Chapter 13: Famous Son

Rather than have Ember come over to my house today, I decided to pay him a visit. I couldn't jump anywhere near as well as Ember, so we placed a board on both fire escapes which I walked over. It was very easy, as I weighed about 15 pounds.

Mark didn't live in an apartment like I did, so his family had more than enough room to show off their valuables. The room I came into was full of trophies from pokemon tournaments, and pokemon contests. The pictures on the walls had this image of a full grown man standing next to a Charizard. Any human who knew Mark would say that the man in the picture looked a lot like him, but only pokemon could see that there was a resemblance between the Charizard in the picture and the Charmander in the room.

"Hey, Ember, is the Charizard in the picture related to you?" I asked.

"Yep! He's my father!" Ember said proudly, "His trainer was none other than Zack, former champion of the elite four! He was also Mark's father!" Back when I was human, Mark hardly ever mentioned his father. My guess is that he wanted to make his own reputation as a trainer, which happens with almost every trainer with a famous parent.

Of course, it had been a long time since Zack was the champion. The current leader was Lucas, who had defeated Cynthia, who defeated had Brendan, who had defeated Wallace, who stepped in when Steven resigned, who had defeated Gold, who had defeated Red, who had defeated Blue, who had defeated Lance, who had defeated Zack. Made me wonder how long the list went. "So where is he now?"

"He and Zack went traveling to far off places. We get letters every now and then,"

Ember then stopped to think, "Say, where are your parents?"

"I don't have any," I said absentmindedly. This news seemed to shock Ember.

"You don't?! Don't you feel sad?"

"At first yes, but after a few years I got over it." Now Ember looked confused.

"Years?"

"Oh, I mean… When I hatched no one was around. I wandered into the city where Jenny found me." Ember decided not to push the subject any further.

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I quickly forgot the fact that Mark was the son of a former pokemon champion mostly because I had no interest in it. What really caught my interest was the objects Mark kept in his bedroom next to his TV.

Video games.

Jenny and I always used to play them back when I was human. I haven't had a chance to play them ever since I began living at Jenny's due to the fact that I was the one that owned the games. I convinced him to play a few games with me. We were evenly matched due to the fact that I had skill, which he didn't have, and he had fingers, which I didn't have. It felt good to do human things again.

"Ember, have you ever been to an arcade?" I asked.

"That's a place full of video games, right?"

"Right! You wanna go?"

"Don't you need money to play them?"

"Yes, but we can still go to see other people play."

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Don't ask how we managed to get permission from Mark to go to an arcade unsupervised when we can't speak English. I'm not sure how we did myself.

We left by the usual means, fire escape, where an anthill seemed to have migrated beneath my feat just as I landed. Anthills hate me.

Walking towards our destination, I wondered if anyone would be playing my favorite game. It was one of those shooter games with a plastic cord attached to the arcade box. I was usually unable to play it due to my luck, like that time when the game was out of service, or that time there were ten people in line for it. Who waits in line at an arcade?! … Ok, I waited too, but that's not the point!

I realized then how hard it would be to play a shooter without fingers. As I was trying to solve this problem, my horns acted up again. They felt very excited, with the feelings coming from behind me. Before I could react, I was suddenly shot forward by water so fast that it seemed to come out of a gun. The landing was rough, but I was ok.

Ember then came to help me up, and then my horns felt more excitement. We turned around and saw a blue frog-fish-like pokemon. I figured it was a Mudkip belonging to the trainer behind it.

The trainer pulled out a poke ball. I was expecting him to let out another pokemon, but he surprised me when he threw it at me instead.

Ember pushed me out of the way, which made the poke ball hit him instead. The poke ball opened up and Ember was surrounded by a red light. The light returned to the poke ball, but nothing happened to Ember. "Uh, Ember, was there any reason that you pushed me?"

"Be careful Jonathan!" he said, "If a poke ball hits a wild pokemon they may get caught!" While I hardly thought of myself as 'wild', I remembered a conversation I had with Ember in which I learned that being wild meant that you didn't have a trainer.

And I'm sure Jenny wasn't a trainer.