"BOOM!" I roared, pumping my fist in the air in (Theo's) victory, as my Venipede took down another Petilil. The Grass Pokémon keeled over and fell, unconscious, and he shuffled happily, also flushed with the joy of victory. "Theo, at this rate we're going to-."
From behind the thick of the foliage, Elizabeth's voice shouted, "Hey, Tony, have you caught any wild Pokémon yet?"
Slightly callously, I punted the unconscious Bulb Pokémon out of the way and shouted back, "Nope! We just can't seem to get a hold of one."
Elizabeth stumbled through the trees, leering suspiciously at me. Innocently, I waved nonchalantly back.
"Really?"
"Yeah," I said, as the Petilil fell with a thump in the bushes behind me.
"How come Theo's so beat up, then?" asked Elizabeth, squinting at me.
"Oh, we keep running into them, but they all run off after the first attack," I said, and Theo affirmed this with a vigorous nodding of his head, antenna flapping wildly. "It's really very unfortunate." Elizabeth didn't respond, and slunk off to search more, although she didn't stop watching us until she was completely out of sight.
I waited a minute after that, just to be sure, and then bent down to Theo, grinning. "Ready to pack on a few more levels?"
"Veni!" chirped my starter, and there was a determined glint in his eyes. Maybe it was his earlier defeat, maybe it was being back in his home territory of Pinwheel Forest, or maybe it was just plain stubbornness, but Theo was powering through the wild Pokémon like a champ.
Then again, maybe it was the four times resistance to Grass moves and the fact that we were in the middle of a forest swarming with Petilil and Sewaddle. That was nice.
After an hour of fruitless searching, Elizabeth had decided that maybe I was right and that all the Sewaddle were in the inner forest, where all the Sewaddle promptly ran away and Elizabeth ended up tramping through the grass looking for, well, anything. It was her object to catch them all, after all, and when Elizabeth said all, she meant all.
Meanwhile, Theo and I had been intercepting every wild Pokémon that came our way and summarily beating the living crap out of them, and I was feeling pretty good about myself as a trainer. Spirits were high, we were on a roll, and I was feeling great.
Obviously, this couldn't have last very long; Theo and I were wandering around a small clearing in the forest when the people disguised as bushes started popping out at us.
When we realized that we had, for all intents and purposes, actually scared off every Grass Pokémon within a hundred meters, Theo and I began tramping through the forest with as much stealth as physically possible for a ten year-old boy (i.e. none). I wrestled through a particularly nasty patch of brambles, sliding downhill after bursting through the foliage. The moment I slid to a halt, a clump of bushes at the foot of the hill burst to life and something bright red leaped out to greet me.
Now, don't get me wrong. This was positively droll. I had grown up in Castelia City and visited the gym as a kid, and I got over clowns ambushing me from out of the ground when I was five.
It was the look in the man's eyes that were freaking me out.
"Hey, man," he said, in a hoarse, low whisper, drawing out the syllables erratically. "Hey, ma-a-an. What you doing here, man? You're, like, disturbing nature, ma-a-an."
I could only stare, although Theo took only a second to survey the unusually uninteresting sight before moving on. The man was in an all red outfit, although what looked like some kind of uniform on him was torn and mud-smeared. There were shadows under the man's wide eyes, and little bits of twig, leaf, and bug string were tangled in the man's hair. He was incessantly rolling a Poké Ball around in his fingers. While his... face made it difficult to tell his age, he could have been as young as his early twenties or maybe even late teens.
"Whoa, man, where you going? Chill out, little bro..." The ranger picked up Theo as he walked away, and, protectively, I snatched Theo back. My starter, who was getting all too tired with being constantly manhandled by human and Pokémon, stranger and friend alike, lashed out, irritably, at the ranger, before wriggling out of my hands and continuing his stroll past the ranger.
"Not cool, dude. Not cool," I muttered, brushing past bush-man as well, and suddenly the familiar sound of a Poké Ball opening was accompanied by an enraged, shrill screech. A Pansage launched itself at my head, tugging at my hair wildly, flecks of spittle flying from its frothing mouth, and the force of the impact sent me hurtling to the ground.
"Be one with the Way, little man," drawled the ranger. "We're trainers, right? We looked in each other's eyes, right? Let's have battle, man!"
"Theo, get this thing off of me!" I cried, flailing as much as the monkey on my head, and then there were two Pokémon duking it out on my back. Something cracked. In point of fact, several somethings cracked.
The frenzied Pansage turned on Theo, revealing all its sharp little teeth. My Venipede promptly tackled the monkey, stubbornly clinging on as it attempted to shake my Venipede off, even bouncing up and down in an attempt to dislodge the bug. (This, by the way, was still all happening on my back.) Theo bit vicious into the scruff of the Pansage's neck, at the same time lashing his tail at the monkey's legs. The Grass Pokémon lost balance, collapsing (another crack), before spinning around, whipping its tail into my Pokémon's face. (Crack. Crack.)
"Theo, Protect, then Poison Tail!" The bug curled up just as the monkey's tail descended; it bounced harmlessly off of Theo's hardy shell before my starter sent his own tail flying into the Pansage's chest. Half the weight on my back was relieved, and my lungs expanded in a sigh of relief as the other left just as quickly. I rolled onto my stomach, then drew myself onto my knees. "Theo! Poison Tail, again!"
The Pansage bared pointed teeth, droll dribbling down its mouth, but it was just macho grand-standing now; it gave one last screech before being encompassed by a flash of bright light.
"Du-u-ude," said the ranger, as I groaned, face in the grass. "Your Pokémon fights pretty good, but you need, like, different strategies, man. Here, man. New ways to open your mind, ma-a-an." The ranger put a pouch of what I sincerely hoped were just berries by my side, and then disappeared into the bushes.
Curiously, Theo spilled the bag open and sniffed at the berries, but I grabbed them from my prostrate position and said, sternly, "Theo, don't eat those. You don't know where they've been." Or, more specifically, who's been with them. Ma-a-an.
Elizabeth's high, keening voice broke me out of my bath of self-pity, and, grunting, I forced myself up. I considered the pouch of berries; it was made out of some kind of coarse, woven fabric, with a couple Rawst and Oran berries inside. I pulled one out and I considered it. It did not look suspicious. It was free. It was ripe. It was free. But it had come from a man pretending to be a bush. But it was free. Wrestling control over myself, I chucked the berry as hard as I could into the brush.
A hurt voice, different from the ranger from before, but with the same drawling quality, shouted, "Hey, man!"
"Oh, no," I whispered.
Arms sprouted from beneath the ground and a bemused face popped out of the dirt. "You can just be, like, throwing stuff around nature, man."
"You were a bush," I whispered, as the real world and all its unreality caught up with me.
"It's just not right, man. It's, like, littering, man," said the burrowed man, reproachfully, pushing himself out of the ground like some demented self-picking root vegetable.
"You were a bush!" I repeated, louder, just as stunned.
"I might have to, like, battle you over all of that, man, cause, man, I can't dig that, you know, man?"
"Why were you a bush?"
"There you are, Tony!" said Elizabeth, stumbling through the foliage. "I've been looking everywhere for you, where have you been?" She looked at the ranger. "And this is...?"
"A bush," I said, flatly, and turned around sharply. I couldn't spend another minute in this crazy; my Venipede and I had training to do. "Theo! We're leaving, now."
Elizabeth opened her mouth to speak, huffily, but I was already gone. The ranger blinked sluggishly, realized that I was gone, and shouted out, "Peace, little bros!" I had strode far, with purpose, but I could still hear the man. Pointedly, I ignored him, although Theo chirped a goodbye. I smacked him.
"No, Theo," I said. "We don't associate with those people."
"Venipede!"
Forgive me for being a little snippy, but I was tired and annoyed and every person I had met so far on my very first day of training had either been a lunatic, a jerk, or some combination of the two. This, I told Theo, quite verbally and with passion and with quite a few auxiliary maledictions. My Venipede glared reproachfully at me, before turning around and marching as best as he could with his stubby little legs back into the brush. "Theo, stop!" I cried out, but I had feeling that it was already a lost cause.
With a groan, I dove after him, skidding on the grass. Scooping Theo up in my hands and firmly turning him around, which I found to be an increasingly effective way of dealing with him and he found an increasingly annoying way of being dealt with, I squatted as close as I could to his level. I sighed. "Look, I think it's time we had a little heart to heart."
The Venipede rolled his eyes. "Pede..." the little bug sighed.
"I'm serious, Theo! We need to talk!" I cried out, and closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "Things haven't been working out, what with you acting up, and I figured since we're here..."
Alarm flashed in my Venipede's eyes. "Nipede?"
"No, no! It's not- I'm not releasing you, it's just- I mean-" I took another deep breath, my nostrils flaring. "What I'm saying is...I'm new to this. This is my first day, too, you know." The Venipede said nothing, but my starter had stopped trying to shift around, too. "And I know that you used to be wild and this is home and you're not used to this and I'm not used to this- but, here, what I'm trying to say is..." I worked around the awkward pause. "We're a team, now, Theo. You and I. We gotta listen to each other, we gotta work together."
Theodore looked torn between rolling his yellow eyes or cuddling me. In the end, he settled for both. "Venipede," he said, reproachfully, and gestured with an antenna back to the ranger den. My hypocrisy was all too evident, but, with a kind of single-minded and tenacious determination, I plunged boldly on.
"So you listen to me, we can't be having fights all the time," I said, firmly, and my resolve weakened. "And I won't treat you like a pet or a minion or anything like that." I sank onto the grass, lying on my belly so that I was looking Theo straight in the eye. "We're equals. Are now, always will be. Cool?"
"Veni," said Theo, firmly.
"No, Theo, we're not- OK, OK. You really want to?"
"Veni, ve!"
"Yes, I know the berries were free!" I snapped, playfully this time. "Look, I guess we can go back and, I dunno, talk with them? We left Elizabeth there any-." I froze. We left Elizabeth there. Elizabeth, the snotty little girl who believed she owned other people's Pokémon who didn't have any of her own who was my wallet, in the middle of Arceus knew how many drawling bush-people.
Theo was practically sprinting to keep up with me as I burst through the brambles, tumbled down the hill, and sprawled onto level ground in a muddy, grass-stained mess. I rose, gasping and spluttering, "Liz, why didn't you-?" I finally got a good look at the scene in front of me.
Imagine my dismay when I saw not one, not two, but three twig-laced rangers sitting in a cross-legged circle around Elizabeth. "Dear Arceus, they're multiplying," I whispered under my breath. Elizabeth waved, cheerfully, at me, berry juice dribbling out of the side of her mouth, a look of complete contentment lacing her stained teeth.
"Tony, they're so nice!" she exclaimed, reaching out with sticky fingers. "Have some!"
I did not accept the invitation, but Theo did, and with gusto. The rabid Pansage from before had apparently been nursed back to health with a healthy dosing of Oran berries, and the two now rolled in the grass playfully instead violently.
"Hey, dude, chill out," said the third ranger, a girl this time with curly brown hair and a vapid kind of smile. "You're, like, tense, man."
The little circle of friends beckoned for me to join them, but I stayed glued to the spot. My emotions had been swinging back and forth like a neurotic pendulum all day, and I opened my mouth, ready to say something testy and irritable, all the warmth from my little "heart to heart" gone. At the moment, though, someone cracked a joke and the ring erupted with laughter. My dour mood flickered like a dying candle as this group of trainers, this friendly, open group of dedicated trainers who had just met Elizabeth today, started talking animatedly, their Pokémon rolling in the grass. One of them scribbled a number on a piece of paper and proffered it towards Elizabeth, who dutifully pulled out her Pokédex and began typing it in, and then someone cracked another joke and they were all laughing again. Liz was enjoying herself and Theo was enjoying himself and I was watching.
This what being a trainer is about, I thought, numbly. I had always thought that those "day in the life" documentaries of those trainers befriending town folk and being good Samaritans and learning the true meaning of friendship were a bunch of Numel dung, but watching them now...
I shuffled, awkwardly, over to the circle and sat down, just outside of it, mumbling an apology. Before I could even finish, a ranger had reached out and dragged me into the circle; he was the first one I had met, the one that had challenged me to battle. "You, like, dropped this, man," he said, pressing the bag of berries into my chest. "You didn't even, like, get to eat one."
"Yeah, try it, Tony!" said Elizabeth, the juice smeared across her face showing that she had evidently taken her own advice. "The rangers pick them and grow them naturally!"
Gingerly, I bit into an Oran berry, half expecting out of years of lessons of stranger danger that it would be infused with some kind of hallucinogenic narcotic or at least taste really, really bad, but it was only slightly sour and had a wonderfully refreshing flavor. I turned my head, mouth full, to show my approval to the ranger, and looked past the shadows under his eyes to the warm, twinkling brightness in them. I held his gaze for a second, and something older and deeper was reflected in those eyes. Then, a broad smile split his face. "You look like you just discovered food, man."
And then we were all laughing, and I was enjoying myself.
A/N: Attempt to d'aww makes me d'aww. On a side note, school is tiring and time-consuming and I do not enjoy it, but hopefully I'll find a rhythm that gets these chapters out quicker. Also, Pedestal, possibly the best fanfic ever in the history of ever, is OVER. There are still tears in my eyes, and its been over for a week. Bless you, Digital Skitty. You rock.