Some serious best friend therapy was in order.

Joel had been my best friend for as long as I could remember, even when he and his family moved across the region to the deeply religious Lavender Town. If there was anywhere in Kanto I would never want to live, it was there. Joel wasn't religious, and it seemed like he never would be - he was an only child, and was the black sheep and the sore thumb of his nauseatingly boring, beige family. It would have been funny if I didn't feel sorry for him.

Joel and I were friends because we had both been outcasts in primary school. Nobody had spoken to me, and nobody had spoken to him - only to tease, taunt, and bully him, because he spoke with a different accent and couldn't pronounce certain words. Nowadays, at seventeen, he still had the accent and spoke with pride. Back then, life was different and when he was six, he'd been pushed to the ground and scraped his knee pretty badly. I had helped him up and taken him to the school nurse, telling him it was okay and that I wouldn't let them do it to him again. He was younger than my by a few months but looked out for me like a big brother would; like I always did for Eddie, and now I would have to do for Flame and Ace.

I almost fell asleep on the bus, the journey from Pallet Town to Lavender Town far too long for my liking - but the screeching guitars from Death rang my ears enough to keep myself and everyone else awake. My mind tried not to focus on how much my life had suddenly swerved towards a completely different path, all because of my Pokémon. I wanted to focus on how I used to feel, how the music made me feel better and how I could sit and think up little fantasies and stories to every song, like trailers for movies only I would ever get to see.

Lavender Town was bathed in sun but no matter how much the sun blessed the place, it just didn't look any better. It still felt cold and gloomy even though I was roasting to death in a leather jacket. I always thought it was a depressing place. Oh well. Almost everything else in my life had changed over the course of a day, but the sixty-billion-year-old fact that Lavender Town sucked…hadn't.

Way to be fair.

"So you got a Pokémon at long last, huh?"

"Yup. And now I have no clue what to do."

Joel had decided that a shopping spree in Celadon City was the best way to cheer me up. Such a fucking girly thing to do but I went with it anyway. A pineapple-and-raspberry smoothie was the best thing about the enormous Mart in the city and we sat on the top floor together, talking about my little situation. He had been stirring his strawberry smoothie, with his straw, for about ten minutes and it was beginning to really piss me off.

"Are you even gonna drink that?"

"You have no clue how many times I have bought one of these to find they barely blended the strawberry. Therefore I am mixing it and making it smooth. Why it is called a smoothie."

I rolled my eyes and looked back to my own purple concoction, taking another gulp. "Fuck. This is really good."

"I know."

"I might need to buy, like, a hundred of these."

Joel shrugged, but with a cheeky smile on his face, hand still stirring away. "Do it! Unless you plan on buying stuff for your Pokémon. A couple of trainers passed through Lavender yesterday and their bags were twice the size of me. They looked ready to die, but me being lovely, I laughed at them."

"Silly people."

"I know! And Rock Tunnel is nearby, so they'd obviously went through it with ton weights on their back. That is not a smart thing to do, especially when Rock Tunnel is, like, fuckin' gigantic. If I were you, I wouldn't even bother risking it, or even taking a bag with me. Take a goddamn bus."

"It kinds of defeats the point," I laughed. Joel never, ever failed to cheer me up and it was one of the ten billion reasons we were best friends. "A Pokémon journey, not a Pokémon bus ride."

"That's why I'd never go on one. I'd just get pissed and ask my mum for a lift to the next town. Fight a Gym Leader, beat their ass, revel in the glory, and then call Mother Dearest."

"Pissed as in drunk, or pissed as in off? I can see those both happening."

We slapped each other high fives and he finally began to drink his damn smoothie - with a lining of pink above his top lip, he pouted: he looked ridiculous and I was almost on the floor. I felt the tears of laughter spurt down my cheeks as he cracked a couple of jokes, talking in a silly voice and imitating the trainers he had seen the day before.

"In all due seriousness, my Darrell!" he exclaimed, wiping the smoothie away from his lips and preventing further humour. "You should do it because you want to. Do it to kill the time, even. It's not like you're at school or anything. And if you actually won those badge things it'd be pretty excellent. If you managed to beat the Elite Four, you might even get an award!"

"I might get two broken legs."

"How so?"

"Vigorous attempts to kill myself. I saw Agatha on the TV once. Scariest woman alive."

Joel, like the Professor, was firm in the belief I should leave home and travel Kanto because I wanted to. I had to admit, I did want to travel; I wanted away from opportunity-less Pallet Town. The situations came to my mind, just like they had when music provoked them to - scaling through caves and tunnels, exploring cities I hadn't been to before, partaking in the Safari Zone, battling, catching Pokémon for my team…it felt right in some kind of strange way, like I was supposed to do it. The earlier, the better. My heart pounded when I thought about feeling so free - walking around at 4AM because I had no family to pull me back inside and force me to sleep. Hell yeah. I was definitely going to leave as soon as possible.

"First, mi amigo," Joel clearly read my mind because of my long silence. "We better gear you up."

The Trainer's Market was one of the floors of the Celadon Mart, and without a doubt the most popular: it was constantly inhabited by trainers young and old. We raced down there after our drinks and Joel thrust things into my hands as we scaled the aisles frantically, not even looking at what we were about to buy.

"…and this, and this…oh, that looks good, let's get that…"

"Joel, darling, whatever happened to taking only the bare necessities?"

I expected the Disney song to be stuck in my head forever thanks to Joel's singing but no such luck. He didn't even get the reference. Instead, he turned to me, and began laughing. I must have looked ridiculous with so much rubbish in my hands. He dragged me to an empty aisle and we sat together on the floor, spreading the contents out and organising everything. Two seventeen-year-old metal heads sitting on the floor, in a store dedicated to Pokémon wasn't weird at all.

"Let's think. Right, you'll definitely need a bag, so we'll keep that…and we can put the medical stuff back, I just remembered you can buy first-aid boxes and stuff for cheap…"

It took a lot to stop me from punching him. But me being kind, sweet, lovely Darrell, didn't.

"…okay, let's divide this up…this thing has a few pockets."

"How about we actually just buy things first, and then divide them up later? Jesus, Joel, you're supposed to be smart."

Reason ten-billion-and-one why he was my best friend.

"…and done! Man, I'm actually fuckin' envious."

We had bought a fair-sized, black bag that was droopy and hung about my hips. Joel was good at organising things - which was why he and my mum got on so well, regrettably - and he helped me divide everything up into the pockets. The smallest pocket held Poké Balls and there was still room for quite an amount - we figured I wasn't going to be catching many more Pokémon so the ones I owned went in there. The second-largest was dedicated to medicine, the second-smallest for battle items, and the largest went for everything else.

"I bet you are," I grinned, and hit him another high-five in appreciation. "Thanks, man."

"Your mum would be proud of my superior organisation skills. But I can't believe my best ever friend, who didn't care about Pokémon, is now leaving to go travel around the entire region. You better come and visit me, okay? And for fuck's sake, don't go through Rock Tunnel when your bag weighs a ton weight!"

I promised him I would visit him as often as possible.

A voice in my mind was telling me I wouldn't even get that far.