Professor Oak died when I was seven years old.
At the time, I didn't think much of it. I was sad, of course, but I was also seven and living in Celadon City. We got the day off from school and all the adults were super sad, but I thought nothing of it. I just spent the day playing with my best friend, Aiden. We played with our Pokémon action figures in the living room while our mothers discussed grown up things.
Or what I thought were grownup things. Turns out, they were actually ten year old things. The week before I turned ten, I kept hounding my mother to talk to me about which Pokémon I should chose, and how best to plan for my journey. It wasn't until the night before I turned ten that my mother sat me down in the kitchen, handed me my worn Charmander plushie, and told me with a tear in her eye that she couldn't afford to send me on the journey.
My mouth dropped open. For the next week, all I did was cry and stay in my room. I didn't go to school. My mom didn't make me.
At ten, the policies preventing me from going made no sense to me. Money was not supposed to be a part of Pokémon. But with the new fees put in place by the new Professor Oak, such as the Pokémon License fee, the cost of the Pokédex, and especially the cost of a starter Pokémon, my mother couldn't afford it. She could hardly afford to keep us in our tiny apartment, even with her two jobs. The only reason she did it was that the apartment was closer to the Route Seven side of Celadon, the better side, with the better school districts.
But I finished school, seething with jealousy every time another classmate of mine left school to train. By my senior year of high school, the only kids left were the ones who could not afford to go, or who had chosen not to. I graduated without honors, unlike Aiden. He was valedictorian, and deservedly so. But even with his top marks, he stayed in Celadon to attend CC—Celadon College. Really, he should have gone to Pallet Town University, the top school for aspiring trainers. He said he didn't want to move that far away, but it always felt like cowardice to me.
At least he got a chance to work with Pokémon. The Ivysaur League of colleges sprung up around the time Professor Oak began to start charging to become a trainer, as a way around the fees. Basically, you went to college for four years, majored in Pokémon Studies with a focus on a certain region, and once you graduated you applied for a fellowship with the school. If you got the fellowship, you were allowed to become a trainer for as long as you kept winning or providing the school with new and useful information.
It was a way to become a trainer, but it was too much effort for me. Instead, I lived at home for a year, watching all my friends go off to college. After a year, my mother left for Goldenrod City in Johto. She had gotten a job as a manager of an up and coming hotel, and couldn't turn it down. The commute was too much to do daily, and I understood that. So, I packed my things, at the age of twenty, and finally left the apartment I had grown up in.
It didn't take long to find tiny place on the other side of Celadon, and a job after that. In a few months, I had my new life all set.
Strange to think that I ended up as the next leader of Team Rocket.
Of course, no one sets out to be the leader of a criminal organization—at least, not someone with my motivation. It was a slow process, a culmination of different circumstances.
Like most stories, it began on a dark and stormy night…