Chapter 5
It was roughly an hour later that a very hot, very frustrated Nija pulled her way through the threshold to the Pokemon Research Facility. She felt like she could have cried in frustration… if she had enough energy to. The sharp contrast the cold building gave to her fevered brow was welcomed with open arms.
She made her way slowly back to the rear of the building, dragging her feet all the way. Books lined the shelves, and Nija thought vaguely that she really didn't have as many sources of pokemon information as she thought she had. The sheer mass of all the data here probably would have enabled Nija to find out exactly what temperature a Caterpie would evolve at, or what day of the week was most likely for a Pikachu to be in a bad mood.
When she shoved the double doors at the back of the lab open and trudged in, she wasn't all that surprised to see that Professor Drake was reading a newspaper with his feet propped up on his desk. Nija was five minutes over the time assigned for the closure of the event, and had had to haggle with the man at the door to get in. No doubt the professor thought that every new trainer had already been helped.
"Excuse me, sir…?" she began, taking quick notice of the waver in her voice and attempting to stamp it out.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, shoving his feet to the floor with a loud thud and tossing his newspaper aside while getting up. "I'm sorry there, Nija… I didn't see you."
Nija was too happy at being acknowledged to immediately take in how the man had addressed her. "Er… 'scuse me for asking, sir, but… how do you know my name?"
"Ah… Amaris talks about you all the time."
Nija blinked for a couple of seconds. Why in the world would Amaris talk to his uncle about her? Probably to tell him what a dope she was….
Scowling at the thought, she said "Yeah… we hang out together, sometimes."
"That's good, Amaris doesn't have enough friends…" The man said smilingly, straightening his glasses (whilst Nija gagged at being called the insufferable brat's buddy), and heading over to the table especially designed for holding the remaining twelve pokeballs. Nija was overwhelmed with relief that at least Amaris had been wrong about the shortage of leftover pokemon.
"Well, it looks like we've got more than enough for you to choose from," Professor Drake said. "Which one will it be?"
Nija closed her eyes and took a deep breath. While waiting outside in the unbelievably long line that never seemed to end, she had given this a lot of thought. Bulbasaur was out of the question; she didn't want people to see her as someone who wanted to get off easy. Squirtle, too, was out… Nija didn't specialize in water anything, being a rather weak swimmer. The responsibility of starting off with a water-oriented pokemon would assure her a spot in the obituaries: "Young trainer drowned off the coast of Pallet." That left by matter of deduction…
"Charmander." She said, opening her eyes and releasing her mind from the clamp of steel that had settled around it since that morning.
Professor Drake nodded thoughtfully. "Odd choice, very difficult indeed…" he grinned slightly and pulled the ball up from its dip in the white metal. "But I suppose that's why you chose it? Looking for a challenge… that's the mark of a good trainer to be." He dropped the pokemon into her waiting hands, and they flew to her chest eagerly, cupping the prize with a fierce happiness. All of Nija's exhaustion was gone.
"Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU PROFESSOR!" She shouted, spinning on the spot and holding the pokeball up to the fluorescent lighting.
Professor Drake was considering her with a thoughtful expression. "You know, Nija… you remind me of a young boy I had in here earlier today… maybe you two will meet up some time, I think you'd be fast friends."
At the time, the words had little consequence to Nija, who was too preoccupied with the wonder of her newfound power as a trainer. She said something along the lines of "Yeah, okay!" as she started for the door.
"Good luck, Nija. Don't forget Pallet, now…" he called down the hallway that she was dashing down at top speed, the swinging of the double doors barely allowing his parting words to find their destination.
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Crashing through the tall grass, pokeball in hand, spine tingling, Nija was completely set on her goal: her first encounter with a wild pokemon while well armed with her brand-new friend.
The stretch of land between Pallet Town and Viridian City was pretty formidable, but not unbearably so… Nija figured if she walked for about a half hour straight that she would be able to wind along the path formed by travelers and get to her destination in good time with the other trainers. But haste wasn't her concern at the moment; she wanted to loiter around the unbeaten paths a while and get used to her pokemon before encountering one of her fellow new trainers—or worse, Amaris—in order to be prepared for any potential battles.
Nija always found it interesting how the hundreds of new trainers could manage to move off in a huge pack for the first day or two of their journey, before straggling off or racing ahead and never encountering one another again. It was common knowledge that after the first week of journeying, the only trainers who stayed with each other were the ones who did so intentionally, by rooming together and planning their days ahead. Everyone else went off their own separate ways in spite of the fact that Kanto wasn't really all that huge. Nija supposed that with so much to do, though, her homeland was just as easy to get lost in as any winding desert.
There was a rustle behind her, and without stopping to think first, Nija spun straight around and cried "HAH!" She was in the process of thrusting her arm forward to release Charmander when she realized what the source of the noise was.
Speak of the devil, a set of sarcastic teal eyes stared back at her own from behind stray golden-brown bangs. "Fancy meeting you here," Amaris said.
"Yeah, I'll bet," Nija shot back, turning her back on him and pouting at having almost tried to "capture" her enemy.
"You act like I wanted to meet you out here," he retorted coolly, and she could hear the indifferent shrug in his voice. "I'm just out here for some experience… and now that you're here, I can get some easy. Let's fight."
She whipped around and was in the process of yelling at him when he clicked the button on his pokeball, aiming it at the ground between them. Nija's words died in her throat as she watched the red light form a sketchy shape. It almost hurt her eyes to comprehend the technological wonder they were beholding.
Replacing the light stood a small turquoise creature with large, intelligent blue eyes and a shining brown shell set to its back.
Squirtle. Water type, giving it an automatic advantage to her fire type. Of course.
"Well?" Amaris asked, smirking and crossing his arms. "You gonna show me yours?"
"Yeah," she spat, fumbling with her pokeball and stabbing at the button, heart pounding. This would be the first time that she would see her pokemon in action. She wished dully that it hadn't been under the watchful gaze of Amaris.
Red flooded her vision once more, and to Nija's surprise, she could feel a small shift in the energy of the pokeball in her hand. It wasn't a large one, and she probably wouldn't have even noticed it if she hadn't been so wound up. But as the light poured forth and began to outline Charmander, Nija felt the pokeball… deflate, somehow, as if it were becoming no more magical than any old hunk of metal. The wonder she'd felt when first receiving it was being transferred out into the creature materializing before her eyes.
Orange, was the first thing Nija thought. Of course she'd seen a Charmander before—in her picture books and on TV occasionally—but nothing could have prepared her for the vivid colors and reality of the creature before her. The pokemon looked around it slowly, taking in the trees and grass and sky—then turned to face Nija.
Nija's eyes widened slightly at the pair of dazzling teal eyes that met hers. A wave of regret washed over her as she realized that they were the precise shade of Amaris'. That thought was pushed out of her mind when the pokemon whipped around to face the Squirtle in front of it, rumbling a hiss under its breath. The tail flame crackled angrily, spitting embers out to either side. Nija fought against the urge to flinch as a char hit her sneaker. Lifting her gaze to Amaris once again, she grinned.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" The sentence almost died midway as Nija took in Amaris' silent chuckling and token sneer of superiority. "What are you laughing at!"
"Oh, nothing. It just figures that you'd make the most retarded choice you could possibly make," he said, wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes. "Do you have any idea how impossible it is to deal with fire types? Especially as a newbie. And the time you'll have trying to survive against Pewter City's leader!"
Amaris was practically howling with laughter now, slapping his knee and genuinely taking pleasure from the bewildered and taken aback look on Nija's face. Quick to recover, she snapped back "Oh, yeah? Well, you shouldn't talk! Water types aren't that tough, but fire types are one of the strongest there are if they're trained right!"
"If they're trained right," Amaris repeated, sneering now, all traces of laughter gone. "And we all know that you won't even come close to filling that requirement."
"That's it!" Nija spat, firming her stance and whipping her long hair back over her shoulder. "Stop talking and start backing yourself up, you brat!"
"My pleasure," Amaris answered coolly. Nija waited, balanced tensely on the knife's edge of an emotional explosion for Amaris to strike. When he did nothing, she fixed him with an accusatory glare. "Ladies first," he said simply, slipping his hands into his pockets.
This gesture of smug overconfidence fueled the fire that Nija had been trying to control, and all at once she exploded. "Fine! Charmander!" the pokemon fixed her with an unwavering stare. "Scratch attack!"
There was a faltering moment of hesitation where Nija was terrified that Charmander wouldn't obey. After those few seconds, though, the pokemon fixed that stare onto Squirtle and, without any warning, leapt forward and slashed wildly at the small turtle's exposed underbelly. Angry red marks appeared on the cream-yellow skin.
Nija crowed in triumph as Charmander leapt back and flicked its tail from side to side in a gesture of what looked like contempt.
Amaris was unimpressed. "Squirtle, show it what a real attack looks like. Tackle!"
Without that moment's hesitation that Nija's Charmander had displayed, the turtle righted itself and slammed full-force into the lizard. The two went sailing, and Nija thought for a wild moment that they would slam into the nearby tree. They merely skidded to a painful-looking halt inches before it, with Squirtle riding Charmander like a surfboard, a display of show-offish bravado that reminded Nija instantly of the pokemon's smug master a few feet away.
Charmander was livid. Without waiting for Nija's next command (which would have been scratch again, anyway) it leapt forward and scratched viciously at the turtle. And didn't stop.
"Charmander!" Nija shouted, appalled at her pokemon's lack of control. "Stop it, stop it, that's cheating! Charmander!"
Amaris scowled. "Can't you control your bloody pokemon, woman?" he snapped, before turning his attention back to the fray. "Squirtle, tackle it again! Let's end this sad excuse for a battle!"
Squirtle was more than happy to oblige. Cocking its head back and ramming Charmander ruthlessly into the tree, Nija could feel as Charmander's health declined steadily to an abysmally low amount. Wondering wildly why she didn't sense her pokemon's growing weakness before this, she snapped the empty pokeball off her belt and said, "Return," in what she tried not to show as a defeated voice.
Red light engulfed the pokemon, but right before its form vanished completely into the digitized haze, teal eyes sharply met her own again, as if saying, I could have won if you'd just let me!
Nija could have sworn she was imagining it, but didn't have time to think on it. Charmander vanished into the ball, and Nija realized—with a sinking sensation in her gut—that she'd just had, and lost, her very first pokemon battle.
"That was pathetic," Amaris said, frowning at Squirtle as he muttered, "Return." Nija knew she was talking about her ability as a trainer, even though it sounded as if he was referring to her Charmander's performance.
Nija looked at him witheringly. She'd have explained that it was her first time even setting eye on her pokemon, but didn't want him to know that he'd just marred her first moment with her new partner. Instead, she said, "Maybe if you hadn't been such a jerk, Charmander wouldn't have been so riled up at you and your Squirtle."
Amaris rolled his eyes in contempt. "As if he understands what we're saying! Nija, you don't honestly believe that pokemon understand our language beyond the attacks we shout at them." It wasn't a question, but Nija answered it anyway.
"Yes, I happen to." She scowled at him. "You want to make something of it?"
Amaris shrugged and suddenly broke out into a sarcastic grin. "You'd better take the safe route back home and get my uncle to patch up your lizard for you. Wouldn't want you to get hurt out here with your only pokemon inches from unconsciousness, now."
With that, Amaris turned and started off down the path. Normally, Nija would have leapt up and demanded a rematch in the future, might have even run up to him, spun him around, and punched him square in the face, just to see that smugness fall for a moment. But for some reason, she couldn't muster up the strength to be angry anymore. All she could think of was her relationship with her new pokemon—and the undeniable problems they would have in the future if she couldn't get it to obey her.
Plopping down on a tree stump, Nija lightly tossed the ball back and forth between her hands, aware of the light tingle that she'd mistakenly thought of as "magical" earlier in the day. Now, it just seemed like the hum of one very angry pokemon buzzing about inside its entrapment, waiting impatiently for the next fight, and its next opportunity to utterly embarrass its trainer again.