Welcome, potential readers! I've put this story up before, but ended up taking it down to be revised. So here it is once again with a shiny new title and a few small changes!
"I don't want to go on a journey." I said quietly glaring at the back of my mother's head as she prepared dinner. "I know I'll be seventeen, legally eligible for a trainer's license, it just doesn't hold any appeal for me."
My mother didn't even turn to face me. "You couldn't wait to leave when you were younger, besides it'll teach you to interact with others, you'll make good friends when you go."
"I have friends; they just live all over the world." I snapped letting my anger show a bit. "They aren't being forced to go off on their own."
"You're going and that's that." My mother said, challenging me to say otherwise. Knowing a lost battle when I saw one I turned and quickly left the room grabbing The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien so I could lose myself in a fantasy world.
I frowned at the memory from two weeks ago, I didn't like arguing with my mom I always felt guilty after no matter what the fight had been about. "Only seven." I said looking at the clock on the nightstand to my left. I'd set my alarm for eight, in an attempt to oversleep so I'd miss my seven thirty appointment at the local Pokémon center. That plan failed though, instead of fighting it I sighed and climbed out of bed, slowly getting some clothes for a shower.
"Stop stalling and get ready." I heard my mom's voice from downstairs. How she knew I was moving slowly was beyond me.
"I'm going I'm going." I called down not speeding up at all. Eventually I ran out of things to stall with and returned to my normal morning speed soon ending up downstairs a blank look on my face.
"Here, eggs." My mother said producing a plate of eggs out of nowhere. "If you don't eat now you'll regret it later."
Knowing she was probably right I grabbed the plate and sat down at the table to eat. "Normally you don't make me breakfast." I said, my voice not hiding the fact that I didn't want today to happen.
"Normally my only son isn't leaving on his journey." My mom said smiling. "I still think you're going to have a great time, now hurry up, we're cutting it close as it is." She said grabbing her pocket book and walking out the front door to the car.
I blinked and looked at my half eaten eggs. Figuring she made them so she must have intended for me to finish them I ate them as slowly as possible and followed my mother out the door. "Why is it that you're more excited for this than I am?" I asked walking to the small black car parked in the driveway. "I'm pretty sure you're supposed to be worried about all the danger I'll face out there."
"If I act excited some of the energy should rub off on you so you eventually get excited about going on your journey." My mother said from the driver's seat. "Come on, get psyched, It's not everyday you leave to travel Hoen."
"I'm not entirely sure Hoen is a good choice for a newbie trainer." I said thinking back to various statistics I'd read in an attempt to persuade my mother into not making me go on this journey while climbing into the passenger's seat. "There is a ten percent higher death rate of young trainers here than in any other region."
"Yeah, well 87.6 percent of all percentages are made up on the spot." Mom said grinning "You're going to this appointment and you're going on this journey."
"Fine" I said and stared out the window bringing an end to the conversation. The ride to the Pokémon center took close to thirty minutes due to traffic and the distance between the outskirts of Lilycove City and the Pokémon center closer to the center of said city. But entirely too soon for my liking we arrived at the Pokémon center my mom cutting off some man in a blue prius to get a decent parking spot.
"This is it, my little boy getting his first Pokémon." She said a smile on her face. "The officials won't wait forever get in there."
Wordlessly I got out of the car and entered the red roofed building. Looking around the lobby I sighed hoping that not every Pokémon center had the same décor. Yellow tile floors and orange-red walls, whoever designed this place had bad taste in color. "Excuse me I have a seven thirty appointment to get my trainer's license and starter Pokémon." I said approaching the nurse behind the front desk.
"Cutting it a bit close I see." The nurse said with a smile. "I'm Dylan, if you'll follow me we can get you registered as a trainer." With a nod I follow as he walks out from behind the front desk and down a hallway to the right. "So what's your name kid?" he asks stopping in front of a door and taking out a set of keys.
"Gabriel Pond." I said as Dylan unlocked the door and walked in.
"Well Gabriel I'm going to ask you a few questions and see what I can do about getting you a Pokémon." Dylan said sitting at the rather disorganized desk in the back of the small room. "First of all are you a boy or a girl?" he asked reading from a sheet of paper.
"Boy." I said surprised that he couldn't have skipped that question. The rest of the questions were just as simple as the first. I answered as honestly as possible figuring the questions were some sort of personality test used to determine if a kid was stable enough to become a trainer.
"Okay, that's all the questions." Dylan said putting the paper he'd been recording on in a machine that kind of looked like a fax machine. "While your license gets approved let's go pick out your starter."
"I'm not gonna have to choose between three random Pokémon am I?" I asked figuring if I had to have a Pokémon I didn't want something common that every trainer had. "I read that some places do that."
"No, I'm pretty sure they only do that in Kanto these days." Dylan said leading the way out of the room and into one filled with shelves upon shelves of red and white spheres. "Now, do you have a preference to species or type?"
"None at all." Judging by the look I got from Dylan that wasn't the answer most kids gave him. "Surprise me."
"Well than if it's a surprise you want it's a surprise you get." He said disappearing among the shelves of pokeballs. As Dylan searched for a Pokémon to gift me with I looked around the room my eyes soon finding a plaque above the door that said most of the pokemon stored in the room were donated by breeders or trainers that couldn't take care of a young Pokémon. "Here we are!" Dylan said appearing out of nowhere with a pokeball in hand. "I think this should be a decent match for you."
"What is it?" I asked only slightly curious. "It's not some uber powerful creature of mass destruction I hope."
"You'll just have to wait and see." Dylan said handing me the metal sphere and leading me back to what I assumed was his office. "It looks like you've passed the little test you took earlier." He said looking at the fax machine thing from earlier. Of course the only difference I could see was a blinking green light. "I'm now officially authorized to give you your trainer's license." he said opening one of the drawers of the desk and pulling out a red device.
"A Pokedex." I said before he could say anything about the device. Taking the device from his hand a moment after he offered it to me I began cycling through the various apps included in the small thing. "I've read about these, I assume this is the newest model…although I heard rumors on the internet that Unova was already developing the next generation of them though."
Well, There it is. Re-released chapter one. Leave a review if you liked it, or suggestions if you think I could improve~