Ruto woke to an alarm blaring, "PIKA! PIKA! PIKA!" She hurriedly silenced it and pulled on her robe. The clock read 5:30 A.M., but Ruto was a morning person. She tiptoed out of her room as quietly as she could and walked through the kitchen toward the door.

As she reached for the knob, the sound of small, bare feet echoed behind her. She looked back to see her little brother Ralis smiling up at her in his totodile pajamas. Though it seemed a bit odd to Ruto's friends back in Johto, her whole family was prone to waking up early in the morning.

Ralis grabbed her hand. "Are you going out to watch the sunrise again?" He asked.

Ruto smiled. "Yeah I am, would you like to come?"

She opened the door, trying to avoid the usual squeak it made at exactly the wrong times. She pulled Ralis through the door as he giggled, dragging his manectric toy behind him.

"Come on Ralis, we have to hurry if we're gonna make it to our secret base on time!" Ruto didn't have a real secret base (that required a pokemon move), but her and Ralis enjoyed pretending to be real pokemon trainers. They made their way around the few other houses in Littleroot Town and starting climbing up a small hill near the Pokemon Lab.

Ruto looked to the dark sky as the first taillows sang their songs. The sun was barely above the ground, just lighting up the edge of the town pond. Ruto and Ralis made it to the top of the hill and approached a scraggly tree that had lost most of its leaves. Ruto climbed onto the lowest branch and motioned for Ralis to grab her hand. She pulled him up and they climbed a few feet higher.

Slowly, the sun rose above the horizon and the two mesmerized siblings stared in awe. Though they had a significant age gap between them (Ruto was about to turn fifteen and Ralis was halfway through his sixth year), they got along surprisingly well. Ruto wouldn't hesitate to call Ralis her best friend, and Ralis looked to her like she was a superhero out of one of his comic books. They were different from the other kids in town, and everyone knew it.

The Zora family had just moved to the Hoenn region from Johto for Mr. Zora's job. Ruto had been having a tough time adjusting to this new life, and the only thing keeping her from crying herself to sleep every night was her brother. Here, most kids had a pokemon by the time they turned eight or nine, but Ruto's parents couldn't afford to keep one. The other kids in town were only interested in trading and pokemon battles, so the Zora children were mostly ignored.

Ruto's fifteenth birthday was coming up, and she was hoping that maybe, just maybe, her parents could find enough money to get her a starter pokemon. Her dream was to go out on an adventure with a pokemon and challenge the various gyms in the region. She wasn't sure which starter pokemon she would choose, but she would be happy with any of the three. Back in Johto, she had wanted a cyndaquil, but those weren't native here. She hadn't been out of Littleroot Town yet, but she had already seen around six species of pokemon that she didn't recognize. Hoenn was very different from Johto.

The town slowly came awake as the sun rose higher. Ruto jumped from the half-dead tree and held out her arms to help Ralis down. The two friends walked toward their small house, listening to the sound of the surskits skimming the pond. Their neighbor, a fourteen-year-old boy named Tyler, walked out of his house carrying his beloved spinda that his dad had bought for him. He walked past the Zoras, ignoring them completely and nearly pushing Ralis out of the way. Ruto didn't understand why the town kids disliked them so much, what had they ever done wrong? She rolled her eyes at the immature kids. They all based their opinions on who had the coolest/cutest/strongest pokemon, which was just plain stupid.

Ruto's mom met them at the door, smiling. "What are you two doing up so early? Ready for another day?"

The siblings nodded, though it was usually difficult to entertain themselves all day. They grabbed some breakfast inside, and Ruto was once again lost in her thoughts of the world of pokemon that she so desperately wished to be a part of.