Chapter One – Rats!
Route 1
It was almost midday when the pair of young trainers set out towards Viridian City. Having lived in Pallet Town for as long as she could remember, Ashley had little knowledge of the world beyond—though she had of course read of the great Safari Zone in Fuschia or the immense radio tower in Goldenrod. Those names were as but distant lands to her, as foreign sounding as the regions of Sinnoh and Hoenn were to other Kanto-jin. Route 1, so named because it had been used as a salt run in primitive times, bestrode a rocky ridge that lorded over Pallet as if it were protecting it from the outside world.
Yet none of this occurred to Ashley as she took her first steps out of Pallet Town. Her primary concern at the moment was avoiding mud puddles that might stain her official League sneakers, so she gingerly watched her steps as she trudged through the foot-tall grass. She wore her socks high, as was apparently the fashion in the bigger cities of Kanto, but the top edges of the grass grazed her calves even so. She briefly considered putting off her walk to Viridian to change into something more practical, but she was loathe to do so—who said a trainer couldn't look cute? Her outfit was all League memorabilia—she saved up and mail ordered her ensemble bit by bit while waiting for her fourteenth birthday—and she wasn't about to switch into some boring leggings just for a walk into town.
It was a bit of a walk, though, Ashley realized. Though the route was a straight path along the ridge, various rocky outcroppings forced the road to snake side to side along switchbacks, making them popular for joggers but a source of frustration for Ashley. She was breathing heavily by the time she had reached the fourth curve in the trek, and she momentarily paused to bend over and catch her breath.
She wondered how Red was faring, and turned her head to take a look. He looked a little distracted.
"Sorry about that," she apologized as she began to catch her breath.
"Huh? Sorry about what?" Red looked at her with bewilderment. If he was bitter about not getting his own Pokémon, he would never show it. If she knew her brother, he would make a big show about being tough and would resent it if she tried to cheer him up.
"I didn't have the most comfortable sleep last night, so I'm a little winded. I hope you don't mind terribly," she told him, avoiding any mention of his particular situation.
"Oh," he said, still looking surprised. It was likely that he didn't expect her to be so tired. "We can take a break, if you want."
Ashley didn't want Red thinking of her as a lightweight, but she was too tired to pretend otherwise. She leaned her back against a nearby tree, on the sinus of the curving route, and sat down on the floor to stretch out her legs. They felt wobbly and her calves were positively burning—she had no idea that one could get so tired from walking such a short distance—why, she could still see the roofs of the various buildings in Pallet if she looked down to her left. She supposed that walking uphill must be more taxing than even running about on flat ground, which she'd done her whole life.
She expected Red to take the tree next to her, but he sat cross-legged in front of her and began picking at the grass. She paid him no mind—he didn't have to be such a terrible show-off about not being tired. It was something Gary would do. It didn't matter, anyway.
Ashley reached for her bag. She opened the middle pocket and rummaged through her various supplies until she found what she was looking for, a nutritious bar in a foil wrapper—or rather, what appeared to be the corpse of a nutritious bar after it had been mauled by a rampaging Sandslash. Ashley made a face, but ate it anyway—smashed food was better than no food, and she hadn't eaten all day.
While she was eating her chocolatey protein bar, Red appeared to be deep in thought. Ashley wasn't sure what that was about, until she realized that the poor guy was probably hungry too—naturally he was too busy pretending to be a manly man to acknowledge the fact. She shook her head and smiled knowingly to herself, and scrounged up another bar.
"Here you go!" she called cheerily as she tossed the bar to him. Yet again, his head jerked in surprise, and the bar ended up hitting the brim of his cap and knocking it ajar. Ashley found the effect comical, and brought up her right hand to politely cover a giggle.
He frantically tried to fix his hat, and then began fiddling with the wrapper of the nutrient bar until he was finally able to tear it open. The two of them sat there eating quietly. Ashley found it a little eerie—though they hadn't spoken much on the hike up, it seemed a little awkward to be just sitting in the grass silently. Finally, she just couldn't take the silence any longer, and spoke up.
"So why didn't you pack any food? If you had gone separately like Gary, you'd be starving" she asked him, in a far more patronizing tone than she had intended. It was just too weird to be sitting here, quiet like this. Sure, they'd drifted a bit over the last few years, but they used to be so close! If he was upset, he should be able to talk to her about it, darnit.
"What? I'd earn money by battling, of course," Red said between bites.
Ashley made a deliberate show of swallowing her food and gently brushing away food from the sides of her mouth before speaking. "How would you make a living from battling? You couldn't make nearly enough to pay for steady food, much less a place to stay." She tactfully decided not to mention the fact that he didn't even own a single Pokémon.
"Who needs a place to stay?" Red asked earnestly, "how would I complete this Pokédex if I sat around in a house all day? I could do that back in Pallet."
Ashley rolled her eyes. "Honestly Red, you're such a child! I was planning on getting a decent job at Viridian, and enrolling at the city gym on the side. Whether I want to participate in Contests or the League, I'm going to have to work for a while first, and then get some training done. How are you going to travel around if you can't even afford transportation?"
Red's face turned blank, as if he were taken aback by the question. "I hadn't thought about it. I suppose I was just thinking of wandering the world and catching Pokémon… I sorta forgot that I need to eat and sleep too."
Ashley was going to chide him for his foolishness, but then she caught motion out of the side of her eye. She looked around and had just about convinced herself that she was seeing things when something brown and fuzzy darted through the blades of grass. Ashley shrieked and jumped to her feet, suspecting the worst.
Red blinked and asked her what was wrong, and Ashley just continued to point and shriek at a dark shape in the grass. She grabbed her bag and started swinging it wildly against the floor, not caring that she could have damaged the contents inside. She kept thwacking it over and over until a snarl issued from the grass; then a trail of jostled blades revealed the Pokémon's hasty retreat.
Ashley began to calm down. "It was… a… icky… rattata," she managed.
Her brother laughed in disbelief. "You freaked out because of a little rattata?"
Ashley stomped at the ground and glared at him with blazing eyes. "It's gross! They, like, eat trash all day!"
She didn't scare easily she thought, but it seemed a rattata did the trick. Red seemed to notice this uncharacteristic change, because he started teasing her. He laughed for a while, then abruptly stopped and looked very penitent.
Sighing, Ashley slung her bag across her right shoulder and looked mournfully at her half-eaten bar, now covered in dirt. Well, if the filthy rodent wanted it so badly, it was welcome to it now. She felt a little guilty about littering, though.
Ashley started walking back down one of the switchbacks, prompting Red to ask her where she was going. She told him that she wasn't about to saunter through rodent-infested grass and that if he had sense, he'd come with her.
"What? No way sis, I'm hoping to catch that little rattata. You gave it a nasty surprise, and I'm going to try and capture it while it's weakened. That is, uh, if you don't mind," Red declared, starting out strong but ending on a kind of hesitant note.
She shuddered—not because she was afraid, but out of sheer disgust. "Nooooo, no, you're welcome to that filthy creature!"
Shaking her head in wonder, Ashley walked down along the same path in the direction of the previous kink in the road. She tried looking for places where climbing would be easy, but she wasn't having much success. The ledges were short enough that she might be able to leap down from them, but they seemed just too tall to climb.
Fine. She'd just take the long way through the tall grass. When she began to rustle through the grass, Red held out a hand for her to stop, and then bright a single finger to his mouth to gesture for silence. The whole while, his eyes never left a little bird that stood atop a little boulder.
Ashley waited for him to make a move, but he didn't. His eyes flicked back to her, and he tilted his head towards the bird. Did he want her to catch it? She wasn't sure, but she had to admit she was impressed with how stoic he was about all this. He was being a good brother—she supposed he had been looking forward to becoming a trainer just as long as she had.
Ashley reached for her bag tried to quietly remove a Pokéball from the left pocket. Then she gently pressed the button at its center to increase its diameter from its storage size, and cocked her arm for a throw. She knew that she was supposed to weaken it first, but pidgeys were relatively easy to capture and she didn't want to risk scaring the thing away. After taking a deep breath, she flipped her wrist and let the ball fly.
The ball began to arc downwards as soon as it left her hand, and it landed in the grass with a little plopping sound. She had missed the pidgy by at least three feet! The bird noticed the sound and hopped off the stone and scurried towards the ball, and Ashley heard noises that sounded suspiciously like the bird was pecking at it in curiosity.
Red, for his part, again succumbed to laughter. At least she had the decency to try to stifle her amusement at his expense, Ashley thought, but Red seemed to enjoy her humiliation. "You throw like a girl," he said mirthfully.
"I am a girl," Ashley countered hotly. Her cheeks were furiously red with embarrassment. Unwilling to be daunted, Ashley reached into her bag for another Pokéball. She was sorely tempted to throw it at Red, but she didn't have it in her to be so petty.
The pidgey was still pecking away at the Pokéball. Ashley was certain that it was aware of them, but it mustn't have regarded either of them as a threat. It wasn't important; Pokémon psychology wasn't her interest, training was. She cocked her arm back again, and then threw the ball in an identically girly fashion.
This time, the short arc was perfect. The ball hit the ground near the pidgey and snapped open, revealing a bright yellow light that seemed to envelop the bird before drawing it in. After the light subsided, Ashley could see the grass rustling around where the Pokéball had landed. She rushed towards it, hoping that it wasn't about to burst open with an angry pidgey: being raked by talons would sort of ruin her day.
The ball was completely still when Ashley had reached it. That means she had caught the Pokémon! The only trouble was that she wasn't entirely sure which of the two balls contained the pidgey. Not wanting to embarrass herself again, Ashley picked up a ball in each hand and clipped both of them to her belt after pressing the button to shrink them to just smaller than the width of her palm. Now she had three Pokeballs resting against the small of her back, though only two of them contained actual Pokémon. Still, she felt like an actual trainer now.
She turned towards Red and beamed. "I caught my first Pokémon!" After jumping in the air a few times in pure joy, she turned towards Red, who had been watching her celebrate. "Thanks for letting me catch it, but don't you still need a Pokémon?"
"Actually, I caught that rattata you encountered earlier. You weakened it by hitting it with your bag, I think." Red looked at the ground and dug at the dirt with the tips of his sneakers. "So I thought it was only fair that I helped you."
"That was very sweet of you, brother," she said sincerely. She walked towards him a few steps and gave him a hug and a smile. Red continued to kick at the dirt, but Ashley could have sworn that he might have been smiling too.
There was little excitement during the rest of the hike. There was one more zig and one more zag, and then the two young trainers reached the terminus of Route 1 and looked out as Viridian City spread before them. The place was vast, stretching from eye to eye in a way that Pallet Town never could have. There were so many roads and buildings that Ashley was utterly bewildered—and the people! She could have sworn she saw at least fifty people milling about on the street right in front of them, and could scarcely imagine how many people lived in the city—perhaps even a thousand!
She knew there was one place to start, though. She spotted a rather large building to the north and west, build into the stone of a mountain outcropping and decorated in a rather ornamental fashion. Even from this distance, she could make out the outline of a large Pokéball gracing the pediment of that gargantuan structure. Surely this was the city's Pokémon Center, what else could it be? There, she would find all the information she needed about how to make a living in Viridian as a trainer.
This, though, would turn out to be another one of the many surprises she'd have today.
The two of them walked through a narrow mountain pass and left the bustle of the city behind. Ashley reflected that the Pokémon Center was located in an awfully inconvenient location, but the quality of the road seemed to suggest that this pass was being used for something important—and what could be more important than the city's Pokémon Center? Well, the building could turn out to be the gym. That wouldn't be too terrible.
As the pass gave way to an opening, Ashley could spot the roof of that large building rising beyond the top of a nearby thicket of pine trees. The path looked like it skirted around the forest and hugged the mountainous walls of the opening—hopefully it did eventually lead to that building. Ashley was beginning to think that this secluded place was not the likeliest place for a Pokémon Center, and was about to tell Red the same when she spotted a familiar figure turning into this very path.
"Oh great…" she mumbled under her breath as the figure resolved itself to be Gary's. She knew he'd have something to smart crack about, and she wasn't quite in the mood for it. It had been a long day, and the sun was beginning to set below the western mountain peaks—Ashley wanted nothing more than to take the rest of the day easy.
She banished all signs of exhaustion from her face as Gary drew nearer; it simply wouldn't do for him to see her exhausted. Had she known she was going to run into him, she'd have tried neatening up a little: her clothes were still looking a bit dusty from her earlier exertions. Ashley hoped that he wouldn't notice.
"Yo, Ashie girl!" Gary greeted her with a half-wave, "you're headin' for the Pokémon League? Forget it! I bet you don't even have any badges."
Ashley didn't care for his tone. She crossed her arms and glared at him. "And I suppose you do?"
Gary affected nonchalance. "Nah, I was just checking out the opposition. Turns out they're clever and try to keep the competition in the dark. Guess they figured I'd be a threat?" he snorted, and sounded very pleased with himself.
Ashley rolled her eyes. "I'm sure that was the reason." His attitude could get very tiresome—Gary never realized that other people didn't enjoy talking about him as much as he did.
"Somebody's saucy today. Maybe I'll just have to show you my new Pokémon." If anything, Gary sounded even smugger.
"Fine, if that'll shut you up," Ashley said jokingly. She reached behind her and picked up one of the Pokéballs with her right hand. Hoping desperately that this wasn't the empty one, she let it fly.
Gary tossed his as well, and two identical flashes produced two identical Pokémon.
"Perfect! Let's see which of us is really the better trainer, then. Pidgey, tackle attack!" Gary gestured animatedly towards Ashley's pidgey.
Ashley belatedly realized that she hadn't researched her new Pokémon at all, and that she had no idea what it could do. She couldn't just grab her Pokédex now and look like an idiot in front of Gary, so she did the only thing she could think of to avoid embarrassment: pretend that she knew what she was doing.
"Counter-tackle!" she ordered with faux confidence. But as she watched, her pidgey just stood around pecking at the ground—which was asphalt, rather than dirt! The thing didn't even notice the other bird running towards it. Ashley covered part of her face and watched as Gary's Pokémon slammed straight into hers and knocked it over. Then, her disbelief mounting, she watched as her Pokémon began to flee from its assailant.
"Hey! Call your Pokémon back!" Gary demanded, outraged. "There's no running from a trainer battle! I can't believe this. What a coward!"
Ashley was too stunned to feel embarrassment or shame. What was her pidgey doing? She had no choice but to recall it. As she reattached the Pokéball to her skirt, she fingered her other Pokéball and thought about her battle with Gary earlier today. Could her dratini even battle?
Gary's pidgey stood there, somehow looking as smug as its owner. The bird even had some slightly wild plumage that reminded her of Gary's own hairstyle, and she wanted nothing more than to see her Pokémon punch it in the face… or tackle it, or anything like that, really. She knew she was being petty again, but she felt it was justifiable after another embarrassing defeat.
The bird's trainer smirked. "Going to send your big scary dragon next?"
As much as she would have liked to, Ashley decided it would be irresponsible. What kind of trainer would let a Pokémon get beaten up twice in one day? No, dratini deserved a break—she would take her lumps instead of her Pokémon.
"No. I concede the match," Ashley said wistfully.
"What was that?" Gary asked gleefully.
"Don't push it," Ashley warned. "You won."
Gary recalled his Pokémon, and then advanced across their roadside battleground to extend a hand to Ashley. "Good try there, sport," he said condescendingly.
Ashley shook his hand and blinked back tears. "Thanks… but I am clearly in over my head."
Gary, somehow, managed to show sympathy. He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her right arm. "Aww, come on, don't be like that. You'll take all the fun out of it."
"Yes, I bet it's fun when you always win," Ashley retorted bitterly. She blew a stray hair out of her line of sight, which Gary mistook for a wistful sigh.
"No, seriously. You can't be a good trainer if you're so serious about it. Come on, you used to smile all the time. You've gotta just learn to relax and it'll come naturally." The two of them had begun walking back towards Viridian City, completely ignoring Red.
"You think I can do it?" Ashley asked him, unsure why she was revealing her insecurities.
"Sure thing, babe, you've just gotta take the time to do things right. Train the suckers, y'know? How's a wild bird you just caught gonna understand your orders?"
What he said made a lot of sense. The same thing had happened to her earlier in the day, too. Clearly she had to actually train her Pokémon—but she didn't exactly want to play the role of drill instructor with them either. She felt she had a special bond with her dratini, and it deserved to be raised, not just trained. Perhaps even that oblivious bird of hers might gain a little sensibility if she paid some attention to it. How had Gary managed to drill his Pokémon on attack orders in just a few hours, though? The hike alone should have taken him a while…
Ashley was pondering this for a while, and she had completely forgotten that she was still walking in Gary's arms. After a while, she realized that he his body was shaking. She looked up, and realized that he was quietly laughing at her. Laughing. At her.
"What's your damage?" She jerked her shoulders so that his arm was knocked away.
He looked at her, and then his eyes widened. "Oh… oh. I'm sorry, are you going to run crying to big brother?"
Now she jumped away from him completely, and then faced towards him, forcing him to stop in his tracks. "Am not," she said, sounding extremely frustrated. "I can handle myself."
"Oh, you're not?" he said casually. "Then what's your deal, Ash? Come on. You can't fool me. If you don't think you're tough enough, maybe you should follow some good advice and quit while you're still ahead… although I guess you'd actually have to win sometime for the saying to make any sense? Don't let your bad attitude spoil it for everyone else, geez "
Ashley didn't know what to say. She felt acutely embarrassed about the whole thing. Her anger at him evaporated in a storm of desperation, and somehow he had gotten her to think that she'd denied him the rightful privileges of victory, or something. She wasn't stupid—she knew exactly what he was doing, but somehow it was still working. Why did Gary always win?
"Well, I've got to get going, tell me next time." Gary sketched her a mocking salute, and then walked past her.
Ashley should have let it go. But he'd pushed her one too many times. So she called out his name, knowing that his curiosity would stop him.
"Mm?" he stopped, and turned back to face her.
She turned around too, and stepped very close to him. Then she spat on his face. She didn't know what possessed her to do that. She was just thinking of dressing him down with some harsh words, but it just… happened. Expecting his inevitably harsh reaction, she tensed and waited for an explosion of annoyance and anger, hoping he wouldn't get violent.
But he just laughed cheerfully. "That's not very sportsmanly, Ashie-poo," he taunted, using the childish nickname she so thoroughly hated. "I guess losing twice has gotta hurt. But like I said, I gotta run. Smell ya later, babe."
He. What! That was so not the point! She wanted to run after him and tell him that he was getting it all wrong, that it was the tormenting that bothered her, not the loss. She would have, but she suspected that Gary was trying to bait her in order to humiliate her further. Even his little pep talk earlier had been a way for him to gain pride at her expense.
He was right, after all. The loss did bother her. After he left, Red caught up with her. Unaware of anything that had gone on since the battle, he had blithely began to offer the same recommendations that Gary had—and Ashley just snapped. She yelled at him, even though it wasn't his fault, and Gary's accusation that she would go to him for help made it worse. She didn't want or need his help—she wasn't about to be treated like baby sister. She could do everything on her own!
So the two of them separated. Ashley went on a walk, though the sun had set during their earlier contretemps. Her anger had subsided relatively quickly, and she didn't seek out the evening walk because her mood was dark or anything of the sort. She was just disappointed in herself, that was all.
She certainly did still have her insecurities about being a trainer, but she wasn't about to change course now. Her plan was, as ever, to enroll in a gym and learn how to become a Pokémon trainer. She even found the gym during her wanderings of the town, but it seemed like it hadn't been used for some time. It looked ramshackle and derelict, but it still had traces of grandeur—the building did have a larger façade than any in the city, and it was made of stone, which did contribute to its timeworn appearance but also gave it a quiet dignity.
Ashley had always been a dreamer, and something about the League's lofty reputation appealed to her. She knew it was unrealistic to imagine a girl from Pallet would ever become a gym leader at a big city, but that didn't stop her from wanting it. The League memorabilia she wore was enough to sate her desires for a time, but the building awakened a little something in her. It wasn't a big revelatory moment… nothing of the sort: it just stiffened her spine, which was exactly what she needed at the moment. No epiphany could have been timelier.
After encountering a friendly police officer, she'd learned that the nearest operating gym was in a town called Pewter, which was a two days' walk away. Tonight she would take advantage of the hospitality rooms that Pokémon Centers offered trainers (well, they were more like communal hostels, a wing for each gender), and tomorrow—well, tomorrow was another day, as the saying went.
She finally reached the Pokémon Center a few hours later, carrying a few extra things she had picked up in the city. Red was there, looking as if he was waiting for her—ever supportive—but he didn't meet her eyes, and looked at the ground instead.
Ashley walked up to him and clapped him on the shoulders. When he looked up at her, she favored him with a happy, even thankful, smile. "Okay, brother. Let's go on that world adventure together."