The day opened with a tremendous shriek. With a gigantic grin, I slammed my hand down on my vintage dodrio alarm clock as soon as it struck half-past five. I was already awake, of course, and in fact I had just spent the last thirty minutes sitting on top of my sheets, in the darkness of the dormitory room, glasses on, watching the minute hand on my clock slowly work its way towards the six as I worked my way through a box of Aggranola bars. My packing had been completed several hours ago, and I'd showered and gotten dressed as everybody else was going to sleep. I'd spent the rest of the night poring over the many options for starter pokémon that we were going to choose from today, especially my top ten list and all of their weaknesses and strong points and evolutionary forms.
"Ugh," groaned Stacy Mallard from underneath her pillow, once my alarm clock had stopped ringing. "What the hell are you doing." She wasn't awake enough to apply inflections.
"Wakey wakey," I snapped at my roommates. They were good enough girls, they just needed a little bit of a push sometimes.
I heard someone fumbling with something behind me, and turned to find Diana Stamp looking groggily at her own, digital, clock. "It's five thirty." She yawned. "Go back to sleep." She replaced her clock and burrowed her head into her own pillow.
"What?" I demanded. "What?"
Stacy gave a muffled sigh. "Sleep."
I leapt to my feet- enough was enough. "Guys, we are on the brink of fulfilling our dreams of becoming pokémon trainers. In just- five hours, we're all going to have our own pokémon."
From the corner, Claudia Song gave an uninterested grunt, which Stacy echoed.
"Are you guys even listening to what I'm saying?" I demanded.
"Five hours," said Nadia Pierce. "Just... be cool, okay?"
Aghast, I watched the four of them settle back into their beds. It was like they didn't even care about this, the consummation of all our hopes and dreams. I silently resigned myself to waiting out the next few hours.
Three seconds later, my restlessness became much too much to bear. I bounced to the door and yanked hard on the handle- but it was locked. Right. Curfew measures were only lifted at six in the morning, in time for any members of the school cross-country team who lived in the dorms (like me) to get out and do some early morning running. For obvious reasons, today's early morning run had been cancelled.
I thought for another three seconds, then went over to the window. Like the door, it would be locked. But unlike the door, I knew that there was a subtly hidden keyhole on its left side. I reached into my jacket pockets and pulled out a hairpin. As I always did whenever I took it out, I devoted a few seconds to admiring the sculpted donphan ivory that it was made of, and the ironwrought emblem of a Pokéball wreathed in vines that topped it. Absentmindedly, I adjusted my glasses. Then I turned back to the lock and jammed my hairpin into it.
Now, this was the first time that I'd ever tried to pick a lock, not counting the time that I figured out that you could crack a combination padlock by spinning all of the wheels on it at slightly different intervals while attempting to pull it open, but how hard could it be?
I wiggled the hairpin around a little, and thought some more about the journey that I was on the brink of beginning. The best place for me to head to would be Peppertown, which was widely known as the home of the most beginner-friendly gym in the region. There was a gym here in Allspice, but our leader was a real competitive type- it would be easier if I faced her with a full team designed to counter her setup. The only way I'd realistically be able to face her right at the start would be if I got my dream starter, magnemite. I could picture it now: Mila sending out her swanna with a triumphant shout, only to roll her eyes when I unleashed my third-favourite pokémon ever on her.
I was snapped out of my meditations when, for the second time that day, Stacy asked me, "What the hell are you doing?"
"Ah," I said smugly. "You decided to wake up after all. Only took you, what, fifteen minutes?"
Stacy looked at me strangely.
"It's been three hours," said Nadia from the doorway.
I looked out the window that I'd been staring at for (allegedly) the last three hours. A cloudless blue sky looked cheerily back at me. Embarrassed, I straightened up abruptly- and then recoiled from the window as what felt like a white-hot bite cut into my arm. I glanced down at it and found myself clutching half of my hairpin. The other half remained embedded in the window. Its jagged end pointed mockingly at me. I must have snapped it when I got up, making something in the window's locking mechanism electrocute me. With some effort, I managed to force my fist open and release the hairpin piece still in it, then (giving the window a wide berth) I returned to my corner of the room and slung my already packed bag over my shoulder. Then I pulled an empty item capsule (the only one I owned) out of my pocket and pointed it at the clock on my bed. It 'accidentally' absorbed my blanket and bedsheets too, but the other girls weren't about to tell. Their beds were as bare as mine now was, and that sure as hell wasn't the work of the school's cleaning machoke.
"About time," I grunted.
Nadia made a noise that sound suspiciously like choked laughter. I shoved her out of the way of the door and turned the handle. With an obliging click, it swung open, and then I set out. My destination? The school baseball field, which was less a baseball field and more a battleground for the older local trainers, and had been that way for about as long as I could remember. Who had time for baseball when there were pokémon to battle with?
I was the first one there, as per usual, and I'd reached my favourite seat, right at the top of the bleachers, when the first few trainers started filtering into view. I recognized Kayda (owner of a magnetron and not much else), a set of twins I'd always just called 'The Twins' (they both ran small teams comprised of a bunch of local species- lame things like raticates and pidoves), and a guy I liked to call Birdbrain (because he only ever used flying types). There were a couple of new faces too- a redheaded girl with a ninetales and some fat guy with a swalot. I wondered what these people were doing here, until it occurred to me that they were probably coming for the graduation ceremony. Allspice Academy was kind of a big deal, after all. It made sense that some out-of-towners were hanging around school.
I spent an enjoyable hour or so watching ninetales lady crush both the twins and Kayda, and decided that she was definitely Champion material. She'd just started on the swalot guy (who I hadn't been paying attention to at all) when Nadia's nasal voice broke into my lovely day.
"Earth to Janet," she said.
"What?" I said.
"Professor Cypress wants to see us," she told me. "I don't know why, but we think it's bound to be something stupid you did."
"What for?"
Exasperated, she looked skywards for a couple of seconds. "I just said: I don't know."
I sighed and got to my feet. "It was just getting to the good part, too."
"Boo-freaking-hoo," Nadia muttered.
Like I usually did whenever she, or anyone else in our year, said something sarcastic to me, I planted my hand on her chest to give her a rough shove. But then it occurred to me that we were standing on the top step of a tall set of bleachers, without any railings for Nadia to hang on to if she were to stumble and fall. I felt a chill run down my spine.
Half a second later, I noticed that I still had my hand on her boob. To save face, I turned the awkward position into an intimidating physical statement by grabbing her by the front of her shirt and hauling her towards me. I couldn't quite lift her off her feet and shake her around (even though she was easily a head shorter than me), so I settled for saying, "Let's go."
Nadia stared at me, her mouth slightly ajar. "What?" she asked stupidly.
"Let's go," I repeated. "It's important, right?"
Sure enough, when we walked back into the main building, the neutral voice of the intercom system was repeating a terse message every few seconds. "Students of Ward Group 11D, please report to the staff room immediately." Year 11, Dormitory D; that was us. I thought back to the events of the last week. What had transpired to make this dumbness happen today, of all days?
We stomped up the stairs at the front of the building and did just that. Claudia, Stacy and Diana were already there, waiting for us. Behind them loomed the needle-thin and steel-stern Professor Cypress. As always, a clipboard lay in his wizened old hands.
He didn't beat around a bush. Despite his spidery appearance, Cypress was as blunt as you got. "Some of the technicians have reported a security breach at the window in your dormitory. Unlike the breach that boys had last year, this came from inside the room. It happened at about half past five in the morning. Who did it?"
"Well, Professor," I started, looking around at the other girls and silently willing them to shut up so that I could come up with a convincing story. Maybe the situation would be salvageable if I put the blame onto Kayda's magneton somehow.
The other four girls immediately pointed at me.
"Ah," said Cypress with a thoughtful frown.
"Yeah," I finished lamely. Not even the best liar in the world could wring a victory out of that.
"You four may go now," he said, waving away the other girls. "Get ready for the ceremony."
Once they'd left, heading off in the direction of our soon-to-be vacated room, Cypress turned to me.
"Janet. Come with me." He set off in the direction of the administrative block, cutting a brisk pace that I matched. I'd always liked how quickly he went over the course material in our Pokémon Physiology classes, and it looked like he brought the philosophy into other activities as well.
As we went past dozens of numbered pink classroom doors, and the sanitary white-green of the wall panelling that divided them, I gave the school at large a final, secret grin. Today was the day that it would all end... and the day that my journey would finally begin.
When we got to the door of the administrative block (a flashy, futuristic affair covered in blinking lights and a key card receptor rather than a lock), Cypress halted and looked up and down the corridor, confirming that it was totally deserted beyond the two of us. Then he sighed and rubbed his temples.
"Is there a problem, Professor?" I asked politely.
Cypress made a noise that I couldn't quite place at first- but then, with a start, I realized it was a snort. "Problem's one word for it," he said, and the edges of his lips curled up ever so slightly. Then they fell back into the thin line of his usual stoic manner. "Janet, I'm going to be straight with you. That stunt with the window... the higher-ups are extremely nervous about breaches of security like that. Their first thought was to hold you back. That is to say, make you start your journey next year."
My blood ran cold. "What?" I said, barely able to keep a tremor out of my voice. It- it was just a stupid window. Who even cared about people trying to get out of the dorms? And anyway, I hadn't even managed to get through the lock to open that window.
He shook his head, as if to dispel the flurry of frantic thoughts inside my head. "I was able to convince them to change their minds. That said, I hope that this helps you understand how seriously the administration takes offences of this kind. Not that it will matter to you any longer, as of noon today."
I nodded, still shaken.
"Anyway. As you still need to be disciplined in some way-" I inhaled sharply. "- you'll be taken off the priority listing." That got a relieved sigh out of me. While it meant that my top-percentage mark in Battle Theory wouldn't translate into the immediate advantage of being one of the first to select a starter pokémon at today's graduation ceremony, it was much better than not getting to pick a pokémon at all. Besides, it wasn't like I needed to have a particularly good pokémon to begin with. With my formidable battling instincts, I'd rise from the chaff no matter what.
"In fact," continued Cypress, "you won't be choosing a pokémon at all."
For the second time in two minutes, I froze. "What?"
"I offered to assign you a pokémon, instead of letting you choose. They agreed on the condition that I take it from my personal collection, so that I wouldn't unwittingly deprive another student of their first choice." A rare grin spread on to his face as he produced a simple, red-and-white Pokéball. "She's mixed-breed and in very good health."
It took me a moment to realize that the pokémon he was talking about and holding right in front of me was about to become my partner in battle for the entire rest of my life. "What is it?"
He held it out to me wordlessly. I felt my jaw go slack. Reverently, I took the Pokéball out of his hand with both of my own.
"Go," I whispered, pointing the ball at the floor some distance away. I placed my finger on the release switch. It yielded, and the ball opened to release a flood of brilliant red light.
When the light coalesced, I regarded my new partner with a trainer's eye. The first thing, of course, were its impressive jaws. They easily made up a third of the body weight of an average member of the species, and this specimen was no exception. In fact, the only real difference I could see was its skin- a somewhat duller shade of orange than its pure-bred brethren, and mottled with darker and lighter patches that almost looked like imprints of leaves.
Otherwise, my new trapinch looked exactly as I expected trapinch to look. I was glad; the looks of a pure-bred flygon were to die for, and when this little guy evolved I wanted it to look more like the rest of its kind rather than less. Awkwardly, I knelt down next to it and ran my hand over the top of its head. It felt strangely earthy, like putting my hand on soil. Trapinch wasn't on the top ten list of starters that I'd drafted in preparation for today, but it could evolve into a dragon-type. That counted for a lot, in my book.
"I expect that you'll do some research into her kind this evening," Cypress said. "The Leafcutter trapinch: consider it a homework assignment."
I groaned and rolled my eyes, but quickly straightened up when I remembered that he'd just single-handedly saved my training career. "Um, thanks, professor. I really appreciate you looking out for me like that."
Cypress adjusted his glasses. "Just remember that you're on your own from here on out, Prosper. I won't be able to intercede on your behalf if you get into trouble in another city." I nodded firmly, to show him that the message had been duly received. "Now get to the main hall. Your graduation won't be for another two hours, but you ought to take this time to say goodbye to a few of your friends."
He pulled out his key card and slotted it into the receptor behind him, opening the door into the administrative block. "I'll see you there," he said.
I waved him off and recalled my trapinch. Then, as per the professor's orders, I headed in the direction of the school's main hall, where the graduation ceremony would take place.
As I turned a corner, though, I realized that I was standing outside the main building's only computer lab. A computer lab meant one thing: access to the Internet. I glanced down at the pokéball in my hand for half a second before I made my choice. It wouldn't take too long to get the basics on the species, or look up video guides for the first twenty or so moves that my trapinch would be able to learn, or search for pictures of Leafcutter vibrava or flygon, or-
"Hey," said a woman's voice. A white-skinned hand swept between me and the article on flygon's standing in the current tournament meta on my screen. Scowling, I looked up, only to find a complete stranger. She towered over me- even if I'd been standing, I suspected that she'd still have a head up on me. Her narrow nose and high, freckled cheekbones struck me as familiar, somehow. It took me a moment to place her as the redhead who I'd seen battling this morning.
"Oh! Hello," I said, swivelling around on my chair to give her my undivided attention once I'd made the connection. "What're you doing here?"
She raised an eyebrow. "You're a student here, right? Mind helping me get into these machines?" She gestured at a computer at the far side of the room. It looked like she'd been trying to log into a computer here for a while now, judging by the fact that several computers to the right of it were bluescreened.
"Sure," I said, getting up.
"Thanks," said the woman, who on closer inspection was probably only three or so years older than me.
I gave the digital clock at the bottom of my own computer a nonchalant glance and abruptly reconsidered. I didn't have time to fix a bloody computer. "Actually, uh, take this one," I said, offering her the seat I'd just been sitting in.
She seemed a little taken aback, but sat in it all the same. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, yeah, I've gotta be somewhere else anyway."
"Oh," she said. "The... graduation, right?"
"Uh-huh," I said, even as I fumbled with the door knob. I had about five minutes to get to the hall, which was about five minutes less than I needed.
She said something else that I didn't quite catch, mostly because she said it just as I managed to force the door open. I shot through the doorway at a sprint, hung a sharp left and then ran down the stairs at the end of the hallway two at a time.
Thankfully, the halls were deserted. All the teachers and students had to be in the main hall by now, waiting for the last few stragglers to filter in.
"You're late," observed Mrs. Graves, the grey-haired and brick-shaped teacher of Pokemon Biology that I had known for most of my life as my case worker. Why fate had saddled me with a lady who looked like she was constantly eating something uncomfortably sour was a question that I hadn't been able to answer yet, but in the mean time she was accosting me just outside the school's main hall.
"Yeah," I said.
To my surprise, she glanced back over her shoulder and held the door open. "Hurry up, it's already started."
I hesitated. "Aren't you going to, like... tell me that I should be more responsible with my time and stuff?"
"Are you telling me that I ought to?" she asked sternly, cutting into my soul with a glare that could cow a rampaging articuno.
"Uh, no, ma'am," I said quickly.
"Then get in here," she snapped. I did as she said.
Inside the hall, the last few rows of seats were totally empty, like they usually were at whole school events like these. I perched myself at the very end of the very last row, and attentively watched as, one by one, my classmates trooped up to a desktop computer on the stage and selected a starter from the database. Naturally, their every move on that computer was projected on the lightscreen mirror that covered the entire back wall of the hall, showing us every single option that each student hovered over- and their final choice. Right now, Stacey Mallard was taking her sweet time. She seemed stuck between horsea and some weird green blob pokémon that I didn't recognise. I grumbled internally. The choice was obvious: the only pokémon that I didn't know were fundamentally useless.
After what felt like a year, Stacey finally decided on the green blob. It vanished from the screen, and the computer spat a Pokéball at her. Until this time next year, no other student at this school would be able to select another member of that species as their starter. I guessed the measure gave us some variety, especially since we were all going to be fortifying our teams with pokémon from the same few places for at least a few days. It suddenly occurred to me that there could very well be a trapinch in the school system, and I spent a few minutes scanning the lightscreen to make sure that there weren't.
Even when I couldn't find any, I didn't let my guard down. Flygon were pretty popular, as semi-exotic dragons with applications in both competitive battles and contests. If there had been a trapinch there earlier, it could easily have been picked right at the beginning of the selection process, by one of the priority students. I racked my brain for the identities of the other four priority pickers (who I would've been sitting next to right now if I hadn't already gotten a trapinch of my very own), but this quickly proved futile. Even if I knew what their names or faces were, I didn't remember talking to any of them enough to learn which pokémon they were hoping to start with.
It didn't matter, anyway. I planned to destroy all of them in time, or at least the ones that made it to the Ruby Conference in ten months. I wasn't about to let a measly flygon get in between me and that goal.
The selection process ended when some loser boy who I didn't recognize was forced to choose between a pidove, a weedle and a wurmple, the sole remaining options after the rest of the year had finished with the list. It could have been worse, I mused, if I'd gone up there. He could have been forced to choose between only two of those trash-tier starters.
He walked slowly down from the stage with his 'prize', a pidove, and the school headmaster, Mr. Lyvin, took his place amid a polite round of applause.
"Greetings, Allspice Academy!" he said, with a salute that he probably thought looked smart. "And welcome, Year Eleven, to the world of pokémon training!"
I groaned out loud. This had all the makings of another hour-long waffle-fest.
"Momentarily, all thirty-seven of you will come back up to this stage and receive two things! Does anybody care to guess what those two things are?"
If there had been kricketot in this hall, even they wouldn't have chirped in the dead silence that followed.
When Mr. Lyvin, after a pause that had stretched long past 'awkward' and was well into 'positively cringeworthy', finally spoke again, he seemed to have lost some of the spring in his step. "Well... item number one is your Pokédex, a crate of which have been graciously donated to us by the North Zan Trainer Act." Scattered applause. "And item number two is, well, your trainer license! That license will let you challenge the eight pokémon gyms of the official Zan League Circuit as you please, and of course can be presented as necessary to allow you to redeem the Battle Points that you accumulate over your travels!"
He coughed slightly. "With that, I'll take no more of your time!" A dusclops holding a cardboard box phased into existence on his right, and without missing a beat he withdrew an oblong, red object from it. "Can Amanda Black please come up to the front?"
Amanda Black. The only person in my year whose name I'd bothered to remember, outside of my dormitory mates (whose names were more something that I'd been forced to learn, through years of exposure, rather than something that I'd memorised voluntarily). She was the one person in the year who had managed to score higher than me in the written exams, and in doing so managed to secure a higher overall grade than me. She was the first place to my second place, and that was something worth remembering.
"Janet Prosper!" I shot to my feet and began the long walk up to the front of the hall, ignoring the curious stares of students who were probably wondering why I was sitting in the back. As I stiffly accepted my own Pokédex from Mr. Lyvin and pressed my thumbprint into the indicated scanner in order to register myself as a trainer, I glanced sidelong at Amanda. Her face betrayed no emotion or recognition whatsoever as she looked out at the audience. Silently, I resolved to challenge her to a battle as soon as we got out of this hall.