Chapter 14

Jason had spent a lot of time with Evalina and her remarkable collection of Pokemon. Granted, she didn't refer to them as her "collection," and actually seemed quite perturbed when Jason did. Jason wasn't quite sure why she was being so nice to him, feeding him and Bulbasaur and allowing him to ask all the questions he wanted about her… friends, as she called the Pokemon that lived with her. Whatever the reason was, however, Jason was grateful.

He tried to train Bulbasaur over the two-week period, but the Pokemon only seemed to get more and more stubborn. It certainly seemed to adore Evalina, however—he often found it sleeping in her lap. He asked her one day, "How the heck do you get Pokemon to like you so much?" to which she had responded, "I treat them the same way I treat everybody else." He was about to say that that's what he did too, and Bulbasaur still seemed ready to eat his face, when he stopped himself. The truth was that he wouldn't really order his mother to attack things and shout in frustration and pull at his hair when she didn't. But then again, his mother wasn't a Bulbasaur. He supposed Evalina's charm with Pokemon came from the fact that she was a breeder and not a trainer.

Jason didn't have anything against Pokemon breeding. It just wasn't his forte. He couldn't picture staying in one place for his whole life, feeding Pokemon and watching them make babies and never getting any adventure, ever, and he knew he wouldn't be able to bring a fully-functional breeding ground with him all across the globe during his travels. So, his love for Pokemon and his desire to make some lasting mark on the world had left him with the only other alternative—training. It wasn't that Jason was hell-bent on battling Pokemon and making them into buff little mini-machines of perfection that could steamroller any trainer that crossed his path; he merely wanted to be an excellent trainer and spend as much of his time traveling and traversing with Pokemon as he could.

Evalina understood this well enough, although she herself didn't necessarily approve of using Pokemon to beat the daylights out of each other. In fact, she seemed rather squeamish towards the idea of the creatures that inhabited their world really "belonging" to anyone. Jason wondered if she was object to pet goldfish, too, but had stamped the mean thought from his head prematurely. It wasn't his place to judge the girl who'd so readily taken him in.

One afternoon when Jason was out "training" with Bulbasaur (more like watching Bulbasaur attack random rocks and trees of its own volition entirely apart from his commands) Evalina had joined them and sat some disatnace away, observing Jason's ill attempts at making it look like he meant for Bulbasaur to march over to him ceremoniously and kick dirt up all over his shoes.

"Ah, excellent! A great, uh, Sand… Attack." The cover-up died halfway through as both he and Evalina knew that Bulbasaurs didn't learn Sand Attack. He winced as Evalina's face contorted in a way that showed very plainly that she was doing her best not to laugh, and muttered, "But next time don't aim it at me."

"May I suggest you ask him to attack rather than demand?" her voice called over to him from over the grassy plains. Jason frowned at her, feeling rather small under her scrutiny and shrugging.

"Yeah, I guess it can't do any harm, right?" His arms were covered in what felt like hundreds of small pieces of surgical tape that Evalina had leant him after he'd gotten on the wrong end of one of Bulbasaur's Razorleaf attacks.

"So, dude, what say you to a quick vine whip to demonstrate your skills?" Jason tried, stuffing his hands in his pockets and glancing coolly off to the side, trying to look as though it honestly didn't matter to him one way or another. Bulbasaur's red eyes were regarding him in what looked like suspicious spite, and after an indeterminable moment, Bulbasaur attacked a point not two inches from Jason's left foot.

Jason yelped and leapt away from the spot of crushed grass and upturned earth, shooting a venomous glare at Bulbasaur and failing at getting his left hand out of his pocket at all. He off balanced himself, only able to use one arm, and fell over.

Evalina wasn't laughing at him, thankfully. He figured he'd suffered enough of an ego beating without hearing her chuckling softly nearby. Instead, he saw her get up from her spot of grass through upside-down vision and near him, looking as though she were walking on the green, grassy ceiling.

"Well, he did listen to you, didn't he?"

The sentence was so absurd and ludicrous that Jason had to laugh, and after a moment Evalina joined in too, although it seemed nearly against her will. Heck, even Bulbasaur looked mildly amused, although Jason mused that it was most likely a sadistic pleasure derived from Jason's misfortune.

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Ever since he had arrived at the house Carey had avoided Jason like the plague. After their awkward "hello" a few weeks earlier the girl had been scarcer than a Legendary Mew, popping up in random places out of the corner of his eye and startling Jason into a hair-on-end state of fright, but vanishing before he could turn around and spot her. It really was disconcerting, and he was starting to develop a twitch under his left eye, something that plagued him when he was under stress. He kept meaning to ask Evalina if her sister had some kind of freakish psychic ability like his mother, but never got around to it.

The difference between Carey and her cousin was striking. Jason found that talking to Evalina was much easier than talking to other girls had ever been in his life. Evalina almost didn't seem like a girl at all—and at the same time she was the damn girliest girl in the world. She liked flowers and cute things and giggled a lot (something that disconcerted him greatly and made him want to go and lift weights to prove his masculinity), but she also wasn't afraid to dig her hands into the mud when she was gardening or handle a psychotic Rattata, receiving a lot of mean-looking bites in the process. Jason decided that he admired her, something that he only really reserved for his mother and Pokemon trainers leagues stronger than he was.

The fact remained that Jason just wasn't good with most girls. In school he'd been utterly abused by pretty much every female on campus, and those he tried to befriend would smack him across the face if he said something wrong. He still had no idea why Suzie had decided to punch him in the second grade when he noted that she looked like the type of girl who would get along well with his bug collection.

Evalina liked bugs. Evalina liked bugs so much that she hadn't even batted an eye when she'd found a host of Caterpies and other various non-Pokemon insects invading the lowest shelf of her food pantry. She'd chucked the spoiled cereal and noodles outside for the creatures to enjoy more fully even as Jason had washed his hands in scalding hot water. There was something about finding maggots in the cereal one had been digging their hand around in, fully intending to ingest that rubbed him the wrong way. Evalina had agreed that it was troubling to lose so much inventory that wasn't intended for Pokemon consumption, but hadn't expressed any real disgust over the incident one way or another. As she put it, "So long as it's getting eaten by someone, it's not wasted, right?"

"So, if you leave a three-course gourmet meal out in a compost heap and let it rot, it won't really be going to waste, because technically microscopic bacteria-type things are eating it, right?"

Evalina had cuffed his ears in a good-humored way and laughed at him, calling him mean for picking on her, and he knew that she hadn't been offended by his statement. It was a nice feeling.

Even though Jason was thoroughly enjoying himself, he knew he had to leave soon. He'd held up his journey a whole lot by staying there, no matter how nice it was, and he was absolutely itching to beat Brock and win a Boulder Badge. The situation with Bulbasaur was looking dismal, too, and Jason had decided that the only way it would get better was through time. And training… something he wasn't going to get much of around here, as he somehow suspected that Evalina wouldn't take kindly to his randomly beating up her friends.

So the next morning he packed up his backpack and poked Evalina in the shoulder while she was washing dishes. Without even turning around she said, "You'll be leaving us today, I assume?"

Slightly surprised, Jason sputtered out, "Y-Yeah, actually. I gotta get started, I'm never gonna beat Brock if I stay around Pallet all the time."

"All right, take some sandwiches for the road, will you?"

Jason noted that Evalina sounded sort of apprehensive/sad, although which one he couldn't tell. There was also a strange note of detached remoteness in her tone that didn't quite match up with her normal air of happy agreeableness. Struck by an impulse, he hugged her tightly from behind and said, "Thanks for everything… is it okay if I write you sometime?"

The sudden change in the slight girl's disposition spoke volumes, and Jason knew that he'd done something good. She hugged him back with surprising strength (Jason was concerned peripherally as he felt one of his ribs bend oddly) and cried, "Of course! I'd love to hear how your travels go." She pulled back, both her hands on his shoulders and fixed him with a serious gaze. "And you simply must promise to visit us again."

Jason had been wondering what she meant by us, but didn't have to wait long for an explanation—a small, tentative poke to his ribs startled him sufficiently to raise gooseflesh on his arms, and he tweaked out entirely as little Carey fixed him with a very serious, very penetrating indigo-blue stare that didn't at all match with her emotionless proclamation of wanting to see him again very soon.

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Jason had decided to put Bulbasaur back in its pokeball for the rest of the walk through to Viridian City. He'd had to sneak up on it, as the thing couldn't stand being in the contraption for some reason, and he knew that it would be livid with him when he next let it out, probably saving up a few presents of the Razor Leaf variety for him. He shuddered as he thought of all the scratches he would receive.

Viridian City was remarkably close to where Evalina lived, perhaps a thirty-minute walk. While he meandered the pathway that was somewhat overgrown with random weeds and plants (Jason paused here and there to do his civic duty and clear the nearly indecipherable parts) he began to compose a letter to Evalina already in his head.

Dear Evalina, he began, kicking a tangle of vines aside and discovering a small plaque set into the ground that read "Viridian City: 3 miles," How've you been? I know I only left three minutes ago, but a lot can happen in three minutes!

"Wow," Jason muttered as he continued on his way. " That doesn't sound too pathetic, now…"

I've reached the Pokemon Center now, he speculated, skipping from the uneventful present to the future of infinite, wondrous, glamorous possibilities. Bulbasaur's looking healthy and happy. He's had a sudden change of heart and is so loyaly devoted to me that he skipped the Ivysaur stage altogether and is now an ass-kicking Venusaur. We've beaten Brock already, in spite of the fact that we're not even in Pewter yet. In fact, we've beaten them all. I'm on my way to the Indigo Plateau—I'll send a postcard and visit as soon as I'm done wiping the floor with Lance!

Jason laughed at the idiocy he was entertaining, coming to the hardest part of his letter: the closing.

Yours truly, Jason.

Sincerely, Jason.

Jason Fremont.

That guy you once let stay at your house for three weeks.

Love, Jason…?

"You're a basket case, man," Jason muttered, shaking his head and kicking off some more overgrowth. The path was in deplorable state. "Your letter will more than likely be 'Evalina, Bulbasaur was so pissed at being locked in his Pokeball that he took it out on me in the form of lots of very tiny, very sharp leaves. Please send me some of that medical tape you have. Thanks much.'"

It was a very entertaining pastime, and in what seemed like no time at all he'd reached Viridian City. It was upon him very suddenly, and he assumed that it was due to his enviable skill at zoning out that he hadn't noticed it looming on the horizon for the last stretch of path. He took a moment to admire the city before taking his first tremulous step into the threshold of new promise—

… And was abruptly pelted with paintballs.

Sputtering, shouting and nearly falling flat on his back from shock, Jason made a wild swipe in the air and by chance caught a paintball in mid-descent, only succeeding in bursting it in his bare hand and spraying red paint all over the place. After the hostilities ceased he was left to swipe the stuff out of his eyes and spit it out of his mouth. Well, he thought. Nice welcome committee here. Dear Evalina, I've just been attacked by hooligans wielding paint.

Eventually he noticed that there was a girl standing in front of him. She was staring at him with a strange expression, like someone who was forced in front of something quite scary against her will. Jason realized that the pokeball he held in his hand must have fallen sometime during the attack, and as he was looking around the ground for it, noticed—with no small amount of dread—that Bulbasaur had gotten out. The device must have fallen button-down. Ignoring Jason's feeble order to heel, Bulbasaur trotted over to a crouching orange lizard at the girl's feet. A Charmander, Jason realized, and his attentions were immediately drawn away from trying to scrub his face clean.

"Hey, that's your Pokemon, isn't it?" he asked the girl, who was still regarding him uneasily. She looked nice enough—like she couldn't decide between asking if he needed help or chuckling. She had flyaway black hair that looked somewhat messy and sun-damaged, but as if she'd tried to pull a comb through it earlier in the day. Her eyes were an almost-violet shade of blue, darker than his by quite a few shades. He assumed they got their lavender-like coloring from the well-loved violet t-shirt she was wearing.

After a pause, the girl nodded. "Yeah, he's mine. Your name is…?"

Jason didn't hear her at first, as his attentions had been recaptured by the glowing flame at the tip of the Charmander's tail. After a few seconds however—and the restated question from the confused girl—he snapped out of it and responded. "Sorry—the name's Jason. Jason Fremont." He allowed his normal grin to slide back into place and extended a hand to shake, a split second before he realized that it was the one absolutely soaking in paint. Lowering that one and raising the other, he smiled sheepishly.

For a moment, he thought it would be a repeat of the Suzie incident of the third grade. The girl certainly didn't look like she knew what to make of him. Instead, however, a reluctant smile broke out over her face and she shook his hand firmly. "I'm Nija. Ikira."

"Nija? Funny name," Jason commented offhandedly. "Sounds kind of like 'I kneed ya in the face,' or something."

The girl's smile disappeared into a look that said very clearly "where the hell did that come from?" A minute later she was laughing out loud, and said in a giggle-fit voice, "Hey, y'know that's funny you should mention that, I just did that to some idiot the other day!"

"No kidding?" Jason said, squeezing the leftover paint from the tips of his hair. "I hope it was one of the jerks who just turned me into a Monet."

"Actually," Nija said, smiling at him and relaxing, "It was. You wouldn't believe the jerks those guys are. But you really look like you could use a shower… c'mon, the Pokemon Center's right over this way."

"Awesome," Jason said, shaking the excess paint from his arms and legs. "That would be great."

As they headed off towards a building the color of Jason's dyed hair, he noticed that Charmander and Bulbasaur seemed to be becoming great friends, leading the way far ahead of their two human companions. He wondered dully if the plant Pokemon liked everyone except for him.

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Later on that night, after Jason had changed out of his paint-splattered clothing and into an oversized white t-shirt and pair of jean shorts, Nija and he sat talking over cups of steaming hot cocoa in the main lobby of the Pokemon Center. Bulbasaur and Charmander feasted on Pokechow out of porcelain bowls courtesy of the Center. Jason found it remarkable how many things Nija and he had in common—they both had never known their fathers, although Nija's mother was adoptive, both wanted to become Masters since before they knew how to count and both had no idea why there was even a difference between Ground and Rock Pokemon. Jason wondered if the girls around Saffron were just psychotic—so far he'd met two girls in two weeks that he genuinely got along with.

Their Pokemon really seemed to have hit it off, too. They were muttering to each other in growls and snorts, occasionally muttering something that sounded like a language. Jason had often times wondered if Pokemon had a universal language they all spoke to each other, as he'd never met two Pokemon who couldn't communicate with one another.

"So, you headed to the Viridian Forest after this?" Nija asked him. Snapping out of his reverie, Jason stretched back into his seat.

"Yep. You?"

"Same." Nija took a long sip of her cocoa, and winced as it burned her tongue. "You were there in Pallet a few weeks ago, right?"

"Yups," Jason said, puffing his chest slightly in pride. "Tenth from first in line."

"Oh dang, lucky…" Nija lamented, running her hand through her now-tangled black hair and abruptly getting it stuck. "I was dead last. Lost track of time while I was doing last-minute research."

"Wow, that sucks," Jason said. "You seem to really get along great with your Pokemon, though."

"Err…" Nija coughed to cover up what sounded like yeah, right. "To be honest, our partnership could use some improvement."

Jason mentally chalked up yet another thing he and the girl had in common. "How so?"

"Well, for one thing, this guy doesn't seem to like the whole taking-orders thing," Nija began, starting a checklist on her fingers. "Two, he does this weirdo thing where he waits like three or four seconds before he listens to me… if he's not doing things his way, that is. He'll just stand there and kind of freak me out a little, cause I think he's just gonna ignore me and go bonkers on whoever we're fighting, and then he executes the attack. I dunno, I guess it's not technically disobeying, so I can't get mad at him, but still, it's annoying as heck." Charmander had looked up at her during the course of this rant session and glared. "Yeah, that's right; I'm talking about you, buddy." She said indignantly. The Pokemon rolled its eyes—a habit Jason noticed its master did, too—and went back to its Pokechow.

"Such attitude," she commented offhandedly. "How's your Bulbasaur?"

"A nightmare," Jason said. "Honestly, I'm surprised he hasn't attacked me yet today." Bulbasaur looked up innocently from its bowl. "He won't even listen to me. He doesn't even pretend to. Really, all he cares about is eating, sleeping, and beating me up. I feel like I'm in an abusive relationship or something!"

"Wow," Nija said, regarding the leafy Pokemon with a furrowed brow. "He seems so mild-mannered."

"Don't be fooled," Jason hissed under his breath with a theatric flare. "He's eeevil."

Nija snorted into her hot cocoa and gagged. "Ah jeez, you're trying to kill me!"

"Such a drama queen," Jason said, grinning cheekily. Noticing the time on the clock—eleven p.m.—Jason was suddenly hit with a wave of fatigue. "I think I might have to head in for the night," he murmured under his breath, stifling a yawn. "I was thinking about heading through the Viridian Forest tomorrow morning after I stock up on some stuff from the PokeMart."

Nija bit her lip. "Ah, okay. That's cool. I was gonna start off tomorrow, too. I've been loitering around Viridian City for way too long."

"Cool," Jason said, and frowned. He felt like he should say something. Unsure of what it was, he shrugged it off and tapped Bulbasaur on the head. The Pokemon brushed his hand off with one long vine and haughtily started off down the hallway in front of him. Jason looked back at Nija and pointed at the Pokemon's retreating back as if to say see what I mean? Nija laughed openly and shook her head.

That night as Jason lay in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, he realized what he wanted to say. The next morning, assuming he could catch her before she got out into the forest, he'd ask her if she wanted to stick with him through the trek. The forest was a pretty nasty place, and Jason was a firm believer in safety in numbers, even though he didn't really like traveling with people. Besides, he told himself as he shifted positions in an attempt to get comfortable, she's a girl… it wouldn't be good if she were out there on her own.