Alrighty, this here is a fic I've been wanting to write for a while. It's based on my roleplay site, and almost all of the characters in it are from said site. So, I guess as the legal disclaimer, I don't own pokemon, and I don't even own all of these characters. But who cares, right?
I intended to post this on as one can get really in-depth reviews on there. But I don't think anyone would read this if I posted it there, so we'll stick with this. At least here I can 'prolly get Koji to read it.
So enjoy!
---
A dark figure hurriedly made its way down the west face of Ibenrock Mountain, muttering quietly to itself. The world was still enveloped in the dark blue of night; the sun not due to rise for hours, and the whole world was silent, save for the mutterings of the figure and the sound of its feet shuffling across the ground. The occasional curse burst out of the character whenever their foot had an unpleasant meeting with a sharp rock, but all else was quiet.
Minutes dragged on as the figure finally made it to the base of Ibenrock, and proceeded to travel on to Basemountain City, still muttering to itself.
"Hi! Sorry to keep you waiting! Welcome to the... no," the gruff, feminine voice growled. "Hello there! Welcome to -" She let out an exasperated scream and threw her head back, snarling at the sky in frustration. The figure's hood fell off; revealing a head of fiery orange hair before she hurriedly pulled the hood back on and, clutching her cloak tighter to her body, continued on.
The sun was barely peeking over the peak of Ibenrock Mountain when the bundled-up figure arrived at her destination in Basemountain. The city, like almost everything else, was still silently sleeping, so the figure unconsciously tiptoed around the city as she posted white fliers on empty walls, telephone poles, and shoved them into mailboxes when she felt too lazy to find a proper hanging place. The first Meowth had uncurled from its resting place and began roaming the streets in search of bottle caps when the figure ran out of fliers; by the time the first breakfast was set on anyone's table, the figure was well on her way over the mountain, muttering quietly to herself. Bird pokemon soared across the sky, offering melodious wake-up calls to citizens of Basemountain. The sun nudged wildflowers to wake and open their petals to the sky. Two Meowths fought over a discarded tin can top. Business' lights came to life, and "closed" signs changed their greeting to "open." A new day had begun.
---
Who makes a jungle this dense?
This question had found itself running through the boy's mind countless times over the past few hours during his less than pleasant trek through Og Gub. Bushes, trees, vines, flowers, and thorns were everywhere, and the boy's bare skin had come to many intimate meetings with them. Og Gub's lush fauna created beautiful scenery, but it was a pain to travel through. The beautiful flowers offered scents that could literally knock someone out, vines and protruding roots often snagged travelers' feet and threw them to the ground, thorns seemed to reach out and claw at any passerby – Og Gub was no garden, it was a veritable deathtrap.
The boy let out a yelp as his arm snagged on yet another thorn. Luckily, no blood had been drawn – yet – but red, itchy welts were already forming along his arms. He was hot and sweaty, his legs were exhausted from the hours he had spent trekking through the forest, and as he scratched on his arms irritably, he wondered whether the stupid piece of paper clutched in his fist was worth all the trouble.
He had seen the ad on a telephone pole back in the city, and at the time, the offer hadn't seemed threatening at all. There had been no mention of a deadly jungle, well, other than the address at the bottom of the flier. It had only said, "Beginning Trainers Wanted. Free pokemon with acceptance of job. Must be willing to travel." Under that line, there was a scribbled out line that looked like it wrote, "Death may occur," but he had chosen to believe he was just being paranoid. He rather regretted that now.
He sighed, pushed a stray lock of his curly black hair out of his face, and stopped to get his bearings. Not that there were any bearings to get – he wouldn't have known where he was if there had been a map in the sky. With another hopeless sigh, he plunged his hands into a bush and shoved the branches aside to slip through. He cringed as the branches scratched his body, and he contemplated whether he should give up and either try to find his way back to the mountain or become a Monkey Man and live off of bugs and fruits of the jungle. However, his musings were needless, as on the other side of the bush, was the lab.
Calling it a "lab" was really quite a stretch. The building was a run-down mansion, and though it may once have been a beautiful, thriving estate, it was now just as overgrown as the rest of the jungle. A tree was literally growing into the building through a broken window, and the boy could've sworn that he saw a gaping hole in the roof. However, his elation at finally reaching his destination outweighed any feeling of foreboding or disdain for the pathetic excuse for a lab, and he walked up to the door anyways.
The boy stopped to catch his breath for a couple seconds, and knocked on the door. He was a little scared that the whole door might fall down, because it didn't look to sturdy, but nobody answered anyways. He groaned and knocked again, still wary of the door's stability. Of course, to the boy's annoyance, no one answered. He was just about to scream out a "hello" when the door swung open.
The professor wasn't anything like he had imagined. The professor wasn't an old, eccentric man like most of the other renowned pokemon professors were. She didn't look like she could even be thirty. The eccentric part, he wasn't so sure of. The professor was tall and imposing, filling up almost the entire door frame, and covered in orange-red fur. Her face and body were basically in human shape, but her fingers all ended in claws, and she had a tail jutting out of her back that was barely concealed by her white lab coat. The professor was a Pokemorph.
"Come in," she said, stepping back and motioning for the boy to enter. He stepped in and scanned the building, and sure enough, the interior was every bit as haphazard as the outside had been. Standing in front of the boy was a large pile of ruble with ferns growing out of it, directly beneath the hole in the ceiling. He stared at it, wondering if that was indeed the entire lab, when the professor led him around it to an equally messy lab: a large, white room with high-tech machinery, books, and papers strewn everywhere. Very professional, he thought with an amused smirk.
The professor walked behind a table and turned to face the boy. She straightened her body to a businesslike posture and plastered an equally businesslike smile onto her face. "Hello there! Glad to meet you!" she said with a smile, "Welcome to Og Gub Lab! My name is Arkani, but people affectionately refer..." She paused and closed her eyes, like she was trying to remember something. "Okay, okay... So, this world is inhabited by creatures known as pokemon. Some use them as pets, but others..." she trailed off, trying to remember the rest of her sentence. The boy saw her look down to her hand, but he was pretty sure she couldn't have written anything on it, what with the fur all over it.
"AUGH!"
The boy jumped, startled by the professor's outburst. "Stupid freaking speech," she muttered, turning around and rifling through a pile of papers. "Stupid kid coming too early… not giving me time to memorize the stupid…" She let out another exasperated sigh, gave up on the papers, and turned back to boy.
"Okay, well, I'm just going to assume you know all of the stuff the speech talks about, alright? I'm Professor Arkani. You are?"
"I'm James," he replied.
"James. I see. You're responding to my ad, right?" James nodded and handed her the paper. "Good… well…" Arkani clicked her nails against the table thoughtfully. She obviously hadn't planned what to do with anyone responding to the ad yet.
James watched her think for a little while, cringing a little every time he heard her nails click against the tabletop. Finally he spoke up. "Do I get a pokemon or something?"
Arkani looked up absentmindedly. "Hm? Oh, yes, just not yet. I have to know that you're capable first… something like that."
James looked at her, confused. "What do you mean? I have to do a quest or something?"
A spark went off in Arkani's eyes. "Yes! A quest! That's brilliant… perfect!" She dashed off into another room, leaving James standing alone in the lab. He could hear her crashing around the building, throwing things and talking to herself. In a few minutes she returned on all fours and with a big smile on her face.
"Okay, I've got it!" she exclaimed, righting herself onto two feet, "Your quest is to go to the crazy hermit's place and retrieve the book 'The Fauna of Ilex.'"
James stood, waiting for the rest of the instructions.
"Hello? Go! I don't have all day!" she announced. She pointed to the door, and then bounded off on all fours into the back rooms.
He had no idea where to go, but judging by the sound of her fingers flying across her keyboard and the pinging of her MSN messenger alerts, Professor Arkani wasn't going to be much help. With a sigh of both determination and hopelessness, James walked out of the lab and back into the unforgiving jungle of Og Gub.
---
Though he had been worried about his lack of direction at first, James was pleased to note that there was winding dirt path from the west wing of the lab off into the jungle. Ten minutes into his "quest" and James was already decidedly happier than he had been on his aimless wandering before, when he'd been searching for the lab. Sure, the path didn't look fun or easy to travel on, but at least it was visible, and that was just one of the many reasons this trek was more pleasant than the last; James could almost hear his arms singing with joy at the lack of thorns scraping them.
Now that he no longer felt the entire jungle was out to kill him, James was able to take note of Og Gub's beauty. The looming trees housed several different species of plants and pokemon – James had already seen four different species of bird pokemon nesting in them, and flowers of almost every color in the spectrum – and the trees themselves varied in size, shape, and color almost as much as the pokemon living in them. Even the blistering heat from the sun didn't seem so terrible, at least when James could focus on the sounds of birds singing, the sounds of life in the treetops and behind every bush, even the quiet whisper of wind rustling through the leaves…
And suddenly, with pained grunt, a tug on his leg, and the feeling of gravity pulling James towards the ground, the positive outlook was gone like a candle dumped into a lake. James had tripped on a root and was lying facedown in the biggest mud puddle he had ever encountered. James grumbled and cursed in his mind as he stood up, because he was unwilling to actually open his mouth and scream them like he wanted to, for fear of letting any of the disgusting mud into his mouth. He glared, first at the giant puddle and then at the path before him, and continued along on his quest, the thought of Og Gub's natural beauty never once entering his mind.
"Who makes you complete a quest before giving you a pokemon?" he questioned aloud. He was no longer trudging through the jungle, but stomping forcefully against the ground as he walked. Pokemon squealed and ran in every direction away from James, thinking there was a rapid Donphan on the loose.
"I bet in Kanto they don't make you do some stupid quest. No… here it's all, 'Oh no! You must slog through mud and thorns and various other underbrush and threats to your life before we give you a pokemon!'" James ranted. "I bet in Kanto they're just like, 'Hello dear, you want a pokemon? Sure, take one of our finely bred specimens and embark on your wild adventure! Do treat this fellow nicely!' Stupid…" James' not-so-internal monologue was silenced as James fell upon the sight of a ramshackle hut sitting in the middle of a small clearing.
"This must be the hermit's place," he mumbled. He walked carefully up to the dilapidated shack, careful not to step into anymore randomly appearing mud puddles – he was still caked in mud from his last encounter and wasn't looking to get a new layer. It was hard to tell where the door was on the hut, as every wooden slat on the building looked loose enough to be a door. James finally decided on one that he was almost sure was the entrance and knocked on it.
"Come in, my precious…" wheezed a crazy-sounding voice.
"I – I'm not you're precious… sir," James called.
"What?" James heard the sound of footsteps scampering across the floor. A door opened about four slats away from where James stood, and the hermit popped his head out. "Then who the hell are you?"
James had thought the hermit's voice had sounded crazy, but it was nothing compared to his actual appearance. The hermit was short (probably around four and half feet, James guessed), but had a beard that reached past his feet. His bald head had lots of old-person freckles, and his crooked smile revealed many missing teeth. His eyes looked positively maniacal, James noticed, but he seemed harmless enough.
"So… I'm James," he began, not exactly sure if the hermit had actually wanted him to introduce himself.
"I don't care," snapped the hermit, turning around and walking back into his hut. "Why are you bothering me?"
"Well, I was sent here by that one professor… Arkani, I think," answered James, following the hermit into the shack before he lost sight of which slat was the real door.
"She wanted me to go on some quest."
The hermit was now sitting at a small table in front of a fireplace. He shot a creepy grin at James. "I see you found Faceplant Pond on your quest," he chuckled, motioning to the mud that was caked all over James' body.
James gritted his teeth. "Yes. Yes I did."
The Hermit laughed. James honestly didn't find it very funny, so he didn't join in.
"So what does your quest have to do with me?" asked the hermit.
"Well, I have to get some book from you," answered James.
"Ah," replied the hermit, his eyes sparking with recognition. "My dear precious. She's always after the precious." The hermit shook his head slowly.
"Uuuuuuuuh…. Yeah," said James, not sure what else he was really supposed to say. "So… can I have it?"
A fire lit up in the hermit's insane eyes. "NEVER!" he cried, leaping up on the table, clutching a book to his chest.
How the hell did he get that book? James thought, mystified.
"YOU CAN NEVER HAVE THE PRECIOUS!! NEVER! YOU MUST CATCH ME FIRST!" cackled the hermit. With that, he leapt off the table and disappeared down one of the hallways. There was a surprising amount of hallways in the shack, James noticed with surprise, as the shack looked really small from the outside.
"Are you sure?" called out James with uncertainty. He didn't really want to have to chase this guy around to get the book. However, his only response was some more insane cackling that echoed around the house, so James had no idea where it had come from.
"Great. Just great," he mumbled, and started down one of the halls.
---
Darkness. There was darkness everywhere, surrounding him, suffocating him. He choked, gasping for air, but it was as if all the air had left him. He could feel the darkness clawing at him, groping him, desperate to crawl inside him. He stumbled, his eyes clenched tight, for there was no difference whether his eyes were open or closed. He tried to call out, to scream, to do anything but claw through the tangible darkness, but it was useless – he was forced to forever wander through this purgatory of darkness.
"Screw this quest," he grumbled, as he tripped on yet another book. James had no idea how long he had been searching for the hermit, but he didn't doubt that it had been days. He had searched through countless rooms, all the while muttering. "It looked so small from the outside." He was currently in a gigantic room that was piled high with books. There had to be millions of them – the piles grew so high that they looked like mountains to James. There was no light in the room, so James felt as if he were in a dungeon. Or a dungeon library, he thought with a smirk.
The hermit's cackle echoed across the canyons of literature, leading James outside the terrifying room of books and back into the main room. The hermit was sitting at the table, still clutching the book, rocking back and forth in the fetal position in his chair.
"YOU!" screamed James. He lunged across the room at the hermit, an insane rage in his eyes. The hermit cackled and dodged James' attack easily.
"I HATE YOU! YOU AND YOUR STUPID PRECIOUS!" James yelled, swinging at the hermit. The hermit seemed to disappear and reappear on the other side of the room. James screamed wildly and jumped at him again. "JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN BOOK!"
The hermit laughed and jumped to other side of the room again. James scrambled after him, but the hermit tauntingly dodged again.
"YOU'LL NEVER HAVE THE PRECIOUS!" he screamed in a singsong voice. James lunged, missed by a fraction of an inch, and swiped again. The hermit stuck his tongue out at James, but that small movement gave James the chance he needed. James tackled the hermit's legs, and as the hermit screamed bloody murder, yanked the book from his grasp.
"NOOOOOO! NOT THE PRECIOUS! PRECIOUS! PRECIOUS!!!!"
James glared at the hermit and hurried out of the shack. As he walked back into the jungle, he heard the wails of "PRECIOUS! COME BACK TO ME! COME BACK TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" penetrate the jungle. James smirked, satisfied, and headed back to the lab.
---
In a few minutes, James had made it back to the lab, still holding the "Precious." It had taken quite a while for James to get far away enough from the hermit's shack for the hermit's anguished cries to finally become inaudible. When he could finally hear himself think without being interrupted by the hermit's screams, James had focused on finding, and thusly avoiding, the "Faceplant Pond."
But now, back at the lab finally, the oddities of his quest mostly left his mind. It was all over now; he was at his destination with the object of his quest in his hands. He was finally going to get a pokemon. He smiled, proud of himself, and boldly knocked on the door.
When Arkani opened the door she found James positively beaming, holding out a book to her. She absentmindedly took the book and ushered the boy in, a little frightened that a flower's fragrance… or something like that… had affected James' brain.
"Um, James, right? Are you alright?" she asked hesitantly, guiding him to a chair.
"Of course! I'm more than okay!" he exclaimed, almost bouncing in his seat. "I got you the book! I did it! Can I get my pokemon now?"
Arkani looked at the book with surprise, as she had already forgotten that she was holding it. She held it up and inspected it with a serious look on her face.
On the way back from the hermit's shack, James had never bothered to look at the "precious" book, so he took the opportunity to inspect it himself as Arkani held it up. The book was large, James could attest to that as well as its weight, and bound in thick brown leather. It had no title on the cover, though it looked as if it may have once had one, but the ages had worn it off. There were thick indentions on the front cover from where the hermit's nails had dug into it, and the entire upper-right corner had been gnawed off. James seriously wondered what was so valuable about it.
"So? When do I get my pokemon?" asked James.
Arkani was silent, but suddenly she gasped loudly, with a sharp intake of breath and shocked recognition in her eyes. "This! This – this isn't the right book!"
James shrugged. "Sorry, whatever. He kept calling it his 'Precious,' so it's gotta be valuable or something, right?"
Arkani looked at James in horror. "You took the hermit's Precious?!"
James nodded.
Arkani gasped again and threw the book at James as if it were some deadly, poisonous creature. "Well take it back! Now! Hurry!"
"What? Why? What's wrong with this one?" he asked, picking up the book.
"Get it back to him, now!" ordered Arkani, "Before we have a hermit apocalypse on our hands!"
James heaved a sigh and stood up. "So do I get a pokemon?"
Arkani glared at him and bounded off into a back room.
---
BAM! BAM! BAM!
The entire hut shook as James slammed on the wall, as he had no idea where the real door was, the hermit's "Precious" clutched tightly in his arms and a glare on his face.
"Hey! Hermit guy!" screamed James, "I have your book. Do you want it back?"
There was no answer. James knocked some more, but the hut remained silent.
"Stupid old man," he grumbled, and proceeded to pull on every slat on the shack until he found the door. Twelve slats later, James walked into the dark and musty living room of the hermit. James squinted so he could see in the minimal light – the hermit had put out the fir in his fireplace for some reason – and tried to find any signs of the hermit.
"Hello?" he called out, not really expecting an answer. However, the quiet sound of mournful sobbing answered him. James followed the sound down a hallway and into a broom closet, where he found the hermit curling in the fetal position, sobbing into his knees and rocking back and forth.
"Hermit! I have your book," announced James. The hermit didn't acknowledge him and continued to sob. "So, uh… do you want it or what?"
The hermit rocked, back and forth, back and forth. "Oh, the Precious. Why have you left me? Precious!" he sobbed, his entire small body spasming with each sob. James could only stare at him.
"Even now I can sense you, the illusion of your presence taunting me!" the hermit wailed. "But I know you're not really here in this imaginary boy's hands. I know it is not the scent of your superbly chewable leather binding wafting through the air! It's all a lie! A lie! LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!"
Two heavy-sounding thumps echoed through the air, the first one being the Precious smacking the hermit upside the head, the second being the hermit's body hitting the floor.
"What the hell?" screamed the hermit, jumping to his feet.
"I came to give you your stupid book back," replied James, holding out the book. "Here. Take it."
The hermit's eyes got very big, and he snatched the book from James grasp in the blink of an eye. "Ooooh, my Precious! You escaped the bad, bad man and came back to me! Oh, how I love you, my Precious!" He began to smother the book with nasty, wet kisses.
"Oh. Um. Gross. So yeah, I need a different book, actually," said James nervously.
The hermit looked up at him, suspicious. "What book do you speak of?" he asked warily.
James tried to remember the title of the book he was supposed to get. "Um… something about ferns or something… Zilex or something in the title?" He clenched his eyes shut and struggled to recall the name. "Oh yeah! I think it was the Fauna of Ilex. Yeah, that sounds right."
"Oh. That thing," answered the hermit. With a sniff of disdain, he tossed the book to the floor. Once again, James had no idea how the hermit had gotten the book. "You can have that old thing."
With that, the hermit turned and shuffled off into the darkness. James picked up the correct book and walked out of the hut, hoping to never have to see the place again.
---
"Hello? I'm back," called out James, cautiously entering the lab. "I think I got the right one this time."
An annoyed groan and the goodbye message from MSN Messenger told James that Arkani was indeed home. She walked past James and motioned for him to follow her into the lab room where she had tried to first give her welcoming speech. James followed quietly, not wanting to say anything that would make her mad – the professor seemed really pissy whenever she had to log off of her instant messenger.
"Uh, here you go," he said, holding out the book. Arkani took it and inspected the title.
"Yeah, this is the right one," she said, setting down the book. "Don't even remember what I needed it for," she mumbled to herself. "So let me guess: you want your pokemon."
James nodded.
"Alright," she answered. "You did complete the quest. Sort of." She began rummaging around the piles of paper and other junk until she pulled out four pokeballs. She set them all down in front of James and stepped back.
"These are the four starters I can offer you: Lunari, Ferness, Lingos, and Zorillo. You do know what each of them are, right?"
James shook his head. "No, not really. No."
Arkani sighed. "Okay, well…" Once again, she looked like she hadn't prepared a sufficient speech or explanation regarding James' questions. "Well, basically, Lunari is the water starter, a little beaver thing. Lingos is a psychic goose, Ferness is a fire and grass type chipmunk, and Zorillo is a poison and steel skunk. You want specifics, you can look them up in a pokedex."
James nodded distantly. He had no idea that the pokemon offered were going to be that… awesome! His eyes darted back and forth between each pokeball, getting more and more unsure which he wanted to choose as he ran the choices through his brain.
"Um, hello? I haven't got all day," interrupted Arkani. Her patience for the sacred ritual of choosing one's partner had run out.
James sighed, ran the choices through his mind one last time, and settled on one. "I think I want that one," he said, pointing at one of the pokeballs. "The Ferness."
Arkani smiled. "Good choice." She picked up the pokeball, wrote herself a note to register the pokemon to James later, and handed James his new Ferness.
"There you go. And here," she said, rummaging through more stuff, "Is your starter kit." She handed James a pokedex, a few potions and pokeballs, and her number. "Your pokedex has quite a few functions that I'm sure you know about, but there are instructions in there anyways. I will send you your job requirements and stuff as I remember them. Until then, you may as well challenge the gyms – you and your pokemon will need to be fit for the jobs I give you anyways."
James nodded, trying to take it all in. Admittedly, the excitement of receiving his own pokemon was making him pay a lot less attention to Arkani than he normally would, but he was sure that he'd remember everything she was saying. Or most of it.
"Alright! Well you have a fun little adventure!" said Arkani. She began nudging and shoving James back towards the door. "I'll see you later! Good luck!" With that, she got James, who was still staring transfixed at his pokeball, out the door. "Bye!"
The door slammed shut, Arkani logged back onto MSN, and James took the first official steps of his pokemon adventure.