One
Andromeda
Here's the deal. My name's Andromeda VanDenPlas, or Andy for short. I'm a pokémon trainer, and I'm aiming to be the best. This is my story, if you hadn't already guessed. I've decided to write a full autobiography, just because I can, and for your enjoyment. I want people to experience the hardships trainers have to go through on their way to the top. I want those little ten-year-olds, with their little hoothoot and their rattata to know that the idea of becoming the best is not to be taken lightly. There is SO much more to training than levelling up and evolving their team. And so I begin my story in one of the most dramatic moments of my entire life: obtaining my first ever pokémon.
I had always had really protective parents. A lot of starting trainers do, I know, but mine were worse. You'll get to know that. The reason they were so protective? I had no idea. I guessed, however, that it was because I was an only child, and they were extremely lucky to have me. My mother giving birth was a complete fluke. They had been trying for over seven years to have me, but for some reason the embryos would never attach to the – you probably don't want to know any of this.
Point is, mum had always had difficulty getting pregnant, and after waiting so long to spend twelve-or-so hours in excruciating pain and pop me out, both her and my dad committed themselves to me. They would have had more children, but it was only our family's luck that diagnosed her with Leukaemia when I was almost three months old. It only worsened her chances of getting pregnant, not that she wanted to get pregnant anyway with the risk of harm to the baby. So, my parents spoilt me, but maintained a strict streak that always kept me in my place.
When I was five, my parents decided they would move to Azalea Town in Johto from Floarama Town in Sinnoh. The noise was about the same in both towns, they remained fairly quiet for the most part, but sometimes, when something big was going down, trainers, coordinators and tourists, anything flocked to the towns. In Floarama, it was usually contests, or flower festivals; in Azalea, it was events revolving around the Slowpoke Well, or the pokéball maker across town marketing a new brand of pokéball.
I was never allowed to go near Ilex Forest, the Slowpoke Well, or the Union Cave in the distance. In fact, I was barely ever allowed past the sidewalk outside my house without an adult watching me. It really got on my nerves, and on my tenth birthday, I asked the question they had been dreading since I first came across the Azalea Gym (on a shopping trip with a few older cousins):
"Can I get my first pokémon from Professor Elm now?"
The question came completely out of the blue. I had never talked about becoming a trainer before, not even when I saw the Gym. I had always wanted a pokémon of my own though, and I had wanted to travel. I just didn't want them to worry. But the day I turned ten I decided that there was no way I could get a pokémon without their assistance.
It was funny though. I had expected them to turn on their Rage attack and forbid me from ever speaking of it again. Instead they talked it over fairly calmly with each other, weighing the pros and cons. This lasted about a week or so before they finally decided that yes, I could go out to New Bark Town and ask the professor for either a chikorita, cyndaquil or a totodile. Unfortunately, my birthday was right before one of Azalea Town's busiest times of the year, so I had to wait another two weeks before the tourists were ready to leave and the Pidgeot Transport Service was ready to restart business.
During those two weeks, I was lucky enough to claim a front-row seat as the newest Slowking was chosen by the rest of the slowpoke. I actually watched the King's Rock placed on his head, watched the evolution and the mini-parade the new King of the Slowpoke led upwards into the town and through the streets. It would have been a magnificent sight if it hadn't been happening right when I wanted my first pokémon. So I sat there as all these magical feats occurred with a scowl and a grunt, waiting for it to end and the tourists to go home.
I was a whole ten-years-and-one-month-year-old when I was finally able to go to the Pidgeot Man and fly to New Bark. Because I was so young, I had to stay curled up in a large basket, like the ones that hang off hot air balloons, while the Pidgeot Man rode on his bird's back. It took three hours, stopping in two towns (Violet and Cherrygrove) for a drink, before we finally got to the Professor's Home. I was dropped at the edge of town where the local Pidgeot Transport Service harboured their incoming flights and I was left to find the research lab by myself.
At the age of ten that was very difficult. Anyone with mature logic would think one, find the biggest building in the town or two, ask a local. Being ten, you weren't supposed to talk to strangers at all, and you didn't have mature logic enough to search for the signs that pointed towards the facility. Instead, I just looked for the biggest building in town, and soon enough I found a gigantic house with a long driveway that rounded at the giant double-doors and swerved back down onto the street a few yards down the road.
The manor was redbrick with a strop of wood, painted white, separating each floor. The windows bulged out and were decorated with thick curtains. The lawns were a green that could almost blind someone and I could have sworn there was a shiny togetic flying around above – it was too far away to be sure. Seeing a glimpse of a fairly rare pokémon somehow assured me that this was the lab, and so I headed up the driveway of white gravel and rang the chimecho bell.
I expected lab coats. I expected microscopes, and bookshelves and machinery. What I got was a boy about three years older than me and a quilava. They didn't look very professional, but he was probably just a trainer coming back to see his Professor, to show him how much he and his pokémon had grown. The boy's brown hair was cut fairly short around the sides, and a bit longer on top and in the front, with a cow lick that fell a little to the side. An interesting haircut. The quilava stood majestically on its hind legs and flickered the flamed on and off.
"Hi." The boy raised a brow and let his weight fall onto one foot. I smiled in response and kept glancing down at his pokémon as he talked. "Who are you?"
"I-I'm Andy," I said quietly, playing with the end of my shirt's sleeve. Too quietly, it seemed, because the boy jolted a little closer and asked for me to say it again. "Andy – I'm Andy. Andromeda, actually, but call me Andy."
An aging man in a tailcoat tuxedo approached the door and opened it wider to fit himself in.
"Ah, James, do we know an Andromeda?" the boy asked nonchalantly. I looked at his jacket pocket and saw three bulges – pokéballs, I assumed. He must have only been training for a short while.
"You have an Aunt Andromeda in Sinnoh, Master Oliver," James said. He must have been their butler or something. His voice and accent was really refined. I felt a little awkward, coming from a middle class family. And now that I had realised that indeed he was a butler, I felt even more awkward. Professors didn't have butlers. This wasn't the Professor's laboratory.
"Oh. Well then do we know this Andromeda?"
"I'm afraid not, Master Oliver."
"Should we invite her in?"
"It's up to you, Master Oliver." The butler eyed me like I was beginning to rot on the doorstep.
"Actually, I was just wondering..." I was too quiet again. In the next few moments, I was brought into the mansion and made to walk through their elaborate halls. They had a lot of paintings on their walls and their carpet was a rich red. I felt like I was meeting the queen... or something. We stopped in a room with farfetch'd down couches, a huge fireplace and a larger-than-life-sized portrait of a dark-haired man and woman, sitting contently together.
There was a wooden coffee table in the middle with a setup of cakes and pastries and a silver tea set to top it all off. I didn't want to sit down in fear of dirtying their furniture with my inferiority.
James the Butler escorted the dark-haired couple from the painting in from some connecting room; they studied me with curiosity as they entered. The man, funnily enough, had longer their then the woman. It was tucked back in a ponytail like mine, though it still bulged a bit like a lion's mane. The woman had her hair in a neat bob, and it must have been dyed blonde since the painting was done. Her make-up and stern expression had remained the same, though. Both wore fairly expensive-looking clothes. The man wore a plain, black suit; the woman wore a long coat that covered whatever she was wearing underneath.
Hovering behind them was a funny-looking brown-y pokémon, probably psychic, because it was sleeping and hovering at the same time.
What was I doing here?
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Author's Note
Hey guys! This is a revamp of my last OT fic. Basically I was talking to people about changing some of the fic around, not the characters, but the plot. These people decided they wanted to help, and I thank them forever. The plot changes have led to the main protagonist changing names, regions, even a new starter pokémon. The base of the plot and the characters revolving around it all are the same personality- and looks-wise, are almost exactly the same.
Please Review! It's what keeps me writing. I like to know how I'm doing. Thanks.
Shout Out to Nyaa-Neko, Digital Skitty (who inspired this with their fics Pedestal and Poltergeist's), and my two co-writers/betas, Ruddy OWLS and Veritas Oraculum Amethyetical who both helped refine the plot.