Back in Jhoto...
Lavender nestled into her burrow, snug and warm as a hibernating Caterpie. She had found the perfect place to live; it had wide, open grasslands, few humans (except on certain days), and not many predators.
She was starting to doze off when sudden vibrations startled her awake. She rushed to the entrance, poison spines raised, only to find a Girafarig, a Charizard, and a Gyarados playing catch with their trainer. The Girafarig reared to catch a high-flying apple and barely missed stepping on her. She darted out of her burrow and bit his foot in agitation.
The Girafarig yelped, missing the apple and sending a shower of sparkles into the air. Lavender looked closely and found with surprise that this Girafarig was a different color than normal Girafarig, and set off sparkles; just like her.
The trainer ran up to the Girafarig, checking its foot. Finding the bite mark, she looked over and saw Lavender's head poking out of her burrow. To Lavender's surprise, the trainer spoke!
"Oh! I'm sorry; Blue must have almost stepped on you! You still didn't have to bite him though..." she said looking at Blue's leg, Lavender looked up at her with guilt, "Well, what's done is done, do you want to play catch with us? When we're finished, we can have lunch."
"Sure!" said Lavender, always ready for adventure, "My name's Lavender, what's yours?"
"I'm Tessa," said the trainer, "and these are my friends and Pokemon, Blue, Flame, and Ruby."
"Nice to meet you, now let's play catch!"
Tessa laughed and threw a new apple to Lavender, the Nidoran deftly caught it in midair and threw it to Blue. The Girafarig batted it to Ruby, who tossed it to Tessa. Tessa hurled it to Flame, and Flame used Ember to roast it. Tessa caught it and switched it from hand to hand to cool it, then placed it in a basket. She took a new apple and repeated the process, and soon there were ten apples in the basket.
"Time for lunch!" called Tessa.
The Pokemon ran up to get their roasted apples, and settled down to eat them.
"That was fun!" squeaked Lavender between mouthfuls of apple, "Do you do things like this all the time?"
"We try to find fun and challenging things to do every day." replied Flame, "It's always an adventure!"
"Cool, I love adventure!" exclaimed Lavender, smiling.
"Hey, I have an idea!" said Blue, he turned to Lavender, "Why don't you come with us? You can meet interesting new Pokemon, get stronger, and have as much adventure as you want!"
Lavender thought about this; her mother had told her about trainers, and what they did. This one, though, seemed different than the stories. Tessa didn't try to capture her as soon as she saw her, and she could talk to her! Lavender came to a decision, if she was going to travel with a trainer, this seemed like the best one for the job!
"I'll do it!" she squeaked suddenly, "I'll go with you!"
"Great!" said Tessa, she took a Poke'ball from her backpack and gently touched it to Lavender's skin.
A red light engulfed Lavender, and suddenly she felt like she was in a different body; she couldn't move, and she couldn't see either! She panicked and almost fought against it, but realized that Tessa probably wouldn't do anything to hurt her. She relaxed, and soon, she could move her body and see her new friends again.
"What happened?" she asked, slightly disturbed by the experience.
"Oh, that was a Poke'ball," replied Tessa "it's an easier mode for transporting Pokemon, and it signifies that you've been caught."
"Weird..." said Lavender, shuddering, "I don't like it!"
"Well..." thought Tessa, "You are very small, so you could ride on my shoulder if you wanted, but bigger Pokemon, like Flame and Ruby, can't do that."
"Why?" asked Lavender.
"They're too big for most human buildings, but I try to keep them out when we're traveling, for everybody's comfort."
"Oh, what do we do now?" asked Lavender.
"Well, since you're new, we train!"
"What's 'train'?" asked Lavender.
"It's perfecting your abilities to use in friendly battle against other pokemon. By perfecting your abilities and defeating your opponents, you get stronger and raise levels." answered Flame, sweeping his tail in a glorious arc.
"Ooh! That sounds fun!"
"Well, lets start your first lesson. See that cracked rock over there?" asked Tessa.
Lavender nodded.
"I want you to try and break it apart using Double Kick. Remember to focus your kicks on the place where the crack originates."
Lavender nodded again and sped towards the rock. When she reached it, she jumped up and kicked it as hard as she could three times, then fell to the ground. Her feet hurt, but she'd managed to make the crack squiggle down the rock for a few more inches.
"Great job, Lavender!" exclaimed Tessa, running over to look at the rock, "You managed to make the rock split three more inches, keep up the good work!"
"My feet hurt..." said Lavender.
"Oh, no! They do?" said Tessa as she picked up Lavender, careful to avoid her spines, "I'll put some salve on them and start you out on softer material next time. I guess I'm not used to having a newbie on the team again."
"It's okay, Tessa." said Lavender as the salve was put on her bruised feet, "I was too overconfident, so I thought I could impress everybody by splitting a rock in half on my first try."
"Don't worry, someday you'll be able to, all we need is practice." replied Tessa as she sat Lavender on her shoulder, "Now, let's go to the Pokemon Center and rest up, soon we'll continue training."
In Kanto...
Brown woke slowly, squeezing his eyes tight against the sudden pain in his leg. He waited until the pain receded to open his eyes, and saw with surprise that he was in a dimly lit cave. He moved his head gradually from side to side, inspecting his surroundings.
A lump in the corner, one that he had thought was a rock, moved slightly. He looked closer, and found that it was a Persian! The cat moved again, and slowly got to its feet. It stretched, yawning and showing its large fangs, and glanced at the corner where Brown lay.
The Persian stiffened, realizing that Brown was awake. As it approached him, Brown trembled, preparing to teleport at any second. The Persian stopped, puzzled, and sat where it was.
"There's no reason to be afraid, I won't hurt you." she said in a silky, purring voice.
"You're just trying to trick me, so you can eat me." replied Brown agonizingly as the pain in his leg flared.
The Persian looked at a loss, and Brown could've sworn that she looked genuinely hurt for a second before regaining her composure.
"I don't want to eat you, or I would've already while you were asleep."
"You probably just wanted me awake so you could see me suffer, like those Houndour!" spat Brown, anger flaring.
The Persian hissed and Brown flinched back, the pain in his leg shooting and making him wince. Seeing this, the Persian immediately quieted, looking worried.
"Are you okay? I'm sorry, let me look at that; I hope it hasn't started bleeding again." she said, starting forward.
Brown glared but did not object. He suddenly realized that his leg was covered in bandages, and he looked on in curiosity as the Persian carefully peeled them back. He stared in amazement at the crude stitches on the painful gash, and looked at the Persian in a new light.
"You did this?" he asked softly.
"No," replied the Persian "I know a Chansey, and she did it because I don't have the skill to stitch. Let me get rid of this dried blood for you..."
Brown cringed as the Persians raspy tongue scraped against his wounds, cleaning them. When the gash was free of blood, she wrapped the leg back up in the bandages carefully. Brown nodded in thanks.
"What's your name?" he asked wonderingly.
"My name is Orange." she replied simply.
"I'm Brown... How did you save me?"
"You crawled past my cave, and I guessed what had happened. I took you in and got the Chansey to help you."
"I can't remember much, but wasn't it storming outside?"
"Yes."
"Don't Persians hate rain?"
"Yes."
"Why did you save me? You could've eaten me while I was weak and saved yourself the trouble."
"I don't really know, but I think that I realized sometime last night that you were like me."
"How?"
"For one, you were alone and injured, like I was when I was just a kitten. For another..." she leapt into a ray of sunlight, where Brown instantly saw that her pelt was a much different shade than normal. Sparkles flew from her body, illuminated into intense brightness by the sun.
"You're a Shiny, just like me..." he breathed.
Orange looked puzzled.
"What's that?" she asked.
"You have a different color, a rare strength, a-"
"Hello," said a squeaky voice from the mouth of the cave as the Chansey entered "Sorry to interrupt, how's your leg doing?"
"Fine, Orange just cleaned all the dried blood off for me."
"Good, good. The stitches are still in place?"
"As far as I could tell," replied Orange.
"Excellent, I think that in a few days we'll be able to have you try and walk!" said the Chansey as she checked Brown's leg.
"Well, I have to get going, bye!" she said, and was out of the cave in an instant.
"That was weird..." mused Brown.
"She's like that; she has a lot of patients to take care of." said Orange, "So, what were you saying about Shinys?"
Back in Jhoto...
"Lavender, use Poison Sting!" shouted Tessa.
Lavender shot glowing quills from her spines, which covered her opponent, a Totodile. The water Pokemon was mostly unharmed, but started to look sick as poison coursed through its body. It shook its head to clear it, and took up a defiant stance.
"Totodile, use Bite!"
"Lavender, dodge it!'
The Totodile sped forward with its mouth wide, revealing amazingly sharp teeth. Lavender waited until it got close, then jumped into the air, landing on its head. The Totodile hopped around crazily, trying desperately to dislodge the Nidoran.
"Lavender, use Thunderbolt!"
The man they were battling gasped as Lavender began to spark. A crack sounded, and a white-hot bolt of electricity emanated from the tiny Nidoran. The Totodile cried out in pain as the electricity hit it, and collapsed, eyes spinning.
"Yeah! Way to go, Lavender!"
Lavender bounded up to Tessa and leapt onto her shoulder, looking extremely pleased with herself. The man called back his Totodile and walked over to shake hands with Tessa.
"Great job! My name is Davin." said the man.
"Pleased to meet you, I'm Tessa," said Tessa.
"How did your Nidoran learn all those neat moves? I've never seen a Nido use an electric attack before."
"Oh, we saved up some coins and had the Move Tutor teach her Thunderbolt. It can be really useful at times."
"I'm sure it can, do you know where the next Pokemon Center is?"
"Its just over the hill, you can't miss it," said Tessa, pointing behind her.
"Thanks!"
Tessa waved as Davin left. Lavender nuzzled her ear.
"So, Lavender," said Tessa, picking up the Nidoran from her shoulder "Where do we go now?"
"I've never seen Kanto, but Blue told me about it. Can we go there?"
"Yeah, we have to hurry to catch the Magnet Train, though."
"Come on then, let's get a move on!" chattered Lavender as Tessa laughed.