I feel a disclaimer is necessary to begin. Obviously, I do not own the Pokémon franchise or any subsidiary or I would be on my own island and you'd never hear from me.
Perhaps the most important warning is that I thought about how Pokémon are similar to animals in real life (e.g., I'm pretty sure Eevee is a fox) and so a lot of the training I describe in this first chapter is based on how one might train real animals. I hope the realism resonates with some of you to get you hooked.
My next warning is about the voice I've chosen for this narrative. I am a big fan of first-person, but this is my first attempt at the first-person present voice, meaning I describe everything as it happens to my narrator. I was going for a kind of film noir feel (e.g., The Maltese Falcon, Sin City...) and though it may be lacking due to inexperience, I promise the plot will get darker as the story goes. Coupled with the darker tone, I may have to up the rating to "M" because I'm not sure I can do a story like this without violence; in fact, I don't see how it's possible to have a Pokémon story without violence. I'll see what I can do, though.
I hope none of these departures from the typical fan fiction will deter you from reading my story, but if you only want to read anime-like stories, it's best that you know early: this ain't one.
A Round of Jin
I won't say I always wanted to be a Pokémon trainer. In fact, I used to think it was a dumb idea. I never had much appreciation for nature, and Pokémon are just a bunch of wild animals people decided would make good pets. Most Pokémon are just dumb animals, and those that aren't still take a long time to train. Pokémon lack human reasoning skills, after all. It's not like teaching a kid to learn his multiplication tables—Pokémon don't even have the capacity for that kind of knowledge. All they know is how to survive.
I got roped into the Pokémon trainer deal when I was sixteen and my dad died. He was a big shot Pokémon trainer for a long time; he was the leader of the Wolfram Gym in the Periodos region. His success rate was pretty high—so high, in fact, that ten times out of ten, any trainer who was talented enough to beat Dad's Pokémon was also able to make the Top Ten in the Elite Four Tournament if they competed in the same year. Dad died of a heart attack unrelated to gym battling, although I doubt the stress of his job helped much. The divorce probably didn't help, either. Mom and Dad stopped getting along when I was twelve—constant fighting and arguing over religion, politics, and child-rearing. The divorce was final the day I turned sixteen, and my sister and I chose to live with Mom because she actually gave me the attention I craved. I loved my dad, but he paid more attention to his student Pokémon trainers than to me.
When I heard of Dad's death, it didn't affect me much. Don't get me wrong—I cried for a few minutes during his funeral, but I so rarely saw him anyway that things didn't feel different from before. Mom was grief-stricken for a while, but she managed to get over it by going on a tour of the world. Carrie and I went with her for a while—until I turned 18—to the Kanto region and the Sevii Islands. That's where I caught my first Pokémon. We visited Fuchsia City and the Safari Zone so Carrie could try to catch some wild Pokémon. She actually wanted to follow in Dad's footsteps—make a big name for herself as a trainer and one day take over as Gym Leader back in Wolfram. I had no desire for that life, and I have no idea what inspired me to throw that Safari Ball at that scyther, but my first Pokémon catch was a rare one in Kanto; they're mostly imported to the Fuchsia Safari Zone from the forests in Johto.
That scyther was nothing more than a behavioral experiment for me. I just wanted to see what the big deal was—why did everyone care so much about a giant bug? For the first few days, the scyther was a complete moron. He wouldn't do much of anything except eat and sleep. I heard about a guy named Ivan Pavlov and another named Burrhus Skinner and decided to read up on them. Pavlov learned how to make dogs respond to a bell the same way they respond to food, and Skinner was able to make pigeons do complicated tasks just so they could be fed. Using the principles of behaviorism, I used more complicated strategies to train the scyther. Carrie said I just didn't understand that Pokémon training could be a relatively simple task if I just learned to connect with the animals. She treated the animals like they were toddlers—basically intelligent but unable to function efficiently on their own; I treated them like animals—unwilling to do anything unless you feed them.
People are unique—in appearance, personality, and behavior—and I chose to train the scyther through behaviorism. I won each of my first twelve Pokémon battles, but to give you an idea how much I cared, those twelve battles took me four months to complete. Battling was never important to me. In the beginning, I was only curious if I could train a Pokémon at all, but I inadvertently got attached to the scyther. I named him Musashi after the great swordsman Miyamoto Musashi who was well known for his swordsmanship and use of two swords. Eventually Musashi became a sparring partner for me.
One of the reasons I was never innately interested in Pokémon training was I cared more about personal behavior, specifically martial arts. I was a mighty swordsman, having studied kendo—"way of the sword"—in a local dojo from the time I was seven. Kendo was a wild and vigorous way to exercise and learn how to defend myself at the same time. Then again, I started to lose interest in it when I reached twelve years old and my grandfather started teaching me kenjutsu—"the art of the sword." Both series of instruction had similar purposes—to train rigorously and mold the student into a person of upstanding moral character—but whereas kendo was very sport-like, kenjutsu with my grandfather was much more meditative and skill-oriented. He even trained me in nitojutsu—"two swords method." I participated in many martial arts competitions, but mostly in the display competitions and almost never in duels—the scar under my left eye and the permanent limp in my left leg are notice to everyone why I prefer not to duel.
When I realized I actually liked Musashi—the scyther, not the swordsman—as a friend, I started to train him in nitojutsu, too. I had to start off easy on him until he learned that I wasn't trying to hurt him, but eventually he and I became synchronized in our movements. Now I can duel with Musashi at high intensity and he can match me move for move. This shared practice gets into what has become my philosophy of good Pokémon training. Like I said before, I never wanted to be a Pokémon master; it turns out I'm just good at it. I believe that Pokémon learn faster when the trainer participates in training with them. I participate in cardiovascular exercise and nitojutsu with Musashi on a regular basis. I admit that I can't keep up with Musashi when he moves at full speed, but I train with him at nothing less than full effort, and he responds to it.
My most impressive moment so far came when I submitted to a martial arts weaponry tournament with Musashi as my double. We put on a vibrant, choreographic show of swordsmanship that won first place in choreography—it was the first and, as of yet, only time a Pokémon participated in a martial arts tournament, an impressive feat that probably played a big role in our victory. Some people have tried to register fighting-type Pokémon in martial arts tournaments, but all tournaments are for people and therefore refuse registration to Pokémon. The reasoning is sound; Pokémon physically and perceptually outmatch humans, and therefore allowing them to participate in human tournaments stacks the deck, so to speak. Musashi was permitted to perform because I registered him for a non-combat category.
That's how I got an invitation to a Pokémon tournament on Quicksilver Island. The invitation claimed only sixteen Pokémon trainers were invited and the grand prize was one million dollars and a rare Pokémon. I was more attracted to the money than the Pokémon, primarily because I didn't earn much as a thirty-year-old community college science and math professor and part-time baseball coach. Either way, I was being offered a free, four-day-long vacation at a tropical island resort. I decided to go for it.
The invitation said to bring only three Pokémon. Musashi was practically my best friend, sad as that may sound, and so he was an obvious choice. Of the twelve other Pokémon I collected in my life, I settled on Dad's jolteon—the only one of his Pokémon he left to me when he died—and a Pokémon I found while I was exploring Navel Rock.
Now that I've described how I got here, I can explain my current story.
Short and sweet; that's how to begin a story, right? Technically, the story hasn't begun yet, but now you know a little bit about my primary protagonist Jin. As you might be able to surmise, I made up a new region of the Pokémon world. Kanto's cities were named after colors, Johto's cities were named after trees and shrubs, and Periodos's cities are named after elements of the periodic table.
Because this is a tournament story, I would love to use some character submissions from any of my readers. There will be sixteen competitors and several other people on the island, and so I can use any characters you want to give me. All I need is the following information:
Name (goes without saying):
Age (note that Jin is 30, and so I'd prefer mostly adults and maybe two teenagers for this particular story):
Occupation outside of the tournament (job and location--can be any city in any region):
Basic appearance (height, weight, build, skin tone, identifying features such as a tattoo or Jin's scar):
Basic personality with quirks (be creative here; I can't really tell you what to give me):
Two favorite Pokémon with nicknames and identifying features (not of the legendary variety):
I think that's it. If I realize later I need more info, I will let you know.
Maybe you noticed that the story mentions three Pokémon each for the tournament and I only ask for two from you. I've already decided the list of everyone's third Pokémon because it's plot-relevant, but if I select your character, I will let you approve and name the final Pokémon. If everyone picks the same Pokémon, I will have to discuss options with you or take creative liberty, and so maybe you might choose to list several Pokémon in rank-order of preference. On the occupation note, not everyone has to be a Pokémon trainer, ranger, or breeder. Some of them can be Pokémon Center employees (vets, etc.) or police officers or research assistants, or whatever kind of job you think would logically exist in the Pokémon world if most of our laws of physics were present.