POKEMON ROSE ARC
Chapter 1
Three hours, thirty-eight minutes, and a gaggle of seconds. Only a rough three and a half hours now.
Reclining back and folding her hands behind her head, insides squirming at the mounting excitement at what lay before her, the ten-year-old girl gazed into the heavens.
Pallet had always been a quiet, dull place, full of quiet, dull people. The girl couldn't imagine there being anything of importance that involved Pallet Town in all of history. Except, maybe, what was happening now.
The girl was familiar with pokemon—very, very familiar—so she knew even before the whole town was buzzing about it, that this year was Pallet's turn to start all the new pokemon trainers on their journeys. Indeed, for the last month or so people had been preparing for this night, buzzing around, re-painting their houses and cleaning out old bedrooms so visitors from Viridian, Cerulean, and even as far as Fuchsia and Saffron City would have places to stay while awaiting the following morning.
Now, they had arrived on this clear June night, and even at eight twenty-two in the evening, the girl could see as many as fifty people all outside, standing around, joking and laughing. It was strange to see so many people in this place.
Her mother often said that their town was rather like an artist's palette… a beautiful canvas upon which painters may mix their colors and began creating their life's masterpieces. But no matter how much the girl loved her mother (and her odd zeal for analogies and metaphors), she'd always feel the same. Her home was a cage, and a tiny one at that. Only a few small, two-story houses… painted off-white with gray trimmings and cracked brown shingles on the rooftops, where the girl would spend hours and hours of her time, cloud-gazing and wishing that she could fly away on the back of a Fearow or Pidgeot, and start a journey of her own.
Some "palette" this was.
The two houses on this side of the town belonged to she and… Amaris. Her mother told her over and over that Amaris was a very nice young man, and that she should be kind to him… but the girl could find no reason in the world to be nice to him. Quite the contrary, she loathed him. He never showed the slightest sign of compassion for anything, and always had the air about him of someone who thought they were better than everyone else. She often times saw him throwing rocks at Pidgeys perched on the stone wall surrounding their town, and even though he'd made her promise never to tell a soul (with a little help from the ever-constant stream of blackmail he inexplicably seemed to have her under), he trapped and trained wild Ratatta out in the brush, something that was illegal for an underage trainer to do.
But besides Amaris, the girl knew a few others in the place. There was Marianne across the way who was seven, Mr. Watts who fished for a living by the ocean… and the strange group of people who lived in the massive building in front of which a peeling wooden sign read "POKEMON RESEARCH – PROFESSOR DEREK OAK." The real professor Oak didn't live there anymore (the girl wasn't sure he still lived at all), but the young, high-strung researcher who worked there now was Amaris' uncle. The man was a little… eccentric, but not in an entirely bad way. The girl supposed he must be brilliant if the famous Oak thought him fit to take over his research in Pallet.
The girl sighed and, hoisting herself down off the roof, crept back in through her window on the second floor. Hoping she hadn't made too much noise, she closed the shutters and threw herself down on the bed, which was in its usual state of disarray.
She couldn't stand it, only three hours! Oh sure, she'd have to wait seven more for the research facility to open so she could really reap the benefits of the day, but that wasn't the point. In three more hours she would be able to—officially—call herself a pokemon trainer.
"Sweetie?"
"Yeah, Mom?"
The girl's mother pushed the door open with her back and entered her room holding a tray with two steaming mugs of cocoa on it, and, tapping the door shut with her foot, set down the tray and turned to face her daughter.
Sporting golden-brown hair and hazel eyes, her mother was often mistaken for the girl's elder sister, since the two of them looked nothing alike. The girl had wondered why this was so for many years, until the previous one when her mother had felt she was old enough to know that she was adopted. The girl really had no problem with this, and she knew that this woman standing here with that "you-were-on-the-roof-again-weren't-you?" look was the only mom she'd ever need.
Still though, the girl was curious to meet her birth parents, and knew it would be something she'd have to track down when she was older.
But for now, such thoughts were far away, and as the girl grinned sheepishly and said "Hey mom…"
"How many times have I told you that it isn't safe up there?" her mother sighed, handing her daughter one of the mugs, an old one with a Santa hat adorned Charmander peering from it.
"Oh mo-o-om, come on…!" The girl said, bouncing in anticipation. "I'm gonna be flying up wa-a-ay high on my Pidgeot soon! I can't be afraid of my roof!"
Her mother laughed kindly and ruffled the girl's long black hair with one hand. "Not for a while, now. You still have to catch yourself a Pidgey and raise it properly before you'll be doing anything of the sort!"
The girl grinned. "Technicalities…"
They shared a moment of silence while quietly sipping from their cups.
"Hey Mom?" the girl asked, setting her now empty mug on her bedside table, only to have her mother lift it again to place a coaster down. The girl rolled her eyes in good humor before continuing, "Do you… do you think I'll be a good trainer? I mean, I don't know what I mean by "good" really, just like… I don't know, do you think…?"
Her mother smiled at her and chuckled softly. "Honey, I think you'll be an exceptional trainer. You've got the drive, and I know you'll treat your pokemon right… I'm sure they'll all just adore you, and that's one of the most important things there is to being good, and great." She leaned over to click off the lamp (which was, like everything else in the girls room, pokemon-oriented) on the bedside table. "But before you can be great, you need your sleep!"
The girl moaned out of habit, but inside she felt a lot better. Her mom always had a way of making her doubts vanish. "Oh… all right, but really, it's only nine…"
"ONLY nine? I thought you said you were going to bed at eight thirty so you could be up early tomorrow, young lady."
"Oh yeah… that's right…" the girl muttered, a sudden yawn crippling her sentence. "But 'm not tired…" she protested, curling up under the covers as her mom tucked them in around her feet.
"Goodnight, Nija"
"Night, Mom…"
---------
Nija wasn't really sure when she'd dosed off, but she did know that her mother had been right about how going to sleep early would mean she would rise earlier than she needed to. Her eyes were open at 5:15, her clothes assembled pell-mell at 5:20, and she was dropping out of her window into the bushes below at 5:22, silently thanking her mom for keeping them so bouncy and lush with her obsessive gardening.
Nija wasn't really sure what the point of being up so early was, but she knew she certainly wouldn't be able to sleep. Maybe a walk around the town was what she needed to calm down.
She passed by Amaris' house (shot it a glare), and continued past it, keeping to the perimeter with one hand trailing on the wall and one hand in her pocket. She saw a few of her neighbors entering the lighted Pokemon Research Center and waved. She wished she could get in there early too, but the people in there were probably only making last minute arrangements for the big day.
She was still looking at the research building when her arm collided with something leaning against the wall.
Well, more like someone. None other than Amaris, sporting his trademark look of cool disinterest, barred her way. Nija, who had stopped walking, now took her hand from the wall and stepped past him, replaced it, and began to continue on her way.
"Why do you do that?" came the sneering voice. Nija stopped, already irritated. There was nothing like a little run in with that insufferable brat to get her day started on the wrong foot.
"Do what?"
"That," Amaris continued, pushing off against the wood to stand up again. "Touch the wall while you're walking."
"… None of your business."
Amaris rolled his eyes and called her something like "obsessive-compulsive." Then he asked her something that served as a kick to the head.
"What pokemon are you gonna choose for your starter?"
After a moment of shocked silence, Nija answered "None of your business!" which she knew sounded exceedingly lame as an excuse for something she didn't have an answer to twice in a row.
Nija had thought long and hard about what pokemon she wanted to start with, but she still really had no idea. She had sorta-decided on a Bulbasaur, which everyone said was the best thing for a beginner, then kinda-decided on a Squirtle, which she knew grew up to be the formidable Blastoise, and then maybe-decided on a Charmander, just because she thought that fire pokemon were just plain awesome, and hard to come by.
In the end she'd decided on Squirtle, and had tried her very best to stick to that judgment. But for some reason, now that the question had come from Amaris, all certainty she had had about her decision crumbled away and she was left faltering, torn equally between three opposing forces once again. Back to square one.
Amaris could tell that she had no idea what she was going to choose. Nija could tell from the way the smirk grew on his face. She honestly wondered at times if he could smell fear. "Don't tell me the pokeholic Nija hasn't thought about which one to start with!" he laughed aloud and slapped the wall with his hand. "I don't believe it… you know, if you don't tell them what pokemon you want the second it's your turn, they kick you out till everyone else has gone and you get whatever reject is left over…"
Nija fought internally to keep a look of horror from spreading across her face. She wouldn't give Amaris the satisfaction. Surely they wouldn't do that… he was just trying to scare her… wasn't he?
"I'd get to it if I were you… you only have forty-five minutes before you have to make the most important decision of your life! Tick-tock…" and with that said, Amaris strolled to the research building, one hand in his pocket, and swung the door open, letting himself in.
Nija took perhaps a nanosecond to be bitterly jealous of Amaris' privileges as the nephew of the head of the building, before she turned and dashed back towards her house. She had some pokemon research of her own to do…
---------
"Bulbasaur, a plant type which gives it an automatic advantage over rock and water types, also evolves earlier, giving it the reputation as a beginner's best friend…"
Bulbasaur… Bulbasaur sounded good, actually… if Nija took things the conventional way, she would be up against the leader of Pewter City and Cerulean City's gyms first, and a plant type might be just what she needed to even SURVIVE them… But then again… did she really want to choose her partner based only what would be the easy way out?
Nija let her head fall to the desk. She was doomed, plain and simple. Already she'd depleted her formidable collection of research books. She knew that she couldn't waste any time feeling sorry for herself, but she wished desperately that there were three Nija Ikira's, one for each starter pokemon.
Lifting her head from the pages of her last hope, the morning sun flashed off the face of her wall-mounted clock, and after blinking the light spot from her eyes, Nija caught sight of the time.
"OH MY GOD--!"
Falling all over herself, Nija knocking over her chair in the process of scrambling to the window. She leapt out into the outside world and scraped both her knees and palms on the rougher-than-she-would-have-liked landing. Pulling herself up and half-limping-half-sprinting the rest of the way around the corner of the Research building, Nija groaned as she caught sight of the formidable line that had materialized.
Seven o' five. She was late.
Groaning again and taking her place in the back of the line the curled straight back to the opposing wall of Pallet, Nija caught sight of Amaris exiting the door. He had, of course, been the first to get his pokemon. The sight of the red and white ball in his hand filled her with a flustered anger that forced her to look down and away as he passed her, smirking and tossing it in the air for effect.