Story-writer-wannabe's lexicon excerpts in a contextual order:
That took a while. Anyways, I got bored of seeing only two votes on my poll and asked my roommate what works based on those polls. He gave me a plethora of ideas, and I finally got one! My starter will be….*drumroll*….
..*drumroll is fading out*…
*this is getting awkward, but we can make the best of it*….
…I think you should just read it.
BY THE WAY
If you felt bad about missing out on the poll earlier, sorry, I didn't plan that out too well. Next time there's a poll, I'll give you guys/gals/insert g-based pronoun of your preference a week to respond, and make the options a bit less … spread out. I hope you enjoy this installment, COMMENTS AND CRITIQUE ARE ALWAYS WELCOME, and please message me I'm pretty lonely Not a joke plz talk to me
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~
The survey was too forgettable. If my life depended on my recollection of those questions, I believe I would have died long back. Luckily, the survey doesn't matter at all, and there's no way it would return to haunt me.
I stood before a pillar-like machine, a simple steel cylinder with a lighted panel on its top. Nothing happened for the first few seconds, until the panel lit up. Sunlight beamed out in streams, as if clawing for freedom before losing themselves to reality. Within those streams came together an orb, first of every known color before settling into a solid form, which dropped and rolled onto the panel. The orb had the commonplace red and white color scheme, with a single button on its scar of a black equator; I was just given my starter Pokemon.
"Congratulations," stated my overseer, "You are now an official Pokemon Trainer."
I used to imagine that becoming a trainer would change my world view in some way. I thought that I'd maybe view people kindlier, maybe become more curious about them. Some magical energy would completely turn around my brain chemistry so that I could just be happy with my Pokemon, together striving to complete the League Challenge. We'd all smile, we'd all win, and then I'd do something to make the rest of the world share that same feeling.
I was such a fool in the past. There was no fanfare, no confetti, no cheers, no hug, no smile, and no change in world view for sure. That dream was a childish one, an immature one. The girl wore a bored expression, the significance of the event lost on her after witnessing a multitude of the same. I turned to leave.
As I approached the glass door, hand on what separated me from a journey and a dull white noise, the girl grabbed my shoulder.
"Wait a minute," she huffed. She was really breathing hard. I'd later learn that she had spaced out on her way to leave and had to run across the whole Aether Foundation complex to reach me. "I'm so sorry, I forgot to tell you! Promise you won't tell anyone I forgot?" Turning to her, I responded, "Tell me."
"You didn't promise."
"Fine, I promise I won't tell."
She took a deep breath, steadied herself, and finished, "Your papers say you have to do psych evals, right? Well, Dr. Birch works pretty closely with us for rehabilitation work, so you can just contact us instead of directly bothering her."
"Huh, that's nice." I wanted to leave, to get started before it got too dark, and to meet my starter. I didn't really care much for the psychological reviews.
"Yeah, it is." She was getting annoyed at me, at my impassivity. This was getting fun. "Also, as a part of that, you have to stay here for one night with your Pokemon. I saw its file too, and you both might need some time to…adapt."
If she was trying to make me react to her, she had succeeded. She had successfully shocked me with information I had least expected to hear, and information I hadn't wanted to hear.
I was being put under observation. Whatever they thought is wrong with me, they thought it's bad.
The worse news was that my starter Pokemon was one of the few that were rescued from traumatic situations around the world, making starting my journey even more difficult. I'd be playing life on Hard Mode.
Luckily, I was expecting Hard Mode.
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~
The room had cameras. I never did have a reason to be nervous around cameras, but for as long as I could remember—which wasn't too long at all—a camera pointed at me made me all too aware of the fact that someone I didn't know, someone I couldn't know the intentions of, was watching me. Irrational as I know it is, there was nothing to do about it, and nothing to be done.
There was a table, a simple wooden one, with various toys and games atop it. A stool stood at each end, made of some different kind of wood with a different pattern to it. The walls and floor seemed to be woven with a monochromic spectrum, an imperfect gradient choppily jumping from black to white to gray and back.
I ran my hand against one of the smoother gradients to find that each color came from a different Pokemon: the black ones were rough and frayed, so much that it was hard to imagine being able to weave with them at all; the dark grey more whole and thin, but also varying degrees of rough. When my fingers brushed across the pure-white fur I realized—more like remembered, impossible as that was—the purpose of this room.
My start was a Psychic-type. It had to be, because the Absol hairs in the wall hinted that this room was laced with the Dark-type attribute, the perfect place to contain a psychic.
My pokeball, my starter's prison, rested on the innocent wooden table in that cursed room. The cameras were here to see if I could handle whatever marred and jagged creature lay within; this was the first real test, the kind no amount of studying could truly prepare you for, making it the most efficient way to weed out incompetence.
I pressed the button, the pokeball opened. Streams of light, each an intensely-whitened hue of a color of the rainbow, congregated into a vaguely humanoid shape. What little of an introduction I had put together in my time steeling myself for this meeting disappeared with whatever was once clad in light, followed by a quick blow to my gut. The shock, more than the force, knocked me to the ground; I'm embarrassed to say that it wasn't even that hard of a punch, like that of a friendly Stufful.
There was a small whine of frustration, with no known source in the room. My starter was frustrated, and I would be too if I had been cooped up in a pokeball for a solid amount of time. I saw something stand out against the blacker furs lining the walls, only for it to blink out of existence a few seconds later. Another friendly Fluffel strike came across my cheek, albeit hard enough to give me a bruise. The strike came from a white limb, which then disappeared yet again.
A white limb. Disappearing from one place to appear in another. Psychic typing. My starter was awesome, going for my face after realizing that it didn't do enough damage just hitting my body, a born fighter. It could use Teleport amazingly, and it had the seeds of hand-to-hand combat engrained in its being. Had I been fighting a woman, I would have been struck by love right on the spot, Mesprit be witness to that.
I'm pretty both of us were happy to be dudes. Despite my musings and observations, my Pokemon kept teleporting, trying to knock me down by aiming for my face. A bit harder, and I would have had a broken nose by then. Every strike gave me more information: green on the head, a red horn, an exterior layer of baggy skin over its regular skin, a small mouth. Those lips were meant to remain quiet and passive, but they were curled into a combative, angry sneer.
He tried to hit my nose again. I thought there was a pattern to his teleporting, so I decided to give him a little scare. After going for my nose, he'd pop up around the room a few times, and then appear on my shoulder to hit my head. When I felt his weight on my shoulder, I sprung my trap, grabbing him by his rear pink-red horn. My Ralts grabbed for my hand and tried to pry off my fingers, but given the difference in physical strength, it was to no avail. Besides, my fingers were easily at least as thick as its wrists, assuming it's "sleeves" did not count.
In the Ralts' line, each species has a horn somewhere central on their body. If the Pokemon is at least a Kirlia, it's horn will be on its chest somewhere, but Ralts have their horns atop their heads, a deep off-red growing from the center of their foreheads, with a small secondary horn growing from a similar point on the backs of their heads. If the most recent edition of Bulbapedia is to be believed, the most novice of the evolutionary line use their horns to conduct the emotions of those around them, channeling them to develop their psychic powers. As a side benefit, Ralts are commonly employed as diplomats and relief-Pokemon, using their innate abilities to gain a firm grasp of the situations around them and to guide their trainers towards the best course of action, or to simply be the best source of empathy possible for a mind in turmoil. As a result of this inherent tendency towards empathy, Ralts usually shy away from combat, preferring not to cause harm.
My starter deviated from this petty norm the moment I opened its pokeball. I sneered my best smile, struggling to hold back my joy of finding something more real than the dump of a life I've had, and very afraid that norms that are so often enforced without effort could be effortlessly broken by a single individual. I looked into the Ralts' eyes, my Ralts' eyes, as he looked into mine, his Trainer's eyes, and I knew that both of us had the same mad fear coursing through our airways. He sent a thought into my mind as I asked him the very same question, a sort of pained laugh stemming from both of our injuries evident in our tones;
"What's your name?"