and his blue eyes bloodshot. On the desk next to his paper sat what appeared to be the remains of some sort of meat on a plate and, indeed, a nearly empty pot of coffee.
“So, today’s finally the big day, huh?” said Luke. Without waiting for a reply, he looked at his watch and added, “You’re lucky this isn’t the normal season trainers start coming around, else you’d have nothing to choose from!” He must have been tired, Alex assumed, since there had been plenty of starter pokémon remaining over the last couple years. Though not old, Luke’s memory was deteriorating rapidly.
Again without waiting for a reply, Luke wheeled his chair back, stood up, and headed for a door across the room. “I’m sorry for my appearance,” he went on, “I had completely forgotten you were coming today for a reason other than work. It’s going to be very empty around here without you two. Follow me.”
“Professor Hawkins, where’s professor Spruce?” asked Kimiko as they followed the man, deciding to keep it professional now that they were no longer work colleagues.
He had led them to a room in the very heart of the building, the room where all the starter pokémon were stored in their pokéballs. All around the room were shelves upon shelves of the little red and white spheres, arranged neatly in rows with occasional breaks between them for people to walk through, like a row of bookcases in a library. Alex knew that any non-starters were stored digitally – these days, most professors and trainers alike preferred that method. The professors could work with multiple trainers’ extra pokémon without having to have dedicated room for each of them, and trainers could access their entire collections from their pokédex, swapping their teams around at will.
Luke stopped in front of a computer with some kind of green tube connected to the back of the monitor. He didn’t bother correcting them on his name. “Oh, he’s in the incubation room. Apparently one of the eggs hatched really early this morning, and it turns out it’s a pokémon he’s never seen before. Not sure how it happened, honestly, we don’t have any pokémon in the lab that hasn’t been discovered yet.”
Alex and Kimiko exchanged a glance that pretty much meant
Well, duh. Alex knew that both he and Kimiko were dying to go and assist, but just because the professor hadn’t seen the pokémon before didn’t mean that it wasn’t widely known in some other region. Besides, that’s not why they were here today.
“So, he told me to tend to you when you got here, and apologize on his behalf,” Luke continued. “He knew you would want to investigate, but I was told not to let you linger. I just was so absorbed into my research that I had forgotten to sleep or get prepared or anything else. Anyway, professor Spruce is busy examining the new pokémon so he asked me to give you his best wishes and good luck on your travels, and thank you for all of your hard work over the last five years. And please do remember to check in with us once in a while.” Luke then bowed slightly, and looked expectantly at the couple.
“Uh, Luke… you haven’t given us our pokémon yet,” Alex said.
“What? Oh! Oh my… I’m so terribly sorry, I’m just extremely tired you see and I’ve gone through a few mugs of coffee this morning working on that paper on mega evolution and my memory isn’t what it normally is under these conditions, but you obviously know how I normally-”
“Professor,” Kimiko cut him off with a chuckle. “Our pokémon?”
“Right, right, I’m sorry. So then, I assume you both know what pokémon you would like to choose?”
“I do,” Alex said, stepping forward.
“I think I know who you want,” professor Hawkins said, “but let’s see if I’m right. Well, Alex, who is it?”
“I’ve chosen chikorita,” he admitted, unable to conceal his smirk. Even Luke in his exhausted state could see this coming.
“Aha! You’re very predictable, my young friend. The way that little pokémon follows you around, you would think you’re her mother or something, it’s really quite cute-”
“Er… yeah,” Alex interrupted awkwardly.
“Yes, right, well.” Luke cleared his throat and turned towards the computer. He typed something rather fast, and a few seconds later, a pokéball dropped out of the green tube, having been dematerialized from elsewhere in the lab and deposited within reach. Professor Hawkins stood up and reached for the ball, but before he could pick it up it automatically opened, releasing the contents.
“Chiko!” the chikorita squeaked happily, then looked around, confused at her surroundings. She almost never spent time indoors outside of her ball.
“Hey there,” Alex started. “I guess I’ll get right to the point. I’d like to ask you something. I’ve, er… I know we’ve been working together for a while, but I’m
technically a new trainer, so I’m going to be starting my journey, and I’ve… well, I’d like to know if you would like to come with me and be
my official starter.”
Alex immediately felt nervous. What if chikorita said no? What if she wanted to stay at the lab? He mentally slapped himself for not thinking of – and preparing for – that possibility sooner. He hoped his thoughts didn’t show on his face.
Chikorita relieved him of his worries, however, as she screeched with glee and jumped off the desk towards him. He nearly tripped as he lunged forward to catch her before she hit the ground from her miscalculated leap of joy. He cradled her in his arms as the pokémon rubbed against him affectionately.
“What about you, Kimiko?” piped up professor Hawkins, who appeared to have just been sleeping on his feet since the chikorita emerged.
When she didn’t answer, Alex turned around with chikorita in his arms to see Kimiko leaning against one of the shelves, arms crossed, her eyes unfocused again as they were on the walk to the lab. It took him a second to realize that something was wrong with the picture before him, something more than just Kimiko’s distant expression.
Then it hit him. He leaned forward slightly, holding out his arms, and chikorita jumped to the ground out of instinct. Alex was thankful that she’d understood, somewhere in the back of his mind. He called Kimiko’s name as he ran forward, barely catching the shelf she had been leaning on which was beginning to fall backwards, unable to support the added weight of the girl leaning against it. She gasped as she stumbled away, snapped out of whatever thoughts she’d been engrossed in, and Alex was able to pull the shelf back into a standing position before it toppled over.
One pokéball was apparently not secured well in its place and fell to the ground, where it opened in a flash of light. When the light faded, a small, blue pokémon had appeared next to chikorita. Alex recognized the tiny creature as a mudkip, but not one he had ever worked with before – it had only hatched about a week ago, and newborns were tended to by Spruce directly.
“I’m sorry, little guy,” Kimiko said as she watched the terrified creature. Tears began to form in the little blue fish’s eyes, which had grown wide upon seeing other living beings. Kimiko knelt down and offered mudkip her hand in an attempt to make herself appear less threatening. Mudkip did not look convinced, as it slowly backed away.
Kimiko pulled her hand back as Chikorita walked up to the shaking creature and sniffed it. The mudkip seemed to be frozen in fear as Chikorita walked around it, sniffing curiously. After making a full circle, she looked at mudkip with a smile and said, “Rita!”
Mudkip screamed in terror and ran forward, diving into Kimiko’s skirt in an attempt to hide as Kimiko and Chikorita looked at each other in surprise.
“It’s okay, she won’t hurt you,” Kimiko said, taking the blue creature in her arms and holding it against her chest protectively. The mudkip then looked up into her eyes, examined her face for a moment, then apparently decided she was telling the truth after all – its shaking had stopped, though it still looked frightened.
As Kimiko stood up, careful not to scare mudkip again, Chikorita extended a vine from one of the spots on her neck around the mudkip’s pokéball and handed it to her trainer. Alex, in turn, held it out to Kimiko.
“Would you like to go back into your pokéball now?” she asked the creature. In response, the mudkip climbed out of her arms – using her chest as leverage, to her embarrassment – up onto her right shoulder where it proceeded curl itself around a stray strand of her hair.
“I think it likes you,” Alex pointed out.
“He wasn’t intended as a starter,” said Luke suddenly, which made everyone jump. He was now sitting in the chair by the computer, still looking very worn out, but apparently awake – Alex guessed either the noise from the mudkip’s screaming woke him, or that he was never really asleep and just resting his eyes. “But it does seem that he’s warmed up to you.”
Kimiko carefully picked Mudkip off her shoulder to get a good look at him. Alex thought he seemed smaller than the last mudkip he
had worked with at this very lab. Somehow, he looked cuter, too. Perhaps it had something to do with the large eyes that were just begging to be brought along with them. Or, at least, his new human friend. He watched, eager to see what Kimiko would do. Though he hadn’t ended up consulting her today, the last time he’d asked his girlfriend she hadn’t yet made a decision what she’d wanted to start out with.
“Okay,” she said after another minute, smiling at the creature. “You’ll be my starter, then.”
Alex, now carrying Chikorita, extended his hand to his girlfriend; likewise, Chikorita extended a vine to Mudkip. “Congrats,” he said.
Immediately, the water pokémon squeaked in terror and buried his face in Kimiko’s shirt. She began to rock him in her arms like a newborn baby.
“Well,” said professor Hawkins as he stood, “the professor had, thankfully, set up the documents for your trainers licenses on this computer, but I’m afraid we don’t have any pokédex to give you, since trainers don’t normally start showing up for another four months or so, so for now you will have to just go on without one until you can buy one in the next town. You can register your new pokémon online with your license in the meantime, so you should probably do that now. And then, I suppose you’re finished here. When you do get a pokédex, that can serve as your identification and license too, as well as pokémon registration, league storage, and all that.”
“Sounds good,” Alex said, sitting in front of the computer first with Chikorita at his side and Kimiko and Mudkip right behind him.
