Chapter One.
Just yesterday, he awoke dreading the long walk between where he was and Goldenrod City.
Just yesterday, the rumble in his stomach seemed to peirce through his whole body, making him wish he'd bought more to eat than ramen.
Just yesterday, he complained to himself about the heat of his sleeping bag while he untangled the leaves from his long, matted hair.
Just yesterday, he had no idea how far his journey would take him.
It is the next day, but Ryan still doesn't know of the adventure that is just about to unfold before his very eyes, focusing around his thoughts, his feelings, his actions.
The leaves, the branches, the grass all sway throughout Ilex forest as if they were one living breathing thing. A cool breeze is moving through the forest, and Ryan takes a moment to enjoy it. He is sweating. The weight of his schoolbag is becoming uncomfortable on his shoulders. For what seems to be the millionth time, his stomach gives him the uncomfortable reminder that he hasn't eaten in a while. "I need to eat something!" he complains to himself under his breath. Just as He swings off the schoolbag to retrieve his last package of ramen, he hears a rustle in the bushes. At first he thinks it to be nothing but the wind, but as it continually becomes more violent he can't seem to help but to look for whatever could be making this ruckus.
He sees the whites of the teeth of a grin that he knew couldn't be human, a flash of blue light, hears a high pitched squeal.
He now knows of a part of his adventure. His goal.
He had to get a closer look. He had to know just what that thing was, what was going on. He started to move the shrubbery out of his way to get a view, focussing on the beast rather than its victim. Just before he could get a good view of the thing, down came the foot of an above- average sized Tyranitar. This pokemon made the whole ground tremble, with just the force of setting one foot down. For a split second, Ryan forgot all about his hunger, his curiosity about the beast and it's victim, he even forgot about the slim possibility that his bag might get stolen.(This thought had been at the back of his head the whole time, even though he tried to ignore it.) After this split second, all of the thoughts that came to his mind were focussing on the intense pain in his chest and stomach.
It seemed that as soon as he had felt the pain, he had already traveled far back, further than even his things that he had abandoned. With great pain he managed to open his own eyes. There it was. The beast, standing above him. Ryan also saw the victim for the first time: It was Ho-oh, the legendary pokemon, caught between two hoops and occasionally being shocked by a kind of blue electricity. The beast started talking to him, and he spoke English as well as any human could. "Here I am, doing research for the good of all man-kind, and I get interupted by pesky children." As it said this through his horrible, horrible grin, its grey hair spilt over its head, as if it were a liquid, frozen forever in time. The glasses it was wearing caught some sunlight through a patch in the trees, upsetting Ryan's eyes, causing him to close them again.
Ryan thought he tasted blood.
The beast was certainly trying its best to look like a human. It wore a lab coat, and it swayed in the wind as he went back to observing the Ho-oh. Ryan thought to himself that if he didn't know better, he would probably had thought that it was a person himself. This disgusted him. He knew this couldn't be a human. "No human could do such horrible things to me," he thought, "no human could do such horrible things to Ho-oh."
No, it couldn't be a human.
He did his best to pick himself off the ground, because he couldn't let this thing go around unpunished. He got up, ran past his things, determined to stop this beast in its tracks.
It was too late. It was nowhere to be found.
He walked back to his things. He wasn't hungry anymore. He didn't hurt anymore, either. He put the Ramen back into its place in the bag. He put on his schoolbag and walked about three steps away from where it was. He could still taste blood. He didn't even care. He punched a tree as hard as he could. now his knuckles were bleeding. He still didn't care.
"I swear that I will stop you, if it kills me."
He didn't even get out of the forest that night, he had spent so much time with the beast. He layed out the sleeping bag again. He let out his Charmeleon to let him stretch, after being in its pokeball for so long. He figured that he should also release his Mareep and Ghastly. (He hadn't caught many pokemon yet, but the ones that he had were very close to him.) Charmeleon started a fire quickly, and he ate the last of the ramen, even though he wasn't hungry. He felt like the day he got Charmeleon, as a Charmander, was lifetimes ago, even though it was only a few weeks.
He tried his best to explain what had gone on before to his pokemon, his companions, though he was perfectly sure that Mareep and Ghastly were too buisy playing to take any notice. When he was done explaining, Charmeleon nodded his head, and gave a grunt of understanding. Then he hit Ryan in the face with the back of his hand.
"Thanks, Charmeleon." Ryan was finally able to open his bloodied fist.
When he awoke, he could hear it.
When he walked the trail, he could hear it.
When he left the forest, he could hear it.
Even when he battled, the pasttime that used to fill his entire body with adrenaline and fill his ears with the sound of his heart beating, he only felt numb, heard this sound. Normally hearing such a sound over and over would concern him, but he could only think of the cries of Ho-oh in pain. He thought that someone asked him if he was okay, but he couldn't remember.
Ryan shook his head. He had to get those sounds, those pictures out of his head. He realized that he wasn't in the forest anymore. A boy was standing in front of him, a large net draping down from his hat into his face.
"Did I win?" Ryan asked the boy.
"No, my pokemon fainted because you lost." He said, in what was probably the most sarcastic tone to ever come out of a human mouth.
human.
For some reason this idea of humanity stuck for a while in Ryans head. He left the boy without taking his money. He could see the large buildings reaching up to the sky from Goldenrod City. He could already hear the sounds of city people going to do their morning chores and get to work. Very, very faintly he heard the tingle of a bell.
When he finally arived at Goldenrod City he was astonished by the mere size of the place. Buildings seemed like they were growing out of the ground, and each was fighting for the tiniest spot on the surface. He saw many buildings that were only inches away from each other, and even more with no space between them whatsoever.
Luckily the pokemon center was one of the first buildings Ryan found, and he decided to stop for a break.