Author's Notes:
There's always a little bit of trepidition before posting a story for the first time on a new forum.
This is a Pokemon Fanfiction, but it's not set in the universe of the TV show...or really that of the game, despite being based on Crystal Version. No, this story is based off of a universe that me and two friends created when we started making jokes about Bill being a Nazi. Actually, one of those friends - DagaYemar - already has a fanfiction of that posted; it's in my favorites. I'd recommend reading it first, actually, as it kind of creates the themes and settings for this story.
Daga's, though, is a comedy. Me, I'm not very good at comedy, so this is more of a drama. It is also LONG...just a warning.
Anyway, I've talked enough. We now join out hero...

Chapter One: Crystal Tsubaki

BREET. BREET. BREET. BREET. The alarm was ringing incessantly, loud and penetrating straight into Crystal Tsubaki's skull. The young girl slammed her hand down onto the Houndour clock's snooze button for something like the third time this morning, rolling over onto her chest and sinking her face into her pillow, trying to go back to sleep.

Stupid alarm. It's Sunday. Why the heck was it ringing-

Realization struck like a bolt of lightning from a Raichu.

Crap.

Mrs. Tsubaki made a slight face as she heard scrambling upstairs. She looked up at the ceiling, pausing from making breakfast for the two of them and wondering what her daughter was doing up there to make such a racket.

The girl stumbled down the stairs a few minutes later, just as her mother finished buttering the toast and pouring out the cereal.

"Good morning!" She said cheerily to her daughter. "Breakfast is-"

"Thanksmomdon'thavetimebebacklater!" Crystal rushed, as she blew straight by the table and grabbed one of the toast slices, running towards the doors and trying to get her shoes on while also eating. That ended poorly, with her falling back onto her rear.

"Crystal!" Mrs. Tsubaki exclaimed, moving over to her and putting her hands on her hips. "What has you in a rush?"

Her daughter had stuffed most of the toast in her mouth, and took a second to swallow before responding, while still tying her shoe. "Professor Elm!" She said.

Her mother paused, waiting. "And…?" She asked.

Crystal sighed. "Professor Elm wanted me to help him out with something!" She continued. "His lab's under-staffed, and ever since Gold and Silver left he's been counting on me to pick up the slack!"

"So?" Mrs. Tsubaki asked.

"So," Crystal said, as she finished tying her shoes, "today he wanted me to go to one of his friend's houses, to pick up something that they found. And that friend lives near Cherrygrove City!"

Mrs. Tsubaki paused, taking this information in. "Oh no," she said, shaking her head. "No, no, no. Crystal, it's dangerous to leave the safety of-"

She was speaking to empty air; her daughter had already shot out the door, running full-speed for Elm labs.

Mrs. Tsubaki dashed to her own shoes, pulling them on. She was going to have words with Elm…

Crystal was fairly certain that she lived in the most exciting time to be alive. Kanto had been recently discovered by the natives of Johto; their Victory Army was forever pushing back the forces of nature and giving more space for the human race; and she was about to leave New Bark Town! That last may have had little to do with the state of the world, but it had her excited, anyway.

She supposed her hometown wasn't a bad place to grow up, if one didn't mind the monotony. New Bark Town was located in practically the safest place in the world. The pokémon were weak here, easily kept in check by the numerous trainers and guards for Professor Elm's lab. But it was dull. Crystal had been a legal adult for a year now - thank you, out-of-date laws, she thought - but opportunities to leave New Bark Town were rare, to say the least. The place was locked down tight; after all, Professor Elm was a leading force in Johto's scientific research.

The young girl paused outside of Elm's lab, catching her breath before walking in. There were guards, but they recognized her - knew her by first name, for that matter, after how often she'd been here. Jobs weren't exactly common on the fringe of civilization, and Crystal considered herself lucky to help Professor Elm in his lab, rather than being a simple substance farmer, ten-pallet-store clerk, or something else.

The young girl walked through the maze of corridors and rooms that made up the lab. Professor Elm had nothing to compare to the facility run in Pallet town, in distant Kanto, but it was still sizeable - if understaffed. There were dozens of pokémon in pens and dozens more in pokéballs, waiting feeding or experimentation.

And then there was one pen, which sat empty. Crystal stopped near it like she always did in her way in. It was set into the floor, about fifteen feet deep, with a railing surrounding it. Up until yesterday, a Nidorino and a Nidorina had sat within it. Crystal had helped to remove the two, still basically feral, brought in by sheer power and having never been contained in a pokéball. All they had done was fight to the point of exhaustion for the better part of two or three months, until the last three days or so when the cost of feeding them had simply outpaced the value of the experiment.

As usual, in the case of this experiment, which Elm attempted every year.

Crystal was about to begin moving towards Professor Elm's lab again, but stopped almost as soon as she started: the Professor was already walking in her direction. He was fairly tall and relatively young, but was already balding. He was wearing his usual white coat, and had a clipboard in hand as he walked, looking down at it and making notes.

"Professor!" Crystal said as he walked, moving up to the man. "Sorry I'm late!"

Elm looked up from his notes, brow furrowed. "Late?" He asked.

Crystal nodded. "For the errand?" She asked, hands behind her back. "To Cherrygrove?"

Elm thought a moment, tapping his pen to his chin. "The one for tomorrow?" He asked, flipping through the clipboard and turning it around to a calendar. He had a day circled - a Monday. Tomorrow, in fact.

Crystal stared for a moment, then let out a moan and grabbed the rail to the pen, banging her head against it. "Crap…I can't believe I ran all the way here on my day off…"

Elm smiled a little. "You're around me too much," he said, smiling a little and leaning on the railing himself. "You can forget time pretty easily when working with pokémon."

"Except the ones in here," Crystal said, pointing at the empty pen. "I practically wanted to jump in there and shout at them to start breeding."

Elm laughed. "If pokémon breed in a way we could understand. If the Nido-line can even breed with each other." The professor sighed, turning around. "Catching wild pokémon is such a hazard. If we could tame them, domesticate them on a large scale…"

Crystal smiled. Professor Elm had been working on this problem for years - even before the Johto had first contacted the Kanto region, about five years ago. Pokémon bred with each other, it was known, but they'd never done it in captivity. For that matter, pokémon eggs or nests had never been found anywhere in the known world. Of course, the world was vast, and the human population was not.

Crystal shook her head. "Well, I guess I'll go home…" She said, turning around to leave - or she was, until she saw a dark figure stalking towards her and Professor Elm, fire in her eyes. Several of the lab guards were behind her, escorting her and looking none too pleased at her presence but not nearly brave enough to stop her.

"Uh…" Crystal moaned. "Mom?"

Crystal sat outside of Elm's office, fidgeting. She didn't understand a lot of the loud words that her mother was shouting at Professor Elm behind the closed doors, but she certainly understood their intent.

The young girl let out a long sigh, slumping down in the chair. She was an adult, darn it! Legally, anyway, thanks to the technology of Johto having a history of outstripping the lawmaker's abilities to keep pace with changing lifestyles. People lead longer, safer lives these days than they ever had before, but no change had yet been made to the laws that assumed that people were going to die before the age of forty.

Plus, mothers would always be mothers. Crystal stood, sighing again and walking over to the door to Elm's personal lab, deciding that as long as she was here, she might as well get some kind of work done. Set aside from all the others, it was mostly for experiments Elm wanted to run by himself on his own time. A few pokéballs sat on a retainer, the red lights on their front indicating them to contain a pokémon within, still waiting sorting and processing.

Crystal picked one up, pressing a button on its side and reading the display that ran along the circumference of the pokéball. Contained within was an Eevee, just caught a few days ago. A rare find, especially in this area.

"Huh," Crystal said, rifling through the pokéballs and finding another one, this one containing a more familiar pokémon. She activated that one first, and about four feet from her, a shimmering energy field appeared, taking shape and becoming a small, human-shaped pokémon, with long arms and long legs on a small torso, a large head with three spines, and gray skin with markings around its waist and feet that almost seemed to suggest shorts and shoes.

The pokémon looked around, raising both hands and ready to battle. Crystal shook head. "Hopefully not," she said aloud, leaning forward. Mostly, her job at Elm Labs was limited to cleaning and stocking duties, but she was also the only handler left since Gold and Silver left. Whenever she was in a situation where she could potentially get injured, Professor Elm let her use this pokémon, a Tyrogue, as protection. "Just be ready to help me, 'kay?"

The Tyrogue didn't really understand Crystal, but he hopped up onto the counter of Elm's lab and crossed its arms, waiting and trained well enough to not attack other pokémon on sight. Crystal turned away from him, and let out a breath. "Okay," she said, holding the Eevee's ball forward. "Let's get a look at you…"

Red light streamed forward as the ball opened halfway, taking a different shape than the Tyrogue had as a small, Vulpix-like animal, mostly brown-furred but with a mane of white and two long ears, a single bushy tail, and large, black eyes.

It looked like Hell. Whoever had caught this Eevee hadn't taken the time to get it healed up. It fell over almost immediately, and Crystal put a hand to her mouth when she saw the burn marks along its flank, exposing charred skin beneath, and how was holding up one foreleg as though afraid to stretch it out - sprained at best, broken at worst. It was panting heavily.

"Oh…" she moaned, moving over to the Eevee, Tyrogue following by walking on the counter top. The Eevee glared at her weakly, would probably have bitten her had it the strength. Crystal moved cautiously nevertheless - pokémon were wild, dangerous animals, and often more intelligent then they appeared. Still, if this Eevee was putting on some kind of ruse, laying some kind of trap, Crystal couldn't see through it.

The young girl rifled through Elm's lab, first grabbing a few burn heals a small spray-potion, and a splint. She used the burn heal first, which the Eevee flinched away from until it realized that whatever Crystal was doing, she was helping. Tyrogue watched with disinterest.

"Alright," Crystal said, reaching out and stroking the Eevee's fur atop its head. The Eevee still stared at her, but its tail swished slightly and it nudged Crystal's hand with its nose - a sign of trust. Crystal was about to ruin that trust, of course, but for the Eevee's own good.

"Okay," Crystal continued, moving her hand down to the Eevee's leg, the broken one, talking more for her own benefit then the pokémon's. "This part's gonna suck, but it needs to be done, okay? So just bear with me…bear…with…"

Crystal straightened out the pokémon's bent leg. It howled in pain and bit Crystal's hand - not something she wasn't expecting, though. Tyrogue leapt from the counter onto the floor, but Crystal shook her head. "No!" She said sternly to him as he looked about ready to kick the Eevee. He held back, but clearly didn't look pleased by this fact.

Crystal bit her lip and ignored the pain. The Eevee was far too weak to actually do any real damage to Crystal, and she was in a lab that specialized in dealing with feral or nearly-feral pokémon - she wasn't worried about diseases as she held the Eevee's leg fast and bound it up in the splint, receiving a few more bites for the effort. Pokémon healed incredibly fast; the bones Eevee's leg would be fine in only a few days, but would have healed in all the wrong shape had she not set them in a splint.

Crystal let out a sigh as she finally let go of the Eevee's leg, finishing her ministrations by spraying the Eevee's burn and fur with the spray-on potion, which would accelerate the healing several times beyond even normal pokémon rates. But now the Eevee quite clearly hated her, the strange being that had inflicted incredible pain onto its broken leg. It tried to bite off the splint, but that only hurt more, and besides, Crystal used one of the flexible steel ones that couldn't be bitten off, at least not by such a small and weakened pokémon.

The young girl backed away from the Eevee, which was now standing, its fur standing on end in anger, but also still wincing in pain. Tyrogue, meanwhile, had resumed its disinterested watching of the Eevee, waiting for it to do something stupid when Crystal wasn't looking so he could start hitting it.

Crystal sighed, rubbing the back of her head. With the addition of the splint, the Eevee couldn't go into a pokéball for awhile, until the splint was removed. Still, it needed to be done. Inside of the pokéball, the Eevee was nominally unaware of time passing at all, but leaving it in such a state…

The Eevee hissed at her, like a Meowth or Persian might, its ears flat against its skull and tail straight out behind it, swishing menacingly. It probably didn't realize the only reason it could stand at all was because of the potion Crystal had sprayed it with.

The young girl shook her head, walking over to a cabinet and retrieving some human-intended medical supplies for her hand. The Eevee's bites had only barely broken her skin; she simply applied some rubbing alcohol and a few bandages. When she turned around, the Eevee was still glaring at her, but had stopped hissing. It was limping away from the Tyrogue, however, looking terrified and angry at the same time.

"Look," Crystal said, moving forward and kneeling before the Eevee. "I could have let your leg heal all wrong. Then you'd have probably had to been put down."

The Eevee couldn't understand a word of Crystal's, of course, but Crystal clearly didn't mean it any harm, at the moment. It settled down, glaring at her and watching the Tyrogue. Crystal thought a moment, then grabbed Tyrogue's pokéball and returned him to it, getting a look of disappointment for the effort. The Eevee's fur stood on end at the sight and it hissed at the spot where Tyrogue disappeared, but settled down when Crystal didn't grab another pokéball for itself.

"How long do you think my mom is going to shout at Professor Elm?" Crystal asked, getting down onto her stomach on the floor, watching the Eevee in what she hoped look like a relaxed, non-threatening way and speaking in equally non-threatening tones. "I mean, this should be easy, right? No, my daughter can't go 'cause I'm afraid my own shadow has a Ghastly hiding in it and somehow that applies to her as well. Right?"

The Eevee ventured no opinion on the matter.

"Whatever Professor Elm's friend found must have been pretty big, though," Crystal said, tapping her fingers on the floor. "I mean, not big, big. I couldn't carry something big. But important. Though, if it was so important, why not send one of his aides?"

The Eevee theorized that perhaps they were all busy. Or Crystal decided that it sitting down on its own stomach, a move mimicking Crystal's own, was what that meant.

"You're not much of a conversationalist." Crystal said with a smile, reaching out one hand slowly, the one the Eevee had bitten. It shied away, but Crystal remained still once her hand was outstretched. After a few minutes, the Eevee leaned forward, sniffing at Crystal's fingers.

"You're cute, though," Crystal decided, retracting her arm, again very slowly. The Eevee simply stared at her. "Boy or girl?"

The Eevee of course didn't answer, so Crystal tried to figure it out based on its shape. Slender, with somewhat thicker ears than she expected, a smaller mane but a bushier tail. She could have just lifted the Eevee up, but she was fairly sure how the pokémon would react to that and wasn't eager to have to put on another bandage.

Crystal pointed to the Eevee. "You're a girl." She decided. The Eevee, of course, didn't put forward any objections. "So you'll be…Kitsu."

The Eevee snorted, as though she knew how unoriginal the name was.

"Okay, so it's just an old word for Vulpixes or Eevees," Crystal said, shrugging. "I could be real unoriginal and not name you at all if you prefer."

The Eevee stood, and stretched, making its way forward slowly and settling down closer to Crystal, their noses practically touching.

"Okay, so you like the name-" Crystal began, but then Kitsu bit her nose.