Welcome to Gradation! This is my first story, so it probably could be a lot better. I would appreciate it if you could help me by reviewing it. Thank you, and enjoy!

P.S. I was eager to get started, so I have the first five chapters out already.

Chapter 1: Not so ordinary

-Max-

I was on my way to Dante's house on my bike, trying to shift my attention to my DS every so often. I was NOT going to lose every battle, not like I had last time.

My name is Max. I'm 14 years old, just like my other friends, Chris, Kevin and Dante. We were all going to Dante's house to have a tournament in Pokémon: Black and White. We do this often, almost every time a new game comes out. To my eternal shame, I lose every battle. Even my level 100 Venusaur, Meganium, Sceptile, and Torterra were easily defeated by the others' Pokémon. But with black version, I thought that I might be able to win, at least once.

When I arrived, I saw two other bikes, one red and one blue. Great, I'm the last one here, I thought, parking my green bike next to them. The door was open, like it always is (don't ask me why) so I just went inside.

"What took you so long?" Kevin asked, seeing me enter from the corner of his eye. He was already going against Dante, no doubt with Samurott at the head of his party. "Chris has been waiting to destroy you."

"I had to pump up my tire, and just because his starter is a fire type doesn't mean he automatically wins," I retorted. In case you haven't noticed by now, we had a kind of silent agreement when it came to starters. Chris always picked the fire type, Kevin always had the water type, and I always got the grass type. Dante was the only one with variety, always surprising us with which starter he chose. That probably has to do with why he wins almost every time.

"Well come on already," Chris said. "Dante said he has something to show us when we're done."

I sighed, sitting down next to Chris and using the wireless connection to locate his challenge. I might have said that his starter doesn't decide the match, but I was bluffing. My party was built around Serperior's weaknesses, and Chris liked to train a separate party just to counter what he predicted mine to be. I had used the infinite TM modification to my advantage as much as possible, but it came down to who was better in the end…

-Dante-

I was easily beating Kevin, no surprise there. In fact, it was so easy; it gave me time to think about what I needed to show to the others.

My dad is an inventor, but he's a little lazy, and never managed to get anything he made patented. He'd once joked that he'd thought the computer out before Charles Babbage was born. He does, ironically, have a knack for replicating everything he sees, from instruments to drawings, and especially gadgets he'd dreamt about. That's why I might not have been surprised when I saw the new device that my dad had made. But, for some strange reason, it radiated something… different, maybe even ominous.

The machines looked not different than just four capsules with doors, each tall enough to hold someone 7 feet tall if it was required. They were each attached to containers of gases that were labeled with the colors red, blue, green, and grey. The weirdest thing is, when I asked my dad what it was, he had absolutely no idea. He couldn't even remember his dream, or where he got the gas (or any of the parts, for that matter), or what the colors represented. NOTHING.

I finally finished beating Kevin and went over to see how badly Max was losing. That's when I got another big surprise: Chris was on his last Pokémon, and none of Max's had even fainted. Max smirked as he knocked out Chris's last Pokémon – Simisage – while Chris just stared in disbelief, even oblivious to Kevin's overly loud shout of the same emotion.

"Looks like you'll finally be able to play against me," I said.

"Thanks, but I want to see what you were talking about first," he responded.

Hiding my surprise, I nodded and lead everyone to the basement, the resting place of all my dad's inventions, new and old.