Author's Notes: Thanks for the reviews and OCs everyone submitted and to everyone who added this to favourites and alerts already. I didn't expect so many responses right away so I'm very happy! Particular thanks to Sun and Moon Entity who pointed out a mistake I'd made around Amber getting her starter pokémon. I'd said that the squirtle was taken by an earlier trainer, then had Amber take the squirtle anyway. It's sorted now. The chapter's been edited and Amber has left with a bulbasaur, who I think is a better fit for her after all. Normally I wouldn't update this fast, but from a combination of this being a new story which I'm excited to write and it being summertime with little to do, here it is. To any new readers - the OC form is at the end of chapter one. Enjoy!
They had been walking all morning and had left Acacia Town far behind. Elliot had set his eyes on a windmill in the distance and was stubbornly refusing to look elsewhere as he walked briskly along the dirt track through the grasslands. He moved with the comportment of a man who was running exceptionally late, but didn't want to panic and embarrass himself.
"Why are you angry?" Amber asked curiously as she craned her face towards Elliot, jogging slightly to keep up with him. "Didn't you get the pokémon you wanted?"
"I already have pokémon," he said sternly and kept walking, eyes fixed on the windmill blades rotating in the distance.
"Let me see!" Amber squealed, eyeing the two pokéballs tied to Elliot's waist excitedly. He allowed himself a small grin as Amber's eyes lit up like flashlights.
"No," Elliot said and kept walking. He quite enjoyed the power trip he got from telling the girl off.
She pouted and scuffed her bright pink ankle boots kicking at the dirt path. They walked for a few minutes in quiet, only hearing the sounds of waves breaking on the shore, the wind running through the trees and their own footsteps pounding the trail.
"So does that mean you were a pokémon trainer when you were younger? I bet you weren't very good if you ended up working for granddad," she sniggered. Her wavy blonde hair fell like a curtain over one side of her face to obscure her mischievous grin.
Elliot tensed up. He clenched his fists, his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands and turning his skin white and numb.
"I stopped because I didn't care about the league," he corrected her firmly. "It had nothing to do with being good or not."
"Where did you travel?" she pestered, scurrying alongside him.
"Johto."
"Oh. Why not Kohama?"
"I lived in Johto."
Amber looked up at the sky and the faint outlines of mountains in the distance, past which the Johto and Kanto regions lurked. Elliot could tell that she had a million more questions, but was struggling to keep them to herself for now.
They stopped for lunch beside a leafy silver birch tree and a large boulder. Elliot leant back against the peeling white bark and watched ferries moving slowly across the water in the distance. They were eating their sandwiches in silence when a 'coo-coo' sound rang out from behind them.
"Oh wow!" Amber exclaimed. She jumped up from where she was sitting, dropped her half-eaten sandwich – freshly prepared that morning by a worried mother – on the grass and pulled out her pokédex from the pocket of her denim capri shorts. Elliot watched in amusement as she fumbled to open it and grab an empty pokéball from her loudly patterned rucksack at the same time.
As soon as the pokédex began its drone of, "Pidgey: the tiny bird Pokémon," the pidgey was flapping its wings rapidly, whirling up the loose dust from the track and blinding Amber and Elliot. "Pidgey are very docile, but chase off enemies by whipping up sand." Amber spluttered loudly and squinted, looking around for the Pokémon, but all that was left was a faint outline barely visible through the cloud of dust.
"It's not fair!" she wailed, twirling a strand of blonde hair around her fingertips. "What did I do wrong? The pokédex said it only attacks enemies!"
Elliot tilted his head and tapped his finger on his chin in mock confusion as he reclined against the tree trunk.
"Hmm, maybe shouting at it wasn't the best start?" he suggested. "And just a thought – you usually have to have your pokémon battle a wild one to weaken it."
"Fine," she huffed, "I can use Bulbasaur."
Bulbasaur sprang energetically from the pokéball when its button was pressed. The pale green Pokémon carrying a bulb on her back bounded towards Amber, who was wiping her brow with the sleeve of her fitted green hoodie.
"Bulba," spoke the pokémon in a low, rasping voice as she gently nudged Amber on her bare shins. Amber flinched in surprise and looked down at the pokémon. Instantly, her weary face lit up with an expression of glee as she remembered that she now had her own pokémon.
"Yes!" Amber said eagerly, "Let's go catch us a pokémon, Bulbasaur!"
The trio had walked for a while before they spotted one. The birch trees were becoming less and less dense at the right hand side of the trail and the route emerged into open fields interspersed with farms, all lined neatly with white picket fences. The stone windmill passed on their right, just beside a barn where the farmer was up a ladder applying a fresh coat of pillar-box red paint. The rotation of the blades made the sun a huge disco ball in the sky, flashing blinding light on the trainers as it set between the blades, beyond the town just up ahead. Then, just as Elliot had thought they were safe from another pokémon battling and capturing attempt gone wrong, a rattata jumped out at them from inside a cornfield, munching heartily on the crop.
Amber was about to reach for her Pokédex when Elliot pushed her hand out of the way.
"Look, it's a rattata. If you're fighting it, just bloody do it now!" he said urgently. Amber shot him a dirty look and held the pokédex still in her hand. She looked at it, then at Bulbasaur who waited at her feet, then at the rattata who was nearing the end of its corn cob. In a flash decision, she clasped the pokédex shut and pointed at the rattata.
"Bulbasaur, tackle attack!" she called loudly, startling the rattata. The rat pokémon dropped its food and leapt up, but Bulbasaur was on it like a meowth. Bulbasaur chased the rattata down the footpath, the rattata's long curly tail flailing behind its little body as it ran. The purple rat looked over its shoulder, two huge buck teeth obscuring any facial expression. Bulbasaur began to slow, and the rattata jumped headfirst into another field of crops that reached as high as Amber's chest. Amber slowed in her jog behind them and frowned.
"Bulbasaur, why didn't you catch it?" she demanded, walking up to the pokémon from behind. Bulbasaur cowered, taking refuge behind Elliot's leg when he arrived on the scene.
"Be quiet!" Elliot scolded. "Can't you see you're scaring the pokémon?"
"They've got nothing to be scared of!" Amber shouted, waving her arms around wildly. Even without turning around, Elliot heard the sound of a flock of pidgey flapping their wings and taking off.
She sobbed again, "It's useless. Why do pokémon hate me? Even my own pokémon hates me!" Amber unashamedly wiped the tears as they formed from the corner of her eyes and trickled like rivers down her cheeks.
Elliot knelt to the floor beside Bulbasaur. He picked up the pokémon and sat her on his lap. Bulbasaur smiled weakly.
"Look," Elliot whispered, and Amber paused for a moment and quietened down. "You just act calmly and your pokémon pick up on it. If you go mad, they'll react to that and get scared."
Amber sat down beside him and tapped Bulbasaur on the head tenderly. Bulbasaur smiled, and Amber smiled back between sniffles.
"See? It's not so hard, you can do it," Elliot said. He put Bulbasaur down on the path, brushed the dust from his knees and stood up.
"But I wanted to catch a pokémon," Amber moaned as she started to walk again. The path was just wide enough for the three of them to stroll beside each other and weaved its way between two separate farm fields.
"There's no hurry," Elliot soothed. "We'll reach Thistlebury Town soon anyway, and it's almost nightfall. We can try again tomorrow."