Sometimes our aspirations appear to be oceans away from recognition, and the current seems to sway us in every way but the one leading to satisfaction. However, motivation is a storm that can split apart the most stagnant seas and lead to paradise. Let's stir the storm of progress together, you and I.
Pokémon Sinnoh Chronicles: Growing Pains. (part 1)
Verity Lakefront was the definitive natural picture of solace and tranquility. Pristine cerulean tides washed seamlessly into the picturesque emerald blades of grass on the bay that sent wafts of perpetual springtime into the air, making sweet love to the smoky musk of aged wood to the west and east. The lakefront was a small, veritable portrait of Earth wearing its best Sunday gown that could only have been painted by a tender-handed god…and then down came the massive, eager hand of an officious child smack into the middle of the divine painting, crushing the proud trees, smearing the emerald grass with pristine water and penetrating the passionate scents of the forest with the stink of stagnant peanut butter and grape jelly.
This destructive, golden-haired offender to all things natural and calm stood a staggering four feet tall, four feet and two to three inches if he bounced on his heels as he was prone to do. The wrathful grass-stomper whipped his blonde head back into the air and violently flared his nostrils to take a long and deliberate survey of the smells around him, and then cupped his twitching hands in front of his gaping mouth as if to funnel his cry to all the heavens above him:
"WA-HOO! We're gonna catch us a shitload'a pokémon! Chaaaw! Ahaha!"
The yellow-head's excited war cry broke the calm of the lakefront like a stone through invisible glass, and was punctuated by his sputtering laughter and then a deliberate extended index finger pointed at his reluctant partner in crime, standing no more than three feet behind him. The war crier's navy-haired accomplice seemed to be mortified even with only the two of them there, a red flush burning across his cheeks and his mouth sternly hidden below a comically enormous ivory scarf coiled about his neck, partially in stitches; if he could have fit his entire face behind the scarf after his friend's outburst, he would have.
"Barry…!" said a muffled, high voice from within the white fabric, "You really shouldn't swear that loudly…we're not even supposed to be here…!" The golden forest-offender, now known as Barry, spun around on the dot to face his friend with surprising speed and started spastically shaking his head about while tapping his right index finger on his forehead excitedly. "Ah-ah-ah, my friend!" Barry clicked his tongue and proclaimed. "We're both a whole seven years old starting today! We can go wherever, do whatever, and say whatever we want, Lucas!" With that statement, Barry bit his lip, beamed from ear to ear, looked both ways and then spread his arms out to scream to the sky, "COCK!"
That was enough. Lucas charged his foul-mouthed friend into the trunk of an adjacent tree and slapped two small hands over his mouth to prevent further spirited expletives. "Barry, they will hear us all the way back in Twinleaf if you keep that up, and we'll be in even bigger trouble…!" Barry sifted his eyes left and right at an alarming, epileptic pace before squeezing them shut tightly and then letting out an uncharacteristic sigh. ".. I guess you're right."
Victorious and yet still exasperated, Lucas backed off of his companion and dusted the soil and brush off of his formal, deep blue slacks; he was not dressed for the wilderness and this was not how he had planned to spend his seventh birthday. Still, when Barry set his mind on something, nothing short of satisfaction or unconsciousness would sway his desire, and Lucas had silently elected not to simply club him in the back of the head as usual when he had brought up the ludicrous prospect of "sneaking away from the party and going to Verity Lakefront to catch birthday pokémon. Chaaw!"
"Well…" Lucas clasped his hands together and sucked in his cheeks before half-heartedly inquiring, "What do we do now, Mr. Pokéman?"Barry leapt to his feet without using his arms and pounded his outstretched chest before deflating and saying matter-of-factly, "I don't know." Lucas would have slugged his friend in the teeth right then and there if said friend hadn't hastily waved his hands about and explained "Y-You're the one with the handy dandy pokémon guide. Why don't we use that?" Lucas stilled his trembling fist and remembered that he had brought The Official Pokemon Handbook: Sinnoh Region Category and had tucked it away in the long, overlapping folds of the unfinished scarf around his neck.
Lucas was not yet quite adept at coiling the scarf about him, and so it hung off his shoulders haphazardly and trailed the ground to make him look more like a pouty, half-wrapped mummy than the small, dashing heartbreaker he liked to envision himself as. Nevertheless, the enormous scarf his mother had been in the process of knitting for served to keep a miniature pokémon handbook he had gotten as a gift flush to his shoulder *and* had prevented Barry from simply stuffing the it right down the back of his new slacks and pushing him into the wild for some grand escapade; well, the latter had already happened, but at least he didn't have a book chafing his butt.
Lucas drew the handbook from his shoulder, and what seemed like milliseconds later, had tufts of blonde hair partially blinding him and a sharp chin digging into his collarbone increasingly harder to get a better look at the cover. "WHOA." Barry breathed excitedly as he marveled at the golden trim and holographic illustrations of pokémon running, flying, and seemingly preparing to defend themselves. "This book kicks ass!" Lucas raised an eyebrow. "Barry, I haven't even opened it.."-"Open the book! Open the book!" He was interjected by Barry before he could squeeze out another sentence. Typical. The handbook appeared to have essentially everything a civilian of Sinnoh needed to know in order to acceptably coexist with the endearing life forms known as pokémon; habitual patterns, defense mechanisms, regional migratory periods, how to prepare in fricassee, etc.
Lucas didn't have that much of an implanted passion for the tradition older people referred to as "battling", as it reminded him too much of the battles running rampant in his own world; ever since his father had been stationed in that faraway post in Hoenn where he'd be separated from the family for an undisclosed amount of time, tension had been abound in his household until his abrupt departure. Papa had been a good man, and Lucas was sure of it; he had only transferred to Hoenn to become apart of some association of environmentally conscious pokémon freedom fighters, whatever that meant. Nevertheless, Papa's geologically sensitive sentiments didn't coincide with mother's almost desperately passionate attachment to her family, and above all, her husband. When he had wrenched away from her, both figuratively and literally, he seemed to take her love with him in his coat pocket; Mother hadn't mentioned Papa in two years. That was why Lucas was certain he would never put pokémon through the physical strain that mirrored the emotional stress he experienced in his own household; he was going to be a designer for people and pokémon alike, and with that, with every needle he used to stitch together a scarf or ribbon, it would feel as if he could stitch together his broken home…at least, that was the plan.
Lucas had been so entangled in his own introversion that he was deaf to his friend's hyperventilating and squeals at something in the distant jade blur of the forest. The unaware instigator of Barry's excitement trotted to and fro on four short, hardy legs and occasionally supported itself on the hind two as if in order to survey the ambience of the wooded calm. It rotated its head to the side as if perplexed by something particularly strange, and then lowered itself back on all fours as if dismissing the object as either uninteresting or giving up on deciphering it altogether; that was, until it actually found something. Two somethings, to be exact, not even fifteen yards to the east. Lucas cleared his throat but silently anticipated sudden movement.
Barry beamed a toothy, hellish grin and was near-audibly trembling with an excited word that bounced around in his belly and throat and was suppressed only by his jaw shut tightly like iron; the word escaped in a steaming hiss through the cracks of his teeth. "Biiiiiiiiii…", Barry half whispered and half exhaled. Lucas flipped through the handbook at an urgent pace to follow his excitable companion's strange exposition of speech, and found within the first few pages of its data. Barry flitted his straw-toned mop of hair from side to side, up and down, from the book and to the object of his elation, and let out a girlish cry "…Dooo~ooof!"
Lucas narrowed his dark eyes and let his sight meet the rounded, bushy visage of the newly categorized pokémon. While the beady, pitch orbs that the pokémon had for eyes seemed to lack any soulful motivation, something didn't seem right about the coarse fur on the brawn on its humped back that seemed to stand at attention. According to the book, Bidoof weren't known for being critically hostile, but the critically had been italicized. This wild one dubbed in the handbook as the Simple Pokemon methodically clicked its sizable buck teeth, padded the dirt in front of with a tiny black paw, and then, before either of them could properly react, powerfully bounded in their direction as a white and forceful aura developed around its body as it unleashed a bizzare cry that would be etched into their minds from that day forward: DERP!
----Part Two coming eventually----