"Are you ready to get on the plane for Palmo, Ash?" Ash Ketchum, age 16, of Pallet Town, was getting ready to board the plane to the sixth and last Pokémon region, after finishing his Unova journey. But little did he know that this was not going to be a fairly straightforward journey like most of the others, this would be his biggest and craziest one of all!
"Yes, Professor Oak. Let me just get my Pokéballs," Ash answered, collecting a number of small, multicolored balls with buttons on the middle, his Pokéballs, the only way to catch and train wild Pokémon.
"Are Iris and Cilan already there?"
"Yes, they're waiting for you." Oak replied.
"Okay, I've got everything. I'm ready. Come on, Pikachu." His starter, a small electric mouse, was his greatest friend and never went inside its Pokéball.
"Pi-Pikachu!" it replied, jumping on its friend's shoulder, its favorite spot.
On the plane, Ash went to where there was an Axew waving like crazy to get his attention.
Iris reassured her Pokémon, a small, tusked, olive dinosaur that stood up on two legs.
"SEATBELTS ON, EVERYONE." the intercom blared. There was a flurry of commotion as people put away their luggage and buckled into their seats.
The plane engines turned on, and it moved along the runway. When the plane was up in the air, Ash decided to go to sleep for the three-day-long trip.
Three days later...
Ash felt a tap on his leg and woke up.
"We're almost there. Palmo is right there." Iris said. Ash looked out the window, and held his breath at the sight of the amazing region. The flat, icy plains of the Southern Glaciers slowly rose, until they became the Pokearth-famous Whistling Mountains at Palmo's north, rising to the amazing Mounts Tambora and Flarimist. The Xyrule River flowed from Mount Flarimist, ending near the Mesquite Islands above the Southern Glaciers' reach. Deep Forest, a forest that made Eterna Forest look like a bucketful of barren desert, stretched from the Pokemon Valley to the Xyrule River Delta, which flowed into the Palmmo Ocean. To the Xyrule River's left sat the Desert of Life, which became the Badlands in its north. Both of Palmo's two great Oceans, the Palmo Ocean and the Sea of Legends were a brilliant blue-green, and Ash could see pods of Delphin jumping in the waves, and he even saw one or two Liopela, with just its long neck reaching out of the water. The Triplet Islands in the Palmo Ocean seemed to glow with the radience of the Staticor, Sunpran, and Projectyle who lived in huge numbers there.
The plane dipped and began to rock slightly due to more turbulence as it neared Darna City, a fairly large city that lay in the center area of Palmo, and was located right next to the Sea of Legends, the largest of Palmo's two great oceans.
Ash felt the smooth jolt as the back wheels hit the runway, followed by the front. The plane coasted to a stop, and the door was opened.
''You may now leave the plane. Thank you again for choosing Air Lugia.'' the captain's voice said. The seats began to empty as passengers left.
''We're finally here. Palmo Champion, here I come!'' Ash said, jumping out of his seat. Cilan and Iris got up as well, got their luggage (Ash just had his backpack), and got into the aisle to get out, followed closely by Ash.
Ash turned his hat to block out the summer sunlight and looked at them.
He smiled. ''We're in Palmo!'' he said happily. Iris and Cilan both laughed, and nodded.
''So, where is the Palmo Professor's lab?'' Cilan asked. Ash looked at an atlas of Palmo that he had gotten in the plane.
''It's about two miles from here, near the center of the city.'' he said, walking towards the airport building. He and his friends exited, and they followed Ash, who was focusing his complete attention on the map and ended up running into a power line. ''I'm okay!'' he said, getting back up. Cilan and Iris laughed, and they continued walking, though Ash put more attention into not walking into things now, while still watching the map.
After a while, they stopped walking. Ash folded the map and put it in his pocket. ''Well, here we are. The Palmo Professor's lab.'' he said. His friends nodded, and they walked in.
From the inside, Ash would have never guessed this building was a Pokemon research lab. The walls were filled in every inch with drawings, both of Pokemon and people. The floor was made with colored gold and emerald green tiles.
Near the back of the lab, there was a desk between two doors that could have been any color had they not been completely covered with drawings. Ash could only tell they were doors because they both had a knob that just poked out from the drawings.
At the strangely-carved desk, which seemed to lean to one side but had a perfectly level top, a woman who wore a bright green shirt and jeans was sorting through papers. She looked at us and set the papers down.
''May I help you?'' she asked.
''We're here to get our Starter Pokemon from Palmo's Professor. Can we see her?'' Cilan asked. Ash was currently stuck on staring at a drawing of a strange blue Pokemon that had a prominent circle on its chest. The circle had a snake that layed in a spiral with its head on the outside. Ash caught the snake's eye, which seemed to wink at him. He shook off the notion and looked at the woman at the desk.
''Ah, so you're the ones who were registered for today! My name is Professor Olive. What are your names and ages?'' the woman asked. She must have noticed the trio's expressions, because she said, ''I know I don't look much like the other Professors. But this is me. It goes well with the fact that Palmo is wildly different from other regions. Now, I need your names and ages, and I can show you the new Starters.''
''I'm Cilan Striaton, aged 21.'' Cilan said.
''I'm Iris Dragonfriend, age 12.'' Iris said.
''And I'm Ash Ketchum, aged 16.'' Ash said. Professor Olive smiled, went from behind the desk, and opened one of the hidden doors.
''Follow me.'' she said. Ash, Iris, and Cilan followed.
Inside, the lab looked more like a lab. It was filled with white shelves that held hundreds of different kinds of chemicals. The entire back wall looked like some kind of giant computer. The only difference from other labs was that this one was extremely messy. There were chemical spills on the floor and some shelves had collapsed, with shards of broken test tubes underneath.
''Sorry about the mess. I can never find time to clean it up.'' Professor Olive said. ''Don't step there. It will burn right through your shoe into your foot. Hydrochloric, you know.''
Ash jerked his foot from an orange spill on the ground. Professor Olive laughed.
''I was kidding. It's just dyed water.'' she said. She reached the giant computer and pressed a hidden button on the wall. The computer hummed to life.
''What is your command?'' the computer asked robotically.
''Open Storage Cell S.'' Professor Olive said. The computer beeped, and the floor next to it opened. A table with a dome over the top rose out. Under the dome, three Pokemon Eggs sat on a velvet-like padding. Professor Olive pressed a button on the side of the table, and the dome shifted into the table, leaving the Pokemon Eggs out. ''Palmo gives an extra challenge to new Trainers by giving them Pokemon Eggs to start instead of Pokemon. This steely blue one is Dragonor. The grasslike one that has two fanglike dents in it is Stark. And this cloudy purple one is Darkmor. All of these have their own strengths and weaknesses. Dragonor is good for strategies but not as good with physical combat. Stark is excellent with physical moves but it has a low Defense. And Darkmor is good with Special Attack and Defense, but it only listens to high-levelled Trainers. Choose your Starter wisely.''
Iris, of course, immediately picked up the Dragonor Egg, and cradled it as best as she could in her arms. Axew sniffed it to see what it might be.
Cilan and Ash took longer to decide.
''It's unusual to have a Shadow-Type or Dragon-Type Starter Pokemon, isn't it?'' Ash asked. Professor Olive nodded.
''Palmo is an unusual place. You'll see that easily while you're here.'' she responded.
''Ash, is it alright if I choose Stark?'' Cilan asked.
''It's fine. I think I want to start with a challenge anyway.'' Ash said. Cilan nodded, picking up Stark's Egg. Ash picked the shadowy Darkmor Egg up, expecting it to be heavy. He was surprised when it barely had any weight at all.
''Well, now that you've chosen your Pokemon, I can give you your Trainer Cards and you can begin. Computer, activate Ash Ketchum, Iris Dragonfriend, and Cilan Striaton as Palmo Trainers.''
The giant computer beeped again and three cards came from a hidden slot in the wall. Professor Olive caught them and gave them to Ash, Cilan, and Iris.
''And now, you're officially Palmo Pokemon Trainers. Here are your Pokedexes. All you have to do is activate them with your Trainer Cards, and they will be able to tell you almost anything about Palmo wherever you are. They run on solar power, so they don't lose any power. Good luck!'' Professor Olive said, giving Ash and Cilan a thin, black Pokedex and Iris a thin blue one. Ash and his friends smiled and walked out of the lab, followed by Professor Olive.
When they got near the Darna City hotel, they were greeted by the town Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy, who had a strange-looking Pokémon next to her, who was a pale tan-brown color and looked at everything around it with the same happy expression.
"Hello, and welcome to Darna City. You should know who we are from our relatives in other regions. This is Argol." Jenny said, pointing to the strange Pokémon.
"Argol Argol Argol!" it said, excitedly.
"We can show you to your hotel where you will be staying for the first week of your journey here. You'll need to adjust to Palmo better than most regions because we have a much more diverse climate, being in all of the biomes." Joy informed the trio. Ash, Cilan, and Iris simultaneously looked in their bags for Pokémon Coins, the currency of the Pokémon world.
"Oh, don't worry about paying. Professor Oak already paid all expenses for you three. You'll need some money later on, though, after the first week or so." Jenny assured them, seeing their reaction.
"Wow, Professor Oak sure went through a lot of trouble to get us here." Cilan told him.
"Yeah." Ash and Iris agreed (In this rewrite, I don't want them arguing).
"The bus to the hotel is here, and the driver doesn't like to wait." Jenny said.
At the hotel, they went to their rooms, Nurse Joy having given them their keys. The rooms were side-by-side; Ash's being in the middle. After dropping their stuff on the beds, they went into the hall and swapped ideas about the next two or three years here in Palmo.
"Good," Jenny and Joy said at the same time, "They won't have any trouble with each other at all here."
When they got tired of talking, they went back in their rooms and noticed a map of Palmo lying on the beds. It was only one-sided, so they could use the other side for anything they might need to write down. Ash just tossed his back onto the bed and fell asleep without unpacking or changing, even though it was only noon. Iris started drawing sketches of Axew and Druddigon, who she let out of his Pokéball, on the back of the map. Cilan set his neatly in the nightstand next to the bed and started pacing across the room, thinking. After a while, Iris had finished her sketches and decided to talk to her friends.
"Ash? Cilan?" she started calling, a little quietly. She was answered with a soft snore from Ash's room and a pause in the footsteps coming from Cilan's. Feeling left out, she left the room and checked their doors. Ash's was open, but he seemed to be fast asleep. Cilan's was half open, and she could hear him mumbling to himself. She decided to try Cilan's room first. She opened the door the rest of the way as quietly as she could, and stuck her head through.
"Cilan, can I talk with you for a second?" she asked.
"Okay." he replied, "What about?"
"I just wanted to talk. Ash is asleep, so I came here first. I just wanted to say thanks for staying with us for Palmo. It's very confusing here, but I don't know why." she said.
"It's the atmosphere. Palmo's three days isolated from Unova alone, so it's really different from any other region." Cilan said. Iris smiled.
"That Argol was really cute." Iris said, changing the subject.
"What's going on?" asked a sleepy-sounding voice from the hallway.
"Iris came in here because you were asleep." Cilan explained.
"Sorry. My head just hurts a little. It's something about Palmo's atmosphere."
"Same here." Iris said, getting up from the bed.
"I'm going to go back to my room now and work some more on my drawings, okay?" she told them.
"Sure, you sound like you need a rest, anyway. I'm going back to my room to work on something."
"What?" Cilan couldn't resist asking.
"A project involving my Pokédex. I'm going to try to decode the system and work out how many Pokémon are in this region and what they're called."
"Ash, you know you're hopeless with technology." Iris reminded him.
"I know, but I want to learn how to work this region's Pokédex. It's really complicated this time. Also, can you help me understand something that happened while I was asleep?" Ash asked.
"Sure, what?"
"While I was asleep, I had a dream. It was about a strange shadow thing with glowing red eyes, which were the only parts of its face that I could see over this strange semimetal helmet that it had on. Anyway, it appeared in my dream and told me, in a very deep voice, to beware of something. I don't know what, because I woke up before it could tell me." he revealed.
"It was Darkell." A new voice had come from the hallway, "I am Aran, and I have been looking for Darkell for my entire life, to stop his evil ways."
"Darkell? I think that I've heard that name before…" Cilan said, lost in thought, "Now I remember! That same thing happened to me a few months ago, when your Scraggy hatched, Ash. It told me 'I am Darkell. Do not fear me. Beware of the traitor.' I still can't figure out what that means, though." Cilan recalled.
"A traitor! Huh, the only traitor near here is Darkell." Aran mumbled, just loud enough for the rest to here.
"Now, if you keep on talking like that, then you can just get out!" Iris snapped, "Stop assuming Darkell's bad just because of his name!"
"Iris!" Ash and Cilan said simultaneously.
"I know what she means, actually, and I would stop trying to defeat Darkell, if he was less evil, and I didn't have a whole team of trainers who all hate Darkell." Aran said.
"This sounds a lot like Darkrai all over again." Ash whispered to his friends.
"Who?" Aran asked, not sure what was going on.
"Nothing, Aran."
"I have to go now. I found another clue yesterday as to where Darkell is hiding. Would you like to come and help me?" Aran said, changing the subject a little.
"Should we?" Ash whispered to the others.
"It couldn't hurt, I guess," Cilan answered.
"We'll go." Iris replied.
"Good. Now, here's a GPS for each of you, so you don't get lost in the Dark Forest." Aran informed them.
"Dark Forest? It sounds spooky." Iris shivered a little, "Now I don't know now if I want to go or not."
"Oh, it is. I can still remember before I started training Pokémon, it was so dark at the forest, but bright everywhere else. It was full of the screams of Dark and Dragon type Pokémon. It was…" Aran started.
"When do we go?" Iris interrupted.
"She loves Dragon types." Cilan explained.
"I can tell." Aran answered, "Well, let's go."
At Dark Forest, they could see what Aran meant by the forest being the only dark thing in the area. They could barely see ten feet into the forest, and Aran was right about the screams. They had to grab Iris by her shirt to keep her from running into the dragon-infested forest, because they had no idea what was in there, and they were sure that anything there was probably dangerous as well. While they were pushing Iris back into the jeep, they were completely unaware of a set of eyes watching them from the dark leaves. Pure red eyes.