You know that feeling you get when you're walking around in a dense fog, and you can't tell where you're going? You start feeling lost, and kinda detached, almost like you're sort of floating through everything? You know that feeling?

I've been feeling like that my entire life.

That sort of washed out feeling, like you've just been used for so long that you're used up.

That's me.

I've never been able to connect to anything or anyone. If anything, I'm the spectator – the commentator on occasion, but never a player.

That's why I got into Pokemon – I needed to be a player. I needed to be in my life, instead of watching it. I wanted to do something where I could say I truly got involved.

And boy, did I ever.

Fire-types were always my first choice. Any battle, any match, any bet, my money and my pride were on the Fire-type. But it was mostly luck that I got a Charmander as my first Pokemon when I turned fourteen. I didn't really worry about any other pokemon then. Just one was enough for my goals at the moment.

I lived in a foster home, not much better than the "real" home I was taken away from. The only difference between the home I was in and the "placement" home was that the foster family hid the bottles better. That entire town was a nightmare. The only good thing about it was it had an official Pokemon Trainer Program Admission Headquartes there, in the form of Professor Redwood's lab. You could only be legally allowed to travel with Pokemon and battle with them if you were a program participant, and you could only sign up at a PTPAH. That's where you got your first pokemon.

I was on the doorstep of Professor Redwood's lab the morning of my birthday. He was surprised to see me there, but he covered it up quick enough. Old Woody didn't want me to go, but he couldn't whine about it too much, cause then I would let it slip that he'd been banging me like a drum for the two years I'd lived there. And it gets even more illegal than that, because I wasn't as old as everyone thought I was: My ID said I was born in 1981, but I was born in 1983. In 1997, I was a whopping fourteen years old, and he'd been screwing around with me since I was twelve.

So he kept it quiet that I wasn't really sixteen, and I kept my mouth shut.. I had a fake ID I'd had for a few years now, and when I signed up, according to that ID, I was 16, and I was legally allowed to sign up in the PTP. I think he was hoping I wouldn't get my nerve up, or better yet, that someone would find out about my age and I wouldn't be allowed to go. He just wanted a couple more years of sex. I wanted a Charmander, and I wanted out of there.

We worked out a deal about a year into the bed business: he'd score a Charmander and hold it until everyone thought I was of age, and he could keep scoring with me in the meantime. I honestly was only sleeping with him before that because that way I didn't have to sleep in the "placement" house. After that, it was for the Charmander, too. But bouncing on a mattress with him was still more preferable that the screaming matches at "Placement," or the occasional slapping around.

So I signed up with my fake ID that morning on my 16th/14th birthday. Old Woody handed me the Pokeball, and I called out the creature within, just to make sure he came through on his end of the deal. I let out an orange lizard with a flame on the end of its tail just long enough to make sure it was a Charmander, and that it was living, and I called it back. "Just checking," I said with a smirk, and I headed for the door.

I didn't worry about only having about three changes of clothes on me, half a dozen rags, and a ratty old backpack. It didn't bother me that I had enough food to last me two days, at best, and no money. Nothing mattered to me right then, except that I was finally free.