Hi guys! Welcome to an OC-centric story like you've never seen before. No author inserts, no cheap romances, near-to-none cliches and 100% guranteed no Mary Sues. I don't really have much else to say here, so just get on and read the damn story. Oh, yeah, one more thing: Anything you recognise I don't own.

Before I tell you my story, you need to know who I am. I'm an average, simple, no-powers human, and my name is Eleanor. People who call me Ellie are probably going to have a sharp stick driven through their chest. Thought I should give you a fair warning. I'm not super-strong (though I can shove people pretty hard), I can't fly and I'm not psychic either. Just a stocky, dark-haired teenage kid with brown eyes and small feet. And a totally rad pair of Doc Martens, if I do say so myself. Anyway, I'm a journalist and photographer, and I decided to visit the infamous Smash City. I thought I had picked a boring time to come, but I was proven wrong. As in, really wrong. Let me tell you what happened.

X X X

I took the new train to the city, with my bags bulging with general stuff. If there's one thing about me, I don't care what the heck I look like so long as I look decent. So most of that general stuff was cables, disks, Poffins, cartridges, film and Gods-know-what-else. I hadn't paid much attention to the scenery, so it was a shock when I looked up from my laptop and saw that grass and trees had been replaced with barren red rock. You'd think a desert would be a weird place to create one of the best cities in the universe, but somehow it works. Something to do with a hand. I ain't much for the history kinds of things, if they don't have swordfighting and horseback battles in them. I shut down the laptop and watched as we entered the city. The kind of train they built to get there is a special one. It's not like a steam train, or a bullet train either. It's like those ones they get in Skyworld. You know, the ones that fly? They sort of trundle along on invisible strings, and if it's windy they rock about a bit. It wasn't windy today, which was good because I hate using my laptop when everything's sliding around and all I end up with is p9gg7yhffffff gu5rtfghjbmnnnnn scrawled across the screen.

"Arriving at Stadium Station in five minutes." A voice came from the speaker, so I started scuffing the sweet wrappers and other bits of junk either under the seat or into my bag. Then the train pulled in, and I heaved up all of my stuff and squeezed out of the door onto the station platform. I looked at my watch. It's kinda like a Poketch, only with less apps and widgets. I checked the map. The place where I was staying had a little blob over it, so I hefted my stuff up again and staggered off.

X X X

The Battlefield Lodge, which was the name of the place, was tailored for fighters. There was a smallish training ground in the back (not that I'd be using it) and they served a huge breakfast every morning, which was the selling point for me. The lady that ran it was pretty friendly too. She said that usually she didn't allow pets but she'd make an exception for me. Oh yeah, another thing I should've mentioned. I have a couple of Pokemon, for company, not for fighting with. I decided I wasn't cut out for it after Team Galactic came…they took a few of my Pokemon and I never got 'em back. But my favourite ones still live with me. A Luxray and an Eevee. Why am I talking about this anyway? They're not even relevant to the story (or are they?). Back to the point. After I'd shoved my stuff under the bed to unpack 'later' I romped downstairs and outside. There was someone in the training ground, slashing at one of the wooden dummies. He looked about the same age as me, with scruffy hair and clothes smudged with dirt. I decided that since he was wearing a laurel and a toga that he was from Skyworld. And the dang huge wings on his back, them too. He was using these little shiny blade things, blue with gold edges. That's the thing with Angels. They don't seem to care how effective their weapons are, so long as they look pretty. This guy was good, though. After a moment he somehow got them to stick together to make a double blade and minced the block of wood even more. He leapt back a couple of steps and looked like he was going to load an arrow onto the weapon (it didn't even have a bowstring. Call me stupid, but even I know that to fire an arrow you need a string). That was when he finally noticed me. He looked pretty shocked, so I grinned.

"How long have you been standing there?" he said, slowly.

"Ten minutes? Something like that. I thought that you Angels weren't allowed to come down here."

"II'm on a special mission, given to me by Paluntena herself," he said, pride swelling in his chest. I had no idea who Paluntena was, but the Angel dude made her sound pretty important. Now I could see his face properly (as in, he was staying still long enough for me to see) he looked kinda familiar.

"Aren't you…the Kid Icarus? Pit? Is that it?"

"Oh, you've heard of me." he smiled. "Captain Pit Icari of Paluntena's Army, at your service."

"I've seen you on TV a couple of times, fighting at the Stadium. Actually, I haven't seen any fights on TV for ages…"

"You mean you don't know what happened?"

"Do I?" I frowned.

"The Stadium. It's in disrepair. Broken. Bust."

"Why? What happened?" Pit drew a deep breath, like he was about to launch into a long story, but his chest deflated pretty quickly.

"Actually, I don't really know. Anyway, I've never seen you around here before. Who are you?"

"You can call me Eleanor. Ace reporter, photographer and eater of all that is fried."

"Fried…? I mean, aren't you kinda young?"

"Look who's talking."

"Oh…yeah. Point taken."

"And anyway, not a lot of people will take me seriously anyway. I was hoping to find something to do while I was here."

"There could be some kind of opening at the Smash Daily. Even I take a look at their stuff sometimes, and I don't read newspapers. Boring, normally."

"That's the thing with you hero-types. Good at logic puzzles, good at fighting, naught in any other thinking department."

"That's the thing with you reporters, always stereotyping."

"Careful."

"Why? It's not as if you can fight,"

"Really? Hey, Nute, come on out!" I stuck a hand into my satchel and flung the Pokeball at the floor. Pit took a few more steps backwards when Nute started to glare at him.

"Is that a Pokemon?"

"You bet."

"Oh. Good." and then he did something which annoyed me. He patted Nute in a fond kind of way. "I like Pokemon."

"I guess they must like you too. Nute ain't exactly a cute little kitten."

"All of Red's like me. Charizard especially."

"You're mates with Red? Cool!" I think I'll cut the conversation there. That was how I became buds with Pit. And also quite a lot of other people, but if you sit tight you'll find out about them later.

X X X

So let's move on to the next day. The Battlefield Lodge is more like a B&B sort of place. It has warm rooms equipped with a bed, a bathroom and most importantly a TV, and at ninish in the morning you can traipse down and get something to eat. Bacon, croissant and Nutella galore. All the things I wasn't allowed at home. Heheheh. Not all of the things they had on offer were typical fry-up stuff thouh. Some of them I didn't even know what they were. What the heck was a Skoof Bun? Or a Za? Whatever I didn't know, Pit, who was sitting on the other side of the room, seemed to be wolfing down. I thought maybe they were some kind of Skyworld thing? I like to think of myself as quite a cultural person, but the sky is literally my limit. Anyway, breakfast aside, I went to take Mystery and Nute for a walk and to see what this part of town was like. A busy part, I decided, from all the people bustling around, and there was a totally awesome park. They had swings that were exactly the perfect height for my feet not to drag on the ground. Apart from the playground (I would've stayed longer only there were a few short kids staring at me, so I thought I had better move and let them have the swing) the rest of the place had people strolling around, walking their pets. I say pets not dogs because hardly any of them were dogs. I swear I saw someone with a huge spider. Eeeeugh. I took a seat at a bench because the soles of my feet were starting to hurt, and that was the moment which I met Roy. Kind of. If it weren't for Nute I really don't know what would've happened. One moment I was looking around at the scenery, wondering if there were any ducks on the pond, the next moment there was a yell and Nute was chasing after some red-headed kid with a sword. I almost stepped on Mystery as I ran over (she didn't even bat an ear). I didn't care about the red-head; I just didn't want anyone to pull a sword out on Nute.

"Nute! Return!" I chucked the ever-faithful Pokeball. The red-head looked at me, his eyes wide. They were an amazing shade of blue. I've seen a lot of blue eyes in my lifetime but none that were that colour.

"That thing was a Pokemon?" he panted.

"Not just any Pokemon, my Pokemon." I corrected. "What I want to know is what the heck did you do which made him so mad? Generally he doesn't chase people for no reason. Attack, that's a different matter."

"I didn't do anything." he stuck his nose in the air.

"Nothing at all?"

"Nothing. Honest!" I decided to test his honesty. I have a really mean glare. It's the closest I have to a superpower. He quavered for a moment. "Itwasn'tmyfaulttheymademe!" he suddenly blubbled. As I suspected.

"Who?"

"Whoa!" I wondered if the short boy next to me had waited until now to speak. He had black hair and a round cap, complete with brownish eyes.

"Him!" the red-head pointed a finger at the short kid.

"What about me?"

"You made me poke the freaky blue lion thing."

"You mean you didn't chicken out?"

"Dude, I don't chicken out on any of your lame dares. Anyway, she's scarier than the freaky blue lion thing!" he moved the finger to point at me.

"That freaky blue lion thing happens to be my Pokemon. Leave him alone." I said defensively.

"The lion's owner is a girl?" the short kid's jaw dropped. That really did annoy me.

"Is that any shock? Who are you dudes anyway?"

"What's it to you?" the red-head was cold, but the short kid was much more eager.

"I'm Ness. He's Roy."

"Ness…hey, aren't you a Smasher too?" the name did make a small lightbulb ping inside my head.

"I'm a veteran." he said proudly.

"You've heard of Ness but you don't know about me? What kind of person are you?" this time it was Roy giving me the wide-mouthed look.

"A journalistic one. I only know about the best." I patted my trusty satchel. I've learnt the secret of hammerspace, though there is a limit to how much junk I can cram in there. All that was in there at the moment were my notepad, pencil and camera, which is even trustier than the satchel.

"Then you're not a very good one. I'm way more awesome than he is."

"Are not!" they started to bicker in that really irritating way which boys have. I was just starting to wonder if I should just walk away when a new voice, that wasn't arguing loudly, spoke from by my side.

"They always argue." he sighed. He was about the same height as Ness, with blond hair that was so cool you don't even know. That was how I recognised him.

"Hey, aren't you Lucas?" I asked. He smiled.

"Yeah!"

"And…are these guys your friends?"

"Yeah. Sorry about them. Is your lion OK?"

"My lion is absolutely fine. And anyway, he's a Luxray, which is much cooler than a lion."

"You're a Pokemon Trainer too? I have a friend that's a Pokemon Trainer."

"Red?"

"How did you know?"

"I got a friend who knows him – hey, wait, you know Pit, right?"

"He's my friend. Same as those guys…except he doesn't argue as much."

"I met him the other day. Big wings were a bit of a giveaway."

"I know what you mean." Lucas nodded. I wish I could say that something exciting happened next, but not much really did, so I'll swerve off here and finally get to the point where the story begins. All this was just setting the scene. There'll be an adventure story starting before the end of the day.

Well, there will be a proper plot. Honest! Just not yet! You could say that the prolouge is about four chapters long. As for update time, I don't really have a schedule, but I do have over 20 pages still waiting for me to publish, so we're not going to run out of stuff for a while. Now, if you could possibly click the little button down there that says REVIEW it'd mean a lot to me. See you later!