A/N: Surprise! You have walked into my very first NaNoWriMo story, and there's no escaping now!

So like many of you know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. I have to finish this by the end of November, and it has to be over fifty thousand words. It'll be one heck of a ride, but I believe in me! Sort of.

Right then, no time to waste: let's get this show on the road.

Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon. Oh, and I SWEAR I'm not ripping off the Starter Squad; I thought of this idea first and then was very surprised when I found something so similar on YouTube. You believe me, right?

~*Q*~

Make no mistake, the Vaniville Starter Center wasn't a bad place. The staff let the Pokemon have free rein of the fenced-in pastures almost 24/7. Flowers and grass covered the ground, with ponds dotted here and there for those who liked to swim. The Fire-types had had many an accident where somebody or other ended up falling in, but there was an indoor sauna, off-limits to humans, that dried them off if it was an emergency. Even the main building itself looked nice. Its red-brick walls and signs picturing smiling Pokemon were incredibly enticing to the young Trainers who wished to get a starter. Many nine- or ten-year-olds had spent their days gazing longingly into the pastures and wishing that the volunteer opportunities to take care of the Pokemon weren't already booked. Which they were, invariably.

The Starter Center - or VSC, as the locals called it - had started when a mild nationwide panic arose over how few "starter" Pokemon there were. These Pokemon were labeled starters because they each fit criteria that made them incredibly fit to start a young person off on their journey. They were all at least either Fire, Grass or Water type; they started out small and harmless but could grow to huge proportions; and they evolved twice, but at very specific times that almost assured that the Trainer would be strong enough to handle them. Because of the high demand - rumor had it that a professor of a faraway region had been imprisoned for illegally hiring poachers - the starters began to die out. Soon they were nearly impossible to find anywhere in the wild. Trainers flocked to the Friend Safari in Kiloude, but the safari horded their Ivysaur, Wartortle, and Charmeleon jealously. Several trainers were told to make friends first and come back later.

And so the VSC was started to protect this rare group. It was stuck in development for several years as the owners went out on a quest to collect at least two of each starter Pokemon. After eighteen months, with heavy promotion from Professor Sycamore, they managed to collect full sets of starters from Kalos, Kanto, Johto, and at least a dozen other regions. A year later, the Vaniville Starter Center opened its doors with a wide collection of starters to be applied for. It served double duty as a shelter for the starters as they waited for their future trainers to claim them, and a breeding center to keep the species alive. (Thankfully, these two functions were carried out in two different locations. Although they were both somewhere south of Vaniville, this kept things from getting...awkward.)

A shelter, a wide-open pasture, and a promise of Trainers to love them. Sounds like paradise for a Pokemon, right? Well, it was...for the most part. Every flock has a few black Mareep, and two Pokemon - a Bulbasaur and a Fennekin - were the resident black Mareep of the Vaniville Starter Center.

The Fennekin, Tochi, had been named by a Totodile who had declared it his life's work to properly name every "Species-Name-Dash-Number-And-A-Letter." He called Fennekin-38A after the Kantoan word for 'torch.' Tochi, like his name, was fiery but slow-burning. He was talkative and opinionated, with an ability to hold a grudge that was nearly unmatched, but he held a pessimistic look on life that sharply contrasted with his fluffy face and hyperactive demeanor. Constantly straddling the line between impatient and engaged, he took everything with a gloomy snark at life. Most Pokemon chose to avoid him, but Tochi was fine with that. He had one friend, and that was all that mattered.

No one really knew how the Totodile naming wizard had discovered Sepal's name. Sepal himself seemed to know, but he never elaborated past "it's the Unovan word for a part of a flower."

The Bulbasaur was like a lazy sun. Day after day he was content to lie in a sunny patch, always willing to strike up a conversation but never the one to initiate it. He was happy, and that was all that mattered to him. Sepal liked to think of himself as a philosopher, but being a young Pokemon hatched in a small-town breeding center, he wasn't wise or even particularly clever. He could contemplate a single question for hours, though, and he had such tenacity that he could convince someone that the moon was blue if he really wanted.

The two of them had met when they were young. Tochi had tripped over Sepal as the Fennekin was fleeing a couple of Water-types. Knowing that the sauna could dry off any "accidents," they had taken it upon themselves to give each new Fire-type an "initiation" by dumping them in a pond. The Water-types didn't mean any harm, really - a Squirtle had sworn to them that it would get rid of a Fire-type's weakness - but Sepal wouldn't have any of that. Without even standing up, he lashed out with a scathing speech on how they were potentially ruining dozens of innocent lives, and promptly fell back asleep. The Water-types were horrorstruck. Tochi decided to hang around the Bulbasaur more often.

These days, it was more Tochi who acted as the ringleader. Sepal was content to go along with whatever he was scheming. Their usual daily schedule. however, consisted of standing in a particular spot by the fence and doing absolutely nothing. Until one day, that is.

"Sepal."

"Mm?"

"You ever get tired of this place?"

"No." Sepal rolled over.

"I mean -" Tochi flicked his ears. "Don't you ever want to see something new?"

"No."

"Why not?" Usually Tochi respected his friend's innate laziness, but today he was feeling extra impatient.

Sepal took a while to answer, as usual. "The sun doesn't stop feeling warm. But when it's winter, I go inside."

Tochi rolled his eyes. "Don't you want to know what the sun feels like outside the pasture?"

"I mean, that'd be cool. Or not. It'd be warm."

"Look, Sepal…" Tochi started to pace back and forth. A small groove had already been carved in the dirt from the sheer number of times he had paced there. "I've been thinking. I...I want to leave here."

"You'll probably have to stop scaring away the Trainers, then," Sepal remarked. Whenever a new kid came to choose a Pokemon, Tochi would judge him or her with a cynical eye and flat-out refuse to go near them if they didn't meet his standards. Meanwhile, Sepal would be dozing off somewhere.

"No! Not with a Trainer. I just wanna leave. I want to escape. There, I said it."

"Escape?" Sepal raised his head. "Where to?"

"I dunno…Vaniville?"

"They'd find you."

"The forest, then."

"Hm."

"What?" Tochi hopped from paw to paw. "Would it work?"

"Maybe."

"'Maybe?' You're right. There's not many berries in Santalune Forest I'd have to compete with the wild Pokemon for them, it'd be freezing in winter, Trainers looking for Pokemon are going through there all the time, I could get poisoned or paralyzed with no way to get better…All right, not the forest. I'd have - that's it!" Sepal didn't say anything, so he continued anyways. "I'd have to get stronger! I wouldn't stop in the forest, I'd go all the way to Santalune! And then I could beat the gym leader and then go on to the next city!"

Sepal frowned. "Tochi, you're not talking about the gym circuit, are you?"

"The gym circuit! That's a great idea."

"Tochi, we're Pokemon. Only humans can be Trainers."

"Says who?" Tochi said stubbornly. "Pokemon do all the work anyways. And I sure don't need a Trainer directing my every move on the field."

"But you could get injured," Sepal objected. "Or run into a Water-type…"

Tochi was stumped for a second. Then he got a wicked gleam in his eye. "Or...you could come with!"

"...okay."

"Come on, it's a gre - wait, really?"

Sepal hauled himself to his feet. "I know you. You'll go anyways."

"Sepal, of course I am. Just think about it. Life sucks, so why waste it in a tiny enclosure, waiting to be picked off like Rattata in a Pidgeotto cage? We're Pokemon! We need to get out, see the world, live life." Tochi got a glimmer in his eyes. "Maybe even...evolve."

"You make it seem like we're in jail," Sepal commented. "It's our home, and it's not my fault that you've already ran the perimeters thirty-seven times."

"...you counted?"

"The point is, I'll miss you if you leave, and I'd never stop worrying about what you're doing. I don't really get why you have to leave, but I'll go with you. I gotta -" Sepal yawned. "Gotta protect my friend, right?"

Tochi tackled him in a hug. "Thank you!"

"We'll start planning and stuff tomorrow," Sepal decided. "And also, now you gotta call me Trainer."

"No way!"

"Kidding." Sepal grinned. "So, how are you going to get past the fence…?"

~*Q*~

A/N An important thing you should know: this story will have lots of character development, in addition to adventure and (hopefully) humor. Remember that the rules of NaNoWriMo basically require you to hammer stuff out without worrying about editing. Feel free to critique me, and maybe I'll polish this story up in December!

Thanks for sticking around! Be sure to leave a review...that'd be nice, I mean.

~*Akirys*~