Chapter 1
The Road to Rule is a hard lifestyle. A dream is a dream, to be followed by many, and accomplished by few. Red's lifelong dream to become the most respected, revered trainer had come alive, bringing with it the satisfaction of accomplishing his goal. However, with becoming the champion, his reward was isolation- from friends and family. This is the result.
Red: Age 20, Location: The Pokemon League/Kanto, Date: January 2nd, Year: +10
I stood in an empty room, save for some neatly painted lines directing the boundaries for the many battles fought here. Upon closer inspection, anyone could tell that the floor was beaten and scratched beyond repair. I suppose that, in any case, this wasn't a room to be shown off though. Being the champion, I spent my days making up battle strategies and then proceeding to put them into effect in the challenges I face daily, new trainers coming to show their prowess in their attempts at besting me. To be honest, I used to love it- the attention, the respect, and especially the fights themselves. Even now, everyone wants to be in my shoes. Maybe I should let them. Maybe it would be better to retire before things got worse than they already are. The child I was kept me from ever putting my thoughts into effect. How could I actually give up this great position I had worked so hard for? I love it here!... Or so I somehow force myself to believe. As the days went by, I felt as if I was just going through the motions, shuffling from my house and back, conquering trainers who managed to make it past my elite four.
In the beginning, I had continued to live back in Pallet Town, living out my exciting life of trainers from all sorts of places coming to challenge me. Of course, the media bothered me and everyone else, but it was somehow bearable despite the constant threats and trials we were put though. It was all in all a pretty fun life to lead. It only started to go wrong when instead of me, the reporters began to stalk my friends. At first, we had all laughed at the magazine cover of Blue in a pretty hilarious looking dress, or that time when Green was caught by the cameras while falling off of a tree limb, trying to get Vee down. It was only after a while that the news started to get a hell of a lot darker, and I really mean it. The first incident would've had to have been when a picture was released of Green supposedly beating Yellow, when as a viewer of this event myself, I can say that it's pretty false. Yellow was actually freaking out about a poisonous spider, and no one wanted to get close enough to it in order to get it off of her until Green finally was forced to.
After this was released, people started to wonder about Green and his reputation started to falter. I immediately took action and appeared in a report about the incident, but somehow I managed to make it worse. Instead of listening to my side of the story, the press made it into a scandal, and released that I was trying to cover for Green only because I had some fault in it myself. Some weeks after this came the accusations on Prof. Oak. This was the last straw with Green. He told me himself one day after I had finally gotten some free time at home. I remember the day like it was yesterday.
I'm sitting in my living room, TV on, Mom watching the TV, Pika on the couch with me. The door opens, I don't bother to turn around, since only a few people had keys to my house in the first place. Green walks around to stand in front of me, blocking the TV.
"Uh, you're kinda blocking the TV there, care to move?" I say, in a pretty uncaring, 'oh look it's Green again' type of voice.
"Look Red, we've got to talk about what's been going on. They have taken it too far, and you know it." Green says, looking unhappy as ever. I knew something was wrong, but at that moment I really just wanted to see if the trainers of those tepig decided to break up or not.
"Yeah, yeah, I know, I'll figure out something to do. I mean, as long as we don't give them anything to work with, those reporters will loose interest, right? Don't worry about it." I say, making shooing motions and trying to look past him and at the TV, silently rooting in my head for the guy to just propose already.
For a moment, I look up. And in that moment, almost as if it were slow motion, I see Green holding the latest issue of a popular newspaper. The headline was "Famous Professor on Suspension Due to Rumor". Green looks down at me, and only shakes his head before dropping the newspaper and one of the spare house keys onto my lap. He walks back to the door, sighs, and walks out slamming it behind him. My mom just sort of looked at the door, and then me, with that sad pity face someone might show if your relative died. The tepig couple broke up for good in the background.
The days that followed were practically torture. I refused to leave the house, wondering what other damage I could have done. Blue came by one day, gave me another one of those depressed looks, and after seeing my condition just left again. Yellow came by almost every day, with varying attempts to try and cheer me up. Pretty sure she was doing the same for Green and Blue. On one occasion some of my junior Pokedex holders actually came by from differing regions. I had already met most of them from one occasion to another, but this was different. Some gave me cold looks, some sad, some outright disgusted. I remember once that Gold came by ranting at people outside my house, which was pretty funny to watch, but otherwise I guess all the others either heard the bad things or just felt bad for me. I never had a chance to tell them otherwise. The last day I was in Pallet Town, Yellow came by again, as usual.
"Reeeeeddddddd, you really should get out of the house by now." Yellow practically yawns as she walks through the door and flops onto the couch in front of the TV.
I stare blankly at the ceiling. This was pretty routine by now. I was just about to reply with another of my "No thanks" responses, when the TV channel changes to Blue and Green being questioned at the Lab about my odd behavior. Forcefully.
"What the he-" is all I could muster up before yellow dragged me and I was running out the door to the nearby lab. The crowd parted and we ran inside, trying best as possible to block our faces from the cameras. Some of the people didn't even have cameras, they were wearing some sort of lab suit and just crowding up the place. We went in, and we teleported out with an extra Blue and Green via Pokemon.
"Thanks Red." Says a slightly disgruntled Blue. "I don't even know why they're so hard on us..it's not like we've done anything wrong.."
"It's because of those new damn researchers" curses green, looking past the forestry. "I swear they're out to get us all."
"New..what?" I say, fazed.
"Red, we need to stay out of this for awhile."
Blue and Green leave our hiding spot with grim looks. I knew that they weren't really mad, mostly on Blue's case, but a sinking feeling just kept nagging away at my mind, as it had for weeks now.
We were outside the town, in the woods. You could almost see the town from here, but it was still quite a ways away. As soon as I realized this, I didn't really want to go back. It would only mean causing more pain for my friends, if I could even still say that they were my friends. I was the one who attracted the extension, wasn't I? I look down at yellow.
"I'm leaving." I say, almost absentmindedly.
"Yeah..." Yellow starts until she processes what I actually said. "Wait, you're doing what?" She looks at me, bewildered and very much shocked. "How could you leave, where would you even go?"
"Yellow, you know I can't stay here, I mean, you've seen what has happened." I look up at the sky. It was probably right then that an unrelenting doubt just fell on me, and flattened me under its unimaginable weight. Yellow was pretty much all I had left. The day her face changed to just another depressed look or cold stare was the day I lost everything. I couldn't do that, I just can't bear to hole myself up again. The pressure to leave was practically suffocating me at that point. I basically had one last attempt. "Yellow," I said, feeling as if I were choking, looking at the bright, sunny, cloudless sky. "Will you come with me?"
She looked at me, looked at the ground, and turned around before she could say anything else. "Red, I..."
I can't.
I couldn't look at her again, I could pretty much feel the depressed look she had. "Goodbye, Yellow." I whispered barely enough to be audible. I dared the unthinkable and looked down at her one last time before calling out my Pokemon to fly me elsewhere. I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't really care. This was what being depressed was. I couldn't feel worse. In the air, I only had one thing I could think to say.
"It's a bad day for rain."
The door opens and another challenger comes into the room. I snap out of my reminiscence and look over at him. A pretty rough trainer, by the looks of it, but not one who is going to be taking my title. I proceed to start the match and put out my first Pokemon, Pika.
"Thunderbolt!" Down goes a gyrados.
"Iron Tail!" And another one falls, a flareon.
"Thunderbolt!" The third Pokemon was slightly stronger, a blastoise this time. Still, the effective attack took it down, KO.
This pretty much continued until the battle was over, the trainer standing in front of me with shock written all over their face.
Sometimes, I don't understand how these people can even make it to the champion's room. Maybe the elite four just make it easy out of pity for me, so I have something to do. Well, maybe I don't want their damn pity.
Well, this turned out to be considerably darker than I thought it would. It's not a tragedy, or psychological, or horror, I swear. The next chapter will be something about Yellow, probably. Dang though, that is one depressed Red o~o. Well, this is my first attempt at writing so don't get on to me too much if you review, kay? Haha, just kidding, please do review though, would appreciate some constructive feedback.
p.s. R.I.P Maes Hughes
p.s.s. The chapters will be considerably longer from here on out (probably) and may switch POV. With this story I'm headed towards an adventure/probably romance tag, and I haven't really chosen the characters I will focus on, but I will try to cover a lot. ALSO, the +10 year thing is how many years since Red began his journey, since I don't want to put a straight year. He started his journey at 11, but it's the beginning of the year so his birthday hasn't come around yet~
Red: Geez, could you make it sound anymore like I'm going mentally insane?
Me: you're not insane, just feeling a little... Abandoned, that's all. Don't worry, I'm sure Yellow will come for you :3
Yellow: Wh-what?! It's not like we're... I mean... ummm...
Me: So cute I'm gonna die, anyways,
Red&Yellow: Review please if you took the time to read this way too long author's note!