Title: I'm Gonna Catch 'Em All
Summary: Ashy Ketchup was the shortest boy in his fifth-grade class, but he believed he could make the dream of Pokémon a reality. [One-shot, Parody.]
Rated: T
Warning: Things Escalate Quickly
Author's Note: I wrote this for my parody assignment for my creative writing class, so it's kinda short and the paragraphs are long for ff dot net.
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Ashy Ketchup was the shortest boy in his fifth-grade class, but no one could beat him at naming all 761 Pokémon and every single detail from the Pokémon franchise, including obscure facts that many couldn't care less about, such as the release date of the first game in the United States (September 30, 1998) and Ash Ketchum's birthday (May 22). Many called him a fanatic, but he believed that he could make the dream of Pokémon a reality: he would "catch 'em all." His entire life revolved around the world of Pokémon, and anything unrelated to it bored him immensely. His classmates and teachers thought Ashy was simply an over-enthusiastic Pokémon fan, but then, in second grade, Ashy started coming to school dressed as Ash Ketchum: he wore a black T-shirt, a blue and white jacket, jeans, green fingerless gloves, and a red and white cap, and permanently gelled his hair so that it spiked out on the sides. He also had his mother legally change his name to Ashy Ketchup so as to become closer to his idol in name; "I would have changed it to Ash Ketchum," he explained, "but then I would have been subjected to copyright claims." No one understood how he knew what the word "subjected" meant at age seven, much less how he understood the concept of copyright. His teachers hoped this meant he was a genius instead of a nonsensical Pokémon fan; this was a futile hope, since Ashy's grades were abysmal and it was a miracle that he had managed to pass the fourth grade.
No one believed in Ashy more than his mother, since she was too old to go on her own Pokémon journey and therefore projected her own dreams onto her son. She bought all the games, DVDs, and merchandise for him ever since his eyes first lit up at the sight of Pokémon. Their house was covered in Pokémon posters, all of the kitchen appliances were Pokémon-themed, and even their flower vases were patterned with images of Pokéballs. Cabinets were filled with books dedicated to Pokémon, including Ashy's handmade, glue-covered notebooks that held meticulous detail on each and every Pokémon in existence. The day Ashy turned ten, his mother helped him duct tape a plush Pikachu to his shoulder and gifted him with a bag of softballs half-spray painted red along with food, water, and other necessities. She waved him out of their tiny apartment with a handkerchief, shedding tears of joy and pride as he marched down the fourth story stairs. Ashy never went to school again.
Ashy's teacher called in a few days later, asking about Ashy's unexcused absence. "He finally turned ten, you know," Mrs. Ketchup sniffled through the phone. "Now that he's an adult, he can finally chase his dream of becoming a Pokémon master." Mr. Smith was appalled by the news, and with good reason: with Ashy gone, he no longer had the entertainment of a crazy fanboy to help him withstand the suffering of looking after children, a punishment so cruel that all he did was assign homework before browsing the Internet every school day. After informing the police of Ashy's runaway status, Mr. Smith eventually succumbed to his boredom and willingly watched the entire Pokémon series for two weeks straight, effectively overloading his mind with over nine thousand kilobytes of information and destroying his own mind. The day after his brain-dead body was buried, a note was found taped to his grave, written in scratchy handwriting: "I'm proud of you, Mr. Smith." There was no signature. Mrs. Ketchup cried.
Ashy was spotted a couple months later in an abandoned park, throwing softballs at a sick and malnourished puppy. When he was taken in for charges of animal abuse, he protested that he was simply trying to catch Pokémon and that this was a violation of his rights as a Pokémon trainer. One police officer, after reading over the details of Ashy Ketchup's case, sassily retorted, "If you're a Pokémon trainer, where's your trainer license, huh?" In response, Ashy proceeded to whip out an ID card from his back pocket as if he were waiting for the day he could show it off; it had the words "Pokémon Trainer License" sprawled over the top and listed information such as Ashy's legal name, birth date, and starter Pokémon. The police officer took a moment to think of a rebuttal — somehow not expecting that Ashy would have actually had a "license" — before Ashy tore his license out of her hands, grabbed a Pokémon plushie out of his backpack, and threw it at her, screaming, "I choose you, Squirtle!" The adorable Squirtle plushie smacked her in the face, dislodging her glasses from her face and rendering her blind. Ashy then grabbed his Squirtle and made his escape through the back door, once again evading the authorities. Sarah, the near-sighted police officer, was fired for being incapacitated by a stuffed animal.
Ashy Ketchup continued to avoid capture in this way for the next fifteen years and was only caught when teenage detective genius Sherley Homes predicted his appearance at a Pokémon convention. Several bags of Pokémon plushies, each plushie a different Pokémon, were confiscated from his person as crowds of conventioneers coolly ignored the young man and his elephant-sized bags being tackled to the ground by burly police officers. Complaints of "But I haven't caught them all yet!" were skillfully avoided and recorded for his mental health assessment. In the following months, twenty-five-year-old Ketchup was convicted of several first-degree murders — a large majority of them caused by the repeated throwing of baseballs (after questioning, he explained that in past years he had upgraded from regular "Pokéballs" to "ultra balls") — hundreds of robberies and break-ins, and the kidnapping of multiple children to be his Pokémon trainer "friends."
Ashy would have been sent off to a mental asylum due to his abnormal belief in Pokémon, but a group of his followers broke into jail the night he was to be taken away and rescued him from prison. All the officers on shift that night were brutally pummeled with an assortment of balls, ranging from tennis balls to bowling balls, landing them in either a hospital bed or a grave. The massacre would be named the "Sports Ball Massacre" by government officials, but most knew and referred to it as "The Rise of the PokéCult." Ashy, supported by the obsessive Pokémon fans all over the world who created the PokéCult, would continue to traverse the globe and work towards "catching them all." The Pokémon Company, already with a broken reputation due to Ashy's work, would have stopped all production related to the Pokémon franchise if they had not received an assortment of threats from the PokéCult, ranging from subtle sabotage to outright murder.
Ashy Ketchup still chases his dream today, searching in the shadows, while the amount of Pokémon continues to increase exponentially every year. No one has spotted him since his escape from prison that night, and parents fear the day their children choose to look up to "Ashy Ketchup, real life Pokémon master."