Anything Butt Sane
Back when I was a kid, all my friends wanted to become a Pokémon master. In theory this sounded like fun, even to me. I mean, who wouldn't want to travel the country with your own personal brainwashed monster stuffed in your pocket and collect a whole lot more of those brainwashed pocket sizable monsters in all colours of the rainbow and raise them to be freaking terrifying as fuck ugly war gods and beat the shit out of a bunch of elite fancy ass people's ugly war gods and get famous for it? Not to mention get paid for it!
Oh yeah, and save the world from some evil gangster mob and catch some super sparkly boss monster that's ugly as fuck. Like Red. Gosh, that dude was the shit. Until some kid from Johto beat the shit out of him.
Sounded so freaking cool. We all wanted to be that kid. We all wanted to do that shit. I'll repeat that for good measure. We all wanted to do that shit. Which, for your information, was anything but good. Because like, what if God forbid, one of us was gonna get a taste of glory's fine ass and the rest of us wasn't? What if only one of us got a free Eevee? Only one of us.
So like, one day everyone decided to go freaking insane. Shit went down when some chick named Johanna and a dude named Rowan thought they could waltz into town with some homeless Pidgey. They thought they could go to the Trainer school and give away that poor Pidgey to one of our classmates for free for all of us to see and get away with it.
Did they get away alive? Yes. In one piece? Well, sorta, kinda, maybe. If they kept their legs, they sure as hell wouldn't be showing them around these parts again anytime soon.
That Pidgey, though. Yikes. You don't even want to know. All right, I'll tell you. But only because you're still reading this shit. The kids all went ballistic over it and basically tore the bird's wings off in a massive tug-war orgy and it kind of bled to death on the spot. I remember because the blood stained my favourite shirt. God, I loved that shirt.
In any case, we now refer to that day as the Sinnoh-trainers-are-stupid-as-fuck-incident. Because no one should ever give away a Pokémon to one kid in front of a class of power hungry nine year olds. Like ever. I mean, don't people know what kids are capable of doing these days? Gosh.
The incident also marked the day of the Future-trainers-are-doomed-as-fuck Era in which we are currently living.
'Cause some kid named Giovanni decided something that day. He decided that he was going to take whatever Pokémon he wanted to have, no matter what it cost. Like if he were starving and he could choose between a Happy Meal and a Mew, he would take his own leg and beat the shit out of Mew and eat it. His leg, I mean. He'd stuff Mew in his trusty brainwash ball, duh.
So basically in the midst of the chaos –dead Pidgey stuff everywhere—Giovanni grabbed a pink plastic shovel and proceeded to stab that Rowan kid with it in his eye. Then he stole one of Rowan's Pokéballs and it exploded in a dazzling white light. The white light vomited out a Meowth. Giovanni stared deeply into the feline's eyes and the feline stared back and whatever intimate soul exchange was communicated between them must have been mutual because then the pair ran off into the sunset together, cursing loudly. Because there was poison ivy everywhere.
I think Giovanni is running his own bikini model agency on some Godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere these days. Or using it to mask some evil corporation hell-bent on overtaking the universe. Whatever.
More importantly, Giovanni inspired the majority the kids in the village turn into anal punks who lived their lives as thieves and cheats. And pink-shovel-murderers. Because somehow it became trendy to beat the shit and piss out of people with a pink shovel if you wanted to steal their Pokémon.
So yeah. All the wimpy boys and girls were so terrified of raising strong, beautiful Pokémon and having their insides stabbed with pink garden tools that there was only one thing left to do.
Raise weak, ugly Pokémon that not even a blind person would be caught deaf with. Yeah, you read that right. Deaf. Because they would just know even if they couldn't see or hear themselves being mocked. They could telepathically taste the rejection in the air. Like seriously. Breathe and you'll know what I'm talking about.
If you're wondering what I did, I think it's super obvious. I did the smartest thing in the whole freaking world. Like it was so brilliant, I cannot even believe my brain capacity sometimes. There's some wicked shit happening in there. So what did I decide to do?
I didn't get a Pokémon. Mhm.
And life was a walk in the park.
No one tried to rob me or stab me or mock me while this crap became a global thing. I made it into my mid-teens without any stab marks or emotional scarring. Or least none of the sort that doesn't happen anyhow. Because teenagers are an angsty species of fucked up.
You know, I had just figured out how to tell my parents that I was going to be a super successful garbage man for the rest of my life when it happened. When that man showed up at our front door. I still remember the look on his face when I made the mistake of letting him into our house but my recollection of what he smelled like still haunts my nostrils. The man reeked of justice and purpose. To this day it still makes me want to bury myself alive in my own vomit.
"Jack," Professor Oak began solemnly. "I have come to ask you to go on a mission only you can complete."
Oh how I wish I had invested in a pink plastic shovel back then.
Oak took a step closer to me and took a hold of my shoulders, eyes shining with something that made me want to scream for help. But it was no use. My mouth was filled with toffee cake and my jaws were tired.
"Jack, I need you to end this madness that has corrupted our country. I need you to become a Pokémon trainer."