Chapter One ~ Broken Pedestals

A trainers first Pokemon is one of the most important aspects of a Pokemon trainers life. Traditionally, they were gifted one of three designated 'starters', though many choose to attempt to catch their own or are given a Pokemon from friends or family.

I wanted my starter to be special, to be something unique and powerful. Something that would be the start of an amazing team with great capabilities. I lived in Sinnoh, and the starters there (Piplup, Chimchar and Turtwig), though strong, didn't meet the standards I had set for my future team. So instead I'd turned to my parents. I'd drawn up a list of possible starters for my parents; Dratini, Beldum, Larvitar ~ anything that could be strong and powerful. Fire breathing was a bonus. I was determined to get the starter of my dreams and, as my brother Jay was an experienced Pokemon breeder, I felt I had higher than average chance of this happening. I mean, my parents had said no to every single starter I had suggested, but I was sure Jay would pull through for me.

"Here you go dear; we even placed it in a special premiere ball just for you!" My heart raced as my mother handed me the white, red rimmed pokeball. We were stood outside in the garden, where we had just been celebrating my 18th birthday and the arrival of my trainer ID and Pokedex. My 18th had actually been a couple days earlier, but my ID and Pokedex had been delayed so we'd put off the celebrations for a few days.

Oh boy! Here it is, I finally find out which Pokemon is going to be the start to the worlds strongest team. I can see it now, me with a Dragonite, proudly defeating the elite 4 and eventually, the champion herself, Cynthia. Sky the Dragonite and Lilly Robinett, the strongest Pokemon and trainer team to exist, more powerful than Cynthia and her famed Garchomp.

Pressing the release button on the pokeball I watch as the red energy slowly forms my first Pokemon. Four blue stubby legs attached to a cloud of cream coloured wool. A thick tail with an orange sphere on the end. A blue face with two round, cone like ears.

In other words, a Mareep.

In other words, the destruction of all my hopes and dreams.

The dream-destroyer looked at me lazily, before lowering its head to graze on the grass. It didn't seem all that enthusiastic about becoming the worlds strongest Pokemon. It didn't seem all that enthusiastic about, well, anything.

"See dear, isn't it cute?" Sure, if a destroyer of dreams can be described as cute. Ignoring my mother, I reached forward to stroke the Pokemon, and it acknowledged me with a slow blink, leaning ever so slightly into my hand. Okay, so it was fluffy. So obviously it was cute but I couldn't exactly see Cynthia's famed Garchomp shivering with fear at a cloud on legs.

"It's not just any old Mareep" said Jay, looking rather mareepish himself, "I've bred it a special move; it knows Charge, which strengthens electric type attacks."

This meant my plan to become champion needed some reworking. Maybe I could trade the Mareep for an upgrade at the next town over? But who would trade a battle Pokemon for a Mareep of all things? Perhaps I could dye it's wool pink and trade it off as a shiny... Now there's an idea...

Still, the little Mareep was actually kinda adorable, and it's generally unapproved off the give away your starter Pokemon. Okay then, a Mareep was fine! I would just have to use my exceptional training skills to make it the worlds most powerful Ampharos! All I needed to do was find those exceptional trainer skills. That should be easy enough...

right?

Authors Note: Thanks for reading this far! I hope you enjoyed it, and choose to follow the story as it progresses! Reviews are really appreciated, particularly ones that give constructive criticism. I'm doing this to improve my creative writing skills, so it's really important to me that I get feed back. Hope to see you back soon! I plan on updating this story weekly if I can, so you should see regular updates. Let me know what you think of my starter Pokemon; I wanted something unspectacular, to fight against the tropes of OP starters some fan fictions have. I chose today give it an egg move and a premiere ball because I felt that families would go to some extent to make the starter special, even if it is a plain Mareep. Now I just need to name it...