Authors Note:
Ok, I figured that with the fact that none of my other stories got beyond chapter 2, you guys won't be expecting much in terms of this story. I know I'm not expecting it to amount to much either, so I can't say I blame you.
See, I got the idea to do this kinda thing from MathiasNightLord. Make a challenge, and do the challenge yourself in order to give others an idea for what direction to go in.
My idea is fairly simple, so here is its structure, as well as a brief outline so other authors may build on it.
The first part of chapter one is fairly simple, being a description of the world they inhabit. I want at least a degree of realism, such as in the story A chaotic World by Revenantzeroor The Sun Soul.
Lets be honest, in a world filled with monsters that can spew fire, and cause earthquakes humans might be a tad hard pressed for survival. There will be at least a few casualties here and there, nothing major, due to the upgrade in the competence of the gym leaders. Civilians would be at least partially shielded from death and destruction.
It will also describe Ash's family, and start showing a rift between Ash's mom and dad. It will be in an argument between the two that Ash leaves the house. While his parents were arguing, he sneaks into a forest that he was told to never enter. The forest held pokemon, but most were semi harmless like pidgey and rattata, and given Ash's age, his parents never bothered driving the point home.
Here, I plan on incorporating what we know about Ash's childhood into the story. According to Pokemon X and Y, Ash met Serena during a sunset in a forest when Serena tripped after seeing a poliwag, scrapping her knee. Ash had fixed up her knee by bandaging it and that was the start of there friendship. That was about as in depth as it got, so I leave it to your imagination to deepen there bond.
One event I plan on incorporating is why Ash does not have a dad. In canon, it states that Ash's dad left to go on his own journey, and does not really build on it. Here, I'm making the fall out a lot more extreme.
The time will skip over by a year and the arguments between Ash's mom and dad will have become more extreme, fed on by the fact that ash's dad will feel that a family was holding up his career.
You can choose the time, but I plan on Ash being six when his dad finally leaves him and his mom, only leaving a bit of money, papers for a divorce, and a pokemon egg.
Your free to choose what pokemon hatches from the egg. Here's the catch, I want Ash to specialize in one type only, so the pokemon hatched will also determine the pokemon type ash. If you can't guess, I like electric types, so the pokemon I'll hatch is an elekid. It will not need to be traded to evolve into a electivire.
I plan on making Ash's character to be majorly modeled after Paul from Sinnoh, but with a kind side which he will retain only thanks to Serena. Speaking of Serena, he will spend a lot of time with her after his parents divorce with her being his only real friend.
Sure he will have a bunch of acquaintances and sympathizers, but she will be his only real friend for quite a while.
This will also be the chapter that they will both start studying pokemon in the Pallet library (I refuse to believe that a town right on the path to the Indigo League only has a lab and a few houses. Boy was that poorly thought out.)
Chapter 2 will be focused on the hatching of the egg, and Serena and Ash's first experience with baby Elekid. I think that this chapter will be fairly short.
Chapter 3 will be the other three trainers, Serena, Gary, and Leaf, all getting there pokemon. Ash just tagged along to watch Serena get hers, and to register his Elekid, which might or might not be evolved into a electabuzz.
Oak will also give Ash his Pikachu, Pokedex, and five pokeballs.
A note about the pokedex. I thought that it was shit quite frankly, with how little functions it had, and that the pokegear from jhoto was a lot better. Due tot his being a fanfic, I decided to change it a bit.
The Pokedex, in addition to scanning Pokemon, will include a map, serve as a trainer ID, act as a credit card, record wins and losses, have a built in cell phone, be able to download books, and a bunch of other stuff I haven't thought out. Still got two more chapters before having to deal with it.
I think that its a decent outline, and should help anyone planning to take my challenge.
Disclaimer: I do not own Pokemon.
Chapter 1: Meeting
The world was a wondrous place. Since the dawn of mankind started, they invented many wondrous things driven by there ambition. The first thing they gained were weapons. First they turned them on each other, then they turned them on the rest of the worlds inhabitants, known as pokemon, or pocket monsters.
Pokemon were the dominant species of the world. Beasts of terrible and awe inspiring power. A powerful psychic type, like an Alakazham, could shatter a grown mans mind as easily as breathing, while a Charizard, a flying dragon, complete with the ability to spew fire, could crush humans under its heel.
In a world like this, humans could not hope to survive unless it could effectively combat this threat. Humans all over the world cooperated. A pokemon may attempt to kill a human, for they were such easy prey without any special powers, but it was not meant to be.
For every human that fell the rest of its group, which was then called a tribe, would retaliate brutally. Slaying everything of the same species that it would find. Age didn't matter, for a human couldn't hope to tell a baby a part from an adult when it came to Pokemon. It wouldn't matter anyway, given they smashed eggs open with no remorse.
Slowly Pokemon learnt not to mess with the humans as they were wiped out completely in certain area's. They would have moved back in if not for the fact that the humans got the bright idea that settling down in those areas was a good idea. Any pokemon wandering in would be killed, so they eventually learnt to steer clear of the human settlements.
This started pseudo golden age for the humans, and things would have came to a screeching halt in terms of progress if not for one man getting a idea.
The ancestor of every action was a thought after all.
The thought that went through his mind would revolutionize the world. It was along the lines of 'wait a minute. We have stopped the pokemon, which is great and all, but what if we can harness them instead? Train them to obey us from birth?'
Thus, pokemon eggs were no longer smashed in that particular society. Instead, they were taken and the baby pokemon were brainwashed to fight for humans against there own kind.
Eventually progress was made along this line of thought and the philosophy that it was indeed not immoral to enslave pokemon for humans were a superior being became common and universally accepted as fact as wide range communication became possible.
Of course, there would be someone who came along and said 'hey guys, why do we only harness baby pokemon? What if we found a way to harness adult pokemon too?"
Once again, the ancestor of every action is a thought.
This is exactly what the guy, Apri, winded up doing. He winded up creating a highly specialized set of capturing capsules he called, 'Apriballs.' The materials he used to create them, strangely enough was a previously useless vegetation he called apricots. Very humble of him, naming both the plant and the ball after himself.
The biggest boon of the apriballs was that the pokemon instantly became friendly as its thoughts were reprogrammed. The more time spent in the ball, the friendly it became. Regardless to say, Apri was given the highest honors possible for his discovery and died a very happy and rich man.
The only flaw with a apriball was that it was to overspecialized. For example a heavy ball would not capture a light pokemon no matter how weak it was.
Eventually someone came around and said 'Apriballs are too overspecialized. Why not create a more standardized one?"
And thus pokeballs were given birth. This man was much more humble than Apri, and as such simply named them pokeballs, or pocket balls, and from this stemmed the name pokemon, or pocket monsters. Not a particularly dangerous name.
With the invention of these balls, pokemon were suddenly the backbone of society. As the older generations who remembered pokemon as savages died, pokemon were integrated into society with minimal problems.
Pokemon battling, which used to be a way of humiliating and keeping pokemon in line by forcing them to attack there fellow pokemon, was suddenly a universal sport.
Pokemon were sold off as pets made friendly by pokeballs, raised in farms for food such as meat and milk, used in constructions for heavy labor, etc.
Pokemon trainers emerged, becoming defenders of the city from occasional pokemon attacks, and with the trainers came pokemon nurses which healed trained pokemon to spare the trainer the trouble of having to retrain a new one from scratch after every battle.
So did pokemon professors. Pokemon were also incorporated into the military, and the police forces.
Regardless to say, life without pokemon became unimaginable.
It was in a world like this that Ash Ketchum was born into.
Among the five major regions, Kanto, Unova, Sinnoh, Johto, and Hoenn, Ash was born in Kanto in one of the safest places. A small town called Pallet, which was located in the back door of the Pokemon League, a league that served as a federal government for the entire region.
In addition, the pokemon around was nothing to be worried about. The lakes were checked and it was verified that there was nothing more powerful than a poliwag, a mild mannered water type, located anywhere around. Indeed the worst one can expect to run into was a Spearow. A relatively weak flying type with a bad temper.
Nothing strong enough to harm a town in any capacity. It was taken as a given that civilians would not step into the forest anyway without a guard, so there was no reason to be worried.
Not a danger to a town, but a child was a different story.
Serena was a five year old, and as such, she never took her mom seriously when she said not to wander into the forest. Like every other parent, she kept her daughter in line with threats of monsters residing in the forest, which was true in this case.
Thing is, Serena had stopped believing in monsters a long time ago. It never occurred to her that the monsters that her mother was talking about were pokemon, after all, she had seen plenty of pokemon, like any other child. They all seemed harmless. Serena, being a five year old, did not know that there was a difference between a domesticated and wild pokemon.
Serena probably would have been fine, had it not been for the fact that a poliwag jumped out of the lake whose edge she had foolishly gotten close to. With a frightened scream, Serena took a tumble, scraping her knees.
If she had been a few years older, she might have been able to walk through the forest and get out and go home. As it stood, Serena couldn't stand up, let alone walk though the forest to get to town. Pushing herself against the tree, Serena cried silently, and waited. For surely, if she a=waited long enough, her mom would notice she was missing and look for her right?
It never crossed her mind that her mother, Grace, was out shopping. Even when Grace got home it might take a few hours to realize she was not wandering around, playing. In addition no one had the slightest clue where she was.
Luckily for her, due to a set of unfortunate circumstances, she had her savior heading her way in the form of one Ash Ketchum.
Ash Ketchum of Pallet Town was a fairly ordinary kid. He was born to a loving mother and father, Delia and Deox Ketchum. Delia was Deox's childhood sweetheart, an it was a dream come true when they got married, with little Ash being the icing on the cake.
They never thought of the consequences. Deox was, first and foremost, a trainer. He had wanted to be one as soon as he understood what a pokemon was. He didn't want to be your run of the mill trainer, mind you.
Deox wanted to be one of the elite four, maybe even the champion.
The problem with that was that in order to have a shot with any of those title, one needed to travel throughout the region battling your way through eight pokemon gym. This had to be done within a time limit, or you would miss the Indigo League.
If you won the Indigo League, then you had the right to take the elite four challenge. As you progressed through them, if you could defeat all four and beat the champion, then you would be the new champion. If you defeated even one, then you could take there spot on the elite four.
The problem lied in the fact that now that he had a wife and child, he could no longer wander the region battling.
At first he thought that he would be okay with it. He had a beautiful wife, an a kind hearted son who would eventually grow into a strong man. He thought that with them around, he wouldn't miss training pokemon.
He was wrong.
He was starting to get tired of his relationship, something he only admitted in the deepest recesses of his mind. As time went on, it was difficult to keep it there. At times he felt he only put up with this farce of a marriage, because of his son, Ash.
The child hero worshiped him, a fact that he liked, yet part of him couldn't help but feel that if he was a member of the elite four of Kant, every child in Kanto would hero worship him.
Yet, the signs showed that he was getting tired of this and it was affecting the entire family to some degree.
Today was the first day that he and Delia winded up yelling at each other, over something as minor as where he had been last night. In truth, he was out staring at his old Pokemon photo album from his trainer days, reminiscing with his old Pokemon team, which consisted of his Mighteyana, Charizard, Nine Tails, Arcanine, Blaziken, and Rapidash.
It turns out all of them wanted to go back to his old trainer days too.
With Delia noticing that he had been drifting away from the family, and with him being gone last night, as well as his thoughtless reply that it wasn't her business where he was last night, she had come to the obvious conclusion he was cheating on her.
That stung. The fact that she had thought he was low enough to cheat. It had escalated to them screaming at each other and hurtling insults. Neither Deox, nor Delia, noticed that Ash had been standing outside of the living room. Neither noticed that he had run out of the house either.
Ash, for his part, didn't really understand what was going on. Given that he was five, he didn't understand what cheating meant in that context. What he did realize was that his mom and dad had been getting farther apart emotionally, and he was not happy about it.
Of course, Pallet Town being the cheerful and noisy town it was seemed determined not to give him any quiet to think, so Ash, in an attempt to get away from it all, fled into the surrounding forest. The same one he had been told to never enter under any circumstances. But, luckily for Serena, Ash was not thinking about that right know.
He ran without any direction, not stopping until he heard a weird sound. It sounded like... a girl crying?
Moving off to investigate, Ash eventually coming to see a strange sight. He had heard right, it was a girl crying. The girl had shoulder length blonde hair and white skin. From the distance, Ash couldn't tell what her eye color was given that she was crying and she was quite a distance away.
Ash thought she looked pretty.
The girl was cradling her left leg, and upon further inspection, he noticed it was bleeding.
Ash blurted out, "Hey are you okay?"
Serena looked up, and felt a sense of relief. Someone had finally found her!
"My legs hurt." She called back, sniffling.
Ash moved quickly towards her, and took a look at the leg. Ash had to admit, it looked pretty bad. Ash glanced around. What had his mother said to do in these situations. Luckily for Serena, Ash had plenty of experiences with injuries.
Being the energetic child he was, he had gotten hurt pretty often.
Whenever he had gotten cuts, his mom had washed them out first. When he had asked why, she answered it would get infected otherwise. When he asked what an infection was, she answered it was something that made you sick.
Afterward he would have his leg wrapped in order to stop germs, which his mom said also made you sick, from getting in.
A river was a right next to them luckily, so it was no problem washing out the wound, but it did cause to Serena to whimper. The next part of the 'treatment' was more difficult. Finding nothing else to cover her wound up, Ash took off his shirt to rip part of it of to make bandages out of.
Serena looked at him confused when he took his shirt of. "What are you doing?"
"My mom said, that when somebody is injured, you supposed to cover it to stop blood from coming out, and germs from getting in." Ash answered.
Serena nodded. That made sense.
Half an hour later, Ash and Serena were walking through the forest, chatting happily despite the state they were in. Ash, though unharmed, was wearing the tattered remains of his shirt, was drenched from carrying the water, and was muddy from traversing the forest.
Sabrina, was leaning heavily on Ash, and looked positively filthy from her extended stay in the forest.
Regardless to say, neither there parents were very amused.
