I waded through more grass, but found no sign of any life and therefore gave up, deciding to cut my losses and move on to Accumula Town with the unfairly achieved Purrloin still in my party. As I drew nearer to Accumula Town, I saw a lone figure standing at the edge of the establishment. It had a calm and collected pose; balanced on one leg with a hand in its pocket. I assumed it was Cheren.

I drew closer still to find that my assumption was correct. Cheren stood, waiting for Bianca and I to arrive. It was him. He's a pretty cold person most of the time, but even I'll admit he has his moments. This was definitely one of them.

I strode up and stood alongside him. We sat in silence for a second before I brought the Pokeball holding Purrloin up to chest height. Cheren looked at it, and I gave him a second before flipping my wrist up to toss the red and white sphere towards him. He started as he moved to catch it. I grinned devilishly at his lack of character in trying to catch a Pokeball.

"What's this?" He asked suspiciously while eyeing the sphere I had thrown him.

"Your new partner," I replied coolly, trying to be sly. He took his eyes off of the Pokeball in his hand and turned them towards me. He squinted, probably trying to see what I meant by that.

"I told you, I'm not interested in the contest." He was about to toss the Purrloin back, but I held my hands out to stop him.

"It's fair this way; we all have two Pokémon now." It was a lie, I knew, but I hoped he wouldn't see through it. He gave me a look of disbelief.

"Thomas, you only had one Pokeball." He gestured at me with the ball in his hand. "How could you have two Pokémon if you gave me this one?" He had a point, and I had no counter. Yes, I had an empty Pokeball on me, but it held no Pokémon. Regardless, I tried to use it to bluff my way out.

I held out Oshawatt's old Pokeball and Cheren looked at it, then at the ball in his own hand. Finally he reluctantly put the ball in his pocket. As he did so, Bianca came up from behind us, bouncing like her usual self.

"It took a while, but I finally gave up," she panted. "Those Pokémon sure are fast! I couldn't catch up with any of them." She turned back to us. "So how many did you catch?"

Cheren held up the Pokeball I gave him and I showed my empty Pokeball. I saw Oshawatt frown and shake his head in disapproval, but the others didn't seem to notice.

"We've all got two!" She exclaimed excitedly. "How about we have another battle…you know, to show off our new Pokémon."

Cheren pushed his glasses up on his nose and said, "That sounds okay to me." I shook my head and took a step towards Accumula Town.

"Nah, I'm gonna go to the PokeCenter. I'll meet you guys there." I took another step, and even though I heard Bianca's verbal objection, I met no resistance.

"Alright, see you there," I heard Cheren say. A couple seconds, and steps, later, I heard the sound of a Pokémon leaving its red and white capsule and heard, "Wait a minute….Beryl?!" I didn't turn around, but I heard the sound of running footsteps on grass behind me.

Cheren passed me, turned around, and put his hands on my shoulders. His face was a mixture of anger and confusion. "Thomas, how did you get this Pokeball?"

I had no reason to keep it a secret any longer. I shrugged as I explained "A little girl dropped it. I beat her and she said something about her career as a Pokémon trainer being over."

The anger flushed away from Cheren's face and was replaced by sadness. "This was my sister's Pokémon," he muttered after a second of silence. "I gave it to her before I left."

I shrugged. "Look man, I'm sorry. I tried to give it back to her, but she wouldn't stop running. It's better with you anyway." I took his hands off of my shoulders and sidestepped around him. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to continue on my way to the PokeCenter." I saw Cheren nod out of the corner of my eye, and I resumed entering the small town that lay before me.

The PokeCenter was the second building on the right. It had a vague similarity to the chapels in ancient Europe, but only half the size. The glass that covered the building glinted in the light. I walked through the front doors, also glass of course, and approached the young woman behind the desk.

"Hello and welcome to the Pokémon Center." She said with a smile. "We can rest your Pokémon here in our state-of-the-art facility. Do you wish to rest your Pokémon now?"

I nodded, then picked Oshawatt up from under his front legs, and held him out to the girl, his body dangling underneath him. She squinted at him in confusion, blinked twice to make sure the image in front of her was real, and turned her gaze to me.

"Um, sir…does your Oshawatt have a Pokeball?" She sounded a little flustered, almost as if she didn't know what to do with a Pokémon without a Pokeball. I myself didn't know what to do in this situation. I moved Oshawatt between my hand and my chest, freeing one hand, and took out the "extra" Pokeball that used to be Oshawatt's.

"Well, there's this one….but it's not, erm, coded to him anymore." I fumbled my words and blushed a little, not knowing what to do or say in this situation. I wasn't trained in how Pokeballs worked at all; all I knew was that it was able to hold one Pokémon, no matter how large or powerful.

"What do you mean, 'coded?'" She looked and sounded as confused as I felt.

"Uh, yeah, I don't know either…um, let me try something." I set Oshawatt on the counter and said, "Oshawatt, Return!"

The red light snaked out from the ball and enveloped my Pokémon, surprising me. I gathered myself enough to put the Pokeball on the counter and the nurse picked it up and put it on a machine in the back.

Cheren had said that I would be able to catch another Pokémon with that Pokeball…did he lie? I decided to confront him later. As I made this decision, the nurse held Oshawatt's Pokeball out to me. I took it, saying "thank you," and turned to see a shop near the entrance that I had missed.

I approached the counter and saw Pokeballs behind the cashier. He looked up at me and smiled.

"Hello sir, is there anything I can help you with?" The cashier asked as I came to a stop just in front of the counter.

"I'd like 5 Pokeballs please," I ordered. I was holding up five fingers, which I would guess was just me trying to enforce the number on the guy behind the counter.

"Certainly, that'll be 1000 Pokedollars." I pulled out my wallet, grabbed one of the four one thousand PD notes, and exchanged the money for the five red and white spheres. I stuck them in my belt as I turned to walk towards the door.

That was when Cheren and Bianca chose to walk in, Professor Juniper behind them. I was shocked for a few seconds at the appearance of the Professor.

"I forgot that I was going to show you all around the Pokecenter," she explained, probably seeing my confusion. "I see that you've already sort of acquainted yourself with the PokeStore portion. You're able to buy Pokeballs and Medicine there, as well as other items helpful for battles."

She moved on to the counter where I had encountered, and flustered, the young woman earlier. "This is the Nurse's Desk. This young, pretty lady behind the counter here is Nurse Joyce. She'll take your Pokémon for a quick second and will get them all rested and healed." She pointed to a computer next to her. "This is a general use computer. If your Pokedex is having issues or you need to look something up…anything, you are able to use this computer. A word of warning; be sure to log out of any social network sites you log into." She gave a wry smile as she added that last note.

She walked towards the door, then stopped and turned around because of an afterthought. "I know it's a little late, but I forgot to give these to you." She approached Bianca, giving her 10 Pokeballs. She moved on to me, and finally Cheren, giving us all the same amount. After she was done, she walked towards the door, turned back towards us and yelled "Good luck on your adventure!"

If we weren't the only ones in the building, I'd probably be embarrassed, but I just waved instead. Bianca turned to me once the Professor exited through the doors.

"So what other Pokémon did you get, Thomas? Cheren got a Purrloin, and I got the Lillipup Professor Juniper gave me. Did you get one of those, or did you get another Pokémon?"

I grimaced. I didn't have any other Pokémon, and I had lied to Cheren in order to get him to take the Purrloin. I finally just held Oshawatt's Pokeball in my upward palm in front of me. "This is all I've got," I reluctantly forced out. "I didn't catch any other Pokémon out there."

Both Cheren and Bianca looked at me with shocked expressions. "You mean you didn't have another Pokémon?" Cheren finally asked, breaking the silence. I just shook my head in response. Cheren looked away from me and muttered something that I thought sounded like "liar." I would have felt fine if he hadn't have said that, but instead I also looked to the side, feeling disgusted with myself. I heard a sniff come from Bianca and I looked to see tears streaming down her face.

"H-hey, come on now, it was just a harmless fib. Kind of like Cheren's…you know, about being able to catch new Pokémon with our starter Pokémon's Pokeballs." I glared at Cheren and saw him look up at me in alarm.

"That wasn't a lie. You should have been able to catch other Pokémon." He said defensively.

"Then how come Oshawatt entered the ball easily when I recalled him to his ball?" I retorted. Cheren just gave me an icy stare.

"Thomas," he shook his head. "That didn't mean it was impossible to catch other Pokémon with it, it was still linked with Oshawatt as its first choice. I'm guessing it didn't blink when you recalled him?" I nodded. "If you had truly tried to catch another Pokémon, as you lied about doing, it would have caught the other Pokémon like a normal Pokeball. It's just that since it was still linked to its original Pokémon, it was still able to contain it like normal."

With that, Cheren pushed his glasses up on his nose to signify that he was done. I felt kind of stupid since his explanation seemed sound. I hung my head a little. "Sorry about that then," I mumbled.

"So are we just going to stand around here, or are we going to be moving on?" Bianca was at the door, halfway across the building from us. I smiled, remembering that we were supposed to be on a journey and nodded.

"Yeah, alright; we'll be right there." I called, then looked at Cheren. "You ready?"

He tilted his head. "As much as you are," he replied. I thought I heard a little challenge in his voice.

"Then let's do this." And with that, I headed towards the door.


AN – Wow, 2000 words. I know, this chapter is kind of anime-ish, but I need to have some kind of character development. Anyway, if you enjoyed it, review. If you didn't enjoy it, review and tell me why. Next chapter should introduce N, who I think will be fun to write for…once I get his personality down.

Speaking of, if you think a character is OOC, go ahead and let me know. This story is only slightly a parody; it's mainly just how I think Pokémon would be like in a realistic setting (like being able to Fly ANYWHERE).

Also, in case you missed it, the main character was renamed from Tohya to Thomas to fit in with the full English setting.