Whew. Writing a fanfic is a lot harder than I thought it'd be. Oh well. Ten chapters complete!

Chapter 10

The First Step

"Okay, what's the first important thing you need to keep in mind during a pokemon battle?"

"Uh... the pokemon's health?" I ventured.

"Good. Now what kind of pokemon do you have on hand?" Warren was marching ahead of me like a drill sergeant, holding a stick while gesturing wildly. Gnat sat on his shoulder, its eyes gazing encouragingly at me. We had set off in the morning- for an 'extra-tough-crunch-time-turn-Dew-into-a-trainer' session, according to Warren- and while the rest of the world had yet to wake up, we were already on our way to... somewhere. I didn't manage to pry the answer out of Warren, and he was adamant about not telling me where we were going.

"Um." I exchanged a glance with Girafarig. "A psychic type, an electric type, and a rock type?"

"Rock-ground, Dew," Warren shot me a sharp glare from over his shoulder. "Onix is a dual type. Girafarig too- it's psychic-normal, which is why ghost type attacks don't work well on it."

I blinked, processing the information. I could have sworn that the psychic pokemon was scared of ghost types- it had ran fast enough from the Gastlys back in Sprout Tower. But my doubts were soon cleared when Girafarig whinnied, its face bashful. It seemed it didn't know that the Gastlys couldn't hurt it. "Okay, so psychic-normal, got it," I muttered. Girafarig snorted.

"So what are your pokemon's weaknesses?"

I strained my thoughts, trying to remember what we had gone over the day before. "Uh, for Mareep, it's ground, right? A-and Onix are weak to water, grass, fighting, steel, ice and- um- ground, because of its dual type, but it gains an immunity to electricity." I winced, remembering how Mareep's lightning shocks did absolutely nothing. "For Girafarig..." I glanced at the pokemon, and my mind was a complete blank.

Girafarig sighed. It seemed it had a hard time trying to figure it out too.

"Dark and bug types. They get immunity to ghosts, and fighting is reduced to normal effectiveness, but you gotta watch out for the dark types. And the bug types." Warren quickly pet Gnat on the top of its head to emphasize his point. It squeaked in reply. "Which was why I wasn't sure whether you were up to the gym challenge. Girafarig is your strongest pokemon at this point, so it goes without saying that you most likely would have thought of using it against Bugsy."

"What are we doing?" I asked, glancing around at the trees. We had spent the past twenty minutes walking back towards the Union Cave, though Warren assured me that we weren't going back in there.

"Helping you become a trainer, of course!" Warren turned back at me. "Not having second thoughts, are you?"

Girafarig and I shook our heads.

"Okay! Then list your pokemon's attacks!"

"Wha-what, already?" My mind was in a frenzy. I had barely managed to memorize the whole chart on pokemon weaknesses and strengths, which wasn't helped by Warren's constant corrections whenever I said something wrong, and my eyes were tired from staying up all night. I had barely gotten a wink of sleep when Warren (who had slept half the day away yesterday) woke me up and ushered me out of the Center. We didn't even stop for breakfast. Resolution, I reminded myself, trying to shove the image of a bowl of gruel away from my mind. Resolution.

Girafarig nudged me encouragingly. As my starter, it was also roped in by Warren for his training schedule, though it did seem to be doing better than I did in terms of understanding half of what Warren said.

"Uh. Okay." I sucked in a deep breath, reminding myself I had already gone over this. "Based on what I know so far, Mareep knows Thundershock, Tackle and Flash. Girafarig knows Confusion, Stomp and Reflect-"

"Wait, Reflect?" Warren glanced at Girafarig. "That thing knows Reflect?"

We blinked. "That's the blue-light-wall-screen-thingy, isn't it?" I asked, drawing a square in mid-air while Girafarig whinnied in agreement.

"B-but Girafarigs don't learn Reflect!"

I huffed. Didn't he at least have some faith in my ability? "Girafarig, Reflect!" A blue screen of light appeared in front of us, and I had the pleasure in seeing Warren's jaw drop, his eyes bulging. Girafarig didn't bother controlling it's amusement- it snickered uncontrollably, collapsing into a heap of kicking legs and black-yellow splotches by my side.

He pulled out a tattered book labelled "The Trainer's Guide to Pokemon" and flipped through it, his frown growing deeper by the minute. "That's impossible! No freshly-caught Girafarig can do that! Look, it says so right here!" He frowned, peering over the top of the book. "Come to think of it, where did you get that thing?"

"Mauve found it after your gym battle. Nobody was registered as its trainer. She thought it was mine."

"Huh. Well that's mysterious." He rubbed his chin, then sighed. "Gah, this is too much for me to think about this early in the morning!"

I arched an eyebrow, plucking the book from his hands. "So what do you call forcing me to memorize type compatibility charts?" I flipped through the pages- and just as usual, nothing seemed to make sense. Though if I concentrated hard enough, I could vaguely recall some of the facts written down in the book. Vaguely.

"Training!" Warren grinned, recovering in record time. He stopped short of a small clearing, hands on hips and looking as though he had just climbed Mt. Coronet. "Well, whatever. We're here."

"Here?" I blinked. 'Here' didn't look extremely remarkable. We were surrounded by brush, having left the beaten path a while back. There were plants and trees all about, though you could still see the marked route if you paid close enough attention. In fact, it didn't look any different from any part of the route at all.

"Here," Warren gestured, and amidst the foliage, I saw a ladder poking out of a square-ish man-made hole. "Slowpoke Well. We're far enough from civilization for you to train properly, and the pokemon here are said to be relatively easy to handle, too."

"Slowpoke?" I echoed. Girafarig neighed, a picture of those dumpy-looking pokemon loafing around Azalea town blinking into my mind. "This is where they come from?"

"Mm-hm!" Warren was practically beaming. "The locals around here are pretty reverent of their Slowpokes; something about how the water level around here depends on them yawning or somesuch. They don't mind if we fight them, though, as long as we don't upset them."

I paused. "D-do you think they'd mind if we catch them?" I asked meekly.

Warren frowned. "Probably not, though you might have to ask. Why, do you want one?"

I coughed. "Well, they did look kinda cute..." There was a moment of silence, then Warren, Gnat, and Girafarig all let out a collective sigh.

"Slowpoke aren't really easy pokemon to train, you know," he said sternly. "They're useful, to be sure, but they are slow like crazy. And they're psychic types. You seriously don't need another psychic pokemon in your party if you're going to challenge Bugsy."

I bit my lip. So much for that idea- the first pokemon I actually wanted to catch, and... I sighed. "Alright, then what about a Zubat?"

"A Zubat?" Warren watched me suspiciously, as if expecting me to come up with another silly reason for wanting a Zubat. "Why would you need a Zubat? You've got Girafarig, Mareep, and Onix. Zubats are hardly rare pokemon, you know, and they start off pretty weak. Plus, having three pokemon is usually tough for a beginning trainer to handle, let alone four."

"W-well, it's good against bug types, right?" I hesitated slightly when I realized he was eyeing me carefully. "Flying types are also pretty agile, which makes up for Mareep and Onix's lack of speed, right? Also, it'd be good to have a counter to bug types when my strongest pokemon is Girafarig and since it's pretty weak, it should be easier to handle and-"

Warren snickered before bursting into laughter, garnering my confusion. "Oh man, this is great," he said, wiping away tears from his eyes. "Dew, you spent only one night studying about pokemon and you already remembered all of this? We'll get you whipped into a trainer in no time! You really need to tell me how you actually managed to cram all of this in. It took me months to actually understand that pokemon were more than type compatibility."

"Oh, that's simple," I muttered, scuffing my shoe against the dirt. "I really wanted one, so I paid more attention to it when I was studying."

"Heh, so if you find things interesting, you'd actually bother learning about them?" Warren scratched the tip of his nose. "Makes sense, I guess. Alright, you've made a strong case. Though I'm curious- why'd you want one?"

"Er... well. They looked cute."

The inside of the Slowpoke Well was larger than I expected. Scratch that, it could have been considered a whole town on its own. Water dripped from the ceiling, and the air itself was moist. Streams of water flowed around small islands of rock, and the only way of navigating around the Well was by a muddy, badly-maintained path. I half-wondered how anything could live down here, but we had barely set foot into the cave when the sounds of wildlife filled our ears.

The first thing I learned was that Zubats were plentiful here- there was food to eat, a dark place to hide, and no enemies to think about (save the Slowpoke, but they were fed well enough by the Azalean folk to not bother chasing the Zubats). The second thing was that you could not take a step into the cave and not run into a Slowpoke. Seriously. If I thought Azalea was bad enough, the Slowpoke Well was filled to the brim with the pokemon, though I guess I should have expected it.

Warren quickly had Girafarig and I begin our attempts to catch a Zubat. It was hard- the Well was dark, and the pokemon were not only fast, but small and hard to spot as well. It took us a while to finally corner one, weaken it, and catch it in a pokeball- only to have it burst out and fly away, having had enough of our pitiful attempts to capture it.

"That happens a lot," Warren assured me as he scratched Gnat on the head. "You just have to keep trying."

"Easy for you to say," I muttered. He only had to capture Gnat; Jaws hatched out of an egg by himself.

Girafarig looked at me reproachfully. It knew I was getting frustrated from my own inability to catch a Zubat, and it was probably mentally chiding me for taking it out on Warren. I just glared at it and thought harshly, if I could have caught an Onix without it breaking out of a ball, how much harder was it to catch a Zubat?

It snorted in return and trotted off to find another Zubat to target, though it seemed more interested in talking to the Slowpokes that had gathered to watch us.

A part of me felt guilty, but another part snapped that it wasn't Girafarig's business to pry into my mind anyways. It probably wasn't fair of me, but then again, I didn't feel like being fair when I had spent the whole night studying, being woken up early in the morning for training, and then being incapable of doing something so simple as catching a pokemon!

Girafarig snorted again, though this time it sounded more like a chortle.

"Are you laughing at me now?"

"Gii-ra."

I sighed. It seemed that, even though we had travelled with each other for about a week, Girafarig only had two opinions of me- perpetually in need of its help, or extremely amusing.

We found another Zubat after several minutes of hard searching. It was easy for us to weaken the flying pokemon, what with Girafarig's awesome psychic powers and all, and it didn't take too long for me to throw a pokeball at it- if there was one thing I could be proud of, at least, was that my pokeballs had a hundred-percent hit rate.

However, just like the last one, it simply burst out and ran away.

"Maybe it's just not your lucky day?" Warren suggested. He was sitting with Gnat and Jaws, near the entrance of the Well, a bag full of berries being shared by the trio as they watched us.

"A-aren't you supposed to be training?"

He held up a pecha berry and tossed it into his mouth. "Jaw training," he responded defensively. "Besides, this is bonding time between my team and myself!"

Girafarig and I exchanged another glance. "So, lemme get this straight. My bonding time is to catch a Zubat with my pokemon, while yours is... eating berries?"

Warren grinned. "Berries are good. They're essential for a healthy pokemon's diet! ... Also, my pokemon are stronger than yours, so there."

I rubbed my temple. "You have two pokemon. I have three. I may not be good at maths, but doesn't that mean that our strength levels are about even-?"

"Don't forget who's in charge here!" Warren waved his stick about again. I had no idea he had carried it with him all the way down here. "Continue with your training!"

Girafarig and I exchanged a glance and sighed.

Thankfully, by the time we pulled out our fourth attempt, Girafarig and I had pretty much mastered the 'target, attack, weaken' part of pokemon training. It wasn't easy to actually fight wild pokemon, since they weren't actually threatening our lives and were, for the most part, just minding their own business, but Warren assured me that all pokemon were used to it, humans having been doing this for several centuries. Besides, he argued, the pokemon would have stopped our training if they wanted to- and they were capable of running away.

It still didn't make me feel any better, but with Girafarig's constant nudges, I found myself able to continue. Luckily, we finally managed to capture a Zubat, who, as I found out, was the sweetest little thing you could have imagined. It wasn't particularly strong, as Warren was quick to point out, and it seemed more willing to flee than to fight, but it was still my fourth pokemon.

I wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not.

"What are you gonna name it?" Warren asked me as Jaws finished up the rest of his berries, seemingly content with eating its plastic wrapper as well.

"N-name?" We were just about ready to leave- Girafarig and I had spent the past few hours doing non-stop 'training', and both of us felt pretty exhausted. In fact, the idea of naming my pokemon hadn't even occured to me at all.

"Oh yeah, you haven't named the rest of your pokemon either," Warren murmured. "Are you gonna get around to doing it sometime soon?"

"I-I guess?" I glanced at Girafarig. It shrugged. "I-I just never thought that I should name my pokemon, s-so-"

Warren was about to respond, probably with a lecture on how naming your pokemon was a good step to becoming a trainer, when a voice pierced through the darkness.

"Aw, isn't this sickeningly sweet?"

Someone else was there. I tried to spot who had spoken, but the shadows were too deep. Whoever it was, it caused Girafarig to suddenly turn defensive, growling angrily at the speaker. It seemed that it had been too distracted by our training to have noticed the presence, but since it found it, it didn't like it.

"Heh. Seems like that weakling remembers me." The shadows melted away to reveal a familiar form. I frowned- it was that boy, the one from yesterday. The one who tried to hit me. It was no wonder Girafarig was so on edge.

"Where's your friend?" I asked, realizing that he was alone. The clothes he wore were dark in colour, causing his pale skin to stand out in the dark. He looked almost like a disembodied head.

"Who, Tony?" He shrugged. "Probably still at the Center. I overheard you guys last night- figured you might end up coming here. Tony didn't want in."

"You were waiting for us?" Warren asked, his voice dangerously low. "You were watching us?"

"Not you," the boy said dismissively. "I hear you're way tougher than you look. Something about a Champion's son...?" He scratched his head. "Eh, whatever. I got no bone to pick with you."

"What do you want?" I snapped. "You antagonize me, you tried to hit me, and now you're stalking me too? Just who are you and what did I ever do to you?"

"You rea-ally wanna know?" He smirked, hands on hips, a shining example of arrogance, with condecension oozing out of every pore on his body so much so that I wanted to hit him. "I'm Alexander Farr, from Violet City, and I challenge you, Budew Eldridge, to a pokemon battle. The reason why?" He pointed a finger at me. "People like you aren't fit to become pokemon trainers. You're a disgrace to everyone who calls themselves a trainer, running around with your little electric sheep and psychic horse and now your little bat, pretending that you understand what it means to be a trainer. The Pokemon League is ending in a year, and wimps like you are crawling out of your little holes to kick dirt into all our faces!"

"Y-you think you know-" I began, only to be interrupted when he took out a pokeball, directly pointed at me.

"Any reason you come up with is only an excuse!" Alex sneered. "You don't have the guts to be a trainer, and I'm gonna prove it by sending you running home!"

Next: Budew and Alex's fight is interrupted, and the first signs of an approaching disaster appears.

Also, because of my busy schedule for the next few months, I'm not sure when I can get the next chapter up, but tentatively, I'd say I could pull one out of my hat in two weeks' time.