For Red, the first time he knew, he was 8 years old.
He remembered he was playing in the woods outside Pallet Town with the neighbor boys. It was summer, and it was boiling hot out, even among the shady redwoods. But that's just Pallet - they didn't know any better.
It was a favorite game among the boys to reenact the week's episode of Pokémon Rangers; this week, Green was playing the part of Lord Vileplume, whose poison spores led to the subjugation of the entire planet of Isis.
Green was a problem child, put lightly. He was the same age as Red, and the similarities did not end there. The boys were born on the same day, in the same wing of the same hospital, to two women who lived on the same street. But life was difficult for the children of war; doubly so for young Green, whose mother died in childbirth and whose father never returned from overseas.
When he played the villain in the reenactments, he committed.
Green climbed atop a mossy tree stump and stamped his feet, a gesture half improvised and half in rebellion against shoes a half-size too small. "Now, humans! Breathe deep of my poison, and suffer!"
Green, for whatever reason, did not like Red. He was physically larger than Red, and he used his mass advantage to full effect. He was a bully. He would force-feed his neighbor clumps of dirt and grass to "prove he was a Ground-type." He would strip him of his clothes and smash rocks against his bare skin. Nobody in the group saw this as abnormal; they were all too used to the fucked up Oak kid. Nobody ever said anything, certainly not to any adults, and certainly not to Green.
They say it starts with a look. A glint in the eyes. You see them watching, and their eyes dart quickly away. Were they...staring?
"Hold your breath!" Green laughed, but Red did not hear him. He could not stop looking at those eyes.
They were beady eyes, bulging black spheres sticking out of a bed of soft, yellow fur. It sat alert on a branch across the woods, every hair on its body standing like a twitch fiber. Those soulful eyes sat above puffy, red cheeks.
It's looking at me. Why is it looking at me like that?
Seconds turned to minutes turned to hours, and Red became absolutely lost in those beady, black eyes.
It's like it's looking at my soul.
Red gasped for breath as he suddenly felt Green's full weight bearing down from behind, as the larger boy pinned wee Red to the ground. Red could only note the horrified expressions of his friends as warm liquid sprayed and then pooled on his back as Green cackled.
Walking home wearing fresh, if oversized clothes and carrying his soiled clothes in a plastic shopping bag, Red thought of his father. He wondered if the war was almost over. He wondered when Dad would write.
He wondered what that rodent was thinking. He knew that Pokémon were smarter than they seemed. He knew that they could be as smart as people, maybe even smarter. But he also knew that they were, well, wild. They didn't think the way humans did.
Then...why did it look at him that way? Almost like...
Like I fucked its mother, Red thought to himself. He didn't know what it meant, but they said it on TV once, and the context sounded similar.
It wasn't simply animal instincts.
It felt like a challenge.