A deep song rustled through the trees as the Pokemon of Route 202 in Sinnoh enjoyed a normally pleasant evening. Route 202 is known for being one of the places where beginning trainers take their first steps into the open World of Pokemon, just as Route 1 above Pallet down is known in Kanto. The route is home to a small handful of Pokemon, all low-level and pretty tame by comparison to other wild Pokemon. One such species of Pokemon found on Route 202 is a Kricketot; and one Kricketot will have to overcome great hardship in order to be successful in life.
Kricketot has a red body, with tan markings down the front of its body and a tan collar-like piece around its neck. The Pokemon has two small feet with no visible toes, and two small stubby arms with no discernable fingers. A large oval-shaped dark red/brown nose and two small black eyes with white irises. On its forehead there is a brown/dark red oval-shaped portion of its body. At opposite sicdes of the brown/red segment there are antennae that curl into a question mark-like design.
John, a small Kricketot that lived along Route 202, loved making noise with his antennae in order to communicate with other Kricketot and other Pokemon on the Route. However he often failed to create proper sounds, or at times even could not make any sounds with his antennae at all. The failure to perform often caused John much sadness, and he found himself crying himself to sleep many nights.
'Why can't I make proper music,' John thought as he lay in his bed made of leaves and tree bark, 'I just want to make everyone happy by making an amazing song, but I can't even say 'Hello' sometimes to my fellow Kricketot. Why do I have to have this problem, why can't I just be normal like everyone else?' He sobbed as he believed that his disability would be a permanent one, unaware that a sliver of hope lay just on the morning's horizon.
The next morning, John was awoken by a knock on the exterior of his home, a hollowed-out log. As he crawled out from inside the log, what he saw truly perplexed him, as he saw a strange Bidoof that he had never seen before. John knew all of the Bidoof, and other forms of Pokemon that lived in the nearby area, but he had never seen this particular Bidoof before. This new Pokemon also had certain characteristics that John would have remembered if the pair had ever met.
Normally Bidoof have bodies covered with dark-brown fur, with tan markings around its eyes and a red nose. However, his Bidoof instead had light-brown fur on its body, causing it to look almost cream-colored. The Pokemon's normally black area around its red nose was instead snow-white. Confused by the unexpected and strange-looking visitior, John began to speak to his caller. "Hello," he started hesitantly, "my name's John and as i hope you've figured out I live inside that tree stump. Is there something that you want of me?" John said all of the words slowly, trying to enunciate each syllable to assure that he would convey the proper message to his new visitor. 'I hope I said everything correctly,' he thought to himself, 'it would be an embarrassment if this new Pokemon can't understand a word I'm saying.'
The cream-colored Bidoof smiled with his big toothy mouth and started to reply. "Yes, John, I know who you are. I've heard that you have a problem sometimes with speaking clearly, and that you want to be able to speak clearly all of the time. I'm sure that you try to practice as much as you can, but that sometimes the music comes out incorrectly, or sometimes just doesn't happen at all. You must feel pretty sad about all of this, don't you?" The Plump Mouse Pokemon moved close to John and stood on his hind legs, wrapping his front arms around John's red body. "I'm Frank by the way," the Pokemon continued, "and I think I have a way for you to be able to speak clearly. I was sent from a place far from here, where a mystical spirit lives that can sense Pokemon's emotions. It sensed that you were crying out in pain, and it wants to help you if possible by fixing your ability to speak. All you would have to do is come with me, and it's only a few day's journey from here."
John looked at Frank stunned as his mind began to process this information. 'I..I actually have a chance to be normal, to be able to speak normally to everyone? This is beyond wonderful. I've always wanted to be normal, and this Bidoof here seems to have the means to make that happen. I wonder why this special spirit cares about me, though. After all I'm just a lowly Kricketot, nothing special at all.' He smiled widely and began to speak to Frank. "If what you say is true, I will gladly come with you to wherever this special spirit lives. It is true that I've always wanted to live a normal life, and it seems like you're offering me to have my wildest dreams fulfilled. I don't know anyone who could turn that down."
Frank continued to smile and hugged John again as he listened to the Kricketot's response. "Wonderful," he began, "we can leave right now if you want, assuming you have no other pressing engagements to get to." The Kricketot nodded and the pair slowly started off on their journey.
Several days into the trip, they ran across a large town with many humans and Pokemon that resided there. "Move quickly and follow me," Frank hissed quietly to his companion, "we don't want humans to see us and try to catch us. I'm not much of a battler and from the looks of you, you aren't either. We can't exactly get your voice fixed if we get captured by some passerby, right?"
John started to nod in agreement, and it was at that moment that a tall human wearing a white and orange t-shirt and black pants saw the duo walking along the streets. When he noticed the pair, the human quickly grabbed his brown bag from the chair he was sitting on, tightened his green scarf around his neck, and ran towards the group shouting, "ooh, wild Pokemon. If you don't get into my Pokeballs in the next two seconds, I'm fining you $1 million!"
"Does he think we have human money," John asked Frank, confused as to what the tall figure meant.
"I don't know John," Frank replied, "but it looks like he means to battle with us. I can try to distract him if you want to try to get to the spirit Pokemon. Just keep heading in this direction until you see a large body of water!" The cream-colored Bidoof turned and faced the tall human, who sent out a blue penguin-like Pokemon.
Soon, the trainer commanded his Pokemon to attack Frank with a barrage of bubbles, and John could only watch helplessly by looking behind him as he ran as fast as he could away from the battle. The last thing John saw before the battle site faded from view was Frank being sucked up into one of the trainer's Pokeballs and never emerging after the ball hummed.
'Oh no,' the scared Cricket Pokemon thought, 'that human has Frank under his control now. He has to spend the rest of his life doing whatever the trainer wants, how barbaric.' He started to cry as he kept running and running, managing to avoid numerous other trainers or Pokemon in the city. As soon as he saw the beginnings of a wilderness Route, he quickened his pace even further in an attempt to leave the town as quickly as possible.
Once he reached the dense grass of the route, he felt a small sense of security, as he was at least used to the familiar basic landscape of the plains. Small trees dotted the area here and there, and the tall grass ensured that he would be able to successfully hide from anyone who would seek to bother him. As he kept traveling through the grassland, he smelled a faint smell that reminded him of what ponds on Route 202 smelled like. 'I think this is the direction it's in,' he thought, as he quickened his pace to reach his destination.
Within several hours, John found himself at a large lake that seemed mostly abandoned, except for several Starly and Bidoof. In the middle of the lake, there was a large rock formation that looked as if it was not a natural occurrence. Something about the rock formation called to John, and he spent an hour swimming across the lake until he reached the rocks. Upon climbing the rocks, he found a small entrance to an interior rock section. 'I wonder where this leads,' the Pokemon thought, as he entered the structure. 'It feels like I've been called here, to this particular spot, by some force that I cannot comprehend. Is this the work of that spirit that Frank was talking about?' As he continued to ponder why he was compelled to the rocks, he heard a loud voice overhead.
"John, simple Kricketot from Route 202, you have been brought here by one of my followers so that I can help you solve the most difficult problem that you have ever faced." A small gray Pokemon descended from the top of the cavern, floating close to John so he could speak, although the Pokemon seemed to be speaking with its mind. The Pokemon had a pink face with two tentacle-like appendages on either side of its head, and a large red gem in its forehead. There was also two tails that had a smaller-sized gem in the middle of each tail. "I am Mesprit," it continued, "the legendary Pokemon of emotion. I sensed your sorrow and pain and decided to help you bring an end to your woes. All you need do is tell me that it is your desire to speak clearly and so it shall be, for it is within my Psychic-type powers to mend your antennae." The pink Pokemon hovered above John, awaiting a response.
"Of course," John eagerly replied, "I'd love to be able to be normal. All I want to do is make music for my friends and those who live on my Route. Sadly, as you know it's usually impossible for me to get even a single line of song out, let along a melody." He looked up hopefully at the Pokemon, wishing that it would fulfill his desire.
Mesprit smiled and its body began to glow with a Pink aura. "You have chosen wisely, young John. You see, I have friends that can see beyond the here and now, friends that can see into everyone's future, even your own. I was told that by next year's time you will be a great composer of your community, creating and performing songs the likes of which no Pokemon has heard before. However, the future can be uncertain, like a diverging stream across a river; had you declined my offer to heal you, that future would never have come to pass, and you would continue to wallow as you have been."
The aura that surrounded the Pokemon soon extended to John, and he could feel himself becoming stronger and better with each passing second. The bug-type Pokemon began to waver, however, as he considered what possible future lay ahead for him. 'Although being healed by Mesprit would allow me to carry out my dreams, I wouldn't really be the one responsible for any of those achievements; it would be that Pokemon's work at healing me that caused everything positive to happen in my life, as if I was just along for the ride. I'd rather find some way to fix my problems on my own, instead of relying on others to do my job for me.' "Stop," he yelled to the legendary Pokemon, "I want you to stop healing me right now!"
"Oh," the grey Pokemon asked. "why do you want me to stop? Aren't I giving you everything you've ever wanted, especially when I told you about the future that awaits you if you undergo my treatment?"
"Look," John replied solemnly, "if I get help from you to magically fix all of my problems, I won't be helping myself at all. All of those wonderful things you told me about would just be because of you and your friend, and not because of me at all. I'd rather wait another two, or even five years to learn how to communicate properly and then compose music than to owe all of my achievements to someone else."
The legendary Pokemon's aura slowly faded, and it smiled again at John and began to speak. "Once again, you chose wisely. I was testing you to see if you would be tempted to take my quicker and easier path. Your musical compositions still await you, and you'll start to see in the next month that you will be able to speak better of your own accord, not because of anything that happened today. If you had weakened and taken my offer, you would have found your voice failing within several weeks, and be unable to correct the error for many years. The true point I brought you here was to learn to look inside yourself for solutions to your problems. Good luck with your music, John." John then felt himself enveloped in a pink light and when he opened his eyes, he was back at home inside the hollowed-out tree.
From that day onward, John dedicated as much of his time as possible to honing his speech and music-making abilities, and he soon found that his efforts were paying off. He stopped feeling sorry for himself and began to look at his disability as a challenge that he could overcome. Just as Mesprit had told the young Kricketot, within a month he had made significant improvements, and within a year he had composed his first full song. Everyone on Route 202 came to hear his performance, and nearly all asked him how he was able to cure himself. To his questioners, he simply said that a chance encounter that changed his outlook on life helped him succeed.