Chapter 10: Bulbasaur and the Hidden Village.

Disclaimer: Still don't own pokemon.

A/N: Here's a whole new chapter and as you've probably guessed, this chapter is the start of the infamous trio. I hope you like how it goes. There will not be the absolutely ridiculous giant vacuum by Team Rocket. They will still show in this chapter but not with a stadium and a vacuum.

Raven DK- Props to you, you win a metal for longest review yet but you brought up a lot of good points and that's why I liked it so much. The reason it said he would meet all three starters is that was what the chapter was supposed to originally be but I thought about they Ajay episode and decided I wanted to do a chapter on that first. I just forgot to go back and fix that entry. He will be catching all three starters but only two will be part of the main team. He will still train all three but the main battling team will only have two of them. The other will still have a part in the story and will be substituted just like all the others. I understand what you mean by the fact Ash caught all the fossil pokemon and it was a spur of the moment thing. This is my first fiction so I forget a lot of details and Ash is a sponsored trainer by Oak and they even called Oak to make sure. He was given permission by Oak himself, sorry if I forgot to say that exactly.

GA Pokemon Fan- I agree.

Amourshippingfan-I will try to work Froakie into the story because I also love Ash-Greninja but it will likely not be until a later arc of the story. As the story is going now, he will have two water starters in this story alone. With the question of Aura, I'm leaning more towards no because of his psychic abilities but I might if convinced. And with Serena, she will, that'll be the eventual pairing but likely not till the Hoenn Ark. Froakie will come at the same time as Serena but not till Hoenn.

Thank you all for the reviews and ideas for the story. I'm glad that you like it and I hope you like what happens with the starters.

Ash had been traveling for a couple days since the incident with Ajay and it had been an interesting time to say the least.

About a mile away from the entrance to the tunnel, Ash found a school for trainers that was pathetic in his opinion. He saw this group of teens surrounding a treadmill quizzing the runner on various things and then making fun of him for messing up an answer. Ash stopped them and checked if the kid was alright. When he asked the kid where he was, he told him he was at Pokemon Tech. Ash said he had never heard of it before and the kid said that it prepares trainers for the league and that it was better than taking a journey. Ash just laughed at that notion and told him that taking a journey was better and more fulfilling. The student just shook his head in disbelief and claimed because of his current level of education, he was superior to any standard trainer with two badges.

Ash couldn't help but snort at this and told him that he had two badges and could probably beat him with one of the two types the first two gyms used to prove it. The student laughs, analyzes the situation and lead them to the battlefield of the school. Ash sent out Marshtomp and the young kid sent out a weepingbell in response. The kid ordered a razor leaf which "hit" Marshtomp before he could move. They didn't do any damage to Marshtomp and just hti his chest and fell to the floor pathetically. Marshtomp just retaliated with a weak water gun which blasted it unconscious before it could even hit the ground. Ash just laughed, recalled Marshtomp and left the school before anyone had time to react. They were all just staring at the unconscious Weepingbell in shock because they thought type advantage meant everything.

After he left, he arrived at the entrance to the underground tunnel and stopped at the rest point to actually exchange some of his pokemon. He sent back Marshtomp and Grimlock to get some rest and he kept three open spaces on his team for future pokemon (Foreshadowing). After a night's rest, he began the grueling three-day journey through the underground tunnel. It's a good thing they have places to rest throughout the entire tunnel and it's not just an open tunnel.

It was a long journey and despite the fact they tried to imitate sunlight so the trainers don't have to adjust to the sunlight again, it still took about an hour for Ash's eyes to adjust to being outside again.

Present Time

It had been about a day since Ash got out of the tunnel and he was currently walking through a forest path near the main route. No one ever took this path because there was a risk of getting lost but Ash wanted a break from all the battles and so did his pokemon.

A couple of his pokemon are showing large signs of evolving. Abra's fur is getting longer and his abilities are getting stronger. He is also sleeping more everyday which means his body is storing more energy for his evoloution.

Elekid is showing many signs of evolving and will likely evolve in the next intense battle he has. His fur is getting longer and his incisors in his mouth are getting longer and sharper. His fur is also darkening where his stripes would be. Elekid is also getting more energy and teleport does not fatigue him nearly as much.

Sandshrew is showing the most signs of evolving. The plates on his back are coming together and smoothing his body. Points on his back are turning a dark brown and appear to be raising into points. The nails on his hands also are extending which will be the large claws the Sandslash are known for. He has been training near the point of exhaustion trying to prove himself but Ash managed to stop him telling him he did not need to prove his own strength. He will likely evolve soon.

Ash was walking on the small forest path for about an hour with Sandshrew when he saw a small bridge crossing over a rapid river.

"Huh, I wonder where that goes. You want to find out, Sandshrew?" Ash asked.

Sandshrew nodded and they began to cross the bridge. About half way across, they heard some groaning and turned around and saw one of the ropes looking like it was about to snap. The two began to panic and sprinted to try to beat the collapse of the bridge. They were near the other side of the bridge when the rope gave out. Ash made a jump for it and landed on the edge and struggled for balance for a second before Sandshrew slammed into him making them both tumble to the ground.

When Ash recovered, he said, "Wow, that was close. They should have really replaced that bridge…..Sandshrew?" He looked around for Sandshrew for a second before seeing him stuck in some vines hanging from a tree all tangled up. "Ha-ha. You need some help? We can stop and take a break if you want." Sandshrew just glared at him and gestured at the vines angrily.

Ash just chuckled and walked over to the hanging pokemon and pulled out his pocket knife to cut him down. After cutting down a couple of vines, Ash heard a bush rustling. He looked to his right and was suddenly tackled by a green blur.

"Oomph! What the hell was that?" Ash looked up and saw a growling Bulbasaur looking at him angrily. "What the?"

"BULBA…Saur." Bulbasaur snarled at Ash. It then turned to Sandshrew and used razor leaf to cut him down. Sandshrew thanked him and question why he tackled Ash. Bulbasaur just shook his head, wrapped Sandshrew in a vine and took off carrying the shouting Sandshrew. Ash quickly got up and tried to chase the running pokemon but it was too fast for him to catch up to. After a minute of chasing, he lost the plant pokemon and had to stop and catch his breath. Ash knew he needed to find the Bulbasaur and Sandshrew, so he sent out Grimlock to track them.

Grimlock looked at the panting Ash in confusion and nudged him to see what's going on. "A..Bulbasaur…took…Sandshrew. Can you track his scent?" Grimlock nodded his head and began to sniff the air looking for the familiar scent of Sandshrew. He perked his head up and gestured for Ash to follow him. Grimlock led Ash through the forest before they came across a small hut with pokemon all around it surrounding what looked like a couple pokemon arguing. When the two got close enough, the other pokemon moved away and revealed the two pokemon arguing. It showed the Bulbasaur from earlier arguing quite loudly with his Sandshrew. He used his psychic abilities to act as a makeshift translator. It was rough but the gist of it was that Bulbasaur did not like humans and could not believe Sandshrew was protecting one. Sandshrew was retaliating by saying how the human saved him from an abusive trainer and how he's been nothing but nice to them. Bulbasaur did not believe him and said that trainers were bad and the only good human was taking care of all these pokemon and how his former trainer abandoned him.

It was after that, Bulbasaur turned to see Ash staring at him and growled at him and raised his vines in preparation to attack. Right as it looked like he was going to attack, they all heard a feminine voice, "Bulbasaur, stop! He's not here to hurt anybody. You took his friend."

Both Ash, and Bulbasaur turned to the source of the voice and Bulbasaur immediately retracted his vines but still glared at Ash. Ash saw a young woman with blue hair in a pink shirt and red overalls with a concerned look on her face.
"Are you alright? He's very protective of the pokemon living here and the other pokemon he thinks are in trouble." The girl said.

"Ah, thanks for stepping in Miss..?"

"Oh…Oh dear, my name is Melanie and I am the only human in this "hidden village" as I call it. I take care of pokemon that were abandoned by their previous trainers and are recovering. Bulbasaur is the defender of this village. He was abandoned by his former trainer and has devoted himself to protecting the other pokemon here." Melanie said with a sad tone at the last part about Bulbasaur.

"I'm sorry to hear about that. My Sandshrew also had a trainer before me. He was abusive and I got him arrested recently. Sandshrew decided to come with me afterwards and we've had a good time since." Ash responded. Sandshrew walked over to Ash and nodded happily.

Melanie smiled happily at this and gestured for Bulbasaur to come over. Bulbasaur walked over with a considerably softer face with Melanie being there, and after hearing about Sandshrew's story.

"I hope there are no hard feelings…Sorry for getting to close to the village and making you think I was hurting Sandshrew when I was getting him out of those vines. Truce." Ash said holding out his hand hoping Bulbasaur understood the human gesture.

Bulbasaur stared at him for a second before sighing and extending one of the vines to grip Ash's hand. The two shook their hand/vine to officiate their truce and Melanie smiled happily.

All of a sudden, Ash saw a glint of light behind Melanie and tackled her as a volley of nets flew over their heads and wrapped around many of the pokemon relaxing in the village. Ash and Melanie stood up and saw a group of four men in black jumpsuits run out of the forest with large net guns. Ash stiffened when he saw the large red R's on their chest.

"Dammit, Team Rocket, quick hide! I'll deal with them." Ash said standing up ready to fight the criminal organization again.

Melanie nodded and went to grab Bulbasaur to hide with him but he shook himself out of her grip and went to stand by Ash. "Bulba..Saur..Bulba….Bulba BULBASAUR!" Bulbasaur yelled standing tall. Ash smiled at that because he didn't need any translation to know what Bulbasaur was doing. He was going to fight with Ash and try to stop the Rockets. He would continue to fight and protect the pokemon of the hidden village no matter what it took.

Ash locked eyes with Bulbasaur and nodded to each other ready for the fight ahead. There was newfound respect for Ash in Bulbasaur's eyes. He doubted many other humans would have helped fight the criminals that threatened his home and he respected him for it. Ash was going to help him FIGHT!

Ash was standing with Bulbasaur on his right and Sandshrew on his left ready to take on the rockets. Three of the Rockets saw the small amount of opposition they had and laughed. They sent out their pokemon which was a rattatta, spearow, and surprisingly a machop. When Ash saw the pokemon, he couldn't help but grind his teeth in anger. The pokemon seemed malnourished and when he looked into their eyes, he had to look away for a second. The pokemon's eyes lacked all form of intelligence. The Rockets turned these poor pokemon into mindless battle slaves. They would not hesitate to hurt their opponent permanently and had no sense of self-preservation. Ash would have to knock them out quickly before they hurt themselves in their feral craze.

"Sandshrew, use Rollout to take out the spearow and rattatta before they can go crazy. Bulbasaur, you think you can take the Machop?" Both pokemon nodded and Sandshrew took off at the smaller pokemon rolling as a ball and Bulbasaur quickly launched a leech seed to tie up the Machop. The spearow was immediately taken out by the powerful rock type move and the rattatta tried to bite the rolling ball to stop it but was run over and shakily got back up, and charged at Sandshrew again hissing.

Ash looked over to Bulbasaur and saw the Machop completely tangled in the energy sucking vines trying his best to fight its way out but it was not succeeding. Bulbasaur just rolled his eyes and sent a sleep powder to the struggling pokemon to him under. It immediately fell asleep and Bulbasaur sent over one of his vines to the sleeping pokemon. The vine wrapped around the sleeping pokemon and began to glow a vibrant green. He was using Mega Drain to make sure it did not wake up ready to battle again. About ten second later the Machop stopped struggling in his sleep and Bulbasaur retracted vine.

He saw an unconscious rattatta fly over by the sleeping Machop and turned to see Sandhsrew walking over to him again. He just smiled and looked over to the Rockets and saw them just yelling at their unconscious pokemon telling them to get up and fight. Ash just rolled his eyes and told Bulbasaur to knock them out with sleep powder which the grass type did happily.

They were happy with their small victory before Ash remembered something important. "Wait, weren't there four of them?" Right after he said that, they heard a high pitched scream from Meladie. They turned and saw the rocket Grunt dragging off Melanie and was being closely followed by a medium sized Persian. Ash and the two pokemon immediately ran to catch him so he wouldn't hurt Melanie. When they caught up they saw the Rocket on the edge of a cliff holding Melanie in a way he could throw her off in a moments notice.

"Stop right there kid, don't come any closer or she goes cliff diving!" The Rocket ordered while shaking Melanie who was clearly in shock.

All three of them stopped and Bulbasaur snarled with all the rage in his small body. It was actually quite threating despite his size and they saw the Rocket tense up.

"Give up all of your pokemon. Throw the pokeballs over here and she won't get hurt!.. Hey! Hey! Tell That Damned Bulbasaur to Stop With That Damned Snarling!"

"I'm Not Going To Give You My Friends! And Bulbasaur's my pokemon. You are holding the human he trusts the most in your hands threating to throw her over a cliff!" Ash yelled back.

"Well in that case, say GOODBYE!" The Rocket yelled and twisted his body and pushed Melanie off the cliff. He tried to run away but he was tackled almost immediately by Ash and knocked out while Sandshrew was charging at the Persian.

"BULBA!" Bulbasaur yelled in panic and charged forward with his vines extended to try to catch Melanie. He got his vines around her and slowly stopped her descent. He seemed to be holding his own right now and Ash turned to make sure Sandshrew was alright with his battle.

Sandshrew was standing still while Persian was circling him with a predatory strance. Sandshrew's only movement was him turning to face the large cat pokemon so he could not ambush him. The Persian charged at Sandshrew and right before he could be mauled, Sandshrew flipped around and slammed the underside of Persian with his glowing claw from the move slash. The Persian flew straight up about 15 feet with a cry of pain and Sandshrew jumped up after him beginning to glow brightly.

His body grew to about twice his former size, the claws on his hands lengthened and got sharper and a large amount of spikes shot out of his back. The glowing ceased as he reached Persian and in Sandshrew's place was a large Sandslash that looked slightly different from the usual Sandslash. It looked mostly the same except for the fact that it was larger than the average Sandslash and its claws were longer than average. Also, all of the quills on his back became a dark purple about halfway up the quill to the sharp point.

Sandslash grabbed the Persian viciously and spun in the air and threw him straight into the ground with a Seismic Toss. When the dust settled, it showed the Persian on the ground pitifully whining, clearly not in any condition to battle. Sandslash ran over to Ash and smiled happily. Ash smiled back and turned back to Bulbasaur to see if he needed help and began to sprint at the sight he saw.

Bulbasaur struggling to keep his footing and was slowly being dragged towards the edge of the cliff. She was too heavy for him to be able to pull up himself. Right as he was about to fall off the edge, he felt a pair of arms wrap around him, lift him up and begin to pull. Bulbasaur looked up and saw Ash holding him pulling with obvious effort so nobody fell off the cliff. Bulbasaur gained a new amount of energy and began to reel his vines in to help the process. They both finally stopped after they got Melanie onto the cliff and Ash grabbed her and pulled her to safety. Both Ash and Bulbasaur were panting from the effort of dragging Melanie onto the cliff.

Bulbasaur looked Ash in the eye and smiled happily thanking him without a word being said between the two. Bulbasaur turned his head to the right and his face became panicked. Ash looked where Bulbasaur was and saw the Persian barely standing with its gem glowing brightly. It then roared and sent a power gem directly at Ash and then collapsed in exhaustion. Ash's eyes widened and he was suddenly pushed out of the way of the attack. He landed and turned to see Bulbasaur be hit with the rock type move and be launched off the side of the cliff.

Ash quickly threw the upper part of his body off the cliff in an attempt to catch Bulbasaur but he was too far for him to reach. As Bulbasaur fell, he managed to lock eyes with Ash and nodded in thanks before closing his eyes, seemingly accepting his fate. Although Bulbasaur accepted his fate, Ash did not. He reached his hand out and felt for the familiar energy he was growing accustomed to. He reached for more than he ever had before and his eyes and entire arm glowed with an icy fire that surrounded Bulbasaur and stopped his fall.

Bulbasaur opened his eyes in shock that he was no longer falling and even more when he saw Ash glowing. Ash began to pull Bulbsaur to him and when he was close enough, he grabbed him and put him on the ground right by him. Bulbasaur looked up to thank Ash and was immediately alarmed when he saw Ash with a bloody nose.

Ash saw the alarmed look and brought a hand to his face and pulled it away to see blood. "Huh? That's never happened before…" Ash then collapsed immediately and passed out.

-Time Skip- 3 Hours Later

Ash awoke about three hours after he passed out and was surprised to see he was inside a shed. He was confused for a second before he remembered all of the events that had occurred earlier that day.

He walked outside and was almost immediately tackled by a green blur that he immediately recognized. "Hello Bulbasaur, how are you feeling?" Ash asked. Bulbasaur nodded happily and Ash saw Melanie approaching.

"Thank you for all your help Ash and thanks for saving mine and Bulbasaur's life. I have one favor to ask you though." Melanie greeted happily.

"What can I do for you?" Ash asked politely.
"Please take Bulbasaur with you on your journey. He is strong, loyal and he cannot reach his full potential staying here protecting these pokemon. I think he would be able to reach his full potential traveling with you."

"Does he even want to come with me? I don't want to force him to come with me." Ash asked to make sure.

"Oh yes, we talked about it….He likes you, trusts you, and wants to get stronger. I feel it would be best if he went with you. You do have to battle him first."
"Alright, come out Sandslash!"

It was a tough battle but Sandslash pulled through with a Magnitude that measured at a 9. Ash pulled out an Ultra-ball right after and threw it at the barely conscious Bulbasaur. There was a small struggle but the ball successfully captured Bulbasaur.

He let out Bulbasaur, healed him with a super potion, and scanned him with his pokedex.

Bulbasaur- The Seed Pokemon

Bulbasaur can be seen napping in bright sunlight. There is a seed on its back. By soaking up the sun's rays, the seed grows progressively larger.

Sex: Male

Type: Grass/Poison

Known Moves: Tackle, growl, Leech Seed, Vine Whip, Posion Powder, Sleep Powder, Take Down, Mega Drain, Giga Drain (Not Unlocked), Grassy Terrain, Ingrain, Leaf Storm (Not Unlocked), Magical Leaf (Not Unlocked), Nature Power (Not Unlocked), Power Whip (Not Unlocked), Sludge, Grass Whistle.

Note: This Bulbasaur has an unusually large amount of egg moves. This is likely due to a specialty breeding program to breed these moves. It also seems to have an extra pair of vines in its bulb that it has not accessed yet bringing the total number of vines in this specimen to four instead of the usual two. Its skin is also denser and tougher than the norm of the species. Will likely become tougher as it grows and evolves.

"Wow Bulbasaur, you're really strong. You are going to make a great addition to the team." Bulbasaur smiled happily at that and Ash continued. "I can only imagine how powerful you will be when you evolve." Ash said smiling before he saw the grimace on Bulbasaur's face. "You don't want to evolve? Do you?" Bulbasaur hesitated for a second before slowly shaking his head in a negative then looking down to avoid Ash's gaze. "Hey, hey, hey don't worry. I won't force you into evolving if you don't want to. But if you ever do decide to evolve, I'll support your decision and help you along the way." Bulbasaur beamed with happiness and tackled Ash with a hug.

After this, Bulbasaur turned to give Melanie a heartfelt goodbye which left both him and Melanie crying. Wiping a tear out of his eye, he bid farewell to Melanie. Ash and Bulbasaur then left the village and began the trek to the main path to Vermillion City with high hopes for the journey ahead.

Hey Guys, here is the first chapter of the infamous trio that Ash is going to catch. Don't worry. I really hope you like what I did with Bulbasaur and how it all went down. I also hope you like what I did with Sandslash's evolution and the unique aspects about him.

Sorry for the delay on this chapter. I've been busy with my hectic work schedule, not to mention that College has officially started and I've been busy with homework and such. I will get the next chapter out as soon as I can. See you next chapter and I hope you stick with the story. Tell your friends.