Imprinted

by krishkai

It's a one shot about a person who joins the Police Federation and meets an aggressive arcanine.

I hadn't expect to get into the Kanto Police Federation in just a few days but everything had gone better than I expected. The battling, physical and written tests were all easy and I had cleared them with ease. And a day later I walked up to the reception counter of the main police quarters in Vernia City and was greeted by the short blonde receptionist with a certificate of qualification. The giant reception of the building with all the waiting tables and chairs and the training grounds of the building were about to become my haunts for the rest of my life. The qualification certificate was quite small, along with was handed a key to my own personal room, a police badge and a special hi-fi wallet. It was quite interesting, in the wallet was a small digital window showing my name, current time, money I had in the wallet, the pokemon registered to me and so on. But for the time being I had no pokemon.

Growing up in this giant city, I had never had the opportunity to raise my own pokemon. Of course there were some tournaments in the city and I would go watch them with my older brothers. Two of them left on journeys to conquer the league quite a few years back whereas on of them became the gym leader of this town. Being the youngest, I was quite babied and had stayed inside most of the time researching about pokemon and science. My other two brothers would be surprised if they found out that I had become a police officer. The thought was quite far-fetched but here I was.

I waited in the reception area for my instructor to come. He was some that went by the name of Looker. Looker was apparently a top agent in the international scene and was quite a busy man. Thus I didn't expect to get much training from him. Nevertheless I waited, sipping a cup of coffee I had bought from one of the shops outside. Vernia City, as I had stated before, is quite a huge city. It's not a very rich city, most neighborhoods were cramped. The good thing about the city was the huge and wide roads. The city was kept quite clean and the people are quite hospitable as well. You wouldn't see much crime taking place in the city at any point of time, so the HQ here had it easy.

Half past five, I was woken up by a cup of water thrown at my face. I rubbed my eyes and sneezed once before looking up to see Looker. He was dressed in a brown coat and black pants. His hair was all shabby and it looked like he hadn't slept for days. With a wave of his hand, he beckoned me to follow him into the building. I waved at the receptionist before proceeding into the building. We went into a long hallway with several doors on one side and glass on the other. If you looked out of the glass wall, you could see a giant grassy octagonal area with a lot of pokemon, the HQ training ground, also the biggest open area in the city. There was lone large tree in the middle and some sand near the edges. The training ground was sealed in by 30 foot steel walls and a huge glass dome. It was quite impressive to look at.

At particular places at the edges of the ground, there were doors on the walls, probably leading to the resting and feeding areas of the trained pokemon. Halfway through the hall there was an opening the glass leading to a staircase and up to an open observation point. On the opposite side of this staircase, there was another staircase leading up to the dorm rooms. Looker told I could go to my room up that staircase and he also pointed at the other end of the hall telling me to go eat something at the cafeteria. Looker threw me a daily schedule before heading up the stairs to get some sleep I believe.

I wasn't feeling hungry at the point, so I climbed over to the observation area and well…observed. There were not many pokemon in the training ground. A female police officer was training a few growlithe near the north side of the ground, the direction I was facing. To my left were a Granbull, a Hippowdon and a Serperior lazing in the sunlight. To my right I saw a lone Arcanine, sleeping as far as I could tell. There was something peculiar about the Arcanine, I was not sure what but I dismissed it as the size. Usually Arcanine were smaller, this was one was around 7 feet instead of the usual 6. I was staring at it for quite some time, and then suddenly out of nowhere it opened its right eye and stared right at me.

There was some kind of crazy power emanating from his eye. It stuck me to that spot, some sort of fear and primitive anger flowed from the Arcanine as it looked straight at me. I couldn't help but stare back just like a Deerling frozen in fear by headlights. I could see tendrils of fire emerging from the beast's mouth. And all of a sudden it jumped into the air and shot a giant fire ball at me. If not for a giant spout of water extinguishing the fire and knocking the Arcanine into the wall, I would've been burned to a crisp.

The Arcanine was knocked out cold by a Samurott sent out by the female officer I had seen earlier. Recovering from that shock, I thanked the officer for saving me at the moment. She called the Samurott back into her pokeball and walked to the observation area via a staircase from the training ground. She shook my hand and introduced herself as Winry. She was of medium build, had tanned skin, wore a blue police uniform and had black hair tied back in a knot. Winry asked me not to mess around with that Arcanine anymore and boy, I was happy to go along with it. Soon afterwards, she left to train the growlithes she had left to save him and offered to get a cup of coffee sometime. I laughed as she left and thought I'd go up to my dorm and spend rest of the day reading the police manual and organizing my new schedule.

The next days were quite hectic as I had to get used to my new police life style. Every day at six, we had to wake up and go to the smaller ground at the southern end of the building to some daily exercises and practice shooting and battling. As I was a new recruit, I didn't battle at all. I had no pokemon on me and I wouldn't be assigned one till later. There were six other officers. Two of them were guys like me, and then there was an old male officer, two young female officers and Winry. After the drills and exercises we'd have breakfast at the cafeteria. Then we were assigned chores by the chief officer who lived on the top floor and looked after the execution of the tasks needed to be done. For the first week I was just assigned smaller tasks like setting up the drill ground again and helping out at the reception.

The HQ was quite big in length and size, and was about three stories tall. The ground floor consisted of the reception, training areas and the cafeteria. The first floor consisted of offices whereas the second and third floors consisted of dorms and the Chief's office. It was a normal looking building, painted brick brown on the outside and was grey on the inside. Not too colourful but the dorms were all painted with different colours. There were also a few officers who lived outside the dorms and in their homes. All my family had moved away to Pallet Town so it was easier for me to stay at the HQ. My brother lived in the outskirts of Vernia City, quite a distance from the heart of the city so I really didn't want to stay with him.

In the second week I got a chance to get a cup of coffee with Winry after she had returned from a patrol of the city outskirts. We just chatted about how the days were going by before I decided to ask her about the Arcanine. She didn't say much other than the Arcanine's name, Tsume, and that it was better for me to find out on my own, train myself to be a detective. She gave me directions to the HQ Library before leaving to go to her dorm room. I didn't waste much time and headed towards the library to check out profiles of the pokemon living in the dorm. Now that I think about it, I had never spent too much time checking out where the pokemon live and who cares after them.

In the corner of the high ceiling library, there was a small bookshelf with boxes of pokemon files in them. I looked up Tsume's card alphabetically and took out his profile. As I had guessed, the Arcanine had been seven feet tall. He used to be a pokemon owned by a trainer, but then he was shifted to be a pokemon taken care of by the HQ staff. This was when I realized that the trained pokemon in the HQ were of use by any police officer and that they did not specifically belong to anyone. I read a bit more into the file and gathered that Tsume had been left here by his trainer, after the officer had quit the force because of some unknown reasons. Apparently, the officer was quite a harsh person and he had not treated Tsume with proper care thus explaining the aggressive attitude the Arcanine showed.

There were some reports on the damage caused by Tsume in the file as well, such as when the beast had tried to bite off the tail of a Liepard who had strayed too close and such as when he had tried to break open the wall by dashing into it continuously. I kept the file back in to the box before I went out to observation area. The sun had gone down and the artificial lights of the dome were on. There were no other pokemon in the ground other than Tsume who was chained to the ground and was being whipped by one of the staff that took care of the pokemon. With each whip the Arcanine growled but not once did he turn on the person and burn him. It was painful to watch and I knew that I couldn't do much about it so I turned around and walked up to my dorm room.

In the third week, I was presented a pokeball by the receptionist, who had called me once my chores were done. She told me it was a pokemon that was registered to be mine and that now I was allowed to train and battle with it. I didn't expect to get one so early but I thought I'd go check out my new pokemon out in the training ground. I threw the pokeball onto the grass and out came a little ball. And then the blue ball rolled over and I saw that it was a Spheal. I wasn't too excited, but I bent down and greeted the little guy. He rolled over to my leg and started nuzzling me. It was cute, but I didn't know if the thing had good battle potential. Since it was a he, I decided to call it Bruce, a decent name.

I brought out my wallet and started checking out some information on my Spheal. Bruce really didn't want to cooperate with me so he was reluctant to perform the attacks I called out. I petted the thing and gave it some candy so that it was more willing to do something, but he was quite content of just rolling around in the grass. After a few more tries, the Spheal launched out some ice shards at a nice amount of speed. Unfortunately for me and my little friend the ice bounced right off the glass dome and sank right in front of you know who.

I don't know what happened right there, but by some miraculous force, I did not wet my pants. The Arcanine jumped right at me fangs beared and roaring. The roar shook the dome and scared the pokemon around us. In the next few seconds, Bruce giggled, puffed up and sent a blast of water at the Arcanine. The Arcanine was forced to land in mid flight by some fancy aerial maneuvers. As soon as the dog landed, my little guy shot off four consecutive ice beams freezing the Arcanine's legs on the ground. The Arcanine let out off one more ground shaking roar before trying to melt the ice. But the ice was pretty solid and in place, the fire barely touched it. A staff member, presumably the whip person, came and knocked the dog out before it burned me and my Spheal to a crisp, because after he knew he was stuck, he started charging up a giant fire ball that evaporated the puny water gun Bruce had thrown at it to get rid of the fire. I called the Spheal back into my pokeball before leaving the ground, pretty exhausted and scared.

In the next few weeks, I completely avoided the bigger training ground and just battled with some of the officers in the drill and exercises battle ground. Bruce was getting quite fond of me and he turned out to be quite the battler. I also got a promotion on the chores I was given. I got patrolling on some days; I was allowed to go occupy the help outpost in Vernia Square, right at the heart of the city and so on. It was a pretty relaxing life; there wasn't much crime in this city. Most of the people were quite satisfied with what they had. There were some reports of team rocket prowling around but that was weeks ago and no one had seen them ever since.

On one particular day, I was going outside to patrol on my bicycle, Bruce sitting on the back carrier all happy and bubbly. Once I had gotten my cycle outside, I was about to mount it when a large explosion shook the ground and a roar shook the sky. I heard glass break and a fire ball burst forth from the training grounds. The dome was totally blown open and I could see leaves flying in the air. There were some screams and suddenly a black figure jumped out of the dome and right next to me. The Arcanine roared right into my face before jumping on to a rooftop and roaring once more. As you can assume, I was pretty dang scared. Tsume let out a burst of fire, and looked straight at me. People were running away from the area, while some trainers passing through the town remained to see what the Arcanine would do.

There was a sort of intense fear and hatred in the eyes of the beast. Yet the murderous rage did not scare me, deep down inside I realized there was a pup that was scared of the world and scared of it-self. The eyes had a crazy feeling in about them. Tsume growled before jumping from one roof top to another heading in the northern direction, burning the rooftops as he went. It had started to rain at this moment as well. The sky was grey and the rain was pouring quite heavily. Thunder rumbled across the sky and lightning flashed above the clouds. Winry and another office came outside from inside the building.

Winry's leg was wounded and bleeding. I assumed that it was bitten by the Arcanine. Winry asked me to chase after the Arcanine. Tsume had been acting quite strangely in the last few days, refusing to eat and having random bursts of anger. The other officer carried Winry back into the HQ. I stood there in the rain for a few minutes before I raced off to the north on my bicycle. I could follow his trail quite easily as there were burn marks and people running about scared for their lives. It was quite disastrous, I was expecting backup to follow me in due time but till then I had to track down the beast and stop it before it did a lot of damage. I didn't know how but hopefully I could find a way to stop the great dog, sometimes considered legendary.

Soon I caught up to the blur of orange. The buildings were getting smaller in size as we were approaching one of the boundaries of the city, the Vernia River. It's quite a deep river and in this weather it would be quite turbulent as well. Water had started getting collected on the sides of the streets. Thunder rumbled from time to time. At the end of the road, the Arcanine jumped on to it and stood in front of the rail separating the city from the river. The river looked dark and pretty cold; it would be suicidal to swim in those waters at this time. I got off my cycle and slowly approached Tsume with Bruce shaking in my arms, out of fright seemed to be right.

The Arcanine stood silently and looked over the river. The rain had eased up a bit and I could see the rain drops falling on the beast evaporate. It was quite a scary sight; I could feel the heat emanating from Tsume 15 feet away. He turned and looked at me with the same crazy eyes. We locked eyes and I sensed it wanted to battle. Tsume launched a giant fire ball which I countered with Bruce's hydro pump. The water extinguished the fire. This time Tsume avoided the blast of water and jumped to the side. He started multiplying himself with double team and surrounded me. He charged right towards with me, electric sparks bursting from his legs. At the last moment I ordered Spheal to use protect and countered the Wild Charge. The Arcanine slammed hard into the wall of light before walking back dazed.

All of a sudden, the wild angry energy I had seen in the beast for all this time had disappeared. The will of the beast had suddenly been broken. I felt like Tsume had wanted to fight me just to try and pose some kind of superiority or a will to live by breaking me. The great dog seemed sad and became a shadow of its former self in a matter of seconds. Tsume looked at me with big sad eyes, but there was still a little craziness in them. I motioned for him to come near me so I could pet him. He took a step towards the railing and looked at me again. I called out of his name softly and asked him again to come near me.

I started to sing a lullaby my mother used to sing to me to tame Tsume. I wanted to make the dog feel that he was in no danger and that he didn't have to fight. But still I had a feeling that after whatever his old trainer had done to him, he had become an embodiment of all the anger that had been pushed at him. At that moment while I was singing, I was pretty sure I was about to breakdown and cry. But I didn't have time for that. The Arcanine barked in the manner of a soft laugh, a sad defeated laugh and then just jumped into the icy cold river.

Tsume didn't try to swim against the current or with it; he just relaxed and started drowning into the river. In a matter of seconds, I couldn't even see the body anymore. I asked my Spheal to swim with the current and try and find the dog. Bruce did as I asked but it was in vain. The Arcanine was nowhere to be seen, he had been washed away in the river. After I recalled my Spheal, I knew that the dog hadn't survived. The water was so cold that even my Spheal who is an ice type was feeling quite cold. Tsume had given up, he wasn't going to warm himself up with fire inside him. He had just given up and let the current wash over him and freeze his body. After years of fighting with himself to reclaim whatever he had lost, it was over. He was finally at peace with himself, in death.

I broke down at the moment, fell on my knees and just cried with my Spheal. Winry had come with the Chief after bandaging her wounds to see if I had done anything, but they just witnessed an adult man crying on the riverside hugging a Spheal. I vowed from that day forth that I would stop anyone from messing up a pokemon. The mind is a feeble thing, depending on how it's influenced it can be take in any direction. Sometimes the mind just finds it easier to give in and just go to sleep for good. Walking the walk is hard, but getting through it is the best thing you can do.

I tried to find the trainer who had left the force in the next few days. It was quite shocking to find that the officer had committed suicide soon after he had abandoned Tsume. There were quite a few problems in his life as well. Whether or not Tsume knew his trainer had died or not, he had chosen to take the same path his trainer had. Things were not very different in the HQ afterwards except that one half of the tree in the training ground had been burned for good, a memory of what we lost and what we should protect. I continue living my life to the fullest, hoping one day I can take care of a growlithe and call him Tsume. It would be nice to own a growlithe, in fact I might just go adopt one now. I have heard that Winry could get me a growlithe, I'll ask her tonight.