A/N

Disclaimer: Just to reiterate - I don't own shit. I wrote this, but if the guys who made pokemon knock on my door, I will shit myself. I will then own that shit, and promptly stew in it. Please don't hurt me.

The next morning came a bit too slowly for Cobalt's liking. Likely because the ten year-old was staring at the ceiling of his bedroom for hours, struck by insomnia brought about by intense scheming. He had to stop himself from bursting out into evil, cackling laughter more than once, imagining the mayhem that he and Kong would bring.

It wasn't until he woke up from a measly three hours of sleep, that he realized he had never retrieved Kong from Archie's tender care. Too caught up in outlining his upcoming journey to his parents over the dinner table.

Meh. He'd be fine.

Cobalt finished stuffing his Bag of Holding with his entire wardrobe, and turned to glance around his room. The previous night was the last time for months that he would sleep in his own bed. This very second was his last chance to make sure that he had everything he needed.

His eyes swiveled, categorizing every item in the room, and their potential usefulness in the wild outdoors.

Cobalt's bedroom did not look like the average ten year-old's bedroom. There were no posters on the walls, no pokemon plushies, nor any gaming consoles or other such toys. The only piece of furniture besides his bed, nightstand, and wardrobe was a desk with a blocky PC on top of it. In fact, his room might have been described as spartan - if not for the Charizard duvet on his bed, and the hundreds of sticky notes that riddled his walls.

Cobalt ducked under a blue thread that connected two such notes on opposite walls. This room was the culmination of ten years of learning. Every thought, every conclusion, every difference that he noted between the games and his new reality. All written on the walls, and interconnected by miles of multicolored string.

His father had once asked him who's murder he was plotting.

He replied with, "God."

The boy didn't hold any grudge against whichever being created the universe he now lived in - be it Arceus, or some other esoteric concept. He had never shook his fist at the sky. Never felt wronged by fate, nor had any particularly strong, negative experience at all in this life - unless one counts the previous morning, when he learned pokephilia was a thing. Cobalt didn't. He couldn't count something that he was bottling up and ignoring, after all.

So no. He didn't have any particular reason to go for God's jugular. The boy had just set a goal for himself, and he was nothing if not consistent.

Cobalt stepped around the nexus of string, heading for the one thing he had forgotten to grab the day before. On his nightstand, sitting under an open notebook, was a hand-sized, flat, metal case. He scanned the notebook for anything he might want to keep with him, before flipping it closed, and tossing it on the bed. The case was then unceremoniously tucked inside his bag.

He then turned, and started making his way out of the room, absently dodging more string, and headed down the stairs to the kitchen. His parents were already there - mother nursing a cup of pitch black coffee, and his father wrestling Psyduck away from a plate of toast.

"You have your own food." His father grinned at the duck he held aloft with one hand. "And Clair made this for me, so you'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands if you wanna get at it, Psy."

Cobalt's mother would have swooned if it weren't so early. As it was, though, she had just smiled into her cup. "Morning, Coco." She turned to him after a sip. "All ready to go?"

"Pretty much." The boy shrugged, and headed to the industrial blender they had on the counter. "Just gotta grab Kong, and I'll be good to head out."

His father's grin turned toward him. "Finally remember the punch-munchkin, huh?" He dropped Psyduck, and shoved him away from his breakfast. "Even Archie was tuckered out this morning. Champ told me they kept everyone up all night."

Cobalt paused while tossing a few berries into the blender, then decided to add enough for a second serving. "Well… We'll take it easy on the way to Cerulean, then." He closed the sound-dampening cover of the blender, and started it up.

"No rest for the wicked, ey?" His mother said with a soft, bright smile, and brought him into a tight hug. "My little boy! All grown up and starting his journey! Oh, what am I going to do now?"

Cobalt gasped for breath, and tried to push the lady away. "Mercy!" He wheezed.

His father hummed. "Well, we've got a couple weeks before the circuit starts. We could do a little vacation?"

The Kent couple were part of the force that kept everything running for the League during the Gym circuit. His father was one of those on-call wrecking balls that the Rangers would use as back up, every so often. The man's dragonite could get him from one end of the region to the other within an hour, after all. The rest of his team were no slouches, either.

For the most part, though, Vicktor Kent was the guy in charge of keeping Route 5 clear during the season. He would take a couple walks a day, at completely random times, and just talk with the locals. Pokemon, trainers, whoever crossed his path, really. One of the more interesting stories was when he had to put down a rampaging nidoking that had been making its way towards Saffron.

Outside of that, and one major incident with Moltres back when Cobalt was six, his father's job seemed pretty chill.

Clarisse Kent, on the other hand, was one of the very few ghost specialists left since the sacking of Lavender Town in the war. Most days, she would head down to Saffron, and do a "bunch of boring paperwork," but Cobalt suspected she was either having tea with Agatha somewhere entirely different, or murdering ne'er-do-wells in the streets.

She was also the only known trainer with a dusknoir.

A few of the sticky notes on his wall were all about his mother's occupation. He suspected that she was some sort of assassin for the League, but when he confronted her on it, she had just laughed and called him cute. Haunter had winked at him, though, and he knew Dusknoir watched him sleep that night - the creepy-ass motherfucker.

His mother's arms tightened around him, her head turning to the larger man. "Just us?"

Cobalt pictured his father nodding happily as the idea of vacation solidified. He couldn't see the man actually do so, though, since his face was squished against his mother's clavicle, and pinned by her chin.

"Boy, it's been a while, huh?" He heard his father muse. "We haven't been to Hoenn in ages, and their borders are open again for the season." He suggested.

"Air." Cobalt gasped with the last of his breath.

"Oh! Can we go to Sootopolis? I hear it's beautiful this time of year!" Like a kid in a candy store.

"Good call! I hear it's a real sight to see." His father chuckled. "Though I think you're suffocating the munchkin."

She scoffed. "Oh pish, he's fine." She loosened her grip, and Cobalt dropped to the floor with a wobble. "Go on, Coco. Don't leave before I get a picture, you hear?" She demanded, poking him in the forehead.

Cobalt gathered himself, and shook his hands, trying to get rid of the pins-and-needles feeling. "Save the attempted murder for your targets, you degenerate hit-woman." He mumbled.

"What was that?" She warned.

"Yes ma'am." He straightened and shuffled to the counter, where he quickly poured the completed smoothie into two insulated, metal bottles.

"We'll be out in a couple minutes, Cob-meister." His father said, staring down Haunter - who had stolen his toast while nobody was paying attention.

"Got it!" The boy called back as he bolted out the door.

It didn't take long to find Kong. The mankey was passed out, face down in the grass, in the middle of the front lawn. Cobalt wasn't entirely sure the guy was breathing.

He nudged the pokemon with his foot. "Yo. Kong. Up an' at'em." No movement from his starter. "I've got breakfast?" He offered a second later.

"Key~" The mankey gave a grass-muffled grumble, but otherwise didn't move.

"Come on." He rolled Kong over with a gentle kick, and was met with a glare for his trouble.

Kong squinted in the morning light, and rocked forward into a sitting position.

Cobalt handed his starter one of the smoothies. "Archie really ran you through, huh? Get anything useful out of last night?"

It probably wasn't a good idea to give the puffball ammunition before asking that question, he reflected.

The boy found himself on the ground again, blinking away the dots forming in his vision, and rubbed the spot on his forehead where Kong's smoothie hit. "Motherfucker!" He cursed between clenched teeth.

Kong pointed at him, and waved his other arm towards Archie's little hide-away in the mini-mountain. "Mankey! Key~ mankey-man, key~key mankey! Man-key man-"

Cobalt pelted the 'mon directly between the eyes with the previously thrown smoothie, interrupting his tirade. The metal bottle, now dented a bit, fell to the ground in front of the supremely pissed off puffball. It was a steel, insulated bottle, by the way. One of those "rugged" type containers made for travel.

Cobalt didn't know what bones were made of in this world, but in his last life, if he had gotten hit in the head with something like that, he would have one hell of a concussion. Here, though, he had just been dazed, and the only damage was to the bottle itself.

He had a lot of theories surrounding this new durability. The most likely was some sort of passive aura that all - or most, at least - humans subconsciously used to help them survive in this world of magical monsters. Hell, it was even somewhat likely that humans were a species of pokemon, but he categorically refused to dive into that. His mother's reading material, the fact that a human-like egg group existed. It made him want to swallow his own tongue.

"It's too early for this crap, and I still can't understand a word you're saying." He ground out, still rubbing the bump forming on his forehead. "We've got a full day ahead of us, and a few more things to try out." He sighed. "So did Archie help at all last night? Are we going to have to take it easy this morning, or are you done bitching?"

Evidently, Archie did, in fact, help Kong a lot the previous night.

Eight seconds after he had finished speaking, Cobalt found himself in the middle of his family's lake, having been grabbed by the pig-moneky in an instant use of agility, and seismic toss'd across the way. His ten-year old body skipped once on the surface of the water before his father's poliwrath caught him.

He looked up into the hypno-toad's eyes. "Morning Poli."

"Wrath." The grizzled 'mon said, with a look that Cobalt would have characterized as "utterly done" if not for the clear, amused glint in his eyes.

Poliwrath was the dad of his father's team. Easily the oldest, and his father's starter, he was the force that kept everyone in line. He was riddled with scars, and about twice the size of a normal member of his species, so even if he wasn't the strongest member of his father's team, they would all have deferred to him anyway. He was though. He was by far the most terrifying pokemon Cobalt had encountered in his short life, here.

The way his father told it, Poliwrath was the only reason his entire response team survived the "Moltres Incident." That and the fact that some guy with a pikachu rained God's Judgment down on it via a massive column of thunder, usurping the legendary bird's attention.

So yeah, Red apparently existed, and Cobalt had no clue what that meant for everything. He knew Team Rocket had been decapitated years ago, and Blue was now the Gym leader of Viridian, but the Rockets were still a problem - if less organized. He also strongly suspected that Ash was around, because the grandson of Professor Oak was a strong, newbie contender for the upcoming Conference - if the forums he watched were any indication. If Gary existed, it made sense that Ash did, as well.

On that note, if Red wasn't Ash's dad, he would eat his own foot.

Poliwrath swam him over to the shore, and gave Kong a disappointed look. A look which the mankey ignored in favor of giving Cobalt a smug, condescending glare - as if saying "That enough progress for you?"

It was. It was way more progress than the boy had expected for a single night of training. The puffball's use of agility was instant. No build up, no white aura surrounding his body, no indication that it had been used at all, outside of the speed boost. It was almost exactly what Archie did with his species' constant use of extremespeed. Cobalt supposed that the pig-monkey had already gotten a lot of use out of the move before they met, so he was probably pretty proficient in its use. Some slight tweaks, a little bit of understanding, and a motivated Archie, really seemed to bring it to the next level.

He would have been ecstatic about it. He would have been proud of his starter's progress - if it wasn't unfortunately overshadowed by all this unyielding rage.

Cobalt walked out of the lake, having been pushed forward by Poliwrath, dripping wet. He stalked forward towards his teammate, who just crossed his arms and looked up at him dispassionately.

The boy put his hands on the pokemon's shoulders, and looked him in the eyes. "That was honestly really impressive." He began, making Kong blink at him. "I really didn't think you would get that good with agility so quickly. That doesn't mean we won't still work on it, but I think we can start bleeding what you learned into some other stuff. I've got a lot of plans, and the mastery you just showed will help with all of it.

"But first." He gave the 'mon a fake, happy smile, and bodily tossed the puffball into the lake.

A surprised cry left the mankey's lips, having lowered his guard a bit at Cobalt's praise. His spherical form spun like a ninja star, limbs flailing with centripetal force as he turned in the air, and splashed into the water. "Go drown, you overgrown cotton ball."

A/N

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