Chapter 13
By the time Nija reached Viridian City, her spirits had been dampened considerably. She wasn't one to sink into self-pity, but it was sorely tempting now. All she wanted to do was find the Pokemon Center, heal up Charmander, make her first catch—assuming that wouldn't go wrong, too—and get some sleep, in spite of the fact that it was only mid-afternoon.
Viridian City really was much larger than Pallet Town, Nija decided. She'd been to Viridian with her mother once or twice as a kid, but had never actually been there alone. Now that she wasn't merely tagging along for a shopping trip she felt a sudden surge of freedom. She really was free to do whatever the heck she wanted to.
But, first thing was first—she had to find the Pokemon Center.
It wasn't very hard, since they were the largest buildings in virtually all the towns they were in. The building itself was painted a very strange color of spring green, something that Nija couldn't decide if she liked or not. On one hand, it was very festive and appropriate for the town. On the other hand, she sort of felt like puking whenever she looked at it.
Inside, the accommodations were actually very nice, and she was spared having to look at vivid green. The woman at the counter gave her a key labeled "#15" complete with a smiling Chancey keychain, and Nija headed back to the room. About halfway there she stopped and impulsively slammed her palm into her forehead.
"Jesus, Nija, stop feeling so freakin' sorry for yourself! It's only Amaris!" she berated in a voice that was perhaps a tad too audible, as a few passerby glanced nervously at her. She ignored them, standing tall and rigid, hands balled in fists at her side, backpack strap clutched in her left one. "He's just a brat, and he caught you off guard, and he had more time to train with Pokemon than you did! Next time you see him you just gotta make sure you wipe the floor with him! And you're never gonna get tough enough sitting around!"
Satisfied with putting herself in her place, Nija calmly continued her walk down the hallway until she reached a door with slightly cloudy brass numbers that read "#15" and turned the key in the lock to let herself into the room.
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Nija had decided to hang around Viridian longer than most newbie trainers did. Although she was sorely tempted to follow suit whenever she saw one of the trainers from Pallet coursing through the city in haste for the first couple of days, she restrained herself from blazing her trail after them. Instead, she hung around and purchased a map of Kanto (even though she'd memorized the route like the back of her hand) and trained Charmander like mad. The Pokemon actually was quite willing to beat the tar out of any wild Pokemon Nija encountered, and for a while they coexisted with each other peacefully, Nija allowing Charmander to attack things to its heart's content and Charmander allowing Nija to give it orders. It didn't disobey her like the first time, but it also seemed very arrogant and languid in the way it executed commands, sometimes pausing for nearly ten seconds before deciding to do what its master suggested. It frustrated Nija, but she was determined to keep a core of patience buried deep underneath her normally short tempter. She knew instinctively that blowing up at the Pokemon wouldn't make it like her any better.
It was during one of their massacre training sessions that Nija heard the kids laughing behind a low brick wall on the outskirts of Viridian.
Curious as to what the gaggle of boys found so interesting, Nija motioned for Charmander to follow her closer to the half wall. Instead, Charmander lead the way, once again displaying the maddening way it could follow directions and not follow them at the same time. Rolling her eyes, Nija followed.
The voices got clearer as they got closer, and all at once Nija got a bad feeling in her gut. Charmander seemed to mirror her emotions, as its tail flame spurted and crackled higher and a soft growl rose in its throat. Nija wanted to hiss at it to be quiet, but she somehow didn't think the boys could hear anything but their own self-assured laughter.
"Try again! I'm sure one of them will come off soon!"
"They're on pretty tight though, and what if someone comes over and sees us?"
"You're such a wuss, Devon, no one's gonna see us! And Nidoran horns are worth a fortune! My big brother says so."
Alarms went off in Nija's head and her face suddenly felt flushed and hot. Leaping forward with a sudden and impulsive recklessness, she burst through the bushes on the left of the wall and revealed herself to a circle of crouching boys a bit younger than she was. All of them leapt up and tried to pretend like they weren't doing anything, some of them trying to scatter but being held in place by others. One even moved his foot in front of the center of their circle to try to hide their crime, but Nija had seen enough.
A female Nidoran, only about level 4 judging by its size, was lying miserably on its side and kicking desperately at what appeared to be shoelaces tied around its feet. There were angry red gashes showing up fiercely on its lavender-blue skin, and a trickle of blood was seeping out from the base of its small horn.
The sheer premeditated air of the scene made Nija sick. This wasn't Amaris leisurely throwing rocks at Pidgeys that just so happened to be nearby where he was at the time—this was a bunch of humans ganging up on a defenseless Pokemon and trying to dismember it. Her stomach turning over in a way that made it hard for her to breath, Nija conjured up all of her rage—something that wasn't hard at all—and yelled.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, huh?" One of the boys stifled a laugh and Nija rounded on him, striding forward and grabbing him with both hands at the front of his orange t-shirt. "You think it's funny, do you? I'll show you funny, you jerk!" She punched him square in the chin and chaos broke out. She felt a sneakered foot connect roughly with her ribs, which sent little white sparks flying in front of her vision and swung out blindly, elbowing one of her attackers in the face. She swung around and happened to notice a head near her stomach and took advantage, locking the boy in a headlock.
"Charmander! Get the Nidoran out of here," she said, oomphing as a fist connected with her abdomen. The boys seemed to be holding back, and Nija exploded again without meaning to. "What, you won't fight a girl who's attacking you but you'll pick on a Pokemon that hasn't done anything to you? Is that it? Punks!"
Charmander, who had been setting fire to one of the boy's pants while ripping its teeth into the leg of another, obeyed her instantly for possibly the first time all week. It disengaged itself from the screaming boys and bit through the bounds on the Nidoran in one swift motion. The small rodent seemed terrified, but also too weak to move, much less escape. Charmander hefted it onto its back and was about ready to scamper off when it looked back at Nija. Teal eyes met her own, and she could read his thoughts as clearly as if she were a telepath—You gonna be all right here?
"Go!" Nija grunted, shoving a boy off her midsection. "Go on!"
"Lady, chill out!" one of them cried, backing away and seeming ready to abandon his friends. "We were just trying to make some cash! They're just Pokemon!"
Nija forgot that she was about to run after the orange lizard and threw herself at the most recent offender. "Just Pokemon, huh?" Snaking one hand in the boy's messy brown hair, she yanked. Curling the boys arm around behind his back at an impossible angle with her other, she pulled. "How does it feel?"
The other boys took maybe a second to regard the insane girl and their struggling companion before they turned on their heels and raced off in the direction of Viridian City. The boy beneath Nija was screaming and crying, and finally she was able to loosen her grip and let go. She was shocked and numb, surprised at her own capacity for vengeance and violence, but oh, so satisfied from it.
"You think about it before you try to do something like that to a Pokemon again," she said. "You'll meet people way worse than me."
Pulling herself to her feet and brushing the sticks and leaves from her violet shirt, she shakily headed in the direction she thought Charmander had gone, leaving the whimpering boy behind her to pull himself to his knees and nurse his arm.
Sure enough, about five minutes later she found Charmander and the Nidoran behind a growth of shrubs. The Nidoran seemed already recovering, but Nija didn't trust that it would be all right out on its own so soon. She was about to remove a spare t-shirt from her backpack to wrap it in when she hesitated. It would be a lot easier if she captured the Pokemon first, and in its dormant state in the Pokeball it wouldn't be in pain until she could get it back to the Center.
Nija instinctively glanced to Charmander, as if waiting her Pokemon's opinion on this matter. Charmander was eyeing the Nidoran worriedly, and met her gaze evenly before glancing at the Pokeballs at her waist. After a tense moment Charmander nodded to her and Nija's fingers closed around one of the vacant balls that she kept on the right side to differentiate them from her occupied ones.
As she knelt near Nidoran, seeing its pale violet eyes widen as it squirmed desperately away from the oncoming metal sphere, Nija hesitated, her throat working frantically. Capturing a Pokemon after an intense battle had been one thing—could Nija really do this?
Steeling herself and attempting to confirm her conviction that Nidoran would be much better off once captured, Nija pressed the ball gently down on Nidoran's small flank, letting out a small gasp of awe even though she was well used to the wonder of technology that engulfed it. The ball barely shuddered before laying still on the grass.
She noticed that Charmander was staring at her and smiled weakly at it, giving it the thumbs up. It stared at her for a while longer with an unreadable expression, and then, amazingly, lifted one of its small orange-clawed hands in front of her. Nija stared at it for a moment, and Charmander waved its hand in the air impatiently. Uncertain, Nija knelt down and lifted her hand in the same manner, and Charmander slapped her palm with a small smack. After a second, a smile broke out onto Nija's face… and then a giggle bubbled forth from her throat. In a matter of seconds she was laughing appreciatively with her whole body, even though it felt like it was ripping up her ribcage to do so.
Her Pokemon had just high-fived her.
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It was about a week later when Nija made her first real catch. She, Charmander, and the newest member of their team, the Nidoran, were out training in that same patch of grass. Charmander had advanced to level seven or eight, something that made her extremely happy, and the Nidoran was level five. Overall, she thought she was doing pretty well.
That was when the level six Pidgey attacked. Well, okay, so it hadn't really attacked them so much as Nija had almost stepped on it. But once it caught sight of the intruders it kicked up a flurry of sand and dirt in their eyes and screeched in a very distracting and threatening way. Charmander was ready to completely own the uppity bird, but Nija stopped it. It really wasn't often at all that one came across a level five or higher Pokemon out here, and for the first time since she'd reached Viridian Nija thought of the fourteen unused pokeballs she was carrying around in her backpack.
"Scratch!" She'd shouted, and Charmander had been more than happy to oblige. The Pidgey had actually done quite a number on the reptile, and Nija had just been considering retreating from the fray when Charmander had spun around and regarded her evenly. Its health was low, but the energy in its small form was enough to make Nija reconsider. She made one more round of attacks on the bird before chucking an enlarged pokeball at it. It had barely put up a struggle before seceding into the pokeball and becoming the third member of her arsenal. The celebration that had gone on that afternoon was certainly something else—Nija went out and bought Charmander as much human food as it could eat, something that the lizard was all too fond of, and rewarded Nidoran equally well with its more preferred Pokechow.
After catching the Pidgey, Nija got to thinking about leaving Viridian again. Granted, she wasn't really in such a mad hurry at the moment, but she vaguely wondered if maybe she should be. She didn't really know where the other trainers from Pallet were, but she could only assume that some of them were already done beating the Pewter Gym Leader, and perhaps even more of them already in Mount Moon or possibly Cerulean. She knew she shouldn't base her own journey off of others, but her competitive side couldn't help but cringe at how long she had been loitering around one place. Pokemon trainers were, after all, nomadic beings.
It was about two weeks since she'd arrived in Viridian, and for the first time since the incident with the Nidoran and group of boys, she thought of Amaris. It was amazing how easily the image of his rusty gold-brown hair and teal eyes could pop up in her head whenever she felt inadequate or unsure of herself and her direction in life. Amaris always seemed so sure of himself—if there was one thing Nija actually envied about the insufferable brat, it was that. He never seemed to second guess himself, always forging ahead unblinkingly, never even conceiving that he could be, perhaps, wrong. Heaven forbid the almighty Amaris Drake be wrong.
Just thinking about his self-satisfied smirk caused a new wave of hot anger in Nija. Sitting down and tapping her fingers against a stone bench outside the Pokemon Mart that she'd just visited to stock up on Potions, she thought. Charmander seemed to sense her distress and hopped up on the bench next to her, sitting companionably beside her. If one good thing had come from lingering in Viridian, it was the understanding she seemed to have reached with her Pokemon. Granted, it still seemed far too independent to ever fully obey her, but they had learned how to muddle through most battles without ticking each other off too much. Nija was even getting used to the couple-second delay that Charmander seemed to like to tease her with.
If Nija hadn't been so wrapped up in thought, she might have noticed the four boys crouching behind a stack of shipment crates nearby sooner. As it was, she noticed them moments before they sprung, leaping out from behind the box and slinging what looked like pokeball-sized lumps of paint at a boy just coming into the threshold of the city. The odd thing about the paint was that it didn't stain the thrower's hands at all—in fact, it appeared to be wrapped in thin plastic. When it hit target, however, greens, blues, reds, and golds exploded in bright vengeance all over the newcomer.
Getting to her feet and seeing the four boys dart off giggling before the paint-drenched guy could fully recover, she realized they were the same boys from before, the ones who had been blatantly torturing Nidoran. Rising to chase after them and changing her mind—listening to her better judgment for once—she approached the sputtering figure at the head of town.
He was certainly a strange sight to behold, even disregarding the now multicolor state of his clothing and skin. His thick, golden-blond spiked hair was dyed brilliant, aggressive green at the tips, something that Nija was certain had been there before the paintball attack. His eyes were cornflower blue and very large, probably from surprise, and his attire—well, that was certainly unconventional, too. He worse a long-sleeved white… or, formerly white shirt under a bright orange tank top and a pair of dark green cargo pants with the strangest cut: one knee-length leg and one that reached all the way down to his sneakered foot.
Taking in his bizarre appearance in about a second, Nija was temporarily put out of conversational commission. At any rate, the guy looked awfully putout, and she felt bad for him.
At her heels, Charmander gave what sounded like a snort. Rolling her eyes, Nija went over to help.