In the exact center of Pallet Town there was a small sign which read, i "Shades of your Journey Await!" /i Leola Viola, a young assistant to Professor Oak, never really liked the town's motto. Pallet Town was where her journey ended, and all of the foreseeable shades of her life seemed doomed to feature suburbia. Although she was a native of Cinnabar Island, her years at Saffron University had given her a taste of city life. As she trudged down the worn dirt path to Oak's laboratory, she half-heartedly tried to think of an excuse to go home early. The sun was just starting to peak over the horizon, and it was obviously going to be a gloriously warm day.
Leola was exceptionally smart young woman whom adored pokemon, but disliked many aspects of the outdoors. These included, but were not limited to bugs, allergens, creepy men, and random chance encounters with extraordinarily strong pokemon that tended to leave one dead. Thus one thing led to another...and she found herself on Oak's Pokedex project.
When she had first applied for the job, she had assumed that a position under Professor Oak would involve intense research in a state of the art facility. While the Pokedex project was undoubtedly one of the greatest undertakings in history, Leola was dismayed to find that her role in the project was largely limited by Oak's complete disengagement with reality. In any group of newly qualified trainers, chances are very good that only a handful will be able make a living for themselves. Unfortunately, it turned out that the chances that a newly qualified trainer was actually a budding naturalist were abysmally low. For any one sentence that appeared in the publicly accessible Pokedex, Leola had to weed out half a dozen completely false ones.
Jayne, the tired-eyed receptionist looked up from the pile of paperwork strewn across the reception desk, "Morning."
Leola muttered some sort of incomprehensible greeting and made her way to the coffee pot, where she proceeded to procure her daily overdose of caffeine. She was contemplating hazelnut or vanilla cream when he coworker came down the stairs of the lab. Nikolai was a large, hulking man with dark hair. He was holding a small stack of papers and had a distinctively disgruntled facial expression, "Thought I'd find you here."
"Do I want hazelnut or vanilla?"
He unceremoniously plunked himself down on one of the chairs and shrugged, "I don't know. Look at this," he indicated the top sheet, which featured a picture of a small blue rodent-like creature near the edge of what appeared to be a small stream. Leola looked over it passively, "That's a Marril right?"
He nodded, "For one reason or another a small number of them have migrated into Kanto waters. We didn't include them in the original scope of the program, as they're usually a Johto species…so we have about thirty trainers whom are convinced they've discovered a new specie."
"You look rather exasperated. What's the problem with a few idiotic young boys getting giddy in seeing something they've never seen before?"
"Oak wants us to read them. All of them. He's afraid that perhaps one of these kids actually saw something worth recording, and that if we discard this data we could lose information on some unknown species."
Leola nursed at her coffee, "Just what I needed, another late night, where is the old coot anyway?"
"He's out with the kids in the gardens. He said he'll page us when he needs—"
Nikolai was interrupted with the obnoxious beeping of the videophone. Oak obviously wasn't as dense as he looked: he had made a point not only to install the phones in the obvious places (the lobby…the main labs…) but in the less obvious, but more highly traveled locations, such as the break room. Nikolai turned on the phone reluctantly, and the professors face (complete with his gigantically bushy eyebrows) filled the screen, "Ah hello you two. I see you've noticed my memo about the Marril. We've got another few reports since I've last spoken to you; this time over near Viridian City. I think that it may be worthwhile to investigate."
Both Leola and Nikolai knew what was coming. Every time the Professor Oak mentioned that something was worth investigation, the individuals whom were usually responsible for the investigation were Leola and Nikolai. They exchanged a significant look as he continued, "It's a fairly simple task. I would like for you to head down to Viridian and see if you can see anything. Capturing one would be quite helpful: as none of our Junior Trainers have managed to do that yet. If you head out immediately you should be able to get there before dark. I've already called the Pokecenter and made arrangements for you to stay there."
Without further explanation the videophone blinked off. Leola turned to her partner and sighed, "So I guess we're headed up to Viridian: it beats having to give those canned speeches to the aspiring Junior Trainers."