When I hatched, I saw my trainer. They were disappointed. The only words they said was "It's a boy" before they sent me away.
I didn't even know what was so bad about being a boy. Colors flashed before my newly-opened eyes, blue, yellow, and green, and it made me dizzy, and I saw another trainer in front of me.
I thought I could grow to like this trainer. When they first saw me, they smiled at me, "Hey, look, I got a Vulpix!"
The trainer took a closer look at me and then said, "Oh wait, it's a boy. Never mind."
I was sent into the color place for the second time in the first two minutes of my life.
When I came back out, I was dizzy and disoriented. My new trainer was named Victor. He smiled at me when I first appeared out of colorplace. I smiled back, nervously, hoping he wouldn't send me back just because I was a boy.
I was right. Victor took me out of his box, trained me for a month. I grew stronger and stronger. He stopped when I was level 33. He said I had the perfect moveset and thrust me in front of an old man.
The man told Victor I was close to perfect. 5IVs, he said, in everything except Attack. He sighed, "I would've loved to have and train something like this. If only your Vulpix was a girl…"
Victor changed after he took me to the man. He stuck me in the back of his box and I waited, for months, until he finally took me out again. In his party was another Vulpix, but she was small and shy.
He took us to a place called Pokémon DayCare and told us to make eggs. I didn't really like the other Vulpix, but she really liked me, and we gave Victor many more Vulpixes, to say the least. Every time I saw Victor walk by, my heart would leap like he was going to take me back, but he never did. He just picked up another Vulpix egg and left.
Our pups were very strong. Victor had chosen my mate for me, because she knew Morning Sun and Flame Wheel and she had a hidden ability. When finally, finally, Victor said one of our pups was perfect, he took us out of the dreaded DayCare and put another pair in.
Again I sat in the back of the box. My "perfect" pup was a male named Solar. He was nice enough, but really timid. Victor cherished him for it. To Victor, I was too gentle. I would never be the perfect Vulpix in his eyes.
Soon after Solar evolved into a beautiful Ninetales, I was put back into colorplace. Victor called it Wonder Trade. All my failure pups and my forced mate were Wonder Traded, too. I was the last one to go and I remember seeing Victor's cold eyes, without any trace of regret, staring down at me as I was sent away.
My next trainer took two seconds to look at me, saying, "It's a boy. Great. Goodbye, Vulpix."
Again, shunned because I was a male. I was hoping that a trainer like Victor could appear from Wonder Trade, but nobody did. I was sent back and forth and back again, expecting a nice trainer and loving home, but none came. Every time somebody looked at me they said, "It's a boy. Just what I need," and thrust me back into Wonder Trade.
It took two hours of flashing colors and spinning pokémon to find me a trainer. Her name was Marri, and I remember she had pink hair, pink like Spritzee. She had a friend with her, and I remember her saying, "Vulpix? OMG, I have, like, a whole box of those. And this one's, like, way uglier than all mine. Wanna see? They're totes gorg. One sec, I, like, have to stick him in Wonder Trade where he belongs."
And my heart was ripped into tiny, tiny, pieces as yellow flashed before my eyes.
My next trainer was okay. They put me in the box, which I was cool with. Anything to get away from the bright blue spinning of Wonder Trade. I was stuck in the stupid box for a few months. The trainer, Darla, finally took me out. I was scared that I'd be Wonder Traded again.
She must have seen my fear because she chuckled. There was another Vulpix in her party, and she introduced us. I recognized the Pokémon DayCare behind her.
She left us in the DayCare and I approached the new Vulpix. She was preening her six long tails. I still had one white tail, from my lack of care. I self consciously looked down at my one tiny tail, and back to her tails, long with glossy red-brown fur.
"So, we have to make babies?" she raised one eyebrow elegantly.
I nodded, too starstruck to speak.
"I don't want to," she sighed, flopping dramatically in the dust, and my pieces of my heart literally ripped themselves out of my chest, embedding themselves in the dirt of my life, "What's your name?"
I nodded again.
"I'm Sunny. It's nice to meet you, no-name," Sunny extended a paw.
"My name is Vulpix!" I blurted out. Considering the circumstances, it was a pretty good sentence.
"Vulpix? What kind of name is that? What kind of trainer did you have?" she asked, her other eyebrow arching.
"One who didn't care about me," I said bitterly.
Sunny bit her lip, "I'm so sorry," she said, apologetically.
I just nodded.
I grew to like Sunny. Well, I liked her before, but then she grew to like me. Darla came periodically and stole our eggs, but this time I actually cared. Every time the DayCare Man came to take the brown eggs with orange waves, I would hiss at him, trying to keep the egg with me and Sunny. Sunny told me to stop trying. She said that the humans would always win. She said that we didn't hold a chance against the humans. I hoped she was wrong.
When I was with Sunny, my tail finally split into six curly ones. Sunny applauded me when she noticed. I felt more like an actual Vulpix now, not just a breeding slave.
Darla, finally, came and told us that one of our eggs was perfect. She put the rest of our pups in Wonder Trade, all one hundred and thirty-five of them, and then she put Sunny in Wonder Trade. And then me.
When the blue swirling came again, all I could think about was Sunny. Everyone would want to keep her because she was a girl. Sunny could settle down, evolve, and live a happy life as a Ninetales, but then I knew I was doomed to float around Wonder Trade.
Then I came to a guy called Doug. Doug was very short for a human. When he didn't put me back in Wonder Trade, I was scared I'd have to breed again with somebody I didn't love.
"Hey, little buddy," Doug said, and I felt a wild rush of relief, "Looks like you've traveled a long way to get here."
I nodded, giddy with excitement. DayCare was far, far away, Doug he didn't sound like he was going to put me back in Wonder Trade. I might actually be a keeper.
Doug put me in his PC and my hopes fell. Maybe, if I was lucky, he would forget about me here and I would live my life in the dark confinement of the PC box.
When Doug took me back out, he told me to look in the mirror. I nearly fainted. My brown fur, which I had so carefully groomed, was now the color of marigolds. What was wrong with me?
"Alrighty then. Back to Wonder Trade you go," Doug chuckled, "Powersaves saves the day again."
He brushed invisible dirt off his hands with glee as he watched me ascend into the dark. The blue spinning came again but I didn't notice because I was crying.
The next trainer actually squealed in delight, "Ooh! A shiny!"
She didn't stuff me back into Wonder Trade for my weird coloration. She cherished me for it. I was put in her box for so many weeks because of my orange-colored fur. I was lonely. Finally, finally, another pokémon came into the box, it was a female Ninetales. She was gray instead of cream.
"Vulpix, now that I have a shiny Ninetales, and she's a girl, I don't need you anymore! Off to some other lucky person!" the trainer grinned cheesily.
Wonder Trade spun by me in a blur of blue and black. My next trainer actually shrieked when he saw me. I thought I had scared him, but then he hugged me, so hard I could barely breathe.
"OMG you're perfect!" he yelled, "Hi Vulpix! My name is Randy, and we're going to be good good friends!"
Randy was one of those people who yelled everything. He crammed poképuffs down my throat, played pointless games with me, and rubbed me all over my head and belly, even when I didn't like it. He said he was doing a WonderLocke challenge, and that when I fainted, he would have to send me back on Wonder Trade.
I made it a point to faint as soon as I could.
Randy cried, "Vulpix, do I have to send you off?! Yes, Randy, you have to! It's the rules of WonderLocke!"
This time I welcomed the swirling blue of Wonder Trade, knowing that the person on the other side would welcome me.
The next trainer, Jeanette, leveled me up to level 100 before sending me back to Wonder Trade.
After Jeanette came a guy named Ryan. Ryan also shrieked when he saw me.
"Hey, Vulpix," he said, extending a hand to me, "I made a bet with my friend that I could beat him with a team of Vulpix. You'd be perfect. Help me win that bet?"
I nodded, and Ryan cried, "Awesome!"
He put me in a box called the Battle Box while he went searching for more Vulpix. There was three Vulpix already in the box, though none were orange like me.
"Hey there, newbie," one of them said, a male named Sriracha.
"Hey, yourself," I said back, "How long have you been here?"
"Maybe a month?" Sriracha shrugged, "Dunno. I was the first Vulpix. Then came Ribbon, that lovely lady over there," he pointed out a female Vulpix, who blushed and batted her eyes at him, "And then Sunny came a few days ago."
"Sunny?" I asked.
"Got a problem with my name?" my beautiful Sunny asked, tilting her head.
"Sunny, ohmigosh, it's me, Vulpix!" I dashed towards her.
"Vulpix!" she exclaimed, and she rubbed her face on mine, "I thought I would never see you again! Why are you orange?"
"A trainer named Doug did it to me. Nobody wanted me before I was orange, and now everybody wants me because I'm orange," I answer, pressing against her.
"Bro, you're shiny," Sriracha said, "That's oober rare. Like, one in 8192."
We chatted a bit, and I told everyone about my journey. Ryan deposited another Vulpix in the box, this one a female named Flamo, before taking the night off. Flamo was nice enough, I guess, but quiet and shy and she kept mostly to himself. The last Vulpix came two weeks later, another female, this one named in indecipherable Japanese characters. Ryan was almost ready to challenge his friend. He made the entire team learn Energy Ball before he took us out.
His friend used a team of entirely Squirtles, thank god for Energy Ball. We proudly beat him, only losing Flamo and Japanese Name to well-placed Hydro Pumps.
I still wait in the PC, waiting for another bet to come up. Ryan has used the team three times in bets, winning all of them. Japanese Name has started learning English, and Flamo has started breaking out of her shell. I'm always happy hanging out with Sunny, and Sriracha and Ribbon have started a budding romance. Nobody on the team is as experienced as me, but I don't care. They're my friends.
Thank Arceus for all the people out there, people like Doug and Jeanette who do something to better a pokémon before sending them out to the world. They are the people who saved me. If it wasn't for Doug, I still would be floating around Wonder Trade, waiting for a loving home like Ryan's but never getting anywhere close. I also thank Arceus for FanFiction writers, because without them, our story would never get told.
And that's the end of my Powersaves Saga. Enjoy. I mainly wrote these to show people what Wonder Trade should be used for. If you have Powersaves or even if you don't, do something to better the pokémon before sending it back into the swirling blue. Evolve that Scatterbug you got. EV train that Solosis. Shinify that Luvdisc. Do something better for the world.
'O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?'
'That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?'