Mary Sue sighed as she left her bedroom on the morning of her tenth birthday. Today she would get her pokemon license and her starter pokemon, but no doubt her cruel parents wouldn't actually let her leave until tomorrow. Didn't they realize that she didn't want to have a party with her family and friends, that she'd rather leave on her own personal adventure?
She was dressed in a mini-skirt and tube-top, trying to show off curves that she wished she had, but wouldn't know what to do with even if she did, with her outfit completed by a pair of canvas sneakers. She had lots of sneakers, but she'd decided to wear her vulpix print ones, as a hint to her parents on what she wanted as a starter.
Clearly she didn't realize that outside works of fiction, most foxes were visious little bas- wait, what's the rating on this thing? Hmm, I'm pretty sure I can't say that. Bitc- no, not that one either. Darn those ratings to heck...Jerks! Yes, foxes of all kinds tended to be visious little jerks. However, like many little girls, Mary Sue only knew them from TV and comics, a dubious source of information at best, and so wanted one for her very own, even though she had no training experience of her own. Idiot.
So, anyway, Mary Sue tromped down the stairs, put out that she wouldn't be able to risk her life and sanity for some little badges until the next day, and sulked all the way through her birthday breakfast of belgian waffles, fresh berries, syrup, and whipped cream. Personally, I would be over the moon if someone made me that for breakfast, but it apparently didn't contain enough blisters and sore muscles for her. Well, she'd get them soon enough.
After her delicious and under-appreciated breakfast, Mary Sue was subjected to the worst possible punishment that one could endure on their birthday: she had to go to school. She had wanted to stay home, well, she had wanted to leave on her journey, but failing that, she definitely didn't want to go to school. Unfortunately for her, her mum had to go to work and her dad was getting the house ready for her party, so they wanted her out of the house for the day.
Apart from more hype than was necessary from Mary Sue's friends, school was much the same as any other day. Her teachers all ignored that fact that it was her birthday, the cafeteria food tasted like cardboard, and some of the older kids showed off their pokemon and held mock battles with each other. Soon, she would be having battles, too, and everyone would look up at her in envy- I mean, jealousy- I mean...awe...yeah, awe.
The party that evening was fabulous enough that Mary Sue even forgot to be angry at the world! There was a disco ball! There was cake! There were presents! There was even a strobe light! It "mysteriously" broke not even a full minute after it was turned on, but it was definitely there; people tripped over it and everything. At the climax of the party, Mary Sue was given her first pokemon, a vulpix. It wasn't as though she hadn't been "strongly hinting" for the past three months about exactly what pokemon she wanted.
Mary Sue was so happy, that she held him close for the rest of the night, and even cuddled with him when she went to bed. She held him so tight that he gave her a couple affectionate nips in return; some of them were a little bit too affectionate, but that was okay, she stopped bleeding eventually. Still, it wasn't every day that you got your first scar from a pokemon. Wait, sorry, it wasn't every day that you got a wound that resulted in your first scar from a pokemon. There we go.
The next morning, she awoke to a situation experienced by humans the multi-verse over who let their pets share their bed.
Mary Sue was lying on the very edge of her bed, mere inches from falling off, while her vulpix had sprawled out, somehow taking up not only most of the mattress, but most of the blanket too.
She got out of bed, without sighing dramatically this time, and dressed in what she thought was appropriate clothing for a trek through the wilderness. Yeah, she was wearing the same clothes as the day before. Her parents had bought her hiking shoes, as well as thin shirts and trousers to keep her as cool as possible, while also keeping any ticks, or poisonous plants off her skin, but, well, those clothes weren't very cute.
What did her parents know about pokemon journeys, anyway? They were adults, and adults never did anything fun, or had any experience to fall back on. Didn't they realize that she had to do this her own way? And her way meant way more pink and vulpix-print shoes than her parent's way. Besides, what was the worst that could happen?
She did, however, take the large backpack her parents had bought, along with all the camping gear, even if most of it was a boring beige colour., and yes, she did pack the clothes and boots, too.
She set off with her vulpix in his pokeball because, even though she really wanted to walk around with him by her side, which would be really, really cool looking, he was still fairly bitey, and had started growling at stuff too. Clearly, she would have to keep him out of the public eye until he figured out how to behave.
During that first morning, she learned two crucial lessons. First of all, backpacks full of camping gear were very heavy, especially when the carrier had done little heavy lifting in preparation. Second of all, old sneakers, no matter how cute, were not very good shoes to wear while hiking. Sure, there were plenty of worse shoes out there, but there were plenty of better ones, too.
During lunch, she changed into the ugly, brown hiking boots, and padded the shoulder straps of her backpack with a jacket.
During the afternoon, she learned two more crucial lessons. First, or perhaps third, of all, new boots needed to be broken in before walking in them for long periods of time, otherwise you get blisters, and then your blisters get blisters. Second of all, or fourth, if you prefer, her vulpix didn't listen to a word she said.
See, her parents, while well off, weren't well off enough that they could afford a trainer-bred vulpix, and so had bought a trainer-caught one instead. They comforted themselves with the idea that a pokemon that grew up in the wild might be better than one raised in a house. Wild pokemon understood things like predators, finding water, food, and shelter, while trainer-raised pokemon would look to their trainer to find, or avoid, such things. They knew that their daughter had little experience, and so hoped that a wild pokemon would help her along the way. What they didn't consider was that trainer-raised pokemon automatically expect a human to take charge, while a wild pokemon would fight tooth and claw to take charge themselves, especially with a newbie trainer.
The notion of Mary Sue being in charge was not exactly cemented in the vulpix's mind, and their first fight together didn't help things. Perhaps things would have worked better if it had been against a wild pokemon, but it wasn't, it was against another trainer.
The boy looked to be in his mid-teens, and was very dirty. All his clothes, regardless of what colour they started, had been stained by the dirt, until they resembled the dirt. His legs and boots were encased in mud, and his hair was long and greasy. He might even have had the start of a beard growing in, but then again, it could have just been more dirt.
He had just gotten out of Dark Cave and, much like our young, naive heroine, was heading to Violet City for the Zephyr Badge. Unlike our young heroine, however, this guy had already completed two gym circuits and was now zigzagging his way around his third. He was one badge away from completing the Johto gyms too and, once he was done, was going to go through the Kanto gyms backwards. That is, doing the eighth gym first, and the first gym last, not walking around everywhere backwards. That would be silly.
Anyway, upon seeing him, Mary Sue immediately challenged him to a pokemon battle. He explained the situation, that he had been training for a long time, and that she would no doubt be defeated. He also considered battling her a complete waste of time, but he was too nice to say that to her face.
Mary Sue did understand the concept of a highly experienced and powerful pokemon trainer beating a newbie, but she had seen too many underdog movies to really believe it. Without a moment's hesitation, she sent out her vulpix.
With a sigh of resignation, and while mentally calculating how long the battle would hold him up, the boy sent out his krookodile.
To noone's surprise, except maybe Mary Sue's, the krookodile knocked out her vulpix in a single hit.
He was going to let her go without taking half her money, it would be about as worth it as the battle itself had been, but once she started bawling her eyes out about how unfair it was that she lost and how mean he was, he decided to take it anyway.
He counted his winnings as he walked away, and decided that it was just about enough for a McDonalds meal, or perhaps a Subway sandwich. He hated battling little kids.
Mary Sue then proceeded to throw a tantrum, because she was mature like that, until her vulpix started getting a headache and fired an ember in her direction. Instead of taking it as a hint to shut the … fudge … up, Mary Sue took it as an invitation to shriek at the top of her lungs until she started seeing little black dots floating everywhere, and then finally stopped as she ran out of air.
Unfortunately for her, her vulpix had decided that enough was enough. Being squeezed all of yesterday evening, then locked inside last night, and finally the krookodile and the screaming today. If all that time stuffed into a dinky, little pokeball wasn't bad enough, the screaming was the last straw.
In truth, he didn't get very far before Mary Sue started looking for him, but it didn't really matter. He was used to hiding from things and curled up in a small hollow under a tree root, barely visible, and even then only from ground level.
Mary Sue was not looking for him at ground level, nor was she looking particularly closely, choosing instead to run off in a panic, hoping that she would stumble upon him by chance. It didn't work.
So, lets take inventory. In the span of a day and a half, Mary Sue went from an extravagant, under-appreciated breakfast that I'm still metaphorically drooling over, to leaving on her pokemon adventure with a vulpix on her belt, to quickly getting lost on her pokemon adventure, sans the vulpix. Sure, she still had his pokeball, but it was nothing more than a novelty paperweight unless she actually found him. Less, actually, as it would roll off any papers stacked at an angle.
In case you were wondering, the vulpix actually did rather well for himself. He was still rather young, but he was in an area full of weak, mostly bug-type pokemon. He grew up and got stronger and eventually left his little buggy route to find himself some vixens to hump. He got captured by another trainer during his travels, but was trained up, evolved into a ninetails, and about sixty years later his trainer died peacefully in his bed at the ripe age of 84. He was then released back into the wild, found his vixens to hump, and lived happily ever after. Or, as much as is possible when you need to kill every day to prevent starvation, and constantly have to beat up intruders to stop them taking over your home.
Anyway, back to Mary Sue, who had stopped running around like a pidgey with it's head cut off, and had sat down to start sobbing and have a proper angst-fest.
Actually, you know what? Let's skip to later on. All that's gonna happen is that I'm going to go into excruciating detail about her whinging to the world at large, she'll set up camp for the night, which is boring, and then come to the realization that maybe this whole training thing isn't as easy as she thought, and we already knew that. So, lets skip forward to:
2am
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Mary Sue's alarm went off, terrifying all the pokemon in earshot into silence.
She grumbled in annoyance, her plan no longer seeming like such a good idea, but she was awake, so she figured she might as well go through with it anyway. She quickly got dressed, then shivered as she crawled out her tent. Turns out that the middle of the night is a lot colder in the middle of the wilderness, than it is in the middle of her bedroom. Who would have guessed it?
She had her sneakers back on. They might not be very good hiking shoes, but her actual hiking shoes had given her so many blisters that she thought she might never wear them again. As she crept through the bushes with only a small torch lighting her way, she learnt that along with having lots of ankle support and needing to be broken in, her hiking boots had another feature that her sneakers did not: they were waterproof. She continued on, her feet and legs getting wetter and wetter as she went, but she couldn't stop. She had a plan.
Did I tell you about her plan? No? Well, she must have made it during all that time I skipped. I'll tell you her plan; it's actually a pretty decent one, considering her situation. Her plan is to get herself another pokemon. Genius!
For her area, she had a choice between sentret, pidgey, hoothoot, and a whole host of bugs. She really wanted a sentret, actually, but she forced herself to admit that they weren't the best battler in the world. Bugs? She thought bugs were gross, and she also had the foresight to realize that when the first gym used flying types, a bug would probably not be the way to go. So, there was pidgey and hoothoot; a pidgey would eventually become a pidgeot, an excellent flyer that would be able to carry her around, but hoothoot learned some psychic attacks, and so that was her choice. Of course, it meant that she had to walk around at night to find one, but to everyone's surprise, she was determined enough to set her alarm for 2am to do it.
How is she going to catch a pokemon, without one of her own to weaken it? Well, the best part about that question is I don't even need to answer it. While I was explaining her plan, she managed to find one, so we get to watch, instead.
Mary Sue gasped as she saw eyes, glittering in her torch's beam of light. Slowly, so as to not frighten it off, she bent down and picked up a small rock. From her crouched position, she flung the rock at the hoothoot, knocking it off it's perch and into a small bush. Success!
Two yellow and black feathers poked out the bush- wait, yellow and black? Aren't hoothoot feathers usually brown or black? Ooh, maybe it's an extra-special shiny! Or a spinerak. Nah, there's no way our young heroine would mess up that much.
Mary Sue flung an empty pokeball at the bush, and the pokemon under it was sucked inside. Stunned by the rock, the mystery pokemon no longer had the strength to fight the ball, and it quickly lay still.
Triumphant, Mary Sue let out her new pokemon so that she could see it better. To her horror, she discovered that she had not caught an extra-special, shiny hoothoot. It was, in fact, a spinerak. Hah, I totally called it!
Cringing at every aspect of her new pokemon, from it's eight legs, to it's bright red mandibles, she recalled it and dragged her feet back to camp. As far as she was concerned, the only upside of that venture was that she was no longer pokemonless, but that wouldn't stop her complaining about it.
Why did her vulpix have to run away?! He was adorable, and fluffy, and she'd thought of the best name for him, too. It was a really original name, almost as much as her own; she was going to call him 'Kitsune'. She was sure that he would have loved it, but now she was stuck with a spinerak, which she regarded as one of the creepiest pokemon out there. Clearly, she needed to get out more, or read more online pokedex entries, then she'd know about plenty other creepy pokemon.
She slept badly the rest of that night, too busy bemoaning her fate, as was becoming habit of late, to fall asleep. She gave up on sleep as the sun began to rise, after coming to the realization that this whole journey was even harder than doing her homework, of course. As she packed, she considered what she was going to do. Her feet hurt, her back hurt, her legs hurt, her starter was gone, and her replacement starter was a gross spinerak.
As she packed up, it started to rain. Sure that this was just another example of the world pitting itself against her, she burst into tears again; not for as long as the night before, though, so I don't feel tempted to skip forward several hours this time.
Once her clothes were soaked by the rain, and her face was soaked by her tears and snot, she turned away from Violet City to head home.
Well, too bad for her. Maybe she could try again in a year or so once she was a bit more mature, and once her parents un-grounded her for loosing her starter in less than a day. That visious little jerk had been expensive, you know.