"Do you want to talk about it, Toni?" Roy asked for the third time.

"No," replied Antonia, the same as before. The two of them were scarcely over an hour into their trek through the Viridian Forest and little else had passed between them. There was a well-trodden path through the forest which most travelers to Pewter City took, but Antonia had chosen to take Roy into the wildest part of the woods. She would not say anything about why she had led them there, but Roy figured that there had to be a good reason.

In his plain white t-shirt and jeans, Roy was not particularly uncomfortable. He had spent most of his time in Pallet Town outdoors, and he was happy to enjoy the fresh air and sunlight, even the beating wings and chattering of the pokémon which were all around them. He knew how to avoid the thorns and other hazards of the Viridian Forest from experience which had become instinct, dancing between them without being aware that he was doing it. By contrast, Antonia looked miserable, even more so than she had looked on the road out of Viridian City when Jesse and the other boys in their class had taunted her and Roy. Unlike Roy, Antonia was dressed in a heavy sweatshirt and sweat was rolling down her forehead and stinging her eyes, no matter how frequently Antonia wiped the sleeve of her shirt across her high forehead. Somehow, every piece of stray vegetation ended up in Antonia's brown hair, and with her ducking down to the forest floor every now and then to check under bushes or behind trees she was covered in dirt as well.

Roy watched his companion as she parted the leaves of yet another bush and peered inside before standing back up with the same unreadable expression on her face. The past hour had been enjoyable enough for Roy, but now he was starting to grow restless. "What are we looking for, Toni?"

"A pokémon," she said without looking back at him.

"There's lots of pokémon," Roy pointed out as he followed her to another section of the overgrown forest. "Are you going to catch one?"

"I'm going to try," replied Antonia. "But I want to find the right one."

Roy folded his hands behind his neck and watched her come up empty once again. "If you told me what you're looking for I could help you, Toni."

"Mmhmm," murmured Antonia. She stood up again and scoured their surroundings for a section of the forest that she had not explored yet. He eyes lit upon one, and she set off towards it, carelessly trampling over the forest floor with her heavy hiking boots.

Roy followed Antonia obligingly. "You know, even if you don't want my help," he said, "you could ask your bulbasaur."

That finally made Antonia and she fixed Roy with a curious look. "That's actually not a bad idea, Roy."

"Thank you!"

Antonia reached into the front pocket of her gray sweatshirt and pulled out the small red and white poké ball which contained her bulbasaur. Pressing the button at the center, she released her pokémon in a flash of red light which took the form of a squat toad with a bulb on his back.

"Bulbasaur?" Antonia looked down to meet her pokémon's eyes and said in very deliberate tones, "I am looking for a wild pokémon to catch, Bulbasaur, but not just any pokémon. I'm looking for a weedle."

"A weedle?" interjected Roy. "I thought you were looking for something cool! But a weedle? That's so lame, Toni."

For his outburst, Antonia shot Roy a quick glare before she returned her attention to her bulbasaur. "You know what a weedle looks like, don't you? About this long, with a stinger on top of its head, and a red nose." When her bulbasaur nodded, Antonia said, "Good. Now, if you find one, I want you to try and hold it for me so I can catch it."

Bulbasaur nodded again and then he set off to a different section of the forest from the two young trainers, although still well within their sight. Two dark blue-green vines emerged from under the bulb on his back and Bulbasaur began using them to carefully examine his surroundings, lifting logs and peering into bushes in a conscious mimicry of his trainer.

"Are you sure that you don't want Charmander and I to help?" Roy asked as Antonia crouched down to check a pile of leaves that she had previously overlooked.

"I don't think that's a good idea, Roy," said Antonia without stopping her search. "I'm a pokémon trainer now, and that means that I should have these experiences for myself. Catching one's first pokémon is very important, all of the books say so."

Roy shifted back and forth on his tennis shoes. "Well, all right, Toni, if you say so. I was just worried that you thought I'd have my Charmander burn down the forest or something."

"Well, there's that too."

Antonia's bulbasaur found the pokémon that she had been looking for within ten minutes of being released from his poké ball. There was a rustle by the trunk of a dead tree where Bulbasaur had been looking, a triumphant croak and another high-pitched squeak, and then Bulbasaur came trundling back to Roy and Antonia with his prize wrapped tightly in his coiled vines.

Both trainers examined the shivering little creature that Bulbasaur presented to them. Most of its body was contained by its captor's vines, but its round head was free and looking around frantically with beady black eyes perched over a comically oversized red nose. Its whole body was covered in short hair of a dull yellow color, and on top of its head was a small but sharp horn.

It squeaked continuously, and grew even more frantic as Roy and Antonia hovered over it.

"Well, there's your prize, Toni," said Roy. "What are you waiting for? Put it in a poké ball."

But Antonia continued to study to terrified little pokémon. Finally, she said, "Okay, Bulbasaur, set it down."

"What?"

Bulbasaur looked confused as well, but he obeyed his trainer's command. As soon as his vines started to unravel, the weedle made a break for the nearby underbrush, but its stubby little legs could not carry it to safety before Antonia said, "Bring him back, Bulbasaur." Again, the larger pokémon complied and again the smaller one found itself a prisoner of the constricting vines.

"What's going on, Toni?" Roy asked. "Do you want it or not?"

"I want to catch it," said Antonia, "but I want it to be real, with a battle and everything. That's the way that it's supposed to be done." She loomed over the wilting weedle and told it, "I'm going to have my pokémon let you down again, and this time you're not going to run away. You are going to battle us. I'm going to have my bulbasaur weaken you, and then I'm going to catch you. Do you understand?"

It was hard to judge the weedle's reaction with how much its body was shaking, but Antonia seemed satisfied with what she saw and motioned for Bulbasaur to set the smaller pokémon down again.

Roy watched the exchange uneasily from the sidelines. "Jeez, Toni," he said, "why are you torturing the poor thing? Just stick it in a poké ball already!"

"No, we're going to do this right," the other trainer said curtly. She stepped to one end of the patch of relatively clear ground and had her bulbasaur join her. Across from them, the weedle stood. Its head shot to one side, then to the other, and then back to its tormentors. It seemed frozen by indecision, only to give a little squeal of terror and leap up into the air when Antonia shouted, "Okay, let's battle!"

The weedle took off to its right, but Antonia had already been expecting this and said, "Use your vines, Bulbasaur! Block its escape!"

Sure enough, one of Bulbasaur's vines, never having fully retracted back under his bulb, shot out across the small battlefield directly across the frantic weedle's escape. The small bug pokémon tried to change direction, but the vine looped around behind it and starting roping it in closer and closer to its opponent. As Bulbasaur stepped slowly but purposefully towards it, the weedle turned to face him. But whatever courage the hapless creature had summoned was quickly extinguished and it fell to the ground in a nervous heap of body segments and legs.

"Just catch it already," yelled Roy, "or I'll do it myself!"

Antonia grimaced but produced a poké ball in her hand and with a cry of "Poké ball, go!", she threw it at the prone weedle. But her clumsy overhand throw overshot its target and the ball fell uselessly a few feet beyond the perimeter made by Bulbasaur's vine. Her face red with shame, Antonia jogged over to where the poké ball had landed and then walked up to the two pokémon. Both the trainer and her pokémon looked more embarrassed than triumphant when she tapped the quivering pokémon on the head with the poké ball and the weedle vanished inside of it.

The ball continued to rattle in Antonia's hand for a few seconds, but then it stopped and emitted a soft chime. She looked at the poké ball in her hand and said, "I guess I caught a weedle. I thought I would feel more excited."

As Antonia trailed off, Roy offered, "Do you want me to clap? Would that help?"

"No, thank you, Roy."

"Okay, well, since you got your pokémon now, should we get back to the road?"

"Yes," Antonia replied, "we'll make much more progress that way." With her free hand, she produced Bulbasaur's poké ball and recalled him in another flash of red light. Then, Antonia began fighting her way through the forest back to the way that they had come.

Roy followed her, first only a few steps behind Antonia but eventually overtaking her with the strides of his longer legs. "So, why was it so important that you catch a weedle, Toni?" he asked as he paused to help her climb over an overturned log.

Antonia quickly shook off his hand as soon as she had cleared the obstacle and explained, "Everything I've read said that weedle makes for a good first pokémon for beginning trainers to try and catch, along with pidgey, rattata, and caterpie. Out of those four, I decided that weedle would work best with the pokémon team that I want to put together."

"Wow," said Roy when she had finished, "you've thought about this a lot, huh?"

"Of course, I've wanted to become a pokémon trainer for as long as I can remember." As they navigated around a particularly uneven stretch of the forest, Antonia asked, "What about you, Roy?"

Roy turned to look at Antonia, only to catch his foot on an overgrown root. He caught his balance before he could fall, but he still was catching his breath when he said, "Well, uh, honestly, I was always too busy to care much about pokémon training."

"What? Really? Then, why are you doing this?"

"A whole summer of no parents and I get a free pokémon too?" Roy laughed. "Even I'm not dumb enough to turn that down!" He scratched his head and said, "But when I did think about it, well, I thought it would be a lot different from this."

"Oh," said Antonia. The two of them walked on in silence, until they came to the edge of the untamed forest. Past the last barrier of trees and bushes was the simply dirt path that had been carved through the Viridian Forest.

Roy pushed through the vegetation and then held open a path for Antonia to follow after him. "Looks like we found it! Pewter City here we come!" Antonia smiled at him, but did not say anything.

They walked for nearly half-an-hour on the path before Roy couldn't hold his tongue any longer. "Why are you dressed like that?" he asked.

"Dressed like what?"

"I mean, the sweatshirt, the boots, all of that," explained Roy with an impatient wave of his hand. "It's the middle of June and you're dressed up like it should be snowing right now!"

Antonia awkwardly tugged at her gray sweatshirt. "I wanted to be prepared, so I packed clothes for every kind of weather."

"But you don't need to be wearing them right now, do you?"

"Well, I don't have anywhere else to keep them," said Antonia haltingly. "My bag is full of everything else I needed to bring, so I have to wear them." When she looked back up from her feet, she saw that Roy was shaking his head. "What?"

"You're really something else, Toni," he said with a smile. "You look like you're going to be roasted alive in that thing. If you really don't have any room for it, then I'll carry it for you."

The two trainers continued walking while Antonia weighed his offer, but soon enough she had stopped and, after setting down her backpack on the road, was pulling her sweatshirt over her head. Beneath the heavy gray material, Antonia was wearing a lighter sweatshirt with a soft pink color, which earned her a heavy sigh from Roy.

"I'll take that too. You must have been roasting in all that stuff, Toni."

Finally, Antonia was dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans which could have been twins to Roy's outfit, while his arms were loaded with her bulky overclothes. "There, doesn't that feel better?" he asked.

"Yes, thank you, Roy," Antonia said. Her face was becoming less flushed and there was a new spring in her step as she walked alongside Roy down the path. "Should we let our pokémon out?" she asked him. "I'm sure that they would like the fresh air, and I'm supposed to introduce myself to my weedle as soon as possible after capturing it."

"Sure," Roy said with a grin and he shifted Antonia's clothes to one arm to free up a hand to fish out Charmander's poké ball from his pocket. By the time that his pokémon had been released, Antonia had already let out her bulbasaur and weedle. The former was low on the ground, just breathing in the air of the forest around them, while Antonia was holding her newest pokémon in her hands a fair distance away from herself.

"Hello," she said stiffly. "My name is Antonia and I'm your trainer now." As the pokémon squirmed in her arms she said, a little more pleadingly, "Please don't be afraid." But the weedle's wriggling only intensified until it had loosened Antonia's fingers enough to crawl out of her hands. With its round head bobbing, the weedle climbed onto the back of one of its trainer's hands and started crawling up her bare arm. To her credit, Antonia did not make any noise, but her discomfort was clear from how her body had locked up and the tinge of nausea which had driven the last of the pink from her face.

"Are you okay, Toni?" asked Roy with more amusement than concern.

Antonia swallowed as her new pokémon reached her elbow and said through pursed lips, "I'm fine. It just feels strange is all."

Powered by its sticky feet, the weedle made rapid progress until it was perched on Antonia's shoulder. She turned her head to the side to peer into the small black eyes of her pokémon which was now more curious than frightened of her. Recognizing that small victory, Antonia let her body relax somewhat and a smile softened her face. "Hello," she said. When her pokémon squeaked at her in a friendly manner, Antonia replied, "It's nice to meet you too. Now, let's introduce you to Bulbasaur."

Roy watched her and her two pokémon with a smile on his face. Initially, Antonia's weedle was afraid of her bulbasaur, especially when the larger pokémon extended one of his vines towards it. But Bulbasaur only used it to gently pat Weedle on the head and the bug pokémon's curiosity overwhelmed its fear once again. The heartwarming scene was only broken when Antonia asked, "Roy, where's your charmander?"

Roy looked dumbly at his fellow pokémon trainer and then turned in a slow circle from where he was standing, but his pokémon was nowhere in sight. "Oh no," he said to himself, and then he shouted, "Charmander! Where are you?" There was no answer for him in the noises of the forest, so Roy tried calling for his pokémon again and again, only stopping when Antonia approached him. Then, he said pleadingly, "He was right there."

"It's okay, we'll find him, Roy." Antonia reached out a hesitant hand, but before she could put it on his arm Roy ignored it and stomped off into the underbrush to the side of the path closest to where he had let Charmander out of his poké ball.

Roy plunged straight into the forest, the expertise that he had demonstrated earlier in the day forgotten. His mind was singularly focused on finding his wayward pokémon, and when he encountered an obstacle his first inclination was to force his way past it. If that was unsuccessful, his second inclination was to lose his temper. Behind him, Antonia kept her distance but she was calling and looking for Charmander all the same. At her feet and on her shoulder, Bulbasaur and Weedle searched as well.

Ultimately, however, they found Charmander less by their persistence than by the lost pokémon's own actions. As the sun was passing behind the tops of the tallest trees in the forest, the air was rent with sounds of snarls and squawks. Not only were the growls familiar to both Roy and Antonia, but a faint burning smell also filed the air. Without exchanging a word, the two pokémon trainers headed towards the source of the commotion.

They emerged into a clearing and found Roy's charmander doggedly scratching off the bark of a tree upon which was perched a pidgeotto and its nest of young pidgey. Charmander was unable to climb up the tree, but he still posed a threat to the family of bird pokémon by attempting to pepper them with small blasts of red-hot embers. The pidgeotto was squawking angrily at the interloper, but was also reluctant to leave its nest and chicks.

Roy rushed to Charmander's side and started to pull him away from the tree while his pokémon growled and snapped his teeth at the birds above. "What's the matter with you?" Roy asked. "Just leave them alone!"

Over the commotion, Roy did not hear the rushing of wings, but Antonia did. Before she could say his name, however, a brown and red streak raced through the air and slammed into Roy's side. Sent sprawling onto the forest floor, Roy lost his grip on his charmander and had to clumsily roll over to catch a glimpse of his attacker. It was another pidgeotto, probably the mate of the one in the tree, and its fierce eyes were now trained on Charmander.

As the flying pokémon circled overhead, Charmander watched it. When the pidgeotto lingered in one place for too long, Charmander would leap at it and slash wildly with his claws the patch of air where his foe had been just moments before. In response, the pidgeotto was able to kick up huge gusts of wind and dirt with powerful beats of its wings that sent the flame tipping the end of Charmander's tail flickering. Then, while Charmander was still regaining his bearings, the pidgeotto swooped down and tackled him to the ground. Each time that this happened, Charmander tried to bite and claw the pidgeotto but was unable to catch it before it was back in the air and out of reach.

Roy watched his pokémon get knocked down and pick himself back up three times before he yelled, "Charmander! Leave it alone and let's just go!" When that didn't earn him any response, he instead said, "Stop running around after him and attack him with your fire instead!"

Charmander glanced back at his trainer and then let out a derisive snort before launching himself wildly at the pidgeotto once again, and, once again, failed.

"You've gotta be kidding me," grumbled Roy, and then his eyes fell upon Antonia. "Hey, Toni, how about a little help here?"

Antonia had been watching the scrape between the two pokémon with wide inquisitive eyes, but at Roy's words she shook herself out of her trance. "Ah, well, it's a pokémon battle, Roy. Bulbasaur and I can help if things get dangerous, but shouldn't you try at least try and battle?"

"Thanks a lot," Roy muttered and then he tried issuing another command to his pokémon. "Charmander! At least wait for it to come to you before attacking!"

Charmander did not look at Roy that time, but he did stop chasing after the pidgeotto and instead stood in one place baring his sharp little fangs and curling his claws in anticipation. The pidgeotto seemed ignorant of this change of tactic, and so it tried diving at Charmander again only to be rewarded with a line of shallow scratches along its stomach. Breaking off the attack, the pidgeotto took off again and perched itself on a tree branch out of Charmander's reach.

"Good work, Roy!" said Antonia.

"Thanks, Toni," Roy said. His charmander was eyeing the pidgeotto warily, but Roy looked at the nest of pidgey and their protective parent. Then, he lifted Charmander's poké ball and recalled the startled pokémon in a flash of red light. The other pokémon and Antonia were all taken aback, but Roy just shook his head at their unasked questions and said, "Come on, Toni, let's go."

She followed after Roy and the two struggled through the forest back to the path. The sun was starting to sink in the sky by the time that they were moving towards Pewter City again. "Do you think we can make it there before it gets dark?" Roy asked.

"I'm not sure," answered Antonia. "We didn't make as good time as I had hoped we would since your Charmander ran off." Her words hung in the air and Antonia awkwardly added, "I suppose that I spent a lot more time looking for a weedle than I should have, too." After that, Antonia worked to quickly change the subject. "If it's all right with you, Roy, I'd rather not be walking around in the dark. Can we please set up camp?"

Roy nodded. "Yeah, that's a good idea." The two trainers were silent while they worked at pulling out sleeping bags from their packs and setting up a small campsite. Bulbasaur helped by gathering firewood and Antonia's new weedle crawled around and watched the proceedings, but Charmander stayed inside of his poké ball. Unfortunately for them, neither Roy nor Antonia had packed much in the way of food, so while the pokémon were able to enjoy a meal of pokémon food, Roy and Antonia had to content themselves with the bag of potato chips from Roy's backpack.

"You know," Antonia remarked as she arranged a tent of sticks in the middle of a makeshift firepit according to the instructions of the thin book she had laid on the ground, "most of that bag of chips was just air, so it took up a lot of unnecessary space in your backpack."

"It's still more food than you brought, isn't it?" he asked and laughed when Antonia frowned at him. "Well, when we get to Pewter City we can grab some more. You should probably see about changing out your sleeping bag too."

Antonia looked up from her work and asked, "What's wrong with my sleeping bag?"

Roy picked at the red material and said, "This is a thermal sleeping bag, good for the mountains or when its cold out, but on a night like tonight you're going to be sweating your socks off!"

"And how do you know so much about sleeping bags, Roy?"

"Jesse and I used to go camping with our dad all the time," he answered easily. "He taught us how to do everything." At that, Roy glanced at Antonia's fruitless efforts at starting a fire. "Do you want some help?"

The girl looked up from her feeble collection of sticks and grimaced, but still said, "No, thank you. A good pokémon trainer has to know how to do these things herself."

Roy didn't say anything at first as he watched Antonia continue to struggle, but after a few minutes he remarked, "It's going to get dark soon." When Antonia glared at him, he just shrugged and said, "I can help you out, at least while we're traveling together. You don't have to do everything on your own."

"And what do you know about starting a fire that I don't? I've followed the instructions in my guidebook perfectly!"

"Well, see," Roy started to say, but then he closed his mouth and took the poké ball out of his pocket instead. With a press of the button on the center of the ball, his charmander appeared. "Charmander, can you help us start a fire?" Roy asked.

Charmander looked sullen, but bobbed his head and grudgingly spat a few hot embers at Antonia's firepit, nearly singing her nose as he did so. The bed of dry leaves that she had laid down at the base were ignited and soon the fire was crackling away merrily. Everyone's mood was improved in the light of the fire, and Roy's charmander sidled up next to him, both having forgotten the trouble that the pokémon had gotten into earlier.

Antonia finished the last of the chips and, after gingerly wiping her hands on the knees of her jeans, tossed the empty bag into the fire. The group of them, trainer and pokémon alike, basked in its glow until Antonia broke the silence by saying, "Pewter City tomorrow."

"Yeah," said Roy.

"There's a pokémon gym there."

"And somewhere where we can eat."

Antonia prodded the fire with a stick, sending up a few orange sparks up into the night sky. "Do you feel ready for it, Roy? The gym, I mean, not the food," she added before he could answer.

"Oh, yeah," said Roy, "we're totally ready. How about you, Toni?"

"Well, Weedle still needs some more training, of course, but I think that Bulbasaur is pretty strong. I've done my research and I think that we'll be able to handle it."

"And then we'll leave Pewter City."

"Right."

Roy looked as though he wanted to say more, but he closed his mouth without a word to her. Instead, he turned to his pokémon and asked, "Do you want to sleep out here tonight, Charmander?"

The pokémon grinned toothily and chirped his answer.

"Okay, but you have to promise me that you're not going to run off again, okay?"