I wasn't exactly sure why I was still in the Pokémon Center, never mind why I was still in a stretcher, but I had a feeling it had to do with my deliriously punching out a nurse while she tried to administer an Antidote because I remembered the ghost story the kids had told around school about Marty Atrice. Either way, I felt fine now and wanted to get out, although every time I so much as twitched a muscle the Nurse Joy shot me a venomous look that said, quite clearly, "No."

Resting my head on the pillow, I sighed. There was a little red and white Poké Ball on the drawer next to mine. No guesses as to what was inside of it.

"Jeez, you are nothing but a troublesome little bugger, aren't you?" I asked, and sniggered at the fully intended pun. There was an obligatory groan from the stretcher next to mine, and even the Venipede had the decency to roll his eyes.

I glared, and the teenager sitting next to the bed with a prone Machop on it gave me a once over. "New with Poison types, am I right?"

"Well..." I said, trying not to concede the fact that he was right without actually lying.

"Yup," chuckled the older trainer, stroking his Machop's head as it lay there, more patiently than me. "New to the whole trainer thing by the looks of it, I bet."

I grumbled in a noncommittal kind of way, and turned to the television on the screen, pointedly trying to ignore what I thought of as a pompous elitist. Instead, I watched some kind of news reel on the Elite Four channel about the Kanto Champion relinquishing his title or something to go train on Mt. Silver for a couple years. Weirdo.

At that point, Nurse Joy came by my bedside, checking up on my blood pressure or pulse or something like that. "Say, is today your birthday?" asked the pink-haired nurse.

I smiled. "Yeah, I had my party last night," I said, surprised that the Nurse had taken the liberty of finding out. "Thanks!"

"May you come here for years to come!" she trilled, happily, and went on to the next patient, while I mulled on the exact meaning of her words.

"Wow, you really are new to this," whistled the older trainer, shaking his head. "You started last night? You didn't even go a full twenty four hours before getting poisoned by your own starter? That's rough, dude. That's rough."

"Shut up," I said, annoyed.

The trainer raised his hands in surrender. "Chill, dude." He extended a hand. "The name's Jimmy." So much for surrender.

I was briefly reminded of my friend Jimmy with the Munna, but this kid was nothing like him. For one thing, he had a Machop, which was pretty cool. Even if he was a pompous elitist. Grudgingly, I shook his hand as well.

"Does your starter have a name, yet?" he asked, turning away from his Machop as Nurse Joy administered to it to talk with me. He raised a finger to stroke the Venipede, but the Centipede Pokémon recoiled and hissed at him.

"Don't- yeah. He's a little, er, feisty."

The older trainer shook his head, and for a moment I thought it was out of pity or disappointment, and I opened my mouth to object, but when I saw his shoulders shaking I realized he was laughing. "How's long has it been since you fed the little guy? He's starving!" the older trainer chuckled, reaching into his backpack and tossing the Venipede a Cheri berry. The Pokémon munched happily on the Cheri, yellow eyes considerably less aggressive now that he had food.

I stared dumbly at my Venipede, which actually nuzzled my hand now that he was full and looked imploringly at me. "Why me?" I squeaked, a bit higher than I had intended. "He's the one who gave you the berry!"

"And you're his trainer. So, come on, what's the little guy's name?"

"I haven't really thought of it," I muttered, safely petting my Venipede's hard exoskeleton. The spines were now lying flat, and as long as I didn't stroke him the other way I wouldn't be getting poisoned again.

"What about Toxin?" said the older trainer, helpfully. "Because, you see, technically it shouldn't be called Poison-type because it's really toxins, since poison is used defensively and venom is used offensively..."

I rolled my eyes. "You've been reading the Beginner's Guide, haven't you?"

The older trainer smirked. "You have, too. So what? How's the name?"

"Dude, not cool," I shot back. "That's almost as bad as calling him Venipede. It's like, instead of naming your child Human, you called him Mammal."

"Just Tox, then?" suggested the trainer, as his Machop got off the stretcher. He stood up. "Just a suggestion. Good luck!" And with that, the older trainer was gone.

I pursed my lips. "Tox," I said, trying out the name, seeing how it felt. I tickled my Venipede's head. "Nah. But you do need a name."

While I pondered, Nurse Joy came by my bedside, again, checking up on things. How long would it be before I got to leave this place? "Hel-lo," said Nurse Joy, warmly. "Say, is today your birthday?"

I blinked. "Uh...yeah. It is. I told you that-."

"Happy birthday! May you come here for years to come!"

"Thanks?" I said, quizzically, to Nurse Joy's retreating back. What was up with her? I seriously hoped that my nurse did not have memory problems. Just to be safe, I checked my bedside to see if there was any medication nearby that the nurse may have overdosed me on. Mollified slightly by the lack of any heart-stopping pills in the vicinity, I relaxed into my bed, the unnamed Venipede crawling down from my lap and crawling around the room, curiously.

There had been no one else in the room besides the other trainer, although I could see new and old patients flowing in and out of the rooms in the hallway outside. I snagged the remote control for the TV from my sitting position, and flipped through the channels aimlessly, hoping maybe the television could give me some ideas.

Instead, I ended up watching, dully, a PSA about Poké-Rights, not Poké-Fights. "No Pokémon should have to be a fighting-type..."

I snorted. That was stupid. Fighting-type Pokémon were naturally fighting-type, there was no changing that, although my old belief in the adage was shaken slightly from my viewpoint inside of the Pokémon Center. Guiltily, I eyed the hallway full of broken and bruised Pokémon hobbling past outside, and then my own Venipede, who was happily gnawing at the leg of the desk at my bedside.

I flipped the TV off and waited in sullen silence, until Nurse Joy came in and told me I was free to go. As I was being lead out of the room and down the hall, Nurse Joy once again looked at me with complete surprise and said, without a trace of irony, "Say, is today your birthday?"

I gaped, wordlessly, at her, and because the PSA had made me a little pissy I said, sarcastically, "No."

Looking hurt, Nurse Joy edged away, saying under her breath, "Sorry, I must have had you confused with someone else..." She scurried away, suspiciously with her eyes averted and head down, and I watched her leave without the faintest clue as to what had just happened.

The lobby of the Pokémon Center was not exactly crowded, but there was a certain quiet hustle and bustle that meant that no one was ever without a job to do or somewhere to go. After stumbling down the hall with my Venipede by my side, I looked around the lobby, perplexed. I guess I was looking for my parents, although truthfully I was just scanning the room for something interesting without actually looking for anything.

My gaze settled on a little sofa to the side, and even though I had just spent the last few hours in a bed, sloth won out and I flopped onto the couch. I bent over to pick up my Venipede, but as I rose I found myself staring into the wide brown eyes of a girl, leaning over me. I stared, blankly, at her, having long since given up trying to understand the day's events. Very slowly, she asked, "Theo?"

"Oh, no, my name's Tony."

Apparently disregarding what I had just said, the girl tugged my Venipede out of my hands. "Theo, it is you!"

"No, no, no, you've got it wrong," I said, tugging back on my Venipede, who was looking fairly nonplussed at this sudden change of event. "That isn't Theo, that's..." I paused. Still nameless.

"No," said the girl, flatly. "I've decided, this is Theo." And she plucked my Venipede away and stalked off. I lunged out and grabbed her jacket, causing her to stumble and thankfully tumble onto the couch. A few items dropped out of her jacket pocket, but seemingly unperturbed, the girl rolled happily on the couch with my Venipede (Theo?) looking at me in confusion. Resigned to the inevitable, I picked up the girl's belongings with some vague idea of ransom for my starter back, and absently flipped open her Pokédex. Besides a little blurb of information that said her name was Elizabeth Smith and she was, in fact, a she, there wasn't much information in it. Next to nothing, in fact. In fact...

"You haven't caught any Pokémon," I said, flatly.

The girl looked at me. "So? I'm going to. I'm gonna catch them all."

"You haven't caught any Pokémon," I repeated. "Including a Venipede. You don't have a Venipede."

"Nuh-uh, his name's Theo, and he's right here," the girl said, holding out my starter for me to see, and I took the opportunity to snatch back the very confused Pokémon from her hands. "Hey!"

"This is my starter, you can't take him, that's stealing," I said, keeping my voice low because people were starting to stare.

"No, Theo is mine!"

"Are you some kind of nut job?" I hissed, as the girl, failing to drag Theo- no, my Venipede away, chose to instead pull on me. I stumbled after her, if only because her grip was iron and I liked this shirt. People were also staring, and I smiled nervously at them as a sane reality seemed to grow further and further away. "Are you crazy? Let go!"

"Come on, Theo. We're going on an adventure."

Maybe my Venipede had pricked me again or the last vestiges of the toxin had emerged my bloodstream, but in a light-headed, dazed sort of way, I found myself thinking, Well, Theo's not such a bad name...

A/N: The PSA is a little shout-out to a video made by the same guys behind that dark and gritty live action Pokémon trailer. The repeated happy birthday's was something that happened to me in my version of White, where the Nurse Joy asked if it was my birthday every single time. Don't know if that even happens regularly or it's just a glitch, but jeez it was annoying...