This is a fanfic that I wrote after reading Buwaro's Tales of Flame, so stuff may seem similar. Most of the characters are named after my friends . Pokémon belongs to its rightful owners.

Chapter 1 : It's all about Me.

I leapt from tree to tree in the dense jungle, feeling the wind below the sharp leaves that grew out of the sides of my arms and my tail swinging behind me, perfectly controlled. I was flying! I was free! I was Sceptile! I was…

...rudely awakened by a veritable giant looming over me, trapping me in his shadow. Obviously, I was rather unperturbed. When you're half a metre tall, pretty much everything tends to do that. Added to the fact that he did that every day…, it wasn't really that terrifying…anymore. Looking up at him, he was still the same fat, shapeless old man with brown fur on his head but nowhere else on his body. Wearing clothes. I shuddered. He reminded me of a gigantic mocha Ditto.

When I first came here, I had recurring nightmares about giant light brown Dittos sitting on me and squashing me with their shapeless bulk. But anyway, back to clothes. Never wore those before, and didn't see what was so special about them anyway, except that all humans seemed to love them so much they were never seen without them. Usually. All in all, nothing much special.

My daily routine would usually consist of being awoken by this giant during my sweet dreams, followed by breakfast of some brown gooey stuff that tasted like a week-old Poffin. Humans really don't know what Pokémon like to eat. Anyway, after that I was pretty much able to do whatever I wanted, within the confines of the compound. Yes, the compound. I was a specimen, being kept there for "somebody", who was never mentioned to me by the fat man. Other humans came and went, but never stayed for long, except for a young male, who wore funky super-tight green coloured clothing that clashed horribly with his brown super tanned skin. Not that green was a bad colour, it just looked bad on him.

Easily being able to eavesdrop on the fat man's conversations whenever I went so inclined, I learnt lots of things:

Don't fiddle with the complex system of steel and buttons that the young boy usually sat in front of whenever he came. I wondered if it ever needed to eat; I had never seen it move.

Don't try to bite the human boy's fingers; the Torchic that lived with me did it once; got his face smacked. Really hard.

Be careful of Clefairy. Seriously, every infant knows that they came from the Moon to steal Pokémon for their alien experiments.

Humans used Pokémon to do their fighting for them. (Mostly, and not that I had any problem with it, fighting was kinda fun sometimes.)

The fat man's name was Professor Birch.

Professor Birch kept us separate from the rest of the Pokémon. There's the "them", and there's the "us". Obviously, we still had contact with them.

The "us", however, was comprised of me and two other Pokémon. I didn't really see why the Professor lumped us together, we weren't even all of the same type! Seriously, what was he thinking. There's a Torchic, this annoying Fire type, a Treecko, and me. Yeah, another Treecko. What did you expect? A Mudkip? Oh please.

From Professor Birch, I gathered that I was "a product of selective breeding". It sounded like a lot of crap to me, but hell, it sounded impressive. Although I didn't know what difference it would make to me. Maybe I knew attacks normal Treecko didn't? I did know more attacks than the other Treecko, but, by Arceus, he was old, like Mew-old. However, when I mentioned that to other Pokémon, they would ask me who my parents were. Geez, I lived in a compound, for goodness sake. I was brought there as an egg! Did people seriously expect me to know who my parents are while I'm still in the egg?

Anyway, back to the Torchic. Although Fire types were supposed to be our sworn enemy and all, fire burning grass and whatnot, the Torchic and I shared one thing in common : We wanted to be free of the lab. The other Treecko however…well, that old fart just wanted to stay here the rest of his life, doing, well, pretty much nothing. Whoever said old people were wiser must have been old.

The Torchic's name was, imaginatively, Chic. And he was male. If I was stuck with a name like that…well, I'd probably change it. Or kill myself.

There was this Tropius who could Fly people from place to place, but he was usually kept separate from us…we could've used him to escape the compound that way. Not that I felt the compound was a bad place, it was just…limiting.

My chance finally came.

Apparantly, young people came to this "laboratory" all the time to take Pokémon. They all looked around the same age, and I thought this was probably some weird tradition. Not that it was the weirdest ever, Dittos had this idea that once a year they had to transform into something else for a whole month just to test their patience and transforming skills. Not fun, especially if it chose something like a stone.

Other Pokémon around me were chosen. Mudkips, Other Treeckos, some guy even chose a Delibird, just because they weren't native to this region, I overheard.

Most recently, just the other day, a Jigglypuff had been by an impressively short human (by human standards anyway). He was, like, only twice my height. That's only about a metre tall. He still reached down to pet my head though. That put him instantly on my 'hated things' list. Seriously, don't people know that petting someone else's head is just plain demeaning? (Although, I must say, if I found someone I was taller than, I'd probably do that too.)

That boy and the Jigglypuff looked right together somehow. When I looked at the boy hugging the Jigglypuff and vice-versa, I had to struggle not to gag at the overwhelming… cuteness of it all.

Anyway, it seemed to be that green-tight-clothing boy's turn to pick today. Ruling out the old Treecko, who had went and hidden himself somewhere in a tree and was probably snoozing, he only had two choices. Chic or me. I hoped that it was me. I really wanted to get out.

Chic, standing beside me, tried his best to look adorable and cute, and was shooting puppy-dog (or should I say puppy-bird) eyes at the boy while I was struggling not to gag. What idiot, especially a male, would seriously pick another male Pokémon making gaga eyes at him? Not to mention that Chic was male. If he were female maybe I could understand but…