Author's Notes: I'm discontinuing my old novel, Life, Music, and Ria, mainly because I tried charting myself into the unfamiliar territory where the character was trying to start his own internet cafe business, which I had no idea about. But essentially, they're similar: realistically dealing with the complications of raising the Ralts-line.
I don't own any rights to Pokémon, but I do own the rights to my Original Characters. Reviews would be highly-appreciated.
Christ's How to...
Raise a Ralts
(Introduction)
::: 0732 hours, 10 June (Tue), 2003 :::
"Good morning, Miss Cherry!"
"Good morning and welcome back, class!" The class sits down as Miss Cherry walks to the blackboard, "So how did everyone enjoy their summer?"
As the rest of the class stood up one-by-one and talked about how their summers went, I was staring out the window with my head leaning on my hand. My name's Christ Salvador, your usual ten-year-old with brown eyes and short hair (like I had a choice, considering the school's short-hair policy), lightly-tanned white skin and chubby-cheeks. I may have been a little fat, but not like those fat kids who look like they're blowing air into their mouths; no, it just meant old ladies who'd pinch me would say I had just the right amount of meat in me. Based off experience, believe me.
So why's this story focused on a chubby, ordinary boy like me, you dear reader might ask? "Christ?" Miss Cherry singles me out, "So how'd you spend your summer?"
Was it because I was comfortable being on the spotlight? "Nothing much, Miss Cherry. Just spent it mostly at home playing computer games." Well that last statement probably made you paint my life as this geeky kid who spends his time playing lonely computer games in his mother's basement, doesn't it? Half of that is true, by the way: I am a geeky kid, and I do spend lots of time playing PC games, but I don't live in my mother's basement, mind you!
"That so? As in nothing else aside from computer games?"
"Hahah! What a nerd, as always!" A girl from one side of the class stands up and taunts me.
"What's it to you, Synthia? You his girlfriend now?" The entire class giggles and 'ooo's' at the boy's comeback (who by the way was one of my friends, Beckham Pablos), making the girl (and me) blush and sit back down on her seat. To be honest, while I had lots of confidence taking down monsters in pixel worlds, I still found it embarrassing to deal with the complexities of the opposite gender.
"Now now, class, don't be rude with your fellow classmates, because this year's special, and today's a special day!" So that brings us back to the question: why am I the focus of this story? "You know what time it is?"
"It's Pokémon Day!" The whole class cheers in unison, including yours truly, because who in their right mind wouldn't wanna have their very own all-powerful murderbeast? Hell yeah, I'd want one of them apples!
"That's right! From this year onwards, you'll have your very own Pokémon to take care of! Naturally, you can only pick the starter-Pokémon in Elementary, but when you reach High-School and have more experience raising a couple of Pokémon you'll get to expand to the more advanced types.
"For your school assignment tomorrow," everyone quickly moans, "ask your parents to help pick the Pokémon you want as your starter!" And everyone starts cheering again as Miss Cherry hands the front row some papers to pass (I was third row, first column), "Each of you will be handed a sheet of paper. The front portion describes the commonly-used Hoenn starter Pokémon. What you'll do is fill out the blanks at the back, and pass these papers tomorrow. I'll let you all read the papers first before we continue, and don't be shy about asking questions!"
When I got my paper, I looked at the different Pokémon available as starters, hoping I'd find one I'd like:
Torchic, for people who want to see things burn
Mudkip, for those who want to get wet (what?)
Treeko, for those with green thumbs
Abra, for those who love the supernatural
Makuhita, for those who like to roughhouse
Sandshrew, for those who love to mess around
Taillow, for those who hate the ground
Skitty, usually for girls or those (un)confident of their gender
Wurmple, usually for boys or those who love pranks
Zigzagoon, for those who love comedy
But none of them were what I was looking for. While the list was both extensive and awesome, covering almost every aspect a new Trainer would've wanted, it didn't have that Pokémon that I was looking for, "Miss Cherry?" I raised my hand to call her attention, "What about Ralts? It's not here in the list."
"Why yes, Christ, thank you for reminding me! Everyone, I forgot to mention that your choice of Pokémon doesn't limit you to this list only, but the Pokémon here are recommended for starting Trainers because they're easy enough to take care of. You can actually have your own starting Pokémon, but some come from outside Hoenn like Charmander, making them expensive," this makes a few in the class to moan, "while others are harder to take care of, like Ralts."
"Oh..." I felt a little sadder inside.
Miss Cherry places an understanding hand on my shoulder, "But why a Ralts, Christ? Why not an Abra? Both of them are Psychic-types, surely an Abra would be better for you?"
"Well... It's that... oh, nothing." I faked a smile, which worked and made her continue walking around class.
So... Why specifically a Ralts? Cause it's the first real-life Pokémon I've ever seen outside of books and TV. I met an adult who visited our school several years ago, and sitting on his shoulder like a Chatot was this pretty little Pokémon he called a Ralts. At the time I was a small kid, so it was almost as tall as me, but what got my attention was how cheerful both he and his Ralts were, and it made me feel happy seeing them like that, like two best friends or a father and his daughter (I found out later the Ralts was a girl by asking our teacher).
"No more questions, class? Alright then, please open your language textbooks and turn to page 2..."
::: 0729 hours, 11 June (Wed), 2003 :::
"Wow, Miss Cherry! What's with all these boxes?" one of the girls points at the large, heavy cardboard boxes occupying almost a fourth of our classroom, "Hey, this one has my name on it!" Everyone then checks if their names are on them, and sure enough I even find mine.
"What's in them? You think they're our Pokémon?" I shook my box a bit to check what's inside, but it was hard to tell because all the boxes were apparently filled with styrofoam packaging. I was the first to successfully open mine (I used my ballpen to Poké through the packaging tape), and what I saw made my eyes glint with glee, "A Pokémon Egg!" And sure enough, inside my box was a large cylindrical clear-glass container with special plastic covers, one of them with a Poké Ball secured to some sort of clamp in the center. And inside this container was this greenish-white egg with spots of dark-green and red all over, floating in mid-air. The egg was as large as an ostrich egg, while the entire set was almost as heavy as all my books combined, so I made a mental note to get a bigger bag in the near future. I put a hand on the glass, and it felt warm to the touch, so it probably served as the egg's incubator, but what's most amazing was that the egg, no matter how hard I shook the container, it never touched the sides and kept floating in the same spot, like it was being held in place by an invisible force.
I looked around and saw that everyone had their own named boxes, and those that opened theirs had their their own differently-colored Pokémon Eggs within their own incubators. Some eggs had similar colors and patterns with others, to show they got the same Pokémon, while some looked pretty strange indeed. And slowly it came to me, the realization that from this moment on, I- no, we were now official Pokémon Trainers... awww, sweetsauce!
"Now, class!" Miss Cherry calls everyone back to their seats after everyone else finished getting and/or opening their boxes, "Even if your eggs haven't hatched yet, all of you are now part of the wonderful world of Pokémon, and I expect all of you to be great friends with your newborn Pokémon when they hatch. Until you graduate from Grade School you'll all be limited to having only that Pokémon. Remember: if you can't even take care of just one Pokémon, how much more if you'll take charge of a whole team?
"But what's most important is that Pokémon are your friends, not tools. How you treat your Pokémon and how healthy they become will greatly determine your grades in the future. So I expect that all of you will become wonderful Trainers one day.
"Now..." She takes out a stack of blank papers from underneath her desk and gives each of us one to write on, "What I want you all to do is write in a paragraph of at least three-sentences your dreams and expectations of becoming a Pokémon Trainer, and why you picked the Pokémon you chose. When you're done, please pass the papers to the front."
I peeked around the class to check what their reasons were. Most were kinda standard: to enter into Pokémon Battles and Competitions, to have adventures with, to have something to groom and style and play with, the usual. At first I was gonna start with 'I want to spread happiness to the world', but that sounded really corny. Another idea was 'I want to have a friend to play computer games with', but then many of my games were of the Single Player variety.
After some heavy thought, the perfect statement came to me. It made a pang so strongly in my soul that I wrote it with a bit of tear in my eyes:
"I want to be the father I always wanted to have..."