Disclaimer: I do NOT own Pokemon. I own all characters in this chapter (note the "this chapter" part..heh) EXCEPT for Professor Tracy, who is property of Nintendo, or whoever (everything's all owned by somebody else, these days). If I've left anything out, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. Just use your brain.

A/N: I know there may not be a lot of Pokemon stuff at the moment or romance but it will all come in very soon (well, not the romance, that's for later ^_^)

~*~*~*~*~*~Not Another Pokemon Journey~*~*~*~*~*~

Fourteen-year-old Kari Sako-Kei slammed her locker shut and re-adjusted her grip on her schoolbooks for the hundredth time before turning to her best friend, Anya Lory, also fourteen.

"I couldn't believe how long that paper on the influence of Magikarp on eighteenth-century painters took to write. Magikarp! Do these teachers realize that we also have a social life? Geez, you'd think the only thing better to do for them was grade papers all day!"

Kari laughed at her friend. "You're probably right, but Mrs. Jordan's married and has kids. So she must have some other life rather than being a boring stiff," she added, and the two dissolved in laughter.

"No kidding." Anya looked at her watch. She tried motioning down the hallway with her arms while holding her books. "Come on, we're going to be late to class!" Then she dropped them and they scattered across the floor. "Dammit! There should be some kind of child labor law against the number of books we're supposed to carry!"

Kari laughed and bent down to help her friend pick up her books.

"Shoot, now we're definitely late," Anya said.

"Oh well, at least we'll be together."

"Ha, more reason to give us detention."

~*~*~*~*~*~

"But she didn't even READ the stupid thing! How could she just look at it and give it a freaking C? This is-"

Kari had to cut her friend off before she said anything worse. The traffic jam of people emptying out of classes before filtering outside to wait for buses clogged the hallways now.

"Shhhh, Anya, people are starting to stare at you-" she began.

"WHO CARES?" Kari clapped a hand over her friend's mouth.

"Anya!"

"Mmmph, gerrof Kari." Kari let go. "I'm calm now. I just don't know how she can barely read the first line and grade it so harshly."

Kari nodded. "I know, I'm sorry."

"What are you complaining about? You got a freaking A! How you got that, I have NO idea..."

Kari grinned but lowered her head.

"No, I'm really happy for you, Kari. You deserved it."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

They stepped outside into a partly cloudy day. In the distance, blackened clouds slowly rolled in over the oblivious students of Pallet High.

"See you later, Kari."

"See you Anya, call me when you get home, okay?"

"Sure. You're so lucky; you just have to walk home!"

Suddenly there was a small but audible rumble from the sky. The schoolyard almost became silent as every student listened. Kari felt something fall on her forehead. Within a few seconds the pavement became speckled with fresh spring rain. Kari playfully shoved Anya onto the bus.

"You just HAD to say that!" she said as the doors to the bus closed.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Kari stood there for a while watching the few buses leave (there were only about four). Her shoulder-blade length dark brown hair was drenched with water by this point, and her face was dripping with water that got into her calm gray eyes, and slipped off her small nose, and curved its way down her slightly red cheeks. At this point she wished dearly that she had brought her poncho with her like her mother said she should have.

She cut through the woods on a small dirt path (now turned to mud) to try and evade the rain as much as possible. It was coming down harder now, and Kari's sneakers were also water-logged. She was only wearing two thin layers on her upper-body, and t-shirt and a threadbare sweatshirt, so naturally she was beginning to get very cold. There was still almost a mile left to her house, and she new it would take a long time at the rate she was going.

A few minutes later Kari was shivering and her head was bent down over the road. She seemed to be going nowhere and yet felt like she had walked over fifty miles at the same time. The rain was deliberately pushing her back, impeding her movement, keeping her from reaching her destination.

She forgot all about how cold she was when she suddenly ran head- first into something really hard.

"OW! What the-" Kari mumbled, rubbing her head. She had run into a large wrought-iron gate that guarded the entrance to a huge white mansion on a high, steep hill. Kari's face brightened.

"Professor!"

She heaved herself against the tall wrought-iron gate. It creaked and squealed but moved fractionally until Kari was able to squeeze herself (which wasn't too much, she was pretty thin) and her engorged backpack through. She broke into a run through the driving rain up the steep pavement driveway all the way to the front door of the mansion. She pressed a series of buttons on a gray keypad to the right of the door. Kari heard a familiar buzzing noise and then tried the door. Suddenly the buzzing noise turned off just before she reached the door handle, and the door wouldn't budge.

Kari groaned. "Tracy, you know it's me!" she yelled. A few seconds passed. She banged on the door. "You jerk! Open the door!" After a few more seconds Kari heard the buzzing noise again and yanked the door open.

Inside it was pitch black. Kari couldn't see anything, so she just groaned.

"You are not funny, Tracy," she said.

She expected the lights to fly on after a few seconds and Tracy to pop out from behind a huge bookshelf or something, but the lights remained off for a couple of minutes.

"Tracy?" Kari asked, becoming a little afraid. What if there were robbers there, or a rabid Pokemon, or...or...

The more time that passed and the more Kari thought about it, the more she convinced herself that there was something there other than Professor Tracy. She inched along the wall and felt something stab into her back. It was a light switch.

Just then she heard a squeaking noise to her left, like someone stepping on a loose floorboard, and it was only two feet away from her. Kari took action. She laid one hand on the light switch. In the same moment, she flicked the light on and swung her heavy backpack in the direction of the noise.