Prologue: FEAR

I first heard of the FEAR strategy while getting drunk with a friend at Castelia's Mode Street pub. A self-proclaimed Dragon Tamer at the end of the bar had been boasting his ass off, and Aiden-this friend-he bet everyone that he could take down the guy's Class-100 dragonite with nothing but a freshly-hatched ratatta. We all threw our money in on the bet, thinking he was too much of a drunken idiot to know what he was talking about. Some of the patrons turned away to avoid witnessing the abuse of a Class-1 ratatta hatchling as it would be inevitably destroyed by the dragon. After all, Unovans are a pretty touchy people when it comes to the treatment of our non-human planetmates.

…But I kept watching.

"FEAR," it turns out, is an acronym describing the four parts of a specific battle strategy.

The Dragon Tamer told his dragonite to take it easy on the ratatta, though if using the full force of a Dragon Tail was supposed to be going easy, I'd have loathed to see the rest of its skillset. But here's the thing: after the resounding crack as the beast's mighty yellow tail crashed into the rodent's frail purple body, that mammalian son-of-a-bitch stood right up from the splintered floorboards, barely conscious, barely clinging to life. Hell, you could've spat on it to finish it off, but the point was it had survived the first hit, and it was all thanks to the now-frayed threads littering the debris at its feet.

F – Focus Sash

Aiden found an article in a magazine once—sort of a lifehack, really, that said if you tied cords of hemp or leather together in just the right way, it would be sturdy enough to withstand a gunshot at point-blank. The article proclaimed it as a cheaper alternative to importing processed ariados silk, though it admitted to this "poor man's" method lacking the integrity of granting multiple uses. Aiden had a hobby of making these sashes, but up until this point, I didn't know what the purpose of it was. Honestly, I thought he was just trying to dress up his ratatta to make it look a little more stylish.

Okay, so it had survived one attack, but what could it possibly counter with that wouldn't leave it vulnerable to getting picked off by a second twitch of the draconic beast's tail?

Fearlessly, the rat pounced toward the foe dragon's shin, the nearest thing it could get ahold of, and I could tell that it was radiating some kind of desperate energy, some primal fight-or-flight maneuver only implemented by a cornered prey animal on its last legs, in an attempt to bring its foes down to its level. It struck with a force that should have been impossible under normal circumstances, but lo-and-behold, the dragonite fell hard, its enormous body crushing a few tables and sending a horde of confused drunks scrambling for the bathroom.

E – Endeavor

I'll be damned. The intoxicated bastard might have had a hope in hell after all. That is, if the dragonite didn't have such a quick recovery time. The way those massive muscles flexed, fingerlike pinions outstretched, it was going to be standing over the property damage and swinging its limbs again before ratatta's scrawny little legs could possibly pace across the floor to land a second hit.

Then again, Aiden was also a clever bastard.

A – Attack. Quick-Attack.

With a burst of speed faster than our already dizzy eyes could follow, the purple bullet found a soft spot: a small open wound on the dragonite's abdomen incurred upon its initial fall through the baseboards. The dragon's proceeding roar rattled windows and shattered mugs, and then it lay still. For a few minutes we all stood there, eardrums ringing, wondering if time had stopped or if that was really it. The whole thing couldn't have lasted more than five minutes: the fastest jackpot we ever won.

R – one hell of a Ratatta.

At last, it was the bartender who was the first to move, clearing his throat as a janitorial cinccino compulsively dusted off the bar with its long, ash-gray tail tufts.

"Being that you're the big winner here, champ, I s'ppose you're gonna to be the one to pay for this mess?"

After generously compensating the owner for the damages to his establishment, we still had enough winnings to pay us both a trip to Kanto for the season. We'd been eager to see the world outside of Unova since college, and at the time, Kanto was ripe with opportunity. Turns out, a scientist was seeking young interns for a new research project of his. The gig was unpaid, of course, but the ad emphasized that eligible participants would get a free monster-companion out of it.

Growing up, Aiden and I were never interested in being Trainers, but we knew a lot of people who were, and the successful ones found the Gym Challenge to be rather… lucrative. It was certainly a career path worth looking into, if we were to get free resources for it.

Like a couple of wealthy heirs to the legendary Unovan throne, we boarded the classiest cruise ship to Kanto we could get our hands on, setting off on the first route to Vermilion City before we had even sobered up from the excitement (not to mention the hard liquor).

Aiden spent the whole evening showing off his FEAR ratatta to the beautiful socialites, while I stayed in the room to muse over a map of Kanto, wondering why the hell Pallet Town, our ultimate destination, didn't have a ship port, despite being right up against the sealine. I figured the townsfolk in such rural areas weren't welcome to a lot of foreign tourism. Or perhaps most Kantoans swam from island to island. I laughed aloud at the thought of a country full of gill-having fish-people, at which point I decided that a good night's rest was long overdue.

Aiden… did not sleep so easy.

He didn't talk about it in detail, but something happened that night. I suspected he must have run his mouth off about his ratatta, bragged to the wrong nobleman, or maybe someone just wanted in on his battle secrets. All I know for sure is, somebody figured him out. Somebody realized that FEAR was the kind of trick that only works once, and after they overcame it, Aiden was faced with the fact that all he had was a scrawny hatchling—a Class-1 ratatta.

Aiden claimed to have given up the rest of our cash to the winner as prize money, but with the bruises on his skin and bloodstains on his jacket, I'd have been more inclined to call it a mugging.

An onboard vet was able to restore the ratatta's health, thank Arceus, but I can't say Aiden had a warrior's spirit after that night. Hell, I don't even think he signaled his ratatta to take on a wild flock of pidgey fledglings as we hitchhiked our way from Vermilion to Pallet Town. The great friend I was, I said nothing about it, for fear that he might bail on doing this internship gig with me.

The closer we got to Pallet, the quieter the world became, and the taller the grass grew in the broad, yellow-green fields. The air was so much fresher here, so incredibly clean. It made me gag (being the city kid I am). It was hard to imagine this small farming community being home to one of the most technologically-advanced laboratories on this side of the world. For a moment, I shuddered at the possibility that this could just be one big scam.

Then again, I thought as I carefully pushed open the door labeled "Oak Labs," what more did we have to lose?