A week had passed and I still hated this place.

I was also nowhere near close to finding out where the hell that stupid Poke Ball was. I tried to get more answers out of the bulbasaur and the other starters, but they refused to indulge me in such information.

I hated them.

The professor's granddaughter, the same girl who had caught me passed by on occasion, along with her stupid clefairy and her younger brother. I don't remember what his name was, but I did remember that I hated him too. Just as much as I hated the other three starters. Admittedly, it was also largely because he felt like a typical human to me, but also because I just hated his attitude.

He was annoyingly condescending. And it annoyed me even more that he got along well with the squirtle. They were perfect for each other.

"Heh, you like me little guy, don't you?"

The squirtle flashed the spiky haired boy a grin. "Damn right I do. Bet you like me even more." I groaned.

The boy smirked and looked to his sister. "Hey, Daisy May, do you think Gramps'll let me lay claim to this one before April?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, good luck with that." She looked over the rest of us Starters before her eyes eventually settled on me. "I'm surprised that pikachu hasn't run away yet."

"Yeah, you've said that before," the boy said dryly as he picked up the squirtle and began pampering it. The bulbasaur rolled its eyes as the squirtle stuck his tongue out at the charmander, making the latter tear up. What an asshole. Not that I cared about the charmander, but he seemed to be even more of a jerk than that fearow everyone hated back in the forest.

"Well, I thought it deserved repeating." The girl scoffed before looking down at her device, which was called a phone, according to the bulbasaur. It seemed to be quite the know-it-all and took every chance it got to tell me something I didn't know or was confused about. It was annoying. "Anyway, are you ready to go yet? We need to be at Mrs. Nathan's by noon."

"Yeah, yeah," the boy waved her off in annoyance. He set the squirtle down, much to the water type's disappointment. I was gleeful. The sooner the humans would leave, the happier I would be. "Gramps wanted us to take these li'l guys with us, right?"

Wait, what?

"Yeah. I have their Poke Balls with me." The girl replied and my head snapped towards her. I could practically feel the bulbasaur tensing beside me. It was getting ready to grab me with its vines if I stepped out of line. I didn't care. If that girl had that Poke Ball that caught me...

The boy waved a hand. "We don't need to do that." He reached down to pick up the squirtle again. Oh, for the love of Mew, they were growing attached to each other. As if an even more annoying duo could ever be formed. "I want Ashy-boy to know who's gettin' this one here. Squirtle's been claimed, right little guy?"

The squirtle grinned and I tuned out his response. Instant best friends. If there was anything I hated more than Poke Balls, it was the type of pokemon who clicked with others instantly. No effort whatsoever and others instantly love them.

I scowled as the girl shrugged her shoulders. "Suit yourself. It's not like Gramps said they had to be in their Poke Balls, anyway." I cursed the boy for making me lose my chance to find out where that Poke Ball was. Still, I kept my eyes on the girl as we walked outside the lab to the streets, where something called a car was waiting for us. Outside the lab, and I was still trapped. The only thing preventing me from escaping was that girl...

I gritted my teeth and tried to calm my growing frustration. My cheeks began to spark, but I couldn't help it. I've been on edge all week and spending the nights letting out my anger on the trees and terrorizing the forest pokemon. Those nights simply weren't enough, especially since I had to sneak around that stupid clefairy to do it. I couldn't even attack any pokemon for real, since I had no clue what would happen if I disturbed the irritatingly omniscient peace of this place.

We all clamored into the car. The bulbasaur, charmander, and I sat in the backseat while the boy and his new pet squirtle sat in the front. The girl called out her clefairy from a Poke Ball-of course, and instructed it to sit with us. Why? Didn't know, didn't care. What I did care about, however, was the girl reached over and strapping something over me. She strapped that same thing over the other pokemon in the back, but why did she have to do the same for me?

"Oh, hold still," the girl grunted as she struggled to put the object over me. I didn't listen and continued to raise hell, letting loose a Thundershock. She screamed and the clefairy stepped in, using Psychic to hold me in place while she quickly strapped me in the seat. I felt the material dig into my skin and let out a whine. The girl stepped back angrily as the clefairy released his power. "Stupid rodent," she scowled. "Should've put you in your Poke Ball..."

"PiKA!"

She slammed the door in response and stomped to the front seat next to the boy, where a wheel was installed in front of her. I glared holes into the back of her head and tried to pull the strange strap off of me. It was so tight...

"Can't handle one single pikachu?" The boy snickered.

"Shut up, Gary."

The bulbasaur made sure to check on me with its annoying presence again. It explained how a car worked and what the hell was on me, but I tried really hard to pretend I wasn't listening, so it stopped after we had started driving for a while. Apparently, the thing that was suffocating me right now was something called a "seat-belt" and was supposed to keep me "safe". I thought that was ridiculous. Nothing that requires suffocation should have the authority to keep you safe.

I trailed off from my thoughts on the car and the ridiculous nature surrounding human inventions to focus on my previous activity: glaring as many holes into the back of that girl's head as possible. I guess I wasn't too subtle about it, because the girl twitched very five seconds or so. I eventually got the clefairy to send me a reprimanding glare to stop, but didn't care to listen. What was he going to do about it? Use Psychic to turn my head down at the floor?

I shouldn't have thought that because the second I did, he went and did exactly that. I felt humiliated as I couldn't move my head from that one position, looking like a sad pokemon begging for forgiveness to those they wronged...

My cheeks burned and sparked with anger. I glared holes at the car seat instead, to distract myself from the way my neck strained in that one position. It began hurting after a while and I let out a whine. The stupid clefairy must've taken pity on me, because it let go of its hold on me. I immediately turned my head to glare at it but instantly regretted that as I felt my bones snap.

As I nursed my wounded neck, the squirtle began commentating. "You know what that's called? It's called karma. You know what that is, right?" It paused. "Stupid question. Someone like you wouldn't have the slightest clue."

"Oh, shut up, Squirtle." The bulbasaur rolled its eyes and used one of its vines to unbuckle the seat-belt by pressing on a red button on it. It was then that I realized everyone was getting out of the car. "Just try and behave at the party, okay?"

"Yeah, whatever."

I frowned at that. Party?

The girl grumbled as she made her way towards me and unbuckled my seat-belt without my notice. I was startled when she opened the door and motioned me to get out. "Come on now. All of you stick together, okay?"

"Okay," the other Starters intoned. I simply glowered.

The car had stopped in front of this modest looking building with a sign in front of it. The sign had strange looking words on it that looked eerily similar to Syllabus, but I couldn't make heads or tails out of it. I stared hard at the sign, trying to unlock its secrets.

"Mrs. Nathan's Bakery." The bulbasaur's annoying voice made my ears twitch. I glared at it as it approached. "The whole town is here."

I raised an eyebrow. "The entire town?"

"Yeah," it replied. "Professor Oak talked about it yesterday during lunch. Mrs. Ketchum, some human woman the professor knew, and Mrs. Nathan, the owner of this bakery, have been planning this potluck for weeks. It's to celebrate the four trainers setting off on their journeys on the first of April in about a week from now."

My ears twitched. The first of April? Wasn't that the day when the professor was going to hand me and the other Starters off to some random kids? I glowered. That was a week from now. I needed to get that Poke Ball from that girl as fast as I could, or else I would end up stuck with some dumb brat. And that sure as hell was the last thing I wanted.

It got quiet for a moment before sighing and walking away. It seemed that the bulbasaur had given up on me. Good riddance, since I already decided I was sick of it the second we had met.

I looked around to see the girl and the boy-still holding the squirtle, for the love of-walking around the side of the bakery to the back. My ears twitched as I realized there was a loud buzz of celebration coming from the bakery. I hesitated before following them, keeping close as we approached the crowd of humans.

I felt uncomfortable as I noticed a bunch of humans stopping to look at me and whisper. I sneered at them and they looked away. The fact that I was threatening to shock them if they came any closer was probably the other deciding factor that led to them steering clear of me.

The squirtle looked down at me from the boy's arms. "Man, I am not going to miss you when I set off on my journey with this guy."

I stuck my tongue out at him and told him to shut up before following the girl. She had separated from the boy to go talk to someone, who was another girl. That girl's name was Alex, from what I could gather, but I didn't really care for names. She had blue hair and a funny looking haircut with funny looking bangs. It was a far easier way to remember her than "Alex".

I sat quietly and watched over the crowd of humans gloomily. The girl and her funny looking friend continued chatting and nothing they said interested me. Not that I was listening in the first place, but I couldn't help but overhear some things.

"...Jayden told me that her father wouldn't let her set off on the journey, which was why she couldn't fill out the application...oh, so Professor Oak signed it for Gary?"

"...I heard Ash almost forged his mother's signature on those papers...yeah, but she's not as strict as everyone expects her to be."

"My mom, on the other hand...our parents are still overseas...Starters were given two weeks ago then the applications came in..."

My ears perked at the word "Starter" and I suddenly became interested in their conversation. I ignored the girl's clefairy's odd looks, since it was sending me those since the beginning of the conversation and there wasn't anything different now.

"Yeah, so Gramps had to find another Starter pokemon at the last minute since the league messed up. They were supposed to accept only three trainers, but they admitted four instead."

"One's Gary, the other's Ash, then Leaf, then..."

"Ritchie, Mrs. Nathan's daughter? She's the fourth trainer. She was originally going to be put on the wait list, but I guess something happened in the system that set their records back. So her trainers license was made for this year instead of next year."

"Oof. So, one of the four is going to get a last resort, huh?"

"Basically, yeah."

I didn't like being referred to a last resort. They didn't mention me by name, but I knew they were talking about me. I scowled at them until the girl noticed me. A frown graced her features.

She gestured to me and continued speaking to the funny looking girl. "Yeah, this one here is actually the fourth starter I mentioned. The only one that knows about this guy is Gary, so Gramps is trying to find a way to tell the other trainers without sending them into an outcry."

"And they'd be upset, why?" The funny looking girl bent down to scoop me up in her arms and I instantly began squirming. The girl and her clefairy's eyes both widened as the clefairy used Psychic to rescue me out of the funny looking girl's arms before I shocked her. My Thundershock sailed harmlessly in the air, but caused a few people around us to scream.

The clefairy set me down with a stern look and I stuck my tongue out at him. Jerk.

The funny looking girl laughed nervously. "Never mind."

The girl rolled her eyes at me. "Well, aside from this one's attitude, excluding Gary, the other three kids are expecting there to be exactly three starters. Each of them have to choose between a squirtle, bulbasaur, or a charmander-and they might not get the one they want if someone else in the group got it first. Now that we have a pikachu..."

The funny looking girl winced. "Ouch. There's a definite chance of someone not getting which one they wanted. Unless they were all aiming for the same one..."

"That's the thing," the girl sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Leaf's already hinted at how she wanted Bulbasaur and Ritchie has always gushed about the charmander. Gary's laid claim to the squirtle, but Ash has always fought with Gary over it..."

"Yeah, I can see where this is going. Poor kid's going to be stuck with the last resort, huh?"

"Yeah..."

I frowned then turned to the clefairy. "Who's Ash?" I demanded. I wasn't sure why I asked, it was a spur of the moment thing, but after thinking it through, I realized I really did want to meet this kid. If what they were saying was true, then on the chance I didn't find my Poke Ball in time, I wanted to meet this "Ash" kid. After all, I might be able to get the Poke Ball from this kid instead of the girl after we set out from the lab.

The clefairy eyed me with suspicion. Rightfully so, I suppose, considering I was planning on using the kid for my escape. "He's the son of Mrs. Ketchum. He's over there if you want to see him."

I looked over to where the clefairy pointed and saw a young boy who looked around the age of the boy at the lab. He was playing with a small rattata along with some other girl, who looked younger than he did, under a big tree in the shade.

I hesitated before bounding toward him. I took the clefairy not stopping me as a sign that I was free to do whatever I wanted here, as long as I stayed nearby I suppose. I slowed as I approached, noticing the girl and her rattata turning around to leave. The boy slumped in disappointment at something the girl said before waving goodbye.

I stared. He leaned back against the tree and sighed, closing his eyes as he did so. He seemed to be preparing to take a nap.

I carefully crept toward him and sat next to him, staring awkwardly at his sleeping form. Now what? It wasn't like he could understand me and I wasn't really in the mood for miming what I wanted to say.

...what did I want to say?

I debated back and forth in my mind for a while before the boy twitched. I flinched and stepped back. My mind raced before I decided to turn and run. What was I thinking? I needed to stick with that girl as close as possible and find the location of that Poke Ball out of her. Not some random boy.

I felt eyes on my as I sprinted further and further away from the boy, then stopped. I glanced around, my muscles tensing. When I noticed nobody nearby was spying on me I relaxed, only to turn around and see the boy from a distance.

His eyes were open and he was staring right at me. I shivered as our eyes met and looked away. Something about that kid bothered me, but I couldn't exactly figure out what. I felt something strange in my chest when I met his eyes and I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all.

I had spent the rest of the party taking a nap in the shade. The bulbasaur had started to avoid me, thankfully, but the charmander had stopped by a couple times to "check on me" and "see how I was doing".

It took a couple of threats and one actual Thundershock to the chest to get that hing to leave me alone. It cried and complained about me to the bulbasaur, who glared daggers at me from a distance.

Good. I hated them, so they might as well hate me too. Now we didn't have to pretend like we were friends.

When the party was over, we headed back to the laboratory and I stayed as close to the girl as possible. Or at least as close as I could without arousing the clefairy's suspicion. It was almost sundown and everyone was preparing to go to sleep except me. I kept my eyes glued to the girl.

I followed her down into some basement that was lit up with bright lights that blinded me every time I looked at them. She wandered to the center of the room, where a pedestal stood and reached into her back pocket, took out a Poke Ball, and laid it on the pedestal.

I tensed as I realized that this room had shelves of Poke Balls around the room. And right now, she was putting away the Starter's Poke Balls. Including the one that had captured me.

I hid behind some boxes and watched as she finished her task. She let out a loud yawn before turning to the clefairy and telling it to follow her back upstairs to get some shut-eye. The girl and the clefairy walked by me and I had thought I was safe until the clefairy used Psychic. On me. Again.

I bared my teeth at the dry look it sent me. It rolled its eyes and moved me out the room and back up the stairs. "You can let go of me now," I said as we made it back in the room where I slept with the other Starters. "I'm not going to kill you."

The clefairy sighed and set me down on a nearby cushion. It tossed me one last warning look before it followed the girl outside the room and shut the door behind it.

I let out a sigh through my nose and put my head against the cushion. I took notice of the three Starters conversing in the corner of the room, gossiping like the pidgeotto from the forest would whenever someone did something.

It wasn't exactly clear what you had to do to gain the attention of the pidgeotto from the forest, but it wasn't exactly a good thing. The pokemon who did manage to gain that attention ended up with their lives ruined. If you messed up and did something stupid, you'd better hope the pidgeotto didn't find out. If they did, the entire forest would know about your mistake in less than an hour. And that painted a target on your back.

I would know, since I had been one of the lucky pokemon to have been caught by the pidgeotto's radar. It was hell, living in that forest, but I was still luckier than most pokemon who had suffered under the pidgeotto's gossip.

Those pokemon were dead.

My curiosity got the better of me and I strained my ears to listen to what the Starters were saying. It wasn't anything worth listening to, so I tuned them out after a few mere seconds. At least until I heard my name. Then I got interested again.

"...tell him to back off?"

"Just ignore him. That's what I'm doing. I gave up trying to help him out a while ago, especially since he doesn't seem appreciative of me."

"Wow, somebody isn't grateful for your knowledge? You must feel so...insulted."

"Shut up, Squirtle."

"I dunno guys," the charmander spoke this time and I resisted the urge to shock them from where I sat. "Maybe he's just still adjusting?"

"There's adjusting and then there's simply being an asshole. That pikachu is the latter."

"Comes with being a wild pokemon, you know. You saw how that pikachu acted. He was basically savage. The professor probably made the mistake of getting him from the Mountain-side of Viridian Forest. That place is hell, from what I've heard."

I frowned. That was the forest I had came from, true, but how had these morons heard of it?

"Probably got desperate. Or Daisy May was just being herself."

"Bulbasaur, what's so bad about the Mountain-side of Viridian Forest?"

"You haven't heard about it?" The squirtle gaped and my cheeks sparked that time. I shifted my head ever so slightly in the other direction, as not to alert them that I was listening to their every word.

The bulbasaur had ignored the squirtle's rudeness in favor of an explanation. "The Mountain-side of Viridian Forest is populated by incredibly feral pokemon. Feral pokemon are incredibly detached from society, more so than any other wild pokemon. The reason for this is because of this forest's placement..."

"It's near the mountain." The charmander said. "But why's that bad?"

"The bottom of the mountain the be specific. But that mountain is apart of the Mt. Moon range and it has regular rock slides. It's terrain is pretty rough too, so the league closed it off to any trainers. Trainers coming from this area would have to use the only path through Viridian Forest straight to Viridian City. So, the few pokemon that actually lived in the deeper parts of Viridian Forest grew...feral over time. Last I checked, the last time a human went even near Mt. Moon was over fifty years ago."

"You're such a know-it-all," the squirtle scoffed. "So, you think that pikachu might be from that place? Would definitely explain his inability to understand basic stuff like how a door works."

"Wouldn't doubt it. He definitely seems to be feral. It's a term used more nastily than, say, 'wild', which most pokemon don't mind being called. Feral, on the other hand...it's a term held with disdain and is avoided like the plague. Call a pokemon a Feral and you're inviting yourself to a beating."

"That...sounds pretty bad." The charmander's voice was strained. "So...'Feral' is like a bad word to pokemon?"

"Pretty much, yeah." The bulbasaur sighed. "It's pretty nasty. Especially when you consider how some pokemon are treated by humans, and how they used to be treated in old times. That's where the term 'feral' was first coined. When humans used to enslave pokemon in the olden times, pokemon weren't known as pokemon. We were called Feral."

I had never heard the word 'feral' before and felt insulted that they were referring to me as such. My fur bristled and my cheeks sparked one last time. I was done listening to their smack-talk. If they wanted a fight, they're getting one.

I stood up to my feet and growled, turning my glare onto them. The three Starters jumped and backed away from me warily. They exchanged fearful glances between each other. Good. They were scared. They were supposed to be, given what I was about to do to them.

"Pi-KA-CHUUU!" I let out a Thunder that engulfed the room in a bright light. The other three Starters let out screams as my electricity danced around the room and bounced off of various objects. I heard glass shatter as the window broke, letting my electricity to fry the grass outside.

"Would you cut it out, you psychopath?!" The squirtle screamed as he ducked behind a table. I narrowed my eyes and increased my output, making my range go further towards the outside.

"STOP IT!" The charmander sobbed. I paid no heed and continued increasing my output, further and further until I felt light-headed. The amount of electricity I was throwing around was backfiring on me, but I couldn't stop, even if I tried. And I didn't know why.

So I continued. I ignored the screaming and begging of the other Starters. I blocked out their pleading. I blocked out the slamming on the door from the professor and the girl, demanding the door be opened. I ignored the clefairy's attempt to calm me down. I just continued to let out my anger and frustration until something broke.

My electricity fizzled out. I couldn't see a damn thing, because my vision was blurry. Everything I saw meshed together and the colors were all dulled browns and grays. I heard noise, but didn't understand where they were coming from. Was someone speaking to me?

Then one sound filled my ears, loud and clear. There was no way that whoever else was in the room with me hadn't heard it, that was for sure. It was deafening. It was a thunderclap. That meant one thing.

My hearing came back for one brief second as all the blood rushed to my head and I began tilting.

"-a storm is coming!"

That was the last thing I heard before I hit the ground and blacked out.

I'm going to try and do what I've seen some other creators do and build a "buffer" by writing a lot ahead of time before posting. That way, I can have regular updates every week instead of trying to squeeze quality out in that time frame. As of right now, I haven't built anything yet, but I did start the second chapter. I won't release it until I get around at least five chapters done, however, so it'll be a while before that comes out. This is cross-posted on A03. Updates will be faster on that site, though.

Thank you for reading and please review! I'd love to hear your thoughts! :)