Beep…beep…beep…WHAM

I dropped my arm away from the insistent alarm. "It's too early…" I moaned, curling up tighter underneath my blankets. "And too cold…"

"JAMES WILLIAMSON, WAKE UP RIGHT NOW!" my mom shouted from downstairs. Ah, mothers, vigilantes of promptness and punishers of the late-waking. I reluctantly rolled out of bed and onto the floor. Thud. "NOW GET DRESSED AND COME DOWNSTAIRS!" she hollered. Now, I love my mom, but damn she's got a pair of lungs on her.

"What's the big rush!" I shouted back, lurching to my dresser and pulling on a shirt and pair of pants.

"DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS?" Of course I did. It was April 30th, when the responses Pokemon League trainer applications were sent out… oh.

I was instantly fully awake, dashing around my room to gather my stuff. Here was my cap and over there were my socks and where were my shoes?

"Mom! Where are my shoes!" I shouted, peering into my shrubbery.

"THEY'RE DOWN HERE!" I ran down the stairs, and mom met me at the bottom. I had her messy brown hair, although she wore hers longer than I did; to the shoulders rather than to the ears as I did. I had my dad's blue eyes rather than her green ones, though, and took after him in height as well, being almost a foot taller than mom; who wasn't tiny herself. I was 6'8", and the tallest guy in town ever since my dad…

"Hi mom," I said, wrapping my arms around her. She squeaked and wriggled out. It had been a morning ritual ever since I grew too big for her to do it to me.

"You're finally awake," she said, stepping back and looking me over. "Your friend Lyra was here a few minutes ago, by the way. She was playing hide-and-go-seek with her marill."

"Yes, yes, but did my application go through?" I prompted.

Mom nodded. "It did. Congratulations, honey!" She passed me a large Manila folder, packed with something, or several something's. My name was scrawled across it in sharpie, along with a number: 2351317.

I tore it open and dumped the contents on the table. Six small red and white spheres, poke balls in their reduced state. A one-way Box Uploader, to send any extra pokemon caught to the Box system. Six épée pens - one to help inoculate me against the normal diseases I might encounter as well as to boost my adrenaline responses, so I could defend myself from wild pokemon until I could send mine out - the other five were human-size doses of antidotes, just in case. And most important of all, at least to me, a small rectangle of white plastic.

I picked up my trainer card reverently, and read it. James Williamson, it said, along with a picture of me. Age: 16. Trainer ID: 2351317. Credits: 500.

I grinned at mom. "Finally! Now I just need someone's help to catch pokemon and I can be off to see the world!"

"Oh, Professor Elm was looking for you." Mom smiled evilly. "He said he had a favor to ask of you - maybe you can get his help. Now, do you have everything you need to go out?"

"Yeah, I - no. Mom, I'm still missing my shoes."

She pointed to where they sat in the corner. "And your bag is over on the counter. Your journal is in it too."

"Thanks mom," I said, grabbing the bag. "Where's my wallet?"

"Side pocket."

"Bye!"

I stepped outside of my house, took a deep breath of fresh air, and was immediately smacked in the face with a high-speed marill. "Gah!" I shouted, stepping back into the door. "Marill, don't slam into people!"

Lyra's little blue fuzzball made a chuckling noise, like a gurgling stream, and released her arms from my head, falling to the ground. The little beast glanced to the left, where her mistress was, and hurried off to join Lyra. "Furball," I said affectionately, walking to the Professor's lab.

"Hey, who's that?" I wondered aloud. Standing beside the Lab, looking in through a window, was a young man, about my age, with long, straight, red hair. He seemed to be taking notes on whatever was happening in the lab. I stepped up to him. "What're you doing? You know that the lab is a public building, right?"

But the young man didn't seem to hear me. "…So this is the famous Elm Pokemon Lab…" he muttered. Then he seemed to notice me. "What are you staring at?" he demanded, and shoved me back a step before staring into the Lab again. I just shook my head and entered.

The Lab was filled with equipment; the bookshelves were crammed not just with books but with chemistry apparatuses as well, there were several huge bins filled with apricorns, I could see an energizer in the back of the room, there was a container for pokeballs, and several large racks of cds. Professor Elm's assistant, also Lyra's dad, was trying to bring some order to the books on the shelves, hampered by the test-tube collections. When I greeted him, he said "Hello, James. Professor Elm is at the back of the room."

I gently tapped on Professor Elm's shoulder; he was sitting at his computer, surfing some website. I had to stifle a chuckle when I realized he was watching a video of a mankey someone had dressed in a tuxedo.

He spun around and stood up, grinning widely. "Hi, James! I've been waiting for you. First of all, congratulations on having your application accepted."

I grinned. "I just need a pokemon, now."

"I might be able to help with that..." he murmured before changing the subject. "Listen, do you know anything about my current research?" I shook my head, and he continued. "As you know, pokemon are carried in pokeballs these days. But before the pokeball was invented, people used to walk with pokemon. Just like your friend Lyra does!"

"Actually, we had apricorns before pokeballs," I interrupted, pointing at a half-carved apricorn being used as a paperweight on the professor's desk.

Elm waved this off. "Same technology, just not as developed. Anyway, pokeballs are great because you can carry more than one pokemon - as many as you wanted, if not for the league's restrictions. But walking with po

kemon must have had some advantages. It could have something to do with how pokemon grow or evolve…" he drifted off, probably considering his favorite subject. Of course, there hadn't been any advances in that subject since the discovery of elemental stones more than thirty years ago; while it was known how every pokemon evolved, if they did, it was unknown why. Or how it was actually done. "So, I'm going to give you a pokemon!" I smiled. "Can you walk beside this pokemon, outside of its pokeball, to see if this brings any special feelings or bonds between pokemon and people?" I nodded. " The device over there has some pokemon you could choose from…" His computer dinged. "Oh, I've got an e-mail. Hold on a moment, James."

I waited politely as he read his new mail. "Okay, listen," he said, turning to me again. "I have this friend, who people call Mr. Pokemon. He keeps finding weird things and raving about his great discoveries. Anyway, I just got an email from him saying that this time it's real." Elm sighed. "It's probably another pokemon egg, but we're still so busy with our pokemon research…"

I shrugged. "I can go get it. I'm going to be allowed out on my own in just a few minutes, after all."

Elm smiled. "Great! As I was saying, you can choose one of the pokemon over there." He pointed to a stasis chamber which held three pokeballs.

I looked at the chamber. It was tall and cylindrical, and had a rotating base. Three pokeballs sat there, each, I supposed, with a different pokemon within. There were buttons to rotate the base, and a little screen showed the pokemon inside. "Hm…" Totodile, chikorita, and cyndaquil. Water, fire, and grass. All three were very cute, but that shouldn't really be a consideration. "Professor, can I take them out and meet them?"

"Of course," Professor Elm said with a benign smile.

A few minutes later, I set the third pokeball back in the stasis chamber. I had played with all three of them. Cyndaquil was sweet, and had curled up in my lap immediately. Chikorita, on the other hand, had seemed rather mean, staying away from me and sneering. Totodile had been playful, leaping around joyfully and snapping playfully at my fingers; the one time he had caught me, he merely lipped my finger, rather than biting it.

After some thought, I made my decision, and took cyndaquil. I let her loose from his pokeball, and walked back over to Professor Elm.

"How's walking with a pokemon?" he asked "It's not bad, is it?" I nodded in agreement, patting cyndaquil where she rested on my shoulder, and he smiled. "Now then, Mr. Pokemon likes to wander everywhere, looking for rarities. Right now, though, his house is past Cherrygrove City, a little to the north."

After a few more minutes of small talk, I left. Lyra's dad pressed some potions on me in case cyndaquil got hurt, and I stepped outside.

Lyra was there, and greeted me with a smile. "James!" she exclaimed. "You picked the cyndaquil! Quite a cute fellow you've got there!" Cyndaquil preened a little, wriggling on my shoulder. "When you walk with him, he'll become more friendly. Talk to him sometimes, too. You should show your mom, too! Bye!" That's Lyra for you; she gets excited easily, and cuts conversations off quickly.

I turned to my new Pokemon. "You know," I told it, "'Cyndaquil' is a bit long. We need to get you a new name." She nodded agreeably, and I thought for a moment. "How about Doman? Or Tol?" The little creature made a disgusted face at both. "Alright, what about Cindy?" The newly dubbed Cindy grinned and threw her little arms around my head in a warm hug. "Now, let's go meet the folks."

That night, after introducing mom to Cindy, I returned her to her pokeball and took the adrenaline epee pen as I sat on my bed. "Right," I said, gritting my teeth - the process was supposed to be painless, but according to Lyra had been 'harrowing'. She refused to speak of it, saying only that the dreams the night after were the problem, and the longer between taking it and sleeping the worse they got. Fortunately, I had a sleeping pill to take as well, one which I never had dreams while on. I pressed the epee pen agaisnt my arm and pushed the button, waiting as the level of silvery liquid within dropped, and then took the sleeping pill. Within five minutes, I was out like a light.

But the dreams came anyway.

I found myself alone in an empty labyrinth of glass, floating in empty space with faint stars beyond it. It didn't seem so bad at first. But I soon found that the perfect light which permeated all of my glass cage wasn't perfect. There were shadows, flickering around the edge of my sight, refusing to become clear.

As time passed, they became bolder and bolder. After what seemed like hours of wandering, I was certain that the shadows covered everything that I couldn't see, and were beginning to crawl over me. I was itchy, all over my back, and I felt more and more weight piling on me. I was constantly shifting and turning, trying to get the things off, but they simply slid over each other and kept holding.

Finally, I managed to twist enough to slam my fist into one of the shadows and grab it. The other shadows fled my sight, leaving only the one in my grasp to my view. Before I could understand what the hell I was holding, I was woken by a scream.

I woke up screaming, in harmony with the scream coming from my mom's room. It was cut off after a moment as I rolled off my bed, feeling as though red-hot needles were jabbing all over my body, and that molten lava was being poured through my veins, and that my skin was too thick and hard, and that my hair was on fire. I was a mass of pure pain, so much that I almost didn't notice when the other scream was cut-off.

I struggled to my feet, doing my best to ignoring my body's screaming. Funnily enough, the red-hot pain seemed to get easier to bear as I went on, forcing myself out my door and down the corridor towards mom's room.

"Damn it!" someone swore roughly from ahead. "Why couldn't the bitch come quietly?"

"You know they're always like this, James," came a smoother, almost silky voice. "They never know what's good for them."

"I know, I know. Still, I just wish..."

"What?"

There was a sigh and a kissing sound as I struggled with mom's doorknob - it seemed to weigh too much. "Jessie, why are people so idiotic?"

A silken laugh. "Come on, James, let's take her to the boss." The door swung open, and I saw the people who had attacked my mom.

One was tall and muscular, almost too much for his clothes, a pair of baggy white cargo pants and a white jacket with a small red R on each side of the collar. I didn't even realize how much I was registering in such a small time, but his eyes were scanning me just as fast, almost too fast for me to tell that they were a sinister purple. His hair was shoulder-length and a dark brown with a tinge of purple in it. The man, presumably James, had mom slung unconscious over one shoulder, dressed in only a nightdress.

The other kidnapper was shorter and slim, with long, dark red hair down to her waist. Her face, thin and aristocratic, would have been quite beautiful if not for her eyes, as red as her hair and glinting evilly. The woman, presumably Jessie, was wearing a modified version of the same outfit James wore - the pants were tight and short, as was the jacket, which was cut off to show a toned abdomen, and another, larger red R was proudly blazoned on her chest, which I was too angry to care about the considerable size of.

"Who the fuck are you?" James demanded a moment later.

"Let her go!" I yelled, finding new strength as the pain finally faded, and I managed to stand up straighter. I reached for Cindy's pokeball, but I was still in the plain white pajamas recommended for the injection process, and her pokeball was still in my room.

"Or what?" Jessie demanded, smirking at me. "You don't even have any pokemon! Are you going to punch us into submission?" she laughed, and while it was just as smooth and beautiful as before I could now hear the heartless glee behind it. "James, snap him like a twig!"

"As you wish," he said with a smile. I readied myself, but he didn't even drop mom, simply lashing out with a foot and slamming it into my head, knocking me aside. The last thing I heard before my eyes closed was Jessie laughing once more, the sound slowly fading as I blacked out.

A/N: I've decided to rewrite this story with a few modifications in order to make it more interesting and give it a more serious tone, as you can probably tell by the last scene in this chapter. Clearly, Jessie and James aren't going to be joke characters in this story - they'll be more like they are in the manga (where they're psychopaths) - along with this, I've worked out reasons for some of the nonsensical things in the games and anime which are sort of explained here. Let me quickly spell them out:

It's a communist society, so healthcare and food and such are free. What's not free is equipment for training pokemon, which needs to be earned by defeating other trainers. Additionally, the four-move restriction. In an official pokemon battle as sanctioned by the Pokemon League, any pokemon is only allowed to use four moves they're registered as knowing from a list maintained by the League, and all pokemon move at once, using one move then returning to their trainer to find what to do next. In an unofficial battle, however, such as battles with wild pokemon, the trainers can have their pokemon use any move they're able to use (so even if you replace your Quilava's flamethrower with fire blast within League battles, it would still remember how to use flamethrower), and aren't restricted by taking turns. Finally, pokemon in pokeballs (at least, pokeballs registered to a trainer card) are all automatically linked to a very powerful item kept at the League which is similar to a Focus Sash. Any move which would kill the pokemon instead just leaves them unconscious.

Finally, a quick note about the injection James takes here - it's standard for all trainers. The purpose is mainly to improve the trainer's adrenaline response so that, when wild pokemon attack, the trainer can survive long enough to send out one or more of their own pokemon.

That's all for now, but please remember to review. I read every review that I get, and I respond to many of them through PM. If you have a question, I won't answer it in an A/N, I'll PM you. If you're using a guest account to review, and you leave a question, please also leave another way for me to get in contact with you (email, a reddit account, etc).