Erin threw herself on the bed in the room at a worn-down hotel she had managed to find for cheap. At the Pokecenter she had bought traveling food with most of her extra money, expecting not to have to pay for a room, so she had to take what she could get.
Erin sighed, looking up at the spotted ceiling. "This has been the most hectic day of my life."
"Yeah, mine too. It's never dull when I'm around you, human," Charmeleon answered, even though she didn't want a reply.
She sat up and looked at him with disbelief. "Dull around me? You're the one who-. Oh, never mind; I don't feel like getting into that again. By the way, you could call me by my name."
Charmeleon continued to search every nook and cranny in the small room. "Well, you never told it to me, did you?" Putting his search on hold for the time being, he looked up at Erin with the most piercing blue eyes that she had ever seen. Why hadn't she noticed them before?
When neither spoke for a period of time he said, "I'm waiting for you to tell me your name. That is, unless you don't care to tell me and simply want to be called 'human' like you call me 'charmeleon.' But then if that's fine with you then it's fine with me," he continued, sitting down on the bed with indifference toward the subject since Erin still hadn't said anything.
"I didn't know that you had a name."
"You didn't bother to ask, now did you?" the charmeleon replied, not making eye contact.
"I'm sorry."
"It's all right. Most humans don't think about that sort of thing, they simply assume that all we are is an animal or a slave to do their bidding and fight their battles. They don't stop to think that we think too." After another prolonged silence he said, "I'm still waiting."
"Right, sorry, again." Erin felt slightly foolish and wasn't sure why. "My name's Erin." Then, attempting to lighten to mood slightly, "Now, Almighty Beast of Flame, what might I refer to you as?"
Childish though it was, Erin's remark did make the atmosphere a little friendlier. "Abadon. My name is Abadon." He said no more.
"Abadon? That's interesting. Does it mean anything?"
"Does Erin mean anything?"
"Well, no, not really," she said sheepishly.
"There you have it then. I-"
"Oh my gosh!" yelled Erin suddenly. "I forgot about the Professor! I was
talking to him when the Pokecenter caught on fire!"
"I thought we were over the blaming on that subject!"
"Oh you hush. I wasn't blaming anyone, I just need to call Professor Chronal." She brought out her pokedex and pressed the button to activate and open it. "What did you press to get the vid-screen?" Erin asked Abadon.
He walked over to her side of the bed to have a look at the myriad of colored buttons on the pokedex. "That one," he said, pointing with his claw to a round green one on the left.
Erin pressed it and the computer screen that was there shifted and became surrounded in static for a few seconds and she had thought Abadon had made a mistake. "What did- oh." The screen in front of her was now that of a vid-screen. The keyboard too, looked slightly different, now containing the numbers required to dial and buttons such as 'call' and 'end.' She dialed the number to the professor's lab and waited as the phone rang on the other end.
A frantic Professor Chronal answered. His hair didn't appear to have been combed in weeks, when it had looked fine that afternoon. "Erin? Oh my god, I'm so glad you're all right. I was so frightened that you had been injured in the fire. And then you didn't call back…"
"It's all right, Professor," Erin said, trying to calm him down but appreciative that he had worried about her. No one else would have cared for her well-being. "I wasn't hurt in the fire, and it never got very big to begin with."
Easily sedated when he realized that a threat was over or a problem had been solved, Chronal quickly returned to their previous conversation that had been cut short in the Pokecenter. "Did I hear you yell 'Charmeleon' earlier?" he asked, his information-gathering mind at once curious.
"Oh, you heard that? Darn," said Erin, slightly disappointed. "I wanted it to be a surprise."
"You have a charmeleon with you!?!" he yelled, wanting to know everything surrounding the subject at once: where had she found it; were there any more; how was she able to get it to come with her when she didn't have any pokeballs; how well-behaved was it; was it the least bit intelligent?
Erin could tell that Abadon was starting to become offended by the professor's questions, so Erin quickly halted his flow and began to tell him the story of how they had met in the forest and then met again in the Old City. She briefly explained the circumstances surrounding the Pokecenter. "And yes, he is extremely intelligent," she added at the end. "Come here, Abadon."
"Abadon? Who's Abadon?"
"The charmeleon is Abadon. That's his name."
"Oh, my gosh: a real living charmeleon. I was certain that they had all become extinct." Chronal continued to stare as Abadon came into view on the screen, which made him greatly uncomfortable. "Now, how intelligent did you say it was?" he asked Erin, though still looking at Abadon.
"I have enough brains to know what's going on and I don't appreciate being treated like an inferior just because I don't wear clothes." Said Abadon, looking at Chronal full in the face.
The professor was slightly taken aback by the charmeleon's gaze and stuttered when he tried to speak again. "I-I d-didn't catch all that Erin. Did you understand it? I only caught a few words."
Erin smirked at her absent-minded friend. "I think you need to go back high school and retake the Pokemon-Speech class. Abadon said that he's just as intelligent as you or me and that he doesn't appreciate it when you treat him like he's not. Also, he's a 'he,' not an 'it.'"
"Oh, well, yes, thank you Erin. And, Mr. Abadon, I'm truly sorry if I have offended you. Let me know if there's anything I can do to make it up to you."
Abadon replied to him and Chronal looked toward Erin helplessly for a translation.
"He said that he wants you to treat him like you would anyone else. He doesn't like being called Mr. anything," she answered with a snicker. Abadon, however, didn't think it was so funny. He was about to say something else when the Professor shouted something about chemicals he was supposed to be watching and ran away, not even signing off. Right before Erin turned off her vid-screen, she noticed the appearance of smoke from the direction in which the professor took off. "That Professor…" she said, setting down the pokedex once more and situating herself to a more comfortable position on the bed.
"Why did he keep asking about my intelligence and talk to me like I'm an inferior?" asked Abadon with an extremely thoughtful look on his face.
Erin looked up at him and once again noticed how exceptionally blue his eyes were. Strange how a fire pokemon would have eyes the color of the ocean. "It's partially the humans' fault, I guess. Actually, it's all the humans' fault," she corrected herself. "Since we understood that the pokemon population was depleting, scientists began to breed them in laboratories. Take the poliwag," she said, thinking back to her school. "Every lab has somewhere from three to five different DNA codes of a poliwag. Then they clone those codes to make more poliwag."
"Wait," interrupted Abadon. "So all the pokemon that humans get at their schools are just clones of each other?"
"More or less. But it still depends on the trainer to bring out that pokemon's full potential. If a person is an inadequate trainer, then it's not the pokemon's fault if they're not a good battler."
"What does all this have to do with my question?" the charmeleon wanted to know.
"I'm getting to that," Erin replied. "Those same genetic codes have been cloned so many times over and over again that they're not as strong as they used to be. They're not as smart either. That's the sad thing: people began to clone pokemon to save them, but in the end all they're doing is killing them." Erin lay back on the bed and returned to staring at the ceiling. "In school, they teach us the pokemon language so we can communicate with our pokemon when we get one, but they teach us the old language: the one the pokemon spoke over two hundred years ago; the one that the wild pokemon still speak. The pokemon bread in the labs aren't as intelligent as the wild ones who haven't been cloned for centuries. Most of them need a human trainer to tell them what to do. They can barely think for themselves. So naturally, their vocabulary isn't near as vast as that of a wild pokemon. And yet, they still teach us the whole language. Teachers and scientists are still living in the past, thinking everything is still as it once was," she finished with a sigh. "I'm not even supposed to know all that. And I wouldn't, if I hadn't badgered the Prof for information."
Abadon leaned against the bed. "Is that what your friend does, Professor Chronal? Does he breed inadequate pokemon?" he said with distaste.
"No. He works with chemicals and computers and stuff. A breeding scientist wouldn't have been able to recreate a pokedex."
Abadon then climbed in the bed next to her. "I'm going to go to sleep now, can you turn off the light?"
"Aren't you scared that your flame will catch the bed on fire?" Erin asked with slight disease.
"No," he replied. "Usually it's not even hot; only when I'm angry or when I'm battling will it ever burn anything. Here, feel," he said, bringing up his tail to Erin's hand.
She hesitated. "Are you sure,
because it still looks hot."
"I'm sure, just put your hand in."
Erin closed her eyes real tight and brushed her hand through quickly. Her hand didn't hurt, so she opened her eyes and did it again, this time slower. She smiled. "It really doesn't hurt," she said, flipping her hand around while leaving it in the flame. "It almost feels cold. How can a flame be cold?"
Abadon shrugged and lie back down. "Who knows? But us Chars don't question it, we just accept it. Night."
Erin smiled and turned off the light to the room. "Good night."