They say Champions are born, not raised.
Real Champions, that is. The big boys, capital 'C', with a Grand up front if it suits their pleasure. Anyone can be a champion, with grit and good fortune. The Elite Four are masters of their crafts and only a step beneath the Champion, but they are beneath. They can be planned for. They can be worn down, have bad days. That sweet spot is where everyday champions thrive.
The Grand Champion doesn't have bad days. There's no luck involved when you're fighting for control of Indigo and all its wonders. You're either born with that spark that's driven men to chain themselves to monsters since the dark days of pre-civilization, or you're the B-roll. Simple as.
What a bunch of bullshit.
We all have that spark in us. Every single one, from the youngsters to the old grannies and gramps. Of course you'd disagree. Here's the deal, though- I don't care. I've got a story to tell, and you're going to listen.
It all started four years ago, when Grand Champion Blue took down the king of dragons himself, Lance, in a battle that put the cap on a year of unprecedented success. Gary Samuel Oak's career as a trainer leading up to his Championship victory - all twelve months of it - was something you couldn't even make up. If you'd tried to pitch the story of Blue to a publishing house prior to it taking place, they'd have laughed you out into the street. Even our wildest fantasies require some plausibility.
Yet there he was, triumphant on the throne, barely seventeen years old. I still get chills when I remember the laser light carving his team into the stone face of the Plateau, victory eternal. He put purpose to power that same day and rode out to Saffron City's defense against Team Rocket, and after that went on to drive Indigo forward into a bright new age-
Yeah, obviously that isn't what happened. He stepped down later that day, satisfied with his victories, and assumed the role of Viridian's Gym Leader in the wake of Champion Giovanni's exile. He had accomplished everything he set out to accomplish, shrugged off his father's disappointing legacy and proven that he had well and truly escaped his grandfather's shadow.
To this day I still can't believe people bought that.
One way or another, Blue stepped down moments after he had stepped up, and Lance reclaimed his place on the throne. But then things started to change. Policies that had been in place for decades, bedrock laws, were overturned in a handful of days. Apprentice badges rendered invalid for the purpose of admission to the Indigo Plateau, that was the one that really set people off. Outcry amongst the trainer population was intense. Lance didn't care. Somehow, in losing to Blue he had won greater executive power. For all that their constituents frothed and howled foul play, Indigo's political parties were silent.
More importantly than all of that political garbage, though, was what Lance created in the wake of that year's championship. His crowning achievement, if you ask me.
He created the Pokemon Olympics. They were held on the Plateau that same year, and he dedicated them to Blue, to Saffron City, to all those that had suffered at Team Rocket's hands. All of their pokemon too. The Games were everything pokemon training could be, would be if the world were a kinder place. Competition, struggle, horrible defeat and uplifting victory- all of it bloodless. I've watched those games hundreds of times. These days my mom plays the reruns on TV when she really misses me, that's how obsessed I was.
It spoke to me. On a level too deep to really grasp at the time, being only thirteen years old, the Games were everything to me that battling almost was. They were humans and pokemon fighting together as one, sharing equally in victory and defeat. But the victories were pure and the losses were never fatal. Watching Lance light that torch with dragonfire and usher in a new era of human-pokemon cooperation is a memory I'll take with me to my grave.
I never wanted to be a pokebattler. It never sat well with me, the fighting. Still doesn't. But don't take that to mean I didn't have the spark. I've lived and breathed competition since I took my first steps. It's who I am. It's who we all are, in some way, deep down inside. We're all just passion and meat.
I found my passion that day. Sitting criss-cross in my living room unable to look away from the screen, I vowed that I would be a Champion too someday. An Olympic Champion. I was going for the gold.
Didn't expect that, did you?
I had a routine. At thirteen I decided to copy Bruno's famous strength training regiment, because Lance only ever said that he drank milk when asked about the power behind his implausible feats. A few hours into my first day on the program, having tapped out at around a hundred push-ups and having no Machamp on hand to wrestle, I down-sized to something more my speed.
Three years later, as the sun rose on my sixteenth birthday, I was awake doing pull-ups with a Sandshrew wrapped around my legs when my mom came by with my birthday breakfast.
"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you," she sang, bumping my bedroom door open with her hip while she carefully balanced a tray of food in one hand. She held a long wrapped box in the other, propped against her shoulder. "Happy birthday dear Ethan..."
Ethan. It's my real name, in case you were wondering.
"Happy birthday to you!"
There came a clatter of myriad pokemon rushing into the room, all wishing me a happy birthday in their own special ways. Sanbo, the Sandshrew holding on to my legs to act as a training weight, redoubled its hug and squeaked merrily.
This in itself was a routine, every birthday as far back as I could clearly remember starting with a stack of blueberry pancakes generously lathered with butter and a hint of syrup. As I grew up and my appetite grew with me, a breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee were added to the platter, and when I decided to become an olympic athlete I added a gourmet protein smoothie to the roster as well. My mom made it every year, because she's the best, and after my workout that morning I was so excited to eat that I nearly bypassed the pokemon entirely.
"Ah-ah! Don't be rude." She spun the tray away from me and tilted her head to the crowd of expectant pokemon. She gave no quarter to those with poor manners, birthday or not. I heaved a groan that was all for show and crouched down, exchanging morning greetings with the family.
My mom and I were mildly famous in New Bark Town, or infamous depending on who you asked, for our Pokemon House. Most Indigo households had at least one domestic pokemon to keep them company, and it wasn't unusual to see two, but they tended to be one of a handful of docile, playful species that didn't cause much trouble and or evolve into anything that the average housewife couldn't handle. If you lived with more than that, you were probably a trainer.
As of my sixteenth birthday we shared a two bedroom house with nine pokemon, and not one trainer's license between the two of us. It was a madhouse on a good day. There was always some mess to be cleaned up, something broken that needed fixing and some little monster that needed admonishing. More than once I'd been asked why we bothered. It was a pretty short story.
My dad died when I was four years old of a terminal illness. I was too young to remember much of it, or him, but it hit my mom hard. The next year, on the anniversary of his death, she was so distraught that even I noticed something was wrong. I decided I was going to cheer her up. So that night I dug her home-grown marigolds out of their pot and threw them into the garbage, and ventured out to find her a present.
It wasn't my brightest idea, I'll give you that. When I emerged from the wilds surrounding New Bark Tree hours later, I found the town's small police force combing the area along with most of our neighbors, the sound of my name mixing with the cries of pokemon in the night. An entire pack of Growlithe converged on me within moments, all slobbery kisses and excited yips, and soon enough I was wrapped up tight in my mother's arms while she sobbed and sobbed.
I was bewildered, grimy and exhausted. But I was also triumphant. When my mom finally stopped crying long enough to demand to know what I was thinking, I proudly presented to her the flower pot that I had ransacked, along with the Oddish snoozing in its soil.
That was the day Professor Elm and I first met, as it turned out. He walked right through the semi-circle of police officers and concerned citizens and crouched down to examine my catch, favoring first the Oddish, and then me, with a bemused look.
"Well, I'll be."
We ended up keeping that Oddish, and the next year I set out on another heist with my partner in crime, and my mom was none the wiser until she woke up the next morning to find a Weedle in her bathtub. This turned into another routine of ours, a tradition that my mom definitely didn't approve of but nonetheless lasted through the years. It helped us both, I think. Every year that passed without my dad, we added another member to the family.
So I said my good mornings and dutifully accepted a kiss from Libo, our Lickitung, before digging in to my birthday feast. The sandwich was bacon, egg, and avocado with cheese on fresh toasted bread. I still remember how it tasted. My mom went around tidying things up while I ate, making my bed and putting all the books I had laid out back on their shelves. When I was done she swept the tray away and dropped my present in my lap. She sat on my bed and watched with anticipation, along with nearly a dozen pokemon.
I didn't waste time. The box had some weight to it, and I had absolutely no idea what it could be. I tore through wrapping paper, far more packing tape than was necessary if my mom's chortling was anything to go by, and finally the box itself. Inside was a case of rich mahogany, and inside that was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
A pool cue, custom made. The handle was quarts and gold dust, and the length was a sleek black. It felt heavy in my hands the way all properly made things do.
"You spend so much time down at that pool hall, I thought you might like your own cue," she explained.
It was perfect.
It was my birthday, but that didn't change much. I showed up to my shift at Professor Elm's ranch on time as always, timing my morning run just right to get me there. Running to work was my way of staying sharp and setting personal records; if I dragged my feet I'd be late, which was completely unacceptable to my supervisors as well as the pokemon in my care. On the other hand, if I picked up the pace I'd have enough time to grab a cup of coffee and a bagel from the break room before I jumped in my buggy and hit the dirt road.
Mom's breakfast had been more than enough, so I bypassed the snacks and got straight to work. It was a gorgeous sunny day, the smell of pollen heavy in the air, and I blasted music from my little portable stereo the whole drive to the nursery enclosures.
I'd brought two members of the family with me to work, my star athletes, Aibo the Aipom and Polibo the Poliwag. Don't give me that look. I was a kid when I caught them, and I had a theme going. They were both prime examples of their species, exceptional in a way that I had always instinctively grasped.
Aibo's dexterity was absurd, even compared to the rest of his infamously mischievous breed. He could do things with his single tail palm that I'd seen gold ribbon pageant Ambipom struggle to do with two, and his curiosity was an insatiable thing. He loved learning new tricks and maneuvers just to show that he could, and delighted in racing me to master proficiency. If there was a better candidate for the Skill games, I had yet to find one. He'd also dominate the Jump games, obviously. He was an Aipom.
Polibo, conversely, was something of a stamina freak. It wasn't like I expected to outlast a Poliwag in the water, but when it came to our morning runs or the frequent hikes I liked to take the family on, Polibo was also the last to beg off for a break. I had a feeling that once he progressed through his evolutionary chain he'd be an unbeatable force in the Stamina games. And if I had my way, I'd make him a Poliwrath before the year's end and he'd sweep the Power games as well.
At the moment, neither were acting like the olympic champions I knew they'd soon be. Polibo was idly shooting water guns above our heads that came down in sprinkles to fend off the worst of the heat, while Aibo chattered along with the stereo's music, anchoring himself to my neck with his tail while he swayed to the beat. It was good times. I never considered my hours on Professor Elm's ranch to be 'work', from my first day there to my last. Not to say that I didn't show up every day and put in maximum effort, because I did. I just never dreaded it the way my mom dreaded her shifts at the local market.
It was hard not to love your job when it amounted to playing with baby pokemon. There was more to it than that, sure, but at the end of the day I helped rear the new litters and kept the mothers fed. I was a breeder.
Really, I was the breeder. I'm not just bragging, either- you'll know when I do that. Professor Elm had taken me on as a ranch hand when I was thirteen, and I soon proved my worth in a task that every ranch hand dreaded. Tending to the new mothers.
Dealing with a brand new mother is an art, not a science. Every pokemon is different, gifted in ways entirely unique from any other member of its breed, and this is only amplified when they give birth. Most are aggressive, sure, but in different ways, and for different reasons. They have tics. There are species traits, but they don't paint the full picture, and more than one luckless ranch hand has learned that the hard way. Those that survive the lesson never make the same mistake twice. Instead they make new ones.
My first feeding interaction with a Granbull and her newborn litter - supervised, naturally - went about as poorly for my supervisor as it could have without ending in his death. The poor guy really couldn't have fucked it up harder if he tried. Avoided eye contact when he needed to make it, made contact when he needed to avoid it, stepped all over a barrier in the dirt that the mother had marked out for her pups and then nearly stepped on one of them when she rebuked him. I stepped in and managed, just, to defuse the situation and pacify the furious mother with her food for the day plus a bit of jerky I had packed for lunch.
It was a rare moment of incompetence in a seasoned ranch hand, coupled with a lack of personal experience with the mother. That's all it ever took, when it came to pokemon. A single slip up, and a lack of understanding. Once Professor Elm got word of the near miss, which we were required to file any time we brushed up against death while on site, he assigned me another nursery feeding. When that one went well I was put on another, and another, until eventually I didn't need a supervisor anymore, and my other daily tasks had been taken away and divied up amongst the other hands.
Someone complained, once. I only heard about it later that night at the pool hall, when an aide that had been nearby at the time laughingly told me the expression on the whiner's face when Elm pleasantly asked if she wanted to tend to the surly Mamoswine and her new whelps while I cleaned out the stables.
It was all gravy to me. The job paid far better than anything else a kid my age could get in New Bark, and I loved my pokemon, mothers and younglings alike. Especially the mother I was working with today.
The Typhlosion enclosure was a stone outcropping that shimmered from a distance as we approached, such was the heat that the mother projected at all times to keep her child comfortable. I pulled the buggy up short about a hundred feet short of the enclosure itself and popped open my cooler, waiting for Polibo to hop inside before I killed the engine and hauled out Magna's meal for the day.
Magna was a first time mother, and a fierce one at that. The Typhlosion line was notoriously protective of its young, given that they only gave birth to one at a time and Cyndaquil were utterly vulnerable until they came into their flames. Magna was no exception. It hadn't taken long for me to be given exclusive duties caring for her and her little guy, and I had been all too happy to devote the extra time to it. In the weeks since she'd given birth, the three of us had formed a bond like none other I had made at the Professor's ranch.
I called her Big Ma. Ma for short. She was a big softy when you got down to it. Enormous for her breed, and she liked to put on a show, but she was all fluff under the bristling teeth and magma-secreting hide. The other hands were just too scared of her to get to know her, the pansies.
"Hey, Ma!" I called, approaching at a steady pace. The mirage effect inside the outcropping intensified, the heat rising as the Typhlosion roused from her slumber. A deep, rumbling growl drifted out from the semi-circle of pitch black stone.
"Don't be like that, it's my birthday!" I grinned at her unimpressed chuff. "I even brought you some of the Tauros haunches that came in yesterday. It's my special day and here you are getting the royal treatment."
I made it to the lip of Magna's enclosure and circled around the tallest of the artificially raised stone, until the big girl herself came into view. She was beautiful as ever, ensconced in molten rock so that only her head and the ridge of her back was visible. Her eyes, piercing red, locked onto me for a long moment before she accepted my presence and rose.
Magma sluiced off of her like water, revealing a little bundle of joy curled up in a ball underneath her. The young Cyndaquil shivered as the mid-summer breeze brushed over his fur, uncurling from his sleeping position in a burst of motion and rolling to his feet.
He was the cutest little guy on the ranch, and he was set to be the newest addition to the Pokemon House as soon as he finished nursing. Professor Elm had proposed the idea after the first dozen or so gushing reports I had submitted after my shifts at the Typhlosion enclosure, the timing making it the perfect birthday present. That, and the perfect re-signing incentive.
The Professor and I had been going back and forth for most of the past year about the terms of my employment, and what I would do once I reached the age of majority and became free to roam the countryside in search of feral talent for my olympic team. My plan had always been to test for my trainer's license, not for any desire to take on the gym circuit, but because it offered me the greatest flexibility as a traveler. Professor Elm had spent the last few months doing his best to convince me to stay in his employ as a ranch hand instead, his offers getting harder to turn down as they escalated.
Magna's son and future access to the Pokemon Professor's best stock was what got me in the end. Magna had astounded me from the moment I laid eyes on her, a specimen that any Pokebattler with the guts to take on a fire type would have killed to have on their roster, and she had never seen a day of combat in her life. She was the product of exceptional genetics, and the genome on file for the father was the same. Their child was statistically all but guaranteed to come out a champion, and he didn't disappoint.
I'd taken to calling him Exbibo after seeing him go after his mother's milk, Exbo for short, which Magna had given in to after some huffing and puffing. He was potential personified. I knew from the first moment I had him in my arms, warm enough to burn and heavy enough to put a strain on my back even as a newborn, that he was going to do great things. When Professor Elm offered him to me and Magna agreed to the idea, I knew exactly what those great things would be.
The prodigal son opened his mouth wide and yawned, showing off budding teeth and a long pink tongue. Today, he was still just a cutie, and I got down to the business of sating his grumpy mother's appetite while Aibo surged down my arm and leapt up onto the obsidian outcroppings, hooting and hollering at the drowsy Cyndaquil. Soon enough they were both racing around the enclosure, Aibo leading while Exbo chased.
"Kids," I said fondly. Magna snorted a cloud of soot in my face. "I'm an adult now, Ma. You better get used to it." She lumbered over my way and bopped me with her snout, which was surprisingly cool to the touch. It knocked me back a couple steps, her version of a light smack on the head.
I spent a couple hours there, making sure Magna was satisfied and Exbo had his fill of milk. He had a monstrous appetite, that was for certain, and I could only imagine how much bigger he'd get as he climbed the evolutionary ladder.
Normally around this time, Aibo would have worked Exbo hard enough in their play time that the young Cyndaquil would be ready for a nap, and we'd leave them to it while I went and covered my other tasks for the day. I'd return twice more, once in the later afternoon and once in the evening before my shift ended. Today, however, was different. Today was the day Exbo began his discharge procedures.
Every newborn on the ranch was subject to constant monitoring and light testing, but once it came time to wean them from their mothers entirely, the Professor took a direct hand in things. Exbo would face a week of extensive testing in the lab before he was cleared to leave the ranch he'd been born and raised on- though, in reality, I planned bringing him back with me every day, so he wouldn't be missing much.
The goodbyes are always the hardest part, doubly so when it comes to pokemon mothers. I don't think I could have paid anyone short of the Professor himself to be in my shoes that day, taking Magna's little boy from her, ostensibly for good.
There was a lot of gnashing teeth and posturing. Magna wanted another hour, but I knew she'd only want another hour after that. So I stood firm. In response, a fully grown maternal Typhlosion bristled and roared challenge in my face, raising the ambient temperature to nearly unbearable heights as the stone turned molten at her feet. It was enough to frighten Aibo off the rocks.
I locked eyes with her. "Don't give me that shit, Magna."
You don't believe me. That's fair.
I mentioned that Magna and I had a special relationship. She was like a second mother to me in a lot of ways, especially later on. When I think of all the mentors I've had in my life, those that made me the man I am today, for better or worse, Magna is up there with the Pokemon Professors themselves. Every day that I spent with her and Exbo was an opportunity, a new lesson learned.
The first and most important lesson she ever taught me was how to stand my ground.
In that moment I was at her mercy, a single adolescent human and his untrained Aipom against a destructive force that could topple skyscrapers if truly pushed. But I was not weak. She might take me down, but it was only a might. I had come here today with a purpose, and nothing would keep me from it. Not even her.
Maybe that blind confidence was insane. Maybe it always has been insane, even to this day. But I learned early on that pokemon are a lot like people, and more often than not our base instincts react to what our enemies believe they can do, not what they can actually do.
So I gnashed my teeth and stepped into Magna's personal space, the viscous molten rock sinking beneath my work boots and sparking flames that I could feel through the multi-layered insulation.
"You knew this was coming," I told her, my voice level and firm. "You're making it harder than it needs to be. And you're scaring Exbibo."
Sure enough, the young Cyndaquil had backed off to one edge of the enclave and was staring at the two of us with wide eyes. Magna's temper was doused at the sight of it. I told you from the start, she's nothing but a softy. She beckoned her child over with a rumbling croon and set to grooming his fur. I excused myself from the enclosure, partly to give them privacy while she said goodbye, and partly to stamp out my boots in the dirt outside. I'd gotten out of there fast enough to avoid burns, but I'd need a new pair of boots. It was a small price to pay for my life, but hey. A good pair of boots was a good pair of boots.
Soon enough Exbo was creeping out from the enclosure, snuffling curiously at the dirt. His eyesight was still poor, but his sense of smell more than compensated. He was venturing out into a world that he had only ever distantly smelled beyond the overpowering familial scent of sulfur. I was excited for him. The memory still makes me smile, even now.
Magna leaned out, her massive head level with mine, and huffed a breath of warm air in my face. I smiled and ruffled the fur around her jaw.
"Apology accepted. See you later, Ma."
"So this is the famous Exbibo," the Professor mused. The laboratory was a pleasant reprieve from the summer sun, air conditioned and always meticulously clean. I leaned back in the swivel chair I'd swiped from a research aid's unattended desk and necked the rest of my canteen while Professor Elm inspected my little fire hazard. Exbo snuffled around curiously, ignoring us in favor of all the new scents.
The Professor, Johto's lead man in all things pokescience, was in typical form that day. He'd spilled coffee on his lab coat at some point in the morning, or possibly had someone else's coffee spilled onto him after knocking them down, and he moved with the tightly controlled impatient energy that always lead to such scenarios. Professor Constantine Elm had always struck me as a man that had the ability and the relentless drive to accomplish an endless number of things, cursed by the knowledge that all he lacked was time.
"Come, come, give me a hand." He beckoned me over and I quickly obliged. I offered Exbo my hand, let him go over it until he was satisfied, and then moved to stroke his back, gently applying pressure as I did. Professor Elm immediately set to work.
"Heart rate is regular, coat is coming in nicely, no visible irritations on the skin or ears..." One of the research assistants perpetually in his shadow transcribed the Professor's rapid fire dictations with long-practiced efficiency. It was far from necessary for the Professor himself to go through the motions of a routine checkup, but it was something he always liked to do when the young ones were first admitted. Exbo endured it with as much grace as a child can, and soon enough the Professor had moved on to more interesting topics.
"Tell me more about these games you've been introducing him to," Elm said, twisting Exbo's head from side to side while he inspected the little guy's teeth. His grip was firm, but never to the point of real discomfort. Exbo squirmed anyway. "Your report mentioned that he has preferences?"
"He does." I scratched Exbo up and down the sides of his rib cage until he subsided, and proudly elaborated. "I've been mapping his aptitudes for weeks now. He prefers the games where Aibo smokes him."
"A sore loser?"
"A competitor," I corrected. "He doesn't stop until he gets a win, and then he moves on to something else. Doesn't gloat, doesn't throw tantrums when he loses. His temperament's ideal."
"And how much of that competitive spirit is a side effect of his handler?" Elm asked wryly, sparing me a look that brooked no excuses. But it wasn't like I had anything to make excuses for. I shrugged, unable to contain a faint smirk.
"He's a natural talent. I've just been helping him and Magna through the teething phase, it's all there on my reports." It was true, too. Before and after I'd been promised Exbo, my methods remained the same. I've never resorted to coercion in my search for talent, and I never will. Especially in a pokemon's young and formative years. What am I, a Rocket?
"Engaging with the good behaviors, deferring to Magna on the bad," he said knowingly. That much I couldn't argue with. "It's good to see that he's avoided the worst of his father's tendencies thus far. You'll have to keep me updated on any changes in temperament after his first evolution, of course."
"Working me in my free time? How do you sleep at night?"
"I don't."
The bags under his eyes and the wrinkles in his button-up shirt spoke to that. Since before I was a lump in my mom's stomach, Professor Elm had borne the unenviable responsibility of being one of the known world's leading intellects, and had further compounded his misfortune by pursuing the most infuriating field in pokescience as his speciality - the evolution of pokemon.
There was no other field that mystified quite like the study of evolution in monsters, something I'd learned first hand in my time as an employee on the Professor's ranch. The man regularly went on sleep-deprived tirades that were more insightful than the finest education a private university could provide, and the only cost of tuition was being nearby when his fuse blew. I'd quickly picked up on the core questions that mankind had struggled and failed to answer since the dark days, questions that Professor Elm had dedicated his life to unraveling.
How was it that pokemon could become entirely different species, genetically distinct from what they had been at birth, in the same way that you and I lost our baby teeth and outgrew Saturday morning anime? Age tended to be the inciting factor, but there were hundreds of species that didn't follow the trend. Certain stones, items of significant worth, acts of courage or horrible evil; hell, the time of day could induce evolutions in pokemon. What was the genetic component that allowed for this, the secret gene that all pokemon shared and that we apparently lacked?
That, along with a thousand smaller, derivative questions, were what kept Professor Elm up at night. I didn't envy him. Even now, with where I've ended up, I still don't. There are things that I'm content with not knowing. The great Professor Elm never had that luxury.
"You had anything to eat today, Professor?" I asked, cracking open my cooler.
"I filled up on caffeine pills," the Professor demurred.
Polibo squinted against the glaring fluorescent lab lights as I unearthed him from a pile of snacks I'd packed for the day. Aibo peered over my shoulder and offered his tail palm, an invitation to play from a little monkey rapidly losing his patience in the lab. Polibo only blew grumpy bubbles in our faces though, so I grabbed my food and popped him back in the cooler.
"Here, my mom made extra," I offered, holding out a sandwich. Professor Elm accepted, chewing mechanically while he looked over Exbo's charts. This tended to be how he got his meals in- we all pitched in when we could to fight natural selection and make sure the Professor didn't waste away while his focus was elsewhere.
"He's in-line with projections thus far, but things won't be getting interesting for another few weeks..." Professor Elm muttered to himself, digging through a coat pocket for a pen. "We got the bulk of what we wanted at conception. If we do this right, track the genetic shifts at evolution here, here, here-" Red felt ink swept through Exbo's genome, marking codons seemingly at random to my eyes.
"This is an exceptional creature I'm entrusting you with, Ethan," he suddenly said, and for the first time that day it felt like we were actually in the same room together. My back straightened and my shoulders set.
It wasn't unusual to see the Professor in the course of your duties as an aide. The ranch only covered so many acres, and the lab was really only a small compound at the end of the day. Receiving Professor Elm's full attention, though. That was something altogether less common.
"I won't let you down, sir." I met Professor Elm's eyes, and it was harder than it should have been. I watched him pick me apart in his mind's eye, isolate all my base components and measure my worth the same way he would any other creature in his care. I've spit in the faces of a lot of monstrous creatures and lived to laugh about it, I like to think I'm a pretty tough guy. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I started to sweat.
Finally, he huffed a short chuckle and slapped my shoulder. "You never do."
He produced from his pocket a pokeball unlike any I had never seen, the top hemisphere a custom vibrant gold. He offered it to me, smiling indulgently as I ran my thumb across its surface and marveled at how it reflected the light.
"I won't be making it to the celebration the team has planned for you tonight, so here it is as promised. A gold medal pokeball to match your new gold medal partner. Thank you for all that you've done here in the last three years, Ethan, and happy birthday. I look forward to seeing what you and Exbibo will accomplish together."
It's hard to really put into words what that meant to me, at the time. I remember choking out a thank you and shaking his hand, and I remember crouching down to Exbo's eye level and offering him the golden pokeball, explaining what it meant. When the red laser light of the pokeball struck and condensed him into formless pokepower, the ball didn't shake once. We were already partners by then. This just made it official.
There was still a week of discharge procedures ahead of him, though, so I accompanied Professor Elm to the examination room where Exbo would be spending his time, cradling the not-so-little guy in one arm while we walked. I forget what it exactly it was we were talking about at that moment, something to do with the Miltank that would be calving later that month, or maybe the Granbull bitch's latest outburst. Whatever it was, something caught my eye and it ceased to matter.
Or rather, I caught its eye.
"Sir." Professor Elm stopped a few steps after I did, an impatient look quickly smoothing out into something oddly neutral when he followed my gaze. Walking through the discharge wards, we'd passed over a dozen different pokemon in various stages of adolescence, many in the company of their brothers and sisters. The room I'd stopped short in front of had only one pokemon inside, perched on a plain metal table with two bowls for food and water.
The windows that looked in on the young wards were one-way glass, but the Totodile inside was looking straight at me. I stepped sideways, and its eyes followed.
I'll never forget those eyes.
"Is that-"
"Mout's hatchling, yes," Professor Elm said.
"Her clutch wasn't supposed to hatch for another week," I pointed out, letting hang the obvious follow-up question of what the ancient Feraligatr's newly hatched child was doing here in discharge when it should have been in its mother's care.
The Professor addressed both. "This one hatched prematurely. There were... complications with its birthing. We're keeping it here until we find a permanent solution."
"Permanent solution?" I asked, confused. "Why isn't Mout taking care of it? She's not sick, is she?"
Professor Elm peered through the one-way glass, arms held behind his back. For a long moment he said nothing, no doubt debating what to tell me. The Totodile didn't move a muscle. "Mout won't tolerate it."
"What? Why not?" It made no sense. I'd been with Mout through three consecutive clutches, each more plentiful than the last, and she had always been an incredibly patient mother. Borderline empathetic, for her infamously vicious species. She wasn't the type to abandon a child, especially not one newly born.
Professor Elm frowned at the lone Totodile, like it was a riddle he couldn't quite grasp.
"It hatched yesterday while Mout was away from the nest. And then it ate all of its siblings.
The rest of the day was a classic birthday blur. Once I had shaken off the encounter with the fratricidal Totodile and dropped Exbo off in his room with the Professor, I spent the rest of the work day wrapping up tasks at double time pace so I could get back to the Typhlosion enclosure. My last clear memory is of Magna, the extra time that I spent with her that night while she dealt with the separation from her child.
The alcohol muddled most of what followed. I remember some of my coworkers ambushing me as I went to clock out and spiriting me away to the local pool hall, where my buddies from school were waiting with a full line-up of alcohol and junk food. It wasn't my first time drinking, but it was my first time getting drunk, and I overdid it like most kids do when they hit sixteen and don't have to sneak mouthfuls from their parents' liquor cabinet anymore.
I vaguely remember showing off my new pool cue and absolutely smoking anyone who dared challenge me at Poke Pool - a variation of eight ball, where each billiard ball represented a pokemon type, and a pocketed ball only counted if you combo'd a shot from the cue ball to a billiard ball of a super effective typing first. The games themselves were a blur, but they all ended in victory shots.
At some point I got handsy with an old classmate out back before a bunch of the guys found us and sent the poor girl running for cover with their hooting and hollering. After that it was more shots, a cake I can't recall the flavor of, a final birthday toast. Stark white street lights.
I remember stumbling into someone on the empty road home and falling on my ass. I remember red hair and contemptuous silver eyes.
"What are you looking at?"
My PokeGear's glaring ring tone woke me up early the next morning. Hungover as I was, it took me a moment to realize it was Professor Elm himself on the line, tightly controlled fury in his voice, and a further moment to recognize how odd that was. It all made sense when he told me why he was calling.
Exbo had been stolen in the night.