Chapter 3: Tyler's Journey

"He's a psyco!" Detective Carter called out.

Tyler sat down into his chair, not knowing what to do or say. Everyone else in the room didn't know either. After a few minutes of silence (except for Tyler's mother crying), Tyler stood up.

"Well I better get going. I have a hard task ahead of me." Tyler said while grabbing his backpack.

"What! You're not actually thinking of going? Are you?" Officer Mark asked.

"What choice do I have?" Tyler said. "I'm going to do this whether you want me to or not."

"Tyler!" Tyler's mother called. "Stop, please! We've already lost Eve. I can't lose another child."

Tyler walked over to his mother and hugged her.

"Mom, you haven't, and you won't lose either of us. Eve isn't gone, she's just missing for a while. I promise I'll get her back. And I promise I'll come back too." Tyler said.

"Good luck, son." his dad said after hugging him. "Remember everything I taught you."

"I will dad." Tyler said.

Officer Mark went into the storage room and came out with a bunch of equipment.

"Here's a two way radio that's good for a 15 mile radius, here's a hunting knife, I never thought a cop would be giving a kid a weapon, here's binoculars..." Officer Mark continually gave Tyler items that may be useful in any of his tasks.

Before Tyler left, he saw that just about the whole town had come to see the start of his journey. It filled him confidence as all his friends, neighbours, family, police, and people he never met before were all cheering for him. Officer Mark and Officer Jenny saluted him and Tyler saluted back. Tyler couldn't help thinking that he might never see his home again.

After walking for a while along Route 1, Tyler suddenly remembered about his pokemon. He'll need them to be strong if he and they are to survive. He threw the pokeballs containing Squirtle and Sandshrew. Neither one looked too happy.

"I'm not sure if you guys heard what was going on all that time. But please listen to me now. I need your help on this. My sister will die unless I complete all these things." Tyler said showing them the list.

Tyler wasn't sure if they could read the english language but there heads seemed to be moving from side to side as if reading.

"Well, are you guys going to help me?" Tyler asked.

Squirtle walked forward and nodded. Sandshrew stood back a minute and thought. But than he shook his head.

"Please, Sandshrew. See this picture, this is my sister. All I care about right now is getting her back. Right now I don't care about winning pokemon matches or becoming the greatest collector. All I care about is saving my sister." Tyler said while showing Sandshrew a picture of Tyler's family and pointing at Eve.

Sandshrew stared at the picture a minute, than he started to cry.

"Uh, Sandshrew? Are you okay?" Tyler asked.

Sandshrew got a hold of himself and started to draw pictures in the dirt. He drew a picture of two Sandshrews playing together. Than he drew a picture of a human taking one of the Sandshrews away. Sandshrew drew an 'R' one the human's shirt.

"Did Team Rocket take your sister too?" Tyler asked shocked.

Sandshrew nodded his head.

"I'm...sorry if this is a touchy subject for you." Tyler said.

Sandshrew walked up to Tyler and reached out his hand.

"You want to help?" Tyler asked.

Sandshrew nodded and jumped into Tyler's arms.

"Thank you Sandshrew! And thank you Squirtle!" Tyler exclaimed, "Are you guys ready to go?"

Both pokemon nodded their head in agreement. Tyler and his pokemon continued to walk down Route 1. They came to a small lake and stopped to have a drink. Tyler didn't realize until know about how hard some of those tasks would be. Eight legendary pokemon and one cloned Mew. It made the other tasks look easy.

"Let's see. Lance's Dragonite shouldn't be any harder than getting a legendary pokemon. It'll be easier because I'll know where to look. On the other hand, it's not catching a wild pokemon, it's stealing an extremely powerful trained pokemon. What about the Master Ball? I hope it doesn't have high security around it. Getting the moon stones will be a piece of cake. I just got to head up to Mount. Moon and find some there. The best strategy is just to look for the legendary pokemon while going on my gym journey." Tyler continued planning out to himself what to do first and second.

"Uh, excuse me?" asked a female voice.

Tyler stood up and looked into the face of a beautiful girl. She had long red hair and the prettiest green eyes Tyler ever saw.

"Hi, could you tell me how to get to Viridian City. I come from Johto so I don't Kanto very well." the girl asked.

"Well actually, I was going there myself as well." Tyler replied in a different tone of voice than he usually had.

"That's great. Then you could show me the way. If that's not too much of a problem." the girl asked.

"No, it's no problem." Tyler said.

"Oh you're so sweet! My name's Melody." the girl reached out her hand.

"I'm Tyler." Tyler shook Melody's hand.

"Your pokemon are cute." Melody said.

"Thank you. Do you have any pokemon?" Tyler asked.

"Yes, I have a Vulpix and a Totodile. In New Bark Town you get a choice of either Totodile, Cyndaquil, or Chikorita as a starter pokemon. I chose Totodile because I love water pokemon." Melody said.

"Hey, same thing when I chose Squirtle over Charmander or Bulbasaur." Tyler said.

"Great, it's strange we have so much in common. We chose a water-type as a starter, we both caught another pokemon (which both only one evolution), and we're both headed to Viridian." Melody said.

"Oh yeah,Viridian City! We better get going before it gets dark." Tyler said.

Tyler returned the pokemon to their pokeballs and he and Melody headed off to Viridian City.