The Long And Lonely Story Of Trainer J

Chapter One

The Obligatory, Introductory Retrospection

Author's Note : My interpretation of the world of Pokemon. Original characters belong to me, everything else to Nintendo/Game Freak/Whatever.

Now this is yet another story by me. Starting yet another one is probably a bit ambitious, but I really like this idea so I'm going to go with it.

For a start, this takes place in a separate universe from most of my stories. A fair few of my other stories share a common universe, but this one is independent from the rest. It's a far more realistic, grounded and down to earth take on the world of pokemon. It's probably going to be more depressing and also duller than my other stories, with much less action and such, but I'm going to try a lot harder to make this a deeper story because I want it to be good. My other stories I'm just writing for fun really, but this is different. I am going to really try with this, which will mean updates will probably be even more scarce for this story than they usually are, because I'm not going to rush it, I'm going to take my time. Because I really want this to be good.

I should probably have split that into more than one paragraph somewhere.

My name is J. Pokemon trainer J.

Actually, my name is not J. No. In fact, my name doesn't even begin with J. My name is going to remain a mystery to you, but for the duration of this long, long story, I am going to refer to myself as J. Trainer J.

All of the names in this story are fake, aside from the people who are in the public eye already. Because I don't want the people who inspired these characters to know that this story exists. I don't want them to read this and notice that they were part of the events of this story, I want them to read it and think nothing more of it. So, kindly, if I did base a character on you, shut up and ignore it.

But back to me, because this story is about me. My name is J and my title is trainer. Official title, just like doctor or professor. I am Trainer J. I can't repeat that enough times because I am proud as hell of my trainer status. Just like you would be proud of earning a doctorate, I'm proud of earning a license.

And you know how I earned that license? It's not as easy as people think. You don't just file for one and get it mailed to your door straight away. Nor is it as easy as just paying for one. No, no no no. On top of my crippling school work, I had to study pokemon. While my friends were out being stupid teenagers, I stayed in my house and read about the dietary requirements of crocodilians or the behavioural patterns of mustelids. I had to sit an honest to fucking God series of exams that made my school exams look like spelling tests. I had to take personality and aptitude tests to ensure that I was capable of being a trainer and everything. I spent years preparing for this. Years.

It was a gruelling process, but it finally paid off when I earned my trainer's license at only the age of fourteen. Most people wouldn't pass their test for another two or three years if they passed it at all - that is if they even chose to take the test - but I had put the work in and made the sacrifices throughout the years, so I got to go off early.

So, I left my home in Fuschia. I left the safari and the plains and the beaches and crammed my suitcase into a taxi after saying bye to my parents and giving each a brief hug. I loved my parents, but I was hardly sad at all to be leaving them. No, I was more preoccupied with the journey that lay ahead of me. They, of course, were near to tears but wouldn't stop telling me how they were proud and worried and happy for me and all the rest of it.

My friends were the ones that I didn't want to leave. I had never been good at making friends, so I treated the ones that I did have like the precious commodities that they were. How I was going to make friends whilst travelling across a different region, I had no idea. The thought scared me more than just a little.

One of the many tests that I had taken was the type test. It was a test that took lots of things into consideration - personality, qualities, skills and all the rest of it - in order to decide which type suits you most.

You see, you can't just grab whichever pokemon you want and start using it in competitive battling. No, people have affinities for the different types and will bond far better with that type and generally just get along more easily with that type. Of course, you can try to train a pokemon that you don't have an affinity for, but it's difficult and dangerous. It's generally accepted that the best way to train pokemon is to train your own type.

Of course, some people have more than one affinity. For example, it's common for dark type trainers to also have a ghost affinity, and vice versa. The same goes for rock, ground and steel, and also for grass and poison. There are people who have affinities for two opposite types as well, like fire and water, or something totally unconnected like electric and bug. Then there are the chosen few that have an equal affinity for all types and can train whatever the hell they want, as well the unlucky few that have no affinity at all and just generally suck with pokemon.

So, I had taken that test, I had received my results and I was now heading over to the gym of that type because it's the best place to start. And the taxi that I had just climbed into was taking me to the airport. My parents had offered to come with me, but I refused. I had to be independent if I was going to be a trainer.

"Off to meet somebody, eh?" The taxi driver guessed. He was an old guy with thinning hair, a white moustache and a pair of wire glasses. He seemed like a nice enough guy.

"Uh..." I started pathetically. I was not good at conversation. I froze up for a few seconds and felt all the blood rushing to my face. I was arguably the most awkward person I had ever known. "N-no. I'm travelling," I managed.

"On your own?" He asked sceptically.

"Mm-hm," I said, nodding a confirmation too. Good thing, since my verbal confirmation had probably been too quiet for him to hear. My social skills were really not up to scratch.

I think the driver took a note of the fact that I sucked at conversation because he didn't speak again for the rest of the journey. So, he drove while I stared out the window, looking at the city that I was born and raised in, the only city that I really knew, knowing that I wouldn't be back there for a long time. I felt scared. I had barely ever been outside of Fuschia before in my life. I wasn't sure what to expect.

I gave the taxi driver a tip, awkwardly pausing and stuttering as I did so. He said thanks before I finished talking, cutting me off and putting me out of my misery. He wasn't being rude, he just knew that I didn't want to be speaking and acted accordingly. It was the humane thing to do.

I was so helpless that I nearly forgot take my suitcase out of the car.

I was even more helpless than most fourteen year olds. I walked quickly through the airport, glancing around like a frightened rabbit. I was not in my comfort zone. Watching the people around me strut about, confident, knowing where they were going and how to act in such an environment, I felt out of my depth. I could feel myself start to sweat, purely from fear.

I walked quickly, desperate to just get to the bloody plane. I followed signs and I followed people and I used my problem solving skills, and I eventually made it to my destination with less than five minutes to spare. They rushed me through metal detectors and x-ray machines and checked my passport and training license and other forms, all the while asking me questions to which I would reply with a stuttering murmur. Eventually, though, the horror was over and they let me board the plane.

Inside, the plane looked a lot like a bus to me. Same sort of flooring and same sort of seats, except with folding tables and cup holders. It looked like a bus with three rows of seats really. So, I nervously made my way to my designated seat and couldn't help but feel that everyone I walked past was staring at me. I felt like they would laugh at me as soon as my back was turned. I was like that with people. I wasn't good with them, I was a nervous wreck.

When I found my seat, I found that it was empty. Thankfully. I wouldn't have known what to do if someone had taken my seat - back then, I wouldn't have had the confidence to stand up for myself and tell them to just fuck off. The seat next to me was empty as well. I was glad, and just hoped that it stayed empty. A plane journey with a total stranger was not a thought that appealed to me. But I waited and waited and the plane took off and no one claimed the seat next to mine. I couldn't help but feel a wave of relief wash over me.

I took my suitcase, retrieved a thick paperback from it and began reading. It was a book about a corrupt, violent, mentally unstable police officer and his devotion to the arcanine that he worked alongside. I was about halfway through it and the protagonist was currently blackmailing a fifteen year old girl into giving him a blowjob. His arcanine had just been diagnosed with inoperable bowel cancer so the protagonist was even more volatile than usual.

I read through the rest of DCI Dennis Logan's story and felt myself sympathizing with the detective, even as he bribed and blackmailed and schemed and beat and murdered and fucked his way to the top of the food chain. Nobody fucked with detective chief inspector Dennis Logan. Well, that is until he got on the wrong side of a gang who then butchered his arcanine. Dennis Logan found and slaughtered them before committing suicide at the climax of the novel.

Not the best book I had ever read, but it passed the time on the plane. I guess it had fairly depressed me, but depressed was better than bored.

Then the plane landed.

I felt like I was in a crowd of cattle being herded as I made my way off the plane - all those people in front and behind me, all directed toward a common destination by a handful of people. I don't know, maybe I was thinking too much. That has always been a terrible habit of mine, and one that I retain to this day.

Again, I was searched. By hand, by metal detector, by x-ray, by everything. Exactly like coming onto the plane, but in reverse. But I carried no drugs on me. No foreign fruit or animals. No weapons. Nothing, so they waved me off and left me to fend for myself in a city - scratch that, an entire country - that I had never been in before.

And before me stood Goldenrod City. One of the biggest industrial cities in the known world, along with one of the foremost experts on the normal type - Whitney.

I stood just outside the airport, feeling like I was frozen in time. Everyone was moving, lugging suitcases behind them or wearing rucksacks or carrying briefcases, entering and exiting the airport and leaving for new countries and going back home and their children waddled by their side or sulked or maybe just acted like regular kids and I just stood there, staring. Goldenrod was magnificent.

In front of me was just a beautiful collage of buildings, some tall, some small, some in between, some old, some new, some hard to tell, but all were beautiful examples of architecture. And the two most prominent could be seen above everything else from the ground - the Goldenrod department store and the radio tower. Both were behemoths that lorded over the rest of the city, as if they knew they were the most important.

Along with studying Pokemon and everything about them, I had studied the region of Johto extensively. I knew I'd have to be travelling there one day, and so I was made to learn about it. Learn about every town, every city, all the notable citizens, everything. I knew that Whitney's gym was north of the department store and east of the radio tower and that once I got closer, I'd probably be able to see the gym - it was a fairly large building.

So I walked and I looked up at the buildings and the sky and looked at the people and just felt overwhelmed. This place was just colossal. I felt humbled even being in such a massive city. It felt like a city built for people greater than me.

And I walked for maybe half an hour. I did get lost a few times, but I always knew roughly where I was going, despite the size of the city. The distance wasn't enough to defeat me.

So when I got to the gym, I just stared. More than any of the other incredible buildings in the city, I fell in love with this one. A giant of a construct, most of its size was in its width and length, not its height - four storeys high if I remember rightly. I knew already that it had an extensive network of underground rooms and chambers and that it was designed to withstand even the most explosive of pokemon battles.

So, I made to push open the doors and stride in, but then found that the doors were automatic just as I went to push them. I lost my balance and stumbled ungracefully into the reception.

"Can I help you?" The man at the desk asked me with a sigh. A receptionist, what a soul destroying job.

"Em..." I started, then froze up. My face was burning after my almost fall and I felt...not awkward, but stupid. Laughably stupid. I felt like he wanted to laugh at me. "Yeah, I'm a trainer," I told him. He looked at me expectantly. I didn't know what else to say beyond that. I didn't know if I was supposed to ask to see Whitney or for a room or for a fucking information pamphlet or what. And he continued to look at me expectantly.

"So, do you want me to try and get Whitney or do you know what you're doing?" He asked me. What a stupid question, of course I didn't well know what I was fucking doing. I nodded my head, with a weak "Yeah," that he probably didn't even hear, too scared to attempt real conversation again.

I knew all about the geography of Johto. I knew all about life or death survival situations. I knew all about pokemon and plants and bacteria and ecosystems. I knew about all the citizens of note in Johto. Christ, I knew how to look after myself if I had to live alone. All my learning and studying and all those tests and exams had taught me all of that. But they missed out the most important thing of all: social skills. I was a social disaster.

"Hey, there's a trainer here that wants to see Whitney, I think he's new," the receptionist said down the phone, then waited for a reply. He was in his twenties, with a good tan and toned, muscular arms. He had jet black hair that he kept up with gel in a modern style that probably took him about four hours every morning. He had a thin coating of stubble on his face - I wasn't sure if it was deliberate or if he had just forgotten to shave - and there was a small bird tattooed on his forearm with a phrase in a language that I couldn't read underneath it.

He was good looking, confident, young, healthy and I was jealous of him. I wished I looked like that, yeah, but more than that, I wished I had his confidence. He could talk to people, and that just seemed so amazing to me. How could you approach a total stranger, open your mouth and just start to converse with them? How could you be so confident in yourself that you didn't freeze up and feel like an idiot? How could you walk down the street without thinking and fearing that everyone was laughing at you behind your back? I would have given anything for that kind of confidence, anything in the world. I'd have given a kidney or a testicle or even my license for just regular old confidence.

"Right, thanks Alicia," the receptionist said down the phone then hung up. I looked at him expectantly, then cast my gaze down to the floor when I realized I was doing so, embarrassed. "She's in the end room just down the hall from here," he told me, smiling and pointing down said hall.

"Thanks," I mumbled as I left to go find said room. I wished I could give someone a real, sincere thank you, but all I could put together were mumbles.

So I made my way down the corridor, head down and hands jammed in my pockets, nervous. I passed door after door until I came to the one at the end and I just stood there for a few minutes. My hand was raised, ready to knock, but I was too scared to actually do so at first so I just stood there and breathed, trying to gather the courage to knock. And eventually, I knocked, almost involuntarily.

"Come in," came a woman's voice from inside the room. I gripped the handle, took a deep breath and pushed the door open to reveal a living room. There was a glass coffee table between two leather couches and a cream carpet. The only thing on the plain white walls was a mounted plasma screen TV. I could see a kitchen through an open door to one side and there was a closed door at the other side - what lay behind that was a mystery to me.

And on one of the couches sat Whitney, an ash tray on the table in front of her and a cigarette dangling between her lips. She was a tall, slim girl in her early twenties, with shoulder length light brown hair and hazel eyes. She wore a pair of old, beat up, black baseball boots, faded skinny jeans and an off-white vest. This was a surprise.

"You can stop staring, I know I look different in the ads, we all do," she grunted. Different was an understatement. On the TV Whitney had pink hair tied up in two bunches and had pink eyes. She tended to wear bright shoes, trendy jackets, short shorts and long, colourful socks. And she always seemed to be a bubbly, ditzy girl on TV, but that's not the air she was giving off now.

It was definitely her, her face was the same. It's just that everything else was so normal.

"So, you're the new arrival to our wonderful gym?" She asked, a hint of sarcasm in her voice, standing up and stretching. I nodded hesitantly. "You new to training?" I nodded once again, this time a little more confidently. "You're going to suck," she told me. "Welcome to the club."