Hello everyone! I'm new to the pokémon section of the site, so please excuse any flaws in my canonical knowledge, or facts established by the fan community that I'm not aware of.

This fic will be rated T for now, but will most definitely rise to M in a few chapters. On another note, the timeline for this story is different from what you may be used to (You'll see soon enough) but it's roughly six or seven years before Ash began his journey. He will not feature, by the way.

I hope you'll enjoy this- reviews are welcome, concrit, 'omgplzupdate', and even flames. Please give this fic a chance. Oh, and somewhat arbitrarily but because it is established token on this site, I will state now that I own no facet of the pokémon franchise.

The Greater Good

Chapter One

It didn't really matter that she'd left the Power Plant behind maybe an hour ago; it had completely slipped her mind that she'd even begun to wander. Kicking about glass and broken debris is only a game if you treat it so, and a much darker cloud had obscured the sun late that afternoon, draining the fun out of it. When the wind picked up, the area became sort of hollow- this area of Kanto generally was. Lavender Town wasn't as close as it looked, and you got the occasional trainer or hiker pottering around the Rock Tunnel, but for the most part a resident could spend their days in utter loneliness.

Monday was upon them again- another Monday, same as the rest. She remembered that Jared had gone to the Mart for some milk on a Monday. He'd never come back. That was the sort of place this was, near the old Power Plant; purgatory for the listless.

A flock of spearow shrieked overhead, sustaining their strained flight enough to clear a more dangerous stretch of rocks, no doubt on their way to the plant to sit on the power lines. Annie herself didn't own any pokémon, nor did she particularly want to. In fact, and by simple observation alone it could be ascertained, Annie wanted nothing in particular either. She was gliding through her teenage years, mumbling into lonesome sunsets by the sea with angry rocks clutched in her hands, skipping them out to their watery graves. They never went far.

Something caught her eye across the strange tundra. The tendrils of a small cooking fire reached meekly for the sky from faraway. Some ugly thought reminded her that open fires were illegal on the moor, but boredom quelled it swiftly. Annie headed towards the sign of life with fervour she hadn't known she possessed, like a moth to a flame. As she approached, she found three young men and a girl seated cross-legged, stripped down to their thermals (the cold up here could be quite deadly to those not accustomed to it), talking amiably with each other and nursing a flask of some alcohol between them.

"Oi!" One of them caught sight of Annie across the moor. "Oi, oi!"

The others turned to see what had caught his attention. "Hey!" the girl shouted, grinning big and showing immaculate teeth, even from far away. "Hey, come over here!"

Annie hesitated, but began walking after a few seconds. It was the way home, anyway, so she wasn't going out of her way to meet these people. There were sometimes humans out on the plains, but pokémon usually wouldn't go near them. It was folklore that battery acid waste from the power plant had leaked into the soil long ago in the accident that caused it to become abandoned.

"Hullo." She said, somewhat timidly as she approached. The girl has stood up, revealing a thick, lightly muscled physique under grey thermals. Annie envied people that just oozed confidence in the way that his girl did.

"You live here, yeh?" She asked as she thrust out a hand in greeting, dirty hair falling into her eyes. "I've been about awhile, seen you in the village. Don't mean us no trouble, yeh?"

"No, I don't." She agreed, taking the proffered hand gingerly, cringing at the calluses and the crumbling coat of mud. "What're you doing here, anyway?"

She shrugged, the kind of shrug that is a half-answer and a lie. "Oh, we're just around. You know, for a bit, yeh?"

She had a rough, city accent. Annie nodded. "All right. Must be going, I suppose."

"Nah!" The boy who'd shouted 'oi' dismissed the thought so strongly that in that instant she forgot it had ever occurred to her. "Fire has five places 'round it, if Jordan moves his arse."

Jordan, identified as the blonde and slightly stiffer of them, dutifully shuffled towards the third boy, who, in giddy delight at the ownership of the alcohol, was gazing at the grey, overcast sky merrily. Annie sat. What else had she to do? Well, there was laundry. And dinner. And then, she supposed… something.

The bottle was passed to the loud lad, who handed it to her with a kind smile. "This place is shit, you know."

Annie nodded, a slight scowl tempered by the obvious truth. It was a useless part of Kanto, refusing to die but also never prospering. With some sort of defiance, she took a loud swig of what turned out to be pecha rum, wincing as it burned her throat. It was cheap stuff, for appropriately cheap company. "I guess so."

"So." The girl butted back in from where she was poking the fire. "Got any pokémon?"

"No."

"Want one?"

"No."

Annie wondered why she looked so surprised.

"Do you want… a job?"

"…'Suppose."

"Oh, shit me a sandshrew, Kaylee, listen to her." The loud boy exclaimed, turning to Annie. "Lazy as a snorlax, you are, no 'ffence."

Annie was offended. "Pardon?"

He stretched and yawned, showing her a tattoo of a gyarados curled around the letter R on the right side of his stomach, poking out of his boxers. She was suddenly very aware of the dubious probity of her company, quite out of her comfort zone.

"Well, you're for want of trying, innit? Or someway like that. We've been here for, what, three days, and we're already bored as kakunas. I imagine you're, like, sixteen? Abouts? You must be bored off your pants."

"It's not that bad," she insisted, but her heart wasn't in it. "A little desolate, but we get by. I think it's foolish to go off, rambling around the country, never sure what could happen to you."

"What, trainers?" Kaylee snorted, finishing some drink. "Easy targets, trainers are."

"Here, here!" the drunken boy said suddenly, and all four of them looked proudly at a satchel that was sitting in his lap. He realised they were there and enthusiastically emptied it out, sending a myriad of pokéballs rolling onto the grass.

"Fourteen, not including ours." He slurred, hands touching the balls at his belt in reassurance, where two red and white spheres were held tightly. "How many d'you have?"

"None, she already said, Dean." Kaylee snapped.

"Why do you have so many?" Annie asked, picking one up and feeling the weight- definitely full. If these didn't belong to the teens, whose were they?

"Took 'em, didn't we?" said Dean, picking three up and beginning to shakily juggle them. "Skills."

He dropped one and the others snorted. The button connected with a hard patch of ground and by chance, it popped open, a short burst of red light solidifying into a large, angry nidoran.

"Shit." The loud boy, the one with the tattoo, said, but calm as anything, he whipped a ball from his belt, enlarged it and called forth a growlithe. It had a dull coat littered with patched of backbrushed hair, and looked pretty beat up. Annie didn't know much about pokémon health, but even she could tell that this one needed a nurse pretty bad. "Growlithe, attack!"

At the command, the pokémon flitted across the fire, launching itself at the confused nidoran. Sharp claws extended, it caught the poor thing in the face, sending the two of the sprawling backwards, leaving semi-deep lines of pain. Kaylee picked an empty pokéball from nowhere and readied herself, although the growlithe continued to scrap with the nidoran. With some aggrieved cries and squeals that travelled far across the moor, the nidoran gave up and consented to be pummelled, when it was quickly captured again my Kaylee's waiting ball.

The whole event was over in seconds, leaving Annie shell-shocked.

"Dean, don't play with the loot."

"Aight." He acquiesced, albeit half-heartedly. "I told you that nido was trouble. That kid was a piece of work."

"God, I know! Cap-backwards, short-wearing bundles of egoism, those lads." Jordan spoke suddenly, looking agitated.

They all agreed that the owner of the nidoran had been annoying. Annie found herself uneasy. However it had been taken, it had not been a happy or mutually beneficial exchange.

"Look at her, like she'd seen a haunter!" the drunk boy, Dean, cackled. Kaylee saw Annie's face and cooed, putting the pokéball away and picking her way over their shrub-layer of belongings.

"Aw, honey." She gave Annie what was more of a squeeze than a hug, a bizarre thing to give to someone she barely knew. "Right, I have a plan."

"Does it involve food? I got me some serious munchies."

"Don't smoke so much shit then." She retorted, fixing tattoo-boy with a withering stare. "My plan is better."

Jordan raised a barely-visible eyebrow. "Your plans are so famous for going marvellously, yeh?"

"Shut up. Anyways, I think we should get Boring here a pokémon."

"…Why?"

"…Just, 'cause."

"Waste of time, Kay."

She scowled at him. "And sitting here in some god-forsaken marsh isn't?"

"Not the point. We shouldn't just wait around here. There's nothing to get any more, we got all of it, didn't we? Pigs will start turning up, longer we stay."

"No polies 'round here, Raf."

He shrugged and flopped back onto the ground, collecting the pokéballs in, before setting it down and sighing. "All right, I suppose. But if you get it the shit for this, my name stays out of it."

"As always."

Annie was not sure whether she liked how this was panning out.

Of course, she'd met other people before, other people her age. But these were different. To begin with, they were from the city, which made them dangerous. And then she had to consider the stolen pokémon… it was not a good idea to mix with them, and yet she found herself with a small, guilty excitement. Perhaps it was fine to be whisked along by their strong winds for once. Perhaps. Just perhaps.

Kaylee hooked her arm in Annie's in that way that girls often do, leading her away from the fire. A rapidly descending mist of twilight was upon them, with the horizon a fine line of offensive pink. They headed north, for the Rock Tunnel, skirting around the power plant, taking swigs of rum as they did so. Kaylee did look at the plant curiously, and Raf even dashed inside for a tense couple of minutes, only to return with a fat, newly filled pokéball and a grin. They'd left Jordan and Dean with the fire.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Annie asked, her voice lost in a gust of wind. In response, her companion pulled her faster up a small slope. They appeared to know the route well enough, and the Rock Tunnel grew in prominence to the northwest. It was quite a trek, and although Annie considered herself relatively fit, Kaylee and Raf didn't break their pace. They'd occasionally chat indecipherable anecdotes relating to things she didn't understand, mostly about incidents that had occurred recently. None of them sounded particularly charitable, but Annie decided she didn't have the courage to go against any of it. Or maybe it wasn't that- and this was an uncomfortable thought in itself- and she was enjoying it. That didn't sit well, so she dusted it under her mental carpet.

"Hey," Kaylee snapped her fingers and Annie, mortified, awoke from her reverie. "Pay attention, you, yeh?"

"Sorry." She didn't know why she was apologising. "I just… what are you really doing here?"

"Passing through." Raf interjected quickly, sharing a glance with his friend. "On our way to Cerulean City, innit?"

"There are easier ways to get to Cerulean City." Annie argued. "Route eight, skirt around Saffron City and up Route Five?"

"We're doing a loop." He replied. "None of your business 'neways."

"Chill, Raffy." Kaylee drawled back at him with a meaningful look. "You are such a worry-wuss."

"I have reason to worry. If shit hits the fan, I'm the one who takes the flak."

"She's just a kid. You're not going to mention us to anyone, yeh?"

Annie wouldn't have either way. She wasn't community-conscious, and there wasn't really any community to be conscious of up here. "Of course not."

"See? S'fine."

He eyed Annie incredulously, but nevertheless stopped his badgering, produced a packet of cigarettes from beside his pokéballs on his belt and lit up, eyes glassy, passing one to Kaylee as an afterthought. She wondered what sort of person he was, really. Who, in fact, were they all? She'd not have been so worried, had they not carried a strange magnetism with them, some indecipherable pull behind their eyes, like a fishing lure.

From a rocky outcropping emerged the ragged entrance to the Rock Tunnel, ten feet high and somehow darkening the air around it. In Annie's opinion, it looked like the gaping maw of some horrible beast. The three of them stood looking at it for a while, before Kaylee took a ball from her belt, unleashing a magnemite.

"Right." She said, stepping into the gloom. "Magnemite, Flash!"

With a small spark, the small floating magnet pokémon began to give out harsh white light that outlined the heavy cracks and crevasses in the walls. They stepped in, Raf stubbing out his cigarette before stooping to follow the two girls, muttering darkly to himself, something about hating caves.

"Why d'we have to catch something in here again?" he complained, glancing at the unfathomable ceiling dubiously. "Wouldn't a bellsprout do?"

Kaylee snorted. "Not unless we want her to be laughed at."

"I'll laugh at her anyway."

"You make yourself sound so attractive, don't you?" she sighed and looked at Annie. "Mostly ignore Rafael. Oh, shit… sorry, what was your name?"

"You never asked."

"Oh."

"It's Annie." She added.

"I get how weird this is," Kaylee said quietly as they walked deeper into the cave, letting Rafael wander behind them. He'd let his growlithe out for a bit, letting it stretch its legs after the fight with the nidoran. Perhaps it was just the fact that he had been drinking and smoking, but Raf seemed a restless person, never quite content with what was in front of him, always looking around the next corner.

Annie shrugged in response. She wasn't comfortable with the company, but neither was she particularly upset by it. Owning a pokémon was not high on her list of aspirations, though realistically that list wasn't very long. "It's not too bad. At least you're not kidnappers."

The irony was lost on Raf.

"Anyway, let's find something for you." Kaylee suggested quickly, directing magnemite to dim its glow a bit as to not discourage any wild pokémon. A muted flapping came from around a sharp bend, and the three of them ducked against the cave wall, Kaylee pressing a pokéball into Annie's hand. "Have a go yourself." She whispered.

A loud cry echoed around, loud on Annie's ears. She felt the smooth surface of the ball in her hand and its strange weight, fingers tightening around it. This was her chance to change, to get out of Kanto's proverbial Valley of Ashes. A desire she'd never possessed before erupted behind her eyes and in that moment Annie changed inside herself. There was a new resolve, a sort of pulsing anxiety to live beneath her skin, and she recognised and empathised with Raf's restlessness.

In a rush, the high-flying crowd of zubat launched themselves at the group, fangs bared and screeching.

"Go!" Annie shouted with fervour, throwing the ball into the air. From within came a large, angry sandslash, growling under its breath and bursting to fight.

"Go on, command it!" Kaylee urged her.

"Uh, sandslash, fury swipe!" She yelled the first attack that came to her head.

It jumped up in the air into the wave of zubat, its razor-sharp claws slicing clean through their vulnerable bodies. Annie felt slightly sick as blood hit the walls and the dismembered bodies of the zubat fell to the floor. The sheer brutality and raw power of Kaylee's sandslash was terrifying.

Sandslash landed neatly on the floor, raising a cloud of dust. A single zubat remained- larger than the rest with its sharp teeth bared. With a ripple in the air, it sent out waves of pulsing sound, louder that human hearing could bear. In the nick of time, sandslash curled into a ball, but was battered with an unheard thud onto the wall. Unfurling, sandslash shrugged of the impact and lunged again, this time headbutting the zubat directly in its stomach. It plummeted towards the ground. Kaylee roughly took the empty pokéball belonging to sandslash out of Annie's hand and replaced it with a newer, smaller one that was much lighter.

"Don't stand there gawking, capture it!"

With a nervous jitter, Annie braced herself and threw the ball, meeting the falling zubat halfway. It disappeared in a flash of red light just as Kaylee withdrew her sandslash, the ball falling to the cave floor with a clack.

There was no question as to whether it was caught- it was half-dead either way. Annie numbly walked over, careful not to tread on the severed bodies of its dead compatriots, and picked up the sphere. It felt hot to the touch.

"Nicely done." Kaylee said, at which Raf nodded. "Still, you could have been a bit easier on those other zubat. We can capture them, even if they don't change hands for much, Raf has a habit to feed and points mean prizes."

"Points mean weed." Raf added sagely from where he was already walking out towards the entrance.

"Same thing." She said, minimizing her sandslash's ball and attaching it back to her belt. "So, how does it feel?"

Annie hesitated with her new pokémon in her hand. "…Odd."

"It'll become normal with time." Kaylee explained, linking her arm into Annie's and guiding her out of the cave, strolling jovially. "Anyway, let it rest for a bit, then you can pound the shit out of little kids who have something less powerful. Y'know, the cap-backwards lot that think they're hotter than charizard?"

"We kinda took all their pokémon already." Raf pointed out.

"Why would I want to hurt them?"

That was the wrong thing to ask.

"…Why wouldn't you?"

"Because…"

They fell silent as they left the cave.

Later on, after an awkward walk, they reunited with a spectacularly drunk Jordan and Dean, who were sat in their underpants by the fire laughing louder than the zubat had screeched. "Whoa! Jordan, looook!"

"I see stars!" Jordan was on his back looking at the sky. "Look, stars!"

They burst out laughing.

"You two, we gotta get going." Kaylee said, annoyed at their antics. "Ah, shit, you're three sheets to the wind. We're never gonna up pegs tonight."

"Chill, Kay. We got 'bags and ground mats."

"'Suppose."

They all looked at Annie. She felt prompted to speak. "It was nice to meet you all."

"Wish I could say the-"

"Shut up, Raf."

"He's only saying it 'cause he likes you."

"I doubt it." She replied, bowing herself out of the circle of light thrown onto the ground by the dwindling fire. "Uh, thanks for helping me, I guess."

"Yeh, see ya."

Annie walked away then, her back turned, feeling strange inside. What had just happened was so monumentally different from her normal life, so unnaturally bright and colourful in her dim home environment that she felt she'd never quite be the same. She arrived home, let herself in and set her pokéball on her bedside table, staring at it as moonlight reflected off its shiny surface.

It seemed more alive than she was.