A/N: Just a heads up, this is told by, not a human, or some unseen observer, but a butterfree. As such, the sentence structure may seem a little off to us mere mammals, but who are we to understand the complexities of insect communication methods? … Also, gender recognition; apparently bugs can't figure out how us vertebrates do it :b
A/N 2: This was just going to be a prologue to a fic that would be way more cheerful and fun than this, but after a year and a half and nothing but the prologue and half of chapter 1, I figured that this would make a decent one-shot. Enjoy!
A/N 3: Yamiduke13's gonna call me depressing again :(
She'd had plans. Oh yes, Flitter the butterfree had had huge plans.
She and her trainer were going to battle gyms and gather team mates and get stronger and stronger until they were the best. She'd been the first pokemon her trainer had caught, back when she was just a caterpie. After a bit of training, she had single-handedly beaten every single pokemon at a gym full of rock pokemon. It had been glorious.
The charmander hadn't been too happy, but what did it expect? It was fire type, it couldn't battle rock type.
The trio had then spent days and days trying again and again to find their way through a maze of tunnels, adding a spearow to their group between attempts. Eventually, they emerged out the other side at a new city, this one with a gym full of water type pokemon.
The charmeleon was still unhappy that it couldn't fight a gym, but what did it expect? It was still a fire type, and fought water types about as well as it did rock types.
This gym had been much harder than the first and, though she and the spearow tried their hardest, they lost. Again and again, they lost.
This was the beginning of the end.
Her trainer decided that it needed more pokemon to beat the water gym, so it caught an oddish. She had been against the decision; she would have preferred not to catch yet another pokemon that was super effective against her. However, the addition to the team meant that they finally beat the water gym. The stupid charmeleon was still grumpy, though.
They had then gone south, to an electric gym. That gym had been even worse than the water gym. Even though they won quickly enough, it was still unbearable. She'd had to sit that gym out. She and the spearow had glared at the stupid charmeleon and the gloom as they fought electric pokemon after electric pokemon, and won each time.
Fortunately, they didn't stay there long. Soon enough, they had all gone back north, and then east, just to try and find their way through yet another maze of tunnels.
Like the gyms, this maze was also worse than the first one.
She had expected the gloom to back her up, to give her a break between beating down various rock pokemon. She expected her trainer to let her fight.
Instead, she was backing up the gloom, giving it breaks between beating down the rock pokemon.
By the time they got out of the maze, her trainer had caught a geodude and, between the imbecilic gloom battling the rock pokemon, the spearow battling the fighting pokemon, and the stupid charmeleon battling the zubat, she hardly battled anything at all. She wished it was just her, her trainer, the stupid charmeleon, and maybe the spearow.
The town they emerged into had no gym, instead, holding a tower full of dead spirits and dead dreams. She supposed it was a fitting location for what happened next: she was released.
Her trainer took her out of the town, let her out of her ball, then broke it. Her trainer said that it was sorry, that it really didn't want to do it, but that there wasn't room her for on the team any more.
Then her trainer left.
She slowly followed after her trainer as it walked away, hoping this was some elaborate joke, but too afraid that it wasn't and so stayed hidden.
Her trainer wasn't kidding. She listened to it explain to the rest of her team, their team now, that she had been released and why. The geodude didn't seem to care. The imbecilic gloom had been smug. The spearow was upset. The stupid charmeleon had been angry. She supposed she would have to stop calling it stupid.
She left them then, heading west, back to her forest. She heard the not-stupid charmeleon yelling the her trainer in the distance, even though her trainer was a human and couldn't even understand them.
She supposed she was now strong enough that even the beedrill would have to flee from her, but it didn't matter. The dream was dead.