A/N: So I went through and edited the entire story so far (up to chapter 6 at the time of writing). Most of it, including the basic plot, is the same, just some details and things have been changed. For example, I removed the talking pokémon, and slightly changed Carrie's father. If you've already read it, though, you won't really miss anything too important by skipping the rewrite. Anyways... time to put up the rest of these.

Chapter 1 - Struggles

The first thing she noticed was that it was dark. She blinked to prove to herself that her eyes were indeed open. Her next observation was that she was extremely cold, however there was no breeze of any sort. How could there be? I'm deep in a cave, after all she thought. Still, something didn't feel right. She then noticed a feeling of strong anxiety, though this she was not surprised to discover. She must be getting close.

She spotted a white light in the distance. So, I'm not blind. Yes, that light must be where it waits for me. She walked closer.

The light immediately grew close, and much larger. She stared at it in disbelief. Faster than I thought, I see. This was it, then - the creature she had been looking for.

You're mine, she thought to herself, readying a pokéball in her hand.

The white light, suddenly not a light, but a physical, shapeless being, seemed to turn towards her in response to her thought. She panicked; it was not supposed to be able to see her. She moved to throw the pokéball, but her hand was frozen still. To her horror, she realized it wasn't just her hand… no matter how she struggled, she couldn't move her entire arm, or any other part of her body, for that matter.

There was a flash of white light from the creature… no; it was an energy beam of some kind… It seemed to travel in slow couldn't run. Her whole body was encased in ice and the beam drew ever closer. She tried to scream, but nothing came out, and the light slowly enveloped her…

No…

"NO!" the girl screamed, bolting upright into a sitting position.

It was still dark, and again she was blinded because of it. She didn't need to blink to know that this was real, though. She was breathing heavily and she could feel the cold sweat trickling down her neck; that was proof enough for her that she was still alive and now awake. She hadn't had any sense of feeling a few moments ago aside from being momentarily cold.

She sat there in the dark for a long while, allowing her breathing to calm as she repeated to herself, it was just a dream… just another damned nightmare… Instinctively, as if to further reassure herself, she flailed her right arm – it was cold from the sweat, but definitely not frozen. She sighed angrily.

Deciding she was reasonably in-control now, she slowly turned and reached for a cell phone that was on a side table next to her bed. At the push of a button, the small electrical device lit up. The digital clock on the screen read 2:33 am.

"Damn it!" she shouted, slamming the phone violently on the nightstand. She had gotten less than an hour's sleep this time.

Suddenly there was a fierce pounding on the wall behind her bed. Dust particles and other debris fell from the ceiling and drifted to rest across the bed. The girl silently growled to herself as she punched her pillow furiously before flopping back down against it, laying in the dark silence for a short while before she allowed herself to succumb to the nightmare all over again.

"Honey, slow down, you're spilling milk everywhere. You still have over three hours before you are supposed to see Professor Elm."

The girl ignored her mother and continued to force her cereal into her mouth a little too quickly. Some of her light brown hair that was currently hanging out of the backwards pink cap she was wearing got tangled with her spoon. After forcing said spoon in her mouth, she noticed the hair and promptly spit the half-chewed cereal out carelessly on her pink skirt, cursing immediately afterwards as milk dribbled down her chin onto her purple sleeveless top and the pink undershirt.

The thin, pale, gray-haired woman glanced at her daughter and sighed, sitting down in the old metal folding chair opposite her at the flimsy table, which was currently being supported by more than a dozen old phone books in place of a missing leg.

"What's wrong, Carrie?"

"Freaking hair in my food," the young girl hissed angrily.

"I didn't mean the hair," the woman said.

"I'm fine, mom," Carrie replied forcefully, and then shoved another spoonful of cereal into her mouth.

"You look exhausted. Didn't you sleep at all last night?"

"Of course she didn't sleep last night," came a gruff voice from the next room. "She was too busy shouting and keeping everyone else awake."

"I was not shouting, damnit, dad! I was having nightmares!" Carrie shouted back at her father.

"Do not talk back to me, you maggot," her father threatened. The man stood up from his spot on the old, worn-out sofa in the conjoined living room, where he and his Pokémon had previously been watching a boxing match on an ancient black-and-white television. He was a rather tall man, considering how absurdly fat he was, with little hair on the top of his head, and wearing the only shirt that would really fit him – a plain, white, sleeveless one, and rather large sweatpants. The man's Pokémon, a grayish, almost human-like creature (Carrie thought randomly that it would look very convincing if seen in the dark or looked at quickly, if not for the fact that it had four arms), stood up with his master. Carrie noted that he wasn't wearing the usual power-restricting belt that most Machamp were required to use.

Carrie dropped her spoon into her bowl with deliberate force and stood up as well, glaring at her father with murder in her eyes.

"Carrie, sit down," her mother urged, tugging her sleeve, trying to force her back into her chair.

"Listen to your mother, you pig," said her father.

Carrie ripped her arm away from her mother's grip and kicked her folding chair away from her as she wiped the milk off her chin. Then she bent down and pulled off one of her shoes and tossed it as hard as she could towards her father.

Before he could even flinch, the gray Machamp was there, beating the shoe away with a flick of his wrist. He then leapt over the old sofa and lunged at Carrie, fists flying. She felt an immeasurable pain in her gut and was thrown off her feet, sent flying across the room and breaking right through a boarded-up window over the kitchen sink.

The woman screamed as she ran outside to find her daughter lying in the dead grass, almost unconscious but moving ever so slowly with whimpering moans. There was a dark red puddle of blood forming under her left shoulder, where she first hit the wooden barricade of the window.

She moaned loudly as she tried to move her left arm. Miraculously, she managed to lift it slightly. Content with the knowledge that, somehow, nothing was broken, she moaned again and fell limp, having no desire to attempt to get off the cold, dirty ground. Her mother hurried to the girl's side and hovered over her, afraid to even touch her.

The Machamp then appeared at the door to the trailer with a satanic grin. He made a motion across his mouth with one of his hands, an obvious signal to Carrie's mother to keep her mouth shut about what just happened, though he knew the woman wouldn't say a word. The Pokémon walked slowly up to the Carrie's body, where the mother had thrown herself over her daughter in a futile effort to protect her from her four-armed assailant. Machamp just snickered and lifted the woman with one hand as she flailed about helplessly, and the barely conscious girl in another, quite unconcerned with the groans of protest she made in response, and carried them back into their trailer.

It was late in the evening when Carrie had her first feeling of awareness. Upon waking, she immediately noticed an odd stiffness in her left shoulder and her stomach as well. She lifted herself up slightly, noticing as she did so that she was naked under the wrappings of her blanket, and examined her bandaged arm. Someone had apparently removed the splinters and repaired it while she was knocked out. Curious, she lifted her blanket with her good right arm and looked at the rest of her body. Her stomach, too, was wrapped tightly in bandages. She hissed furiously as she flopped back against her pillow.

At that moment, a freakishly demonic voice from a dark corner of her bedroom began to laugh. The sound made Carrie try to launch upright, an automatic, involuntary response to an unexpected noise in the dark, but she recoiled as she realized the hard way that the pain in her stomach had not yet faded as quickly as her arm, and fell back to her pillow with a moan.

Machamp snickered again as he walked slowly into Carrie's line of view while she was more or less trapped in her lying position. He began speaking, saying words Carrie couldn't understand, but his tone was clearly mocking. Carrie moaned weakly as she forced herself carefully up, ignoring the pain in her stomach now, and spit into the Machamp's face.

Just as quickly as before, the Machamp reacted. Before she could so much as breathe, Carrie found herself pinned down by her shoulders by two of Machamp's arms (who paid no mind to the already existing wounds), and a third of his fists just a millimeter or so from her nose. He moved so fast, she didn't even have time to close her eyes in anticipation. However, Machamp didn't strike. Instead, he laughed and began speaking again.

Carrie coughed and whimpered in response to the immense pain in her shoulder, squirming around in an attempt to shake Machamp off; an act that quickly proved futile. The Pokémon seemed to be enjoying her discomfort and applied extra pressure to Carrie's injured arm, causing her to scream loudly. Machamp covered her mouth with his remaining hand and her screams were silenced.

And with that, the Machamp spit back in Carrie's face a much larger glob of mucus than hers had been before forcibly releasing his hold on her and stomping out of the room, leaving Carrie to cry in silence.

Morning came all too quickly. Carrie didn't even remember falling asleep. If she had any nightmares, she didn't remember those either, which she took to be good news.

She slowly forced herself into a sitting position again, and then twisted around to reach her cell phone to check the time. It was a little after eleven. More interesting than how late she slept, however, was that she had a message. Curious, she listened to it.

"Hello, Carrie? Um… this is Professor Elm. I was under the impression that we had agreed to meet at ten in the morning today. It is now ten minutes after two. Um… please call me back."

Crap. She'd missed her appointment yesterday. All because of that damned Machamp and my maniac father Carrie thought. Anger boiled inside her once again. She violently tore the blankets away from her body and jumped out of her bed, marching a few feet towards her door before stopping abruptly, something clicking in her head. She had hardly been able to move yesterday…

She looked down at her still naked body. The bandages were still wrapped tightly around her waist, but she felt no more pain or discomfort. She looked at her left shoulder as she flexed, with similar results. Whoever, whatever healed her, it did its job well. Too distracted to remember why she was out of bed, she walked the rest of the way to the door calmly, thinking absentmindedly of breakfast. Just as she reached for the bronze doorknob, though, she caught sight of her reflection – she still hadn't put on any clothes. She sighed and turned, walked back to her bed and knelt down, and pulled a large cardboard box out from underneath it where her clothes were stored. Deciding she was too tired to care how she looked today, she grabbed a white undershirt that was far too big for her and a pair of large blue jeans and dressed hastily, pushing the box back to its former place before returning to the door, jeans dragging under her feet.

Carrie walked down the short hallway, sleepily rubbing her left eye. She entered the kitchen where she spotted her father and Machamp eating breakfast and silently decided she wasn't hungry anymore. Instead, she turned left and stepped outside, trying her best to appear as if that had been her destination all along.

It was a beautiful, warm summer day. A short distance from where Carrie stood on the wooden porch, her mother was hanging Carrie's clothes from yesterday to dry, having apparently washed them after someone had stripped them from her. Meanwhile, a rather fat, oval-shaped pink and white Pokémon was enthusiastically carrying a bucket of water towards her trainer, though large amounts of it were splashing over the edge. Carrie wondered vaguely just how much water would be left in the bucket when her mother's Blissey finally set it down. After staring blankly at the Blissey for a minute, Carrie thought dully that it must have been Blissey who had somehow healed her wounds while she was unconscious. How else had she recovered so quickly?

Unsure of what to do next, Carrie walked down the few short stairs and wandered over to where she had been laying in the grass the previous morning.

A small white squirrel with a blue stripe down his back was standing in the area, nibbling on something. The Pachirisu turned and froze as he heard Carrie's bare feet crack the grass, then turned fled up the nearest tree as she approached. Carrie watched him scurry up the thin tree before looking at the ground. Much of the dirt and grass was still stained with her blood. Carrie fell to her knees silently and brushed her hand over the crimson grass, noting that a few of the blades were shorter and jagged; the Pachirisu must have been tasting the oddly colored blades. Tears began to form in her eyes as she stared at the bloodstained dirt. I swear, I will make them pay. Both of them. Dad and that pathetic Machamp. As soon as I get my own Pokémon, they're both going to be sorry.

That thought made her freeze. My own Pokémon… At that moment, the memory of listening to Professor Elm's phone message flashed in her mind. Carrie sprang to her feet and began running, barefoot, to the professor's laboratory, her long, light-brown hair flowing behind her.

Carrie's mother peered around the towel she had just hung on the clothesline to see her daughter sprinting into the forest.

With a worried expression, she walked carefully to the porch, not going up the stairs, but just close enough to peek inside through the screen door. Her husband and his Pokémon were watching that television again. She stepped away slowly, careful not to make any noise, sprinted awkwardly to the thin tree, and knocked on the trunk. A small, white squirrel poked his head out from his hiding spot behind a branch.

"Keep watch over her, won't you?" the woman choked out as she fought back her tears, pointing towards the speck in the distance that was here daughter. She always knew her daughter would be leaving one day. After all, Carrie had been meaning to go out on a Pokémon journey, just like her mother.

The Pachirisu just nodded and darted down the tree trunk, speeding off in the direction of the girl. The woman barely noticed.

The pain in Carrie's stomach was starting to return as she ran, though whether it was from her recent encounter with Machamp or from the lack of food since her half-finished cereal yesterday morning, she didn't know. She struggled to breathe, but refused to slow down. The lab is just around the corner, she thought, forcing herself to keep running, now deep into the small down.

She could already feel her body giving in, however. Her vision was starting to blur, and her breathing was very strained now. She forced herself onwards, no blurry mass in her way, until finally she could just make out the shape of a person in white in front of her, kneeling down beside a small, blue object. She decided she had struggled enough and allowed herself to fall to her knees for the third time this morning.

"Prof…ess…or…" she said just barely louder than a whisper, and collapsed in the dirt.

The next thing Carrie was aware of was that her forehead was cold and wet. She wondered how badly she was bleeding but was too afraid to move her hand to her head and find out. Why was she bleeding so much, anyway? The last thing she remembered was running through a town… as far as she could remember, she didn't hit her head on anything… Instead of thinking too hard, she lay motionless and tried to open her eyes. The second she did, they were met with an intense white light, and Carrie let out a small moan of disapproval as she squeezed her eyes shut again. Suddenly, a voice very near her spoke.

"Professor, I think she's waking up."

A few seconds later, she felt a gentle pressure on her forehead, and realized there was something on top of it, between her head and the new pressure; someone had attempted to stop the bleeding. But her head felt so wet. Whatever whoever it was that helped her tried to do, it clearly wasn't working. A second voice then spoke; it sounded to Carrie like a kind, albeit almost nerdy tone.

"Can you hear me? Are you alright?"

Still unable to remember what exactly had happened, Carrie assumed the questions were directed at her and let out another grunt to signal that she heard him. She then reached her right hand up to her head to feel her blood. The slight pressure vanished just before she touched it. It appeared to be a damp towel, she realized; she hadn't been bleeding at all. Well, that was good. But why did she need the towel, then? Curious, she tried to sit up.

"Easy now," said the nerdy voice, as someone placed a hand on her back to help her sit up. She felt the towel fall from her head and into her lap, and her jeans proceeded to happily absorb the excess water.

"Where am I?" she asked.

"You are in my Pokémon laboratory," said the nerdy voice. The lab. She made it after all. So that must mean the nerdy voice was…

"Professor… Elm?" Carrie asked. Desperate to see, she started to open her eyes again, blinking in the harsh whiteness of the room.

"Yes, that is I," confirmed the nerdy voice. "My, you had us all so terribly worried, we had no idea what had happened to you-"

"What did happen to me?" Carrie cut him off.

"You fainted in the road," came the first voice. It sounded rather high, so Carrie assumed the speaker was female. "We assumed you were attacked or something, so we brought you inside."

"Fainted… right… I ran from my house to… what time is it?"

"It is just after noon," said Professor Elm.

Carrie blinked a bit more, her eyes now adjusting to the light. She looked to her left and saw the professor staring at her, looking very confused. His sandy hair was rather messy and he was still wearing his white lab coat and, in Carrie's opinion, very dorky glasses. Off to her right stood Elm's lab assistant, also in a white lab coat and glasses, though somehow with his black hair, he didn't look half as goofy when compared to Elm's lighter brown. Carrie looked around for the female voice, but there was no other person in the room. She then stared questioningly at Elm's assistant, whose name she did not know, wondering if he could possibly have such a high pitched voice. She must have been making a face, because the assistant frowned and tilted his head as he studied her.

A sudden cry from behind her brought Carrie's attention back to the room. She slowly twisted her body to see the speaker behind her.

Directly where her head had been while lying down stood her mother's Pachirisu and the creature Carrie then remembered seeing with Elm just before fainting. Only now that her vision wasn't blurred did she notice that the Pokémon wasn't purely blue – the sandy yellow of its stomach blended in with the dirt in her blurred vision.

"This is a Cyndaquil," Elm said as Carrie turned completely around on the table she rested on, kneeling now, and stared at the Pokémon. "And this is my assistant, Arthur Williams." The man with the black hair held his hand out.

"Hi," Carrie said, shaking it briefly before turning back to the Pokémon. Arthur frowned again.

Carrie studied the new Pokémon for a moment, ignoring Pachirisu's gleeful cheering. Cyndaquil extended his front paw, but Carrie simply stared down at him. After a few seconds, Cyndaquil lowered his paw back to the table, smoke flowing from the yellow spots on his blue back. Carrie turned back to Elm.

"Professor… I'm sorry about yesterday. I had… I wasn't feeling well. Would it be possible for me to get my Pokémon now, instead?"

The professor looked suspiciously at Carrie's exposed left shoulder, still covered in bandages. "Well…" he said nervously, hesitating; certainly an odd behavior from the professor, who usually talked so much that it was difficult to get a word in. After a few seconds, he sighed. "I guess so. You've already met Cyndaquil here." He gestured to the Pokémon, who nodded once and smiled. Carrie couldn't shake the thought that it looked forced.

She returned the smile halfheartedly, and asked, "What else have you got?" Cyndaquil looked completely insulted again, producing more thick smoke from his back, apparently unaware that he was doing so.

Professor Elm rubbed the back of his head nervously. "Well… you see, you weren't the only trainer this season… I'm afraid that we have no suitable Pokémon left, unless you want to take this Cyndaquil," he said.

Carrie's heart sank as she thought. If she were honest with herself, she wasn't sure exactly what specific Pokémon she wanted to choose. She had always had an interest in ice-types but as far as she knew, though the professors had recently expanded their starter selections, there were no ice Pokémon that were given out as starters. Instead, she had just planned to see what her options were and pick the one that stood the best chance against Machamp. She looked at the Cyndaquil again. Even as fired up as he was, how could this cute little thing battle her father's vicious partner?

The painful reality began to sink in as she looked at Cyndaquil. Whatever she chose, she realized, she would have to train up anyway. No freshly hatched Pokémon could possibly take on a fully evolved one and hope to win, no matter how carefully bred it was. She felt incredibly stupid for thinking for all this time that she could just pick any Pokémon and happily get revenge on Machamp just like that, and was very glad that no one in the room at the moment could read her mind.

"All right," she said finally, "if Cyndaquil is all you have, I'll take it." Elm nodded slowly, however Cyndaquil looked less than pleased with Carrie's sudden change of heart.

"Quil!" he screeched in his high-pitched voice, turning his back on Carrie. She didn't have to understand Pokémon speech to know what he said.

"What do you mean 'no'?" Carrie asked, shocked.

Cyndaquil replied, still in Pokémon speech, and suddenly his back burst into flames.

"Carrie," Arthur started. "Pokémon have feelings too. I believe Cyndaquil feels disrespected. He offered you his paw and you ignored it. The smoke he was releasing is a sign of anger. You didn't apologize when you had clearly offended him. When he was introduced, you simply asked what else you had to choose from right in front of him. You hurt his feelings."

Carrie's angry expression melted away as Professor Williams finished. Cyndaquil then looked back and added something in Pokémon speech with a nod. There was a sudden, rapid beeping sound in the distance, to which Elm's assistant excused himself to check on as Cyndaquil sniffed loudly, only then realizing he was crying, and turned away again as if to hide his face. Carrie sighed.

"You're right," she admitted irritably. "I didn't think about your feelings, and it was rude of me. I guess I've just become a bit edgy, with ev- well, I'm sorry, anyway." Cyndaquil didn't turn around, or respond in any other way to show that he heard her.

"It is also polite," Elm added, "to not make a small Pokémon look up at you when you speak to it. It makes them feel more comfortable."

"Quil," Cyndaquil confirmed. Truly feeling irritated now, Carrie reached over and wiped a tear from Cyndaquil's face with her thumb. The tiny Pokémon shivered slightly, but otherwise didn't react.

"Carrie, that was your mother," said Elm's assistant from behind her. Carrie assumed the beeping she heard earlier had been a phone. "She knew you'd be coming here for a Pokémon and asked if you had left yet. I told her you were heading back home soon, so she will be expecting you."

Carrie wanted to ask why in the world he would tell her to expect her to come home, but then she remembered that she couldn't leave if she wanted to anyway: she still had no Pokémon. Besides, she couldn't wander Johto wearing nothing but sagging jeans and an oversized t-shirt. Where else could she go but back?

"Right," she replied before sliding off the surface she had been kneeling on. She looked around the room properly for the first time now. She appeared to be in Elm's library, or work room of sorts. There were shelves all around the room's perimeter, full of books, and about half a dozen tables in the center of the room covered in papers of various colors. She noticed that the table now in front of her had a considerably larger stack of papers, and turned to look behind her at exactly what she had been laying on. It was, in fact, a wooden table just like the rest, whose papers must have been moved to make room for her.

Looking around again, Carrie found the door and headed towards it without another word.

"Carrie," Elm said. Carrie stopped in the doorway and turned around to see Cyndaquil and Pachirisu looking up at her.

"I think you should take Cyndaquil with you," Elm continued. Behind him, Professor Williams' jaw dropped momentarily, but he quickly caught his mistake and resumed his professional appearance.

Carrie couldn't think, selfish elation already starting to consume her at the thought that she would be getting a Pokémon after all. "Wha… really? Why?"

"Not permanently," Elm replied, handing Carrie a pokéball. "Just spend some time with him. You two got off on the wrong foot."

"I… well, okay then. When do you want him back?"

"Whenever he wishes to return. I trust you won't steal him."

The girl just stared. "Oh… okay. Um… I guess I'll be back later, then. You really want to give me another chance, Cyndaquil?" At first the Pokémon looked hesitant and wary, but after a pat on the head by Pachirisu, he nodded and trotted up to her, the white squirrel right behind.

Cyndaquil followed Carrie and Pachirisu outside and after waving good-bye to the professors, she led him behind the nearest house, looking around to make sure no one was listening before she spoke.

"Okay," Carrie started, "if we're going to do this, you have to stay hidden. It… it isn't safe." She pointed at her wrapped shoulder as proof of her words, then, thinking it couldn't hurt, lifted up her shirt to show her bandaged stomach also.

"Cynda?" Cyndaquil asked, tilting his head.

"You'll see," Carrie replied. "Let's get going."