(I apologize for being so sporadic with updates. I hope to publish a major project-not this one, in case you were wondering-by spring of next year, and most of my time is currently spent on that. Until then...Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Dia de los Tres Reyes Magos, or whatever holiday you celebrate...and Happy New Year!)

Suggestions for the next chapters' topics are welcome!

Regarding My Beginning

Or rather, the roots of the plant I call my life as a liberated Pokémon. For these moments are about the earliest to inception that I can recall; any further down, and I reach into the buried roots of life in infancy: inaccessible by my present state of mind. Therefore, in the interest of clarity, I will first furnish the reader with some brief background information from secondary sources. Though I have hinted briefly at the invasion of Nuvema, I shall dare venture into greater detail.

A Pokémon warlord had ordered the invasion of Nuvema, a significant stronghold—both symbolically and literally—of the false humanist ideals they sought to crush. For Nuvema, the otherwise quaint and picturesque seaside village, held Professor Juniper and her bank of Pokémon: slaves to her research, her scientific exploitation, her every whim otherwise. The warlord had decided not to pursue the Professor any further after she absconded with a handful of faithful Pokémon to a distant region. He—being the relatively more merciful of the many warlords slowly eating away at human rule in Unova—did not desire to hurt her, and that the majority of Pokémon be freed was his primary concern. (Such a flattery, however, cannot be given to some of his corrupt subordinates, as the reader shall realize later.)

Understandably, he had received a tirade of criticisms and even outright derision from the more despotic of the Unova warlords for letting such an "enemy of the state" slip away from his grasp relative unscathed. (The Professor had suffered mild bruises from a fall, and was grazed at the shoulder by a bullet; but this was almost amusingly minor compared to what other human prisoners-of-war suffered in the hands of Pokémon troops with more malevolent intentions, as shall be seen later.)

Still young, as a Snivy, they had locked me in the van for a while, the jet black cargo hold illuminated only by scant slivers of daylight peeking through the door seams. I would not have been aware there were others under the darkness' capability of visual deception, had I not heard tiny footsteps approach me. Timorous sparks flashing signaled to me it was an electric Pokémon.

"Hello!" I cried out in the Pokémon tongue, for I was not versed in English at the time.

"Who is it? Oh! You gave me quite surprise there!" The light from the Pokémon turned to face me, revealing her identity as an Emolga: one whom I had been acquainted with, through by my former Trainer's friends.

"How are you!?" I inquired, beaming with a reassured expression. "Boy, am I glad to see you here. I mean, trapped in a dark van, at least I see a…" I trailed off. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, it's nothing."

"What? C'mon. Don't be afraid. Remember, when you have someone by your side...you can never be afraid." I spoke to a blank screen, for the Emolga's electricity had extinguished in her enervate condition. Her sobs rang vividly, painting a picture of her current expression.

"…My trainer used to tell that to me, what you just said," the Emolga said through choking tears. "And now…he's gone…and…I'll never get to be with him again!"

"Don't cry." I made an effort to reach to comfort her in the darkness, but failed…awkwardly. "He'll come and see you. You'll both see each other again. I promise."

"But how!?" Her sorrow turned the simple question into a plaintive cry.

"I don't know how…" I admitted, "…but it'll happen. I guarantee it." I smiled at her, despite being in the invisibility cloak of darkness. "I'm confident: by the end of today, I shall see my trainer again. I won't be alone. You say it now. Go on, believe in your will."

"Such positivity…I wish I had your spirit."

"Don't mention it—oh. The van has stopped moving." I noted. With that, the doors opened, summer sun pouring into the cargo hold. A burly Machamp briefly acknowledged us, then escorted us to a bustling tent camp we had been shuttled to; presumably one established by the warlord and his military force.

The noxious soot-ridden vapors wafted from crude campfires as dusk neared, the sun a trembling orange orb boiling the land as it touched Horizon. I suddenly spit on the packed dirt surface of the camp. For at that time, the sun was an odious figure—or as odious as could be for the mind of a juvenile Pokémon. It represented utter confusion and perplexity; pain that my young brain refused to endure through mental processing. I spit at the darkness of Night, for it was the polar opposite of sunlight. I spit at the darkness of Night, for it delayed my photosynthetic activities to the next dawn. I spit at the Sun, for I did not want to disappear for twelve hours of agonizing Night. I spit at the Sun, for I did not understand why it disappeared every night—and what fortunate ones in a land far away would reap the benefits of the Sun that we were not so lucky to receive?

Perplexed as to where the sun went at Night, I had once, under my former Trainer, asked "Where is the sun at?" one sunset—not in the human tongue, though pointing towards the red-orange orb touching the sea. My former trainer replied, "The horizon." I was silent in reply—though after a moment of contemplative thinking, I briefly nodded my head in the usual endearing fashion, eliciting a smile from my former Trainer. As a Young Snivy, I at first grunted in jealousy that the sun was theirs every night at Horizon. But then, I grew concerned if those living at Horizon would survive the nightly ordeal. What would it have been? I put my fallible imagination to the test. The huge, fire-ball of orange glowing matter lowers on Horizon. The wooden domiciles catch fire all through the town. People scatter about the streets, the terror of the engulfing fire reflected in their eyes. Babies, human or Pokémon, burn helplessly, unable to escape from their crib prisons. Lovers separate to find a way out of the circumscribing flames, never to unite and love again. Children old enough to escape are abandoned by their mothers, the latter hoping they will survive and start anew and replace their lost progeny. For the fire awakened wild tendencies, an untamed jungle of total abandon. With the suffocating smoke rose self-importance above all matters, and ironically a cold heart in every adult soul.

Lost in the whirlwind of mental recollection, I had found myself and the Emolga escorted to a small tent. Only a faint indigo sky provided natural light by this time, invisible in comparison the bright campfire burning outside. Its glow filtered into the flimsy white canvas tent as a soft, orange flicker, its radiant heat a loathsome side effect in the warm summer night. Indistinct conversations of revelry are muffled by the thin fabric. Rough linen sheets of a crude sleeping space serve little more purpose than as inadequate protection against the pebbly, filthy ground sopped in rain from two nights ago.

"Are you all right?" The Emolga asked me. "You didn't say a word the whole time, and you look very agitated."

"Oh…it's nothing." She was referring to me in the embarrassing state of daydreaming. "C'mon, let's go outside and look at the pretty campfire!" I suggested enthusiastically.

"No, let's wait here," the Emolga replied, quickly returning a dejected expression to my face. "The big Pokémon told us to wait here so we can get 'checked-in'."

"C'mon, what harm can it do?" My eyes remained fixated on the orange flicker.

"Y'know, this reminds me of back in the time when I'd go camping," the Emolga tried to veer from the subject. "He'd snuggle us all up in sleeping bags…tell us stories of the dark woods that lay beyond."

"Weren't you scared?" The very absence of light frightened me, even as a mere evocation of such.

"Nah," the Emolga quickly dismissed my fear. "I knew they really didn't exist. Anyway, the night isn't that bad. Even if it's scary, I always remember that even though the sun disappears into the horizon, it'll rise back again. There'll always be another dawn waiting to rise."

"You know about Horizon?" My eyes widened in curiosity, my naiveté far too great at that age.

"Yeah." Her tiredness was visible, as she had began to wrap herself with the sheets and prepare for an early slumber. "It's all around us. No matter where you go, there'll be a horizon. But no matter where you are, you can't touch it."

I shall be the first! My eyes squinted, staring into space with determination. I'll see my trainer again by tonight, and then I'll go on a mission with her and touch Horizon!

"Where are you?" My restlessness was evermore finite in juvenile years. I ventured from the fragile confines of the tent, in search of my trainer.

My ears took notice of her voice, only thirty seconds from leaving the tent, walking in aimless direction. The familiar voice amplified to a scream as I drew myself closer and closer to her location, in the desolate outskirts of the camp. A smile appeared on my countenance only momentarily when I had at last caught sight of her, but quickly vanished when I discerned her current state of being.

The Machamp who had escorted us to the camp was otherwise engaged in relations with my female trainer that, at my early age, could not comprehend nor understand. An Emboar, if all indications were accurate the leader of the camp, had seized and held her from above, while the Machamp lay underneath. While their low-pitched grunts were audible, the most jarring sound of the spectacle was the high-pitched cries of my trainer as they pulled her closer to their bodies. I am now acquainted with this crime: it is the crime of rape, one which is not condoned in today's society, but still practiced by powerful warlords against their young mistresses.

I had seen evidence of this in Luxray Tanya once, despite her vehement denial of such an accusation. Her eyes hung low the days following the alleged incident, seeming to express discomfort and pensiveness. She had asked for two racks of Casteliacones to be sent to her office, a treat which she had expressed enjoying much as a young Shinx, but began to dislike as she grew older. When questioned about the warlord she had had an affair with, her decided silence spoke more than any of her tear-ridden reprimands for inappropriately prying into her personal life could.

I stood there, as a Snivy, witnessing my trainer succumb to the will of the two Pokémon. "Hey!" The Emboar yelled at me, in Pokémon speak. "Get outta here. Now." His eyes were squinted, staring at me with determination—the message was clear.

I so complied with the Pokémon's orders, leaving the female human at their little mercy.

I never dared seek the campfire's true flame again. The remainder of the night was spent in a painful silence, my eyes turned away from Emolga—her likewise. Since then, I am grateful for the night—for some things are best left unseen.