Pokemon World

PART 1

1

Noobs In England

Man, England is cold! I never knew it was so damp and rainy there, especially since I had been living in Los Angeles for the last two years.

My name is Scott Luther, and I was about to graduate from my two-year term at the American Trainer Academy in L.A. Most kids who want to work with pokemon enroll in the Academy at thirteen, thus becoming official trainers at fifteen years old, and from there, they could receive their first pokemon. It's every young trainer's dream to defeat the seven Leagues and become World Champion, and I'm not outside that group.

But yeah, England is cold. We had just flown to London for our graduation ceremony, and from there, the class was spending one year in Europe for training. And not only that, but there's a pecking order for the seven Leagues, and the European League is the first tier, so why not get it out of the way while we were there?

And it was cold. Did I mention that yet? I stood there with my teeth chattering, slowly getting drenched in a fine drizzle as me and my friend, Damian Black, stood with the rest of the class at the bus terminal outside Heathrow Airport in London, waiting on the motor coach that seemed unlikely ever to come.

"Cold?" Damian laughed as I shivered uncontrollably.

I nodded, hugging myself for warmth. Damian laughed again. He was from Colorado, so he was a little more used to the cold than a kid from Arizona, like me. Damian and I had been friends since our first day at the Academy, and as such, we had decided that not only were we friends, we were rivals. Damian and I were one day going to fight for the title of World Champion, and somehow we both knew it. That was my goal as a trainer, to one day beat Damian, a feat I had never yet managed, even though I had top grades in our simulation courses. It's just that… Damian just has this thing with pokemon, even computer-generated ones. They seem to understand each other perfectly, and so, Damian had beaten me. Damian was valedictorian, while I was second in the class.

"God, finally!" I heard Damian say, and I looked up from my musings to see that the huge, double-decker motor coach had arrived. Damian and I joined the line boarding the bus and I sighed in relief as we got up the stairs and into the heat.

"This little bit of cold is really screwing with you, isn't it?" Damian asked as we sat down.

"I live in Arizona, and we've been in L.A. for two years," I shot back. "Give me a break, dude."

It took about forty-five minutes to reach the huge banquet hall where our graduation ceremony was being held. When the bus stopped outside the building, the voice of our teacher from the Academy, Professor Holly, came over the intercom. "Well, it's time, everyone. Before we proceed, I'm to give you your table and seating assignments so that you know where to go. Headmaster Charleston is then going to explain the ceremony to you so you'll know what to do. Now, if you would all stand up and make your way to the front of the bus, starting with the lower deck…"

We all stood, and soon Damian and I were at the front of the line to receive our seats. Holly handed us each a piece of paper, and as soon as we were off the bus, we looked at them together.

"Table four, seat one," Damian read.

"Table four, seat two," I muttered.

"Sweet," Damian said. "We're at the same table, at least."

We walked through the doors into a huge, majestic banquet hall, with medium- sized round tables all spread evenly around a raised stage area. The stage was round, and a pattern like a pokeball had been painted on it. It didn't take a genius to figure out what it was.

"Why…?" was Damian's question, though it couldn't quite form. It was a very good question, though.

There was a pokemon battle arena in the center of our banquet hall. What was going on?

"Maybe we'll get to watch a fight," I suggested with a shrug.

"What if it's Charleston?" one kid asked excitedly.

"Sweet," another girl said. It would be, too. Headmaster Charleston had won the World Championship title back in his day, and we all knew he kept all his pokemon in fit shape.

We all filed in and proceeded to our seats, waiting with anticipation for whatever was about to happen. Once everyone was seated, I turned to Damian. I had barely opened my mouth, however, when he put a finger to his lips and pointed toward the stage.

There stood a man with short gray and a thick, bushy mustache. He wore a charcoal-gray suit, leaning ever so slightly on a cane. Six red and white pokeballs gleamed from his belt, and his eyes twinkled as he smiled.

"Good evening, class," Charleston called, addressing us as he always had at the Academy.

"Good evening, Headmaster," we all responded.

"Well, I am honored to be here tonight," Charleston said. "I offer to congratulate you all on a job well done, and just say that I am very proud of you all.

"Unfortunately, I regret to inform you that you are not yet finished. All three hundred of you are potential graduates, but only one hundred and fifty of you will leave here as official trainers. Half of you will receive your official trainer certification, but the other half of you will be sent out to spend part of your year here in Europe training instead. In addition, those of you who do not pass will have to wait four months before you can receive certification and begin to challenge the European League. You will also be expected to return home at the end of the year, and thus will probably have to return to finish your run with the European League at a later time."

Muttering had broken out in the crowd at the news that only half of us would graduate tonight. The rest of us would have to wait four months? It was ridiculous! We had all worked hard to get here, and now we were going to be just shunted to the side if we didn't pass whatever test they presented us with tonight?

"Do not worry, however," Charleston continued. "We are not begrudging anyone the right to a pokemon. You have all earned that much. Therefore, I implore all of you who do not pass tonight to spend the next four months training, so you can still make your run through League before we must return to the States.

"Now, you're all probably wondering how this is going to proceed. We are going to call pairs up to battle. The winners will pass while the losers will fail. Your opponents will be selected randomly by computer. Each of you will be given your first pokemon to keep before the battle begins. These pokemon have been chosen based on your own personal strengths and weaknesses, and each one was chosen specially for each one of you by me, Professor Holly, or Professor Yew. We chose pokemon that we believe would make good partners for you, balancing you out and allowing you to work well together."

Great. Another wrench in the works. We wouldn't even know what pokemon we were going to be fighting with, let alone not knowing who our opponents were. I looked over at Damian, who was grinning in anticipation. He was good at this kind of thing, though. I, on the other hand, wasn't so good with going in blind, which was indicated by the sudden urge I had to go to the bathroom. But I knew I'd have to hold it, because a large screen was descending from the ceiling.

"Now, if you would all turn your attention to the screen," Charleston said. As if he had to tell anyone. "Computer, randomize."

Names began to flash rapidly across the screen, moving so fast that it didn't matter whether you could read them or not. Suddenly, they abruptly stopped. The two kids indicated stood and walked up to the stage. One of them was sweating so hard that his face shone in the spotlight on the arena.

Professor Holly and Professor Yew, our two teachers from the Academy, walked up onto the arena, each of them holding a pokeball, and presented them to two guys. Adam, the sweaty guy, almost dropped his, his hands were shaking so badly. Jason, the other guy, looked a little more confident, but not by much.

"Begin," called Headmaster Charleston from the seat he had taken at the table next to the arena.

Adam and Jason threw their pokeballs into the ring, and, with two massive flashes of light, a pokemon materialized on each side of the ring. On Jason's side, there was a small, blue bird with a red-and-white chest and long tail feathers. Meanwhile, on Adam's side, there rose, thirteen feet into the air, an enormous serpentine pokemon made of rocks and boulders, with a long stone spike rising out of its head.

The tables had turned, and now Jason was the one sweating.

"Alright, Onix!" Adam shouted, all traces of nervousness gone. "Tackle!" The Onix opened its mouth and gave a bellow that sounded like an avalanche cascading down a mountain, then it brought its head down on the exact spot the Taillow had been only seconds before it finally had the brilliant idea to get the hell out of there. The little bird shot up into the air as Onix's head crashed down on the arena. The smack of stone on metal was so loud that it broke a glass on the table next to us.

"Taillow, use peck!" Jason shouted. "Go for the eyes!"

The Taillow spiraled down toward Onix's head, then the bird jammed its beak straight into one of the rock snake's eye sockets.

Jason's face lit up, then quickly turned to horror. "Ye-NO!" Taillow's beak was stuck in Onix's eye, and Adam's malicious plan was revealed in his face as he called out, "Now, Onix, roll over!"

I closed my eyes, but it didn't prevent me from hearing the crunch as the Onix rolled over, crushing the Taillow under its head.

"The winner is Adam Creston," Headmaster Charleston called out, and the class broke into applause. The two pokemon were returned to their pokeballs and Professor Holly rose and handed a Trainer Card to Adam, while Jason returned to his seat with his head hung, the embodiment of shame.

The battles stretched on long into the night, with no ties and no surrender. I started to sweat when a hundred and twenty-five battles had passed, and neither myself nor Damian had been called out. What if we were forced to fight? One of us would go on, while the other one would be left behind. But the battles were random, I kept telling myself. What were the chances that-?

"Next battle," Charleston called. "Scott Luther versus Damian Black."

And there it was. The computer had really done it. I had been randomly chosen to fight the one person I knew I wouldn't be able to beat. But somehow, I think I knew we would have to fight. I had known it since they had announced the whole 'random battle' method, and I wasn't scared as I stood up to make my way to the ring. Instead, I was simply resigned to my fate. What the heck, it was only four months, right?

"Good luck, bro," Damian said, slugging me on the arm as we ascended the steps onto the ring and then moved to opposite sides. My brain began to flash off facts about the arena. After a hundred and thirty-some-odd battles the ring wasn't quite flat and shiny anymore. There were dents and gouges and battle scars all over the place. This wouldn't be easy…

I had to force my brain to remember that I was going to lose.

Professor Yew crossed the treacherous arena with my pokemon and handed it to me. "Just remember your battle strategies, Scott," my Battle teacher muttered. "You'll do fine."

"Thanks," I said, taking my pokeball. Professors Yew and Holly then returned to their table sitting on either side of Headmaster Charleston. The hall was silent with anticipation as the crowd waited on the edge of their seats for Charleston to call, "Begin."

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Hey everyone, this is PerdyNerdy. Well, if you're reading this, I'm assuming you just read the first chapter of my story, and I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to review or whatever. Oh and by the way, to the one guy who read my last version, yeah, this is new, but I just recently actually learned how to do stuff on here, so I'm changing it and adding my notes and stuff to the chapters. Anyway, yeah, I'll try to update regularly, it's all a matter of how often I can reach a computer, so bear with me. Patience is a virtue, folks. Peace to all of you,

PerdyNerdy