Chapter 4: Quest
As time went on, the charmeleon adapted to his new life. He still resented his master, but generally obeyed his commands without bothering to try to resist. Only occasionally, he would try once more to fight the orders, but then always obeyed. His life now consisted of fighting and floating in nothingness.
Although their names were unknown to him, the charmeleon started to recognize important pokemon owners. There was one really powerful ghost/psychic user that kept beating them. Eventually, they moved on. They went around fighting randomly for a while, but then fought another important trainer, one who used poison type pokemon. That fight was excruciatingly painful, but not particularly difficult. After the fight ended, he handed the owner another badge, and the charmeleon felt a burst of strength.
From there, they moved across the ocean. This was terrifying to the charmeleon, who had to fight from the head of a gyarados. Occasionally, his tail flickered, but he always managed to save it from completely going out. Next, they landed on a bunch of cold islands, then back into the water, and onto another island. This one was completely covered by a town. Predictably, this town also had an important trainer, who his owner went to fight. This man lived in a volcano. The charmeleon found the surroundings strangely comforting. His tail burned bright in the dry, hot environment. However, his owner wasn't particularly settled.
The charmeleon focused on his opponent. It was a magmar. "Initial attack run, now!" charmeleon's owner called out. He charged, staring at magmar with his scariest face. As it hesitated, a little nervous, the charmeleon raised his head back to fire his "flamethrower", a sort of enhanced "ember" that he had recently learned to use. As he was about to launch his attack, the magmar ejected a beam of light, and a bright glow, like that on a particularly sunny day appeared in the room. The charmeleon launched his flame, feeling enhanced by the beam of light. The fire burst out like never before, until the magmar was invisible, hidden in the flame. The charmeleon kept up his attack, but started to notice something strange. A bulge was moving up his fire stream toward him. He tried to stop his attack, but had no control. As it halted directly in front of him, the bulge lifted its arms off its neck and opened its eyes. Then it, the magmar, punched him with a fiery fist, launching him away. It followed this up with its own flamethrower.
The fire burned at charmeleon's flesh, but not bad. He unleashed a smokescreen, rolled to the side, and waited for his next orders. They came quick. "Rage!" Charmeleon obeyed quickly, rushing up to the magmar and slamming into it. The fiery creature flew through the air and landed hard. The charmeleon didn't hesitate to pursue his attack. He leapt at his foe, punching and kicking and head butting and scratching and… he lost any control over reality. A few minutes later, he came to his senses with full body burns. But he had won. Suddenly, he glowed.
He stretched into a full sized charizard, growing a full two feet higher, and quadrupling in size. His single horn grew longer and split in two. His snout widened. Then, two strange objects poked from his back. They stretched into full wings. The glow faded away.
The charizard slumped to the ground, still badly burnt, and was pulled back into his ball. He tried to resist the pull, just out of curiosity, and could feel a lot more control, but it was still not visible. He was pulled back inside his ball, and had to wait out the rest of the battle. In what felt like less than a second, he felt an energy boost, similar to the one from when his master got the poison-pokemon badge.
In what seemed like another few seconds, the charizard felt himself eject at a hospital. His new mind was strange. He was still the same individual he had always been, but as the nervous attitude of the charmander was replaced by the anger of the charmeleon, so that anger was now replaced by a strange sort of carelessness. Sure, he was being healed just to again be enslaved and forced to beat up other pokemon and be injured himself, but so what? It didn't really matter.
Casually, he listened to the voices in the room. He couldn't understand the words, but so what? His trainer was bragging, waving his new badge in someone's face. The nurse was patting a tentacruel, soothing it. It looked like it wanted to kill her. Some of the other trainers were casually chatting, sitting in groups of two or three. A few, the charizard noticed with a mild twinge of jealousy, were letting their pokemon walk around free. There was some commotion at the door, and the charizard noticed someone walking in, waving something over his head.
Most of the trainers, including the charizard's own rushed over to the new arrival. They started shouting things to him, waving balls and money at him. After a while, he pointed to one person with two balls and a huge wad of money and nodded. The person came over to him and gave him the stuff, receiving the strange object. After a moment, the charizard realized that the two balls had inhabitants! What was this thing?
He looked harder. The object was flat and perfectly circular. One side was shiny and metallic, but he couldn't see the other. Exactly in the center of the circle was a circular hole.
Suddenly, the charizard was sucked into his ball. He hadn't even seen his owner walk up. A few minutes later, in ball time, he appeared again. It was dark out. He was standing on the head of his owner's gyrados. In the ocean. He turned around and suddenly was hit in the head by his owner. In his owner's hand was the round object. The charizard felt a strange, tingling feeling. His wings grew stronger, and a map formed in his head. Somehow, he knew exactly where he was. As he thought of other places he had been, he somehow understood exactly where they were. It was amazing!
After a few moments, the charizard started to wonder. How did his owner get the disk? He looked around, and saw. The buyer of the disk was struggling, stuck in the gyrados's jaws. Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted by his owner leaping onto his back. The owner then returned the gyrados to its ball, dropping the struggling human back into the water. "Viridian City, now!" he declared. The charizard knew where that was! He had never been there, but he located it instantly on his new, mental map, and flew away obediently. Still a slave, but with a strange new freedom.
A/N: A new challenge every week! This week's challenge: Will they beat the Elite four? If not, will they get all the badges? If not, how many will they get? At this point they have six. I love reviews.