Roy stood outside of the pokémon center, fuming at his brother, at himself, and at the whole rotten injustice of it all. After he had finally gotten him alone and badgered him enough, Jesse had said flat-out, "I don't want to travel with you," and then gone back inside of the pokémon center to his friends. His friends, Roy thought bitterly to himself. He aimed a savage kick at one of the bushes that had been planted along the sidewalk leading up to the red-roofed building, scuffing his white tennis shoe and sending up a small wave of dirt.

Apparently, Roy grumbled to himself, he wasn't good enough to join in on Jesse's pokémon journey. Although Jesse hadn't come out and said so much, Roy wasn't so stupid that he couldn't read between the lines, and he knew that Jesse thought that he was going to hold him back. His own twin brother believed that about him! With that thought, Roy kicked at the dirt again.

Jesse had left him out here ten minutes ago, and Roy's blood was finally starting to cool and now that he was able to think about it, he had to face the truth that maybe Jesse was right.

Growing up in Pallet Town together, the two of them had been the perfect team. Between them, Jesse had gotten all of the brains, it seemed, and he was consistently near the top of their classes and always getting them out of trouble. As for Roy, well, he was usually the one getting them into the trouble in the first place. He was the funny one, the sociable one, and together with Jesse they were unstoppable. Roy never would have believed that the day where he and his brother might split up would come so soon.

But it had, and now that Roy had blown off some steam by punishing the landscaping around the pokémon center, he realized that he had a problem which needed a solution. Even weeks before they had received their first pokémon at Professor Oak's laboratory the kids in his class had been organizing themselves into parties ranging from just two would-be trainers to as many as seven. Although the class was going to stick together as far as Viridian City, they were set to split up tomorrow. It was an article of faith among the students that it would be no fun traveling around the Kanto region on one's own, and so a scramble had begun, undertaken with equal measures excitement and with deadly seriousness, to formalize arrangements with one's friends as traveling partners.

Like so many things, Roy had failed to follow through on making his own plans. Half-dreamt schemes had been discussed with his and Jesse's circle of friends, but nothing had been set in stone, and now he found himself walking back into the Viridian City pokémon center thinking hard about who in his class he could turn to and ask to travel with him.

Some of his classmates had already gone to bed, tired from an exhausting first day of being a pokémon trainer, but Roy knew that his friends were made of tougher stuff and, sure enough, they were still sitting in the lobby of the pokémon center. They had been talking animatedly in a small group in the corner of the room when Roy had come back inside the building, but their conversation had stopped as soon as they had seen him. Nonetheless, he waved and said, "Hey, guys, what's up?"

The group of boys didn't reply to Roy, not directly, but instead exchanged looks between each other until all of Roy's friends were looking to Jesse for guidance on how to respond. Of course, Jesse was with them, they were his friends too, after all, but it still irked Roy to see how he was sitting in the middle of the grouping and even more to see how they were deferring to Jesse, silently asking him to deal with his brother.

Jesse wordlessly accepted the others' requests and he slowly stood up from his seat on the couch and came over to Roy, his face drawn in a somber mask that made him look like the older brother instead of one of a set of twins. "Roy," he said softly, "are you okay?"

The question and the tone with which it was delivered almost made Roy lose his cool again, but he held onto his temper and replied curtly, "Yeah, I'm fine. What's up?"

"That's good," said Jesse with a nod, and then he added, "We were just making some final plans before going to bed. Tomorrow's a big day, after all."

"Right, right. So, what's the plan?" Before Jesse could speak again, Roy gave him a punch on the shoulder, maybe a little harder than it should have been, and hurried to say, "Don't worry, it's okay that you don't want to travel with me. I totally get it. I won't be with your group. That's no big deal. Who am I going to be traveling with instead?"

Jesse looked over his shoulder and Roy followed his gaze to see the silent tableau of their friends watching the two of them. Then, Jesse led his brother three excruciating steps away from the group and said in a low voice, "That's not on us, Roy. There's no room for you in any of our groups." He had delivered it in a tone that had tried to be soothing but it was totally inadequate to the task of breaking this news to his brother.

Roy maintained his smile, even though his entire face was heating up and he felt the pinch in his cheeks from maintaining the phony grin. "So, no one wants me, huh?" asked Roy through his clenched teeth. "I thought that we were all friends. I thought you guys liked me."

"We do, Roy. I do," said Jesse in the same infuriatingly soft voice, but then he shrugged his shoulders and admitted, "We all like you, Roy, but you're just not really cut out for a pokémon journey, don't you think? You're a ton of fun, but you barely qualified for your trainer's license and none of us wants to waste our summer, our journey, carrying your weight."

That was it then. The anger was about to boil over, and Roy pushed past his brother and stormed out of the pokémon center, wishing that the automatically sliding glass doors were something that he could have slammed behind him instead.

Roy stewed outside in the early summer night. Everything that might have been beautiful about that night, that day, just made Roy angrier and angrier. He paced up and down the street in front of the pokémon center, keeping his furious comments at the level of murmurs instead of shouting them from the rooftops like he wanted to do. There was nothing he could do, no one would help him, and so Roy's pokémon journey would be a failure. And if it was a failure, if he was a failure, then Jesse would be able to tell himself that he was right to abandon his loser of a brother. He couldn't let that happen, because then-

Roy's musings were interrupted by the appearance of another one of the new trainers in his class. Antonia was a doughy-faced girl a few inches shorter than Roy. Her brown hair was tied up in a lazy ponytail, but a few strands of it had still escaped and were held off from getting in her eyes by her thick pair of glasses. Despite the warm weather, she was wearing a shapeless gray sweatshirt, and she was holding her first pokémon, an equally round-faced bulbasaur in her arms.

"Are you all right, Roy?" Antonia asked. "You were talking to yourself."

"Yeah, I'm fine," answered Roy sharply, "everything's perfect!" Then, he took a deep breath and let it out shakily before giving Antonia a second glance. "Say, what are you doing out so late?"

Antonia looked down at the pokémon and her arms and said, "I was taking my bulbasaur out into the wild for some more training. It was much easier to find wild pokémon without everyone else around making noise."

Now that she mentioned it, the bulbasaur's blue and green speckled skin was marred by a couple of bruises and scrapes. It was nothing that the pokémon center couldn't fix, but it was still impressive to see how dedicated Antonia was after just one day of her being a pokémon trainer. "Wow, it looks like you guys did some real damage. I'd hate to see what the pokémon you battled look like now!"

Antonia looked at Roy blankly. Her pokémon did the same. She was about to start walking again, past Roy and into the pokémon center, but a sudden idea seized Roy's mind and he shouted, "Hey, Toni, who are you traveling with?"

She turned back toward him and tilted her head to one side. "No one. It's just going to be my pokémon team and I."

"Well, uh, how'd you like to travel with me?"

Antonia blinked slowly at Roy behind her glasses, then her eyes narrowed. "That's a very funny joke, Roy. One of your best."

"No, wait, Toni, I'm serious!" Roy called after Antonia as she started towards the pokémon center. She stopped again, and he breathlessly explained, "I don't know anything about pokémon! No one wants to travel with me because they think I'm going to be a total loser as a pokémon trainer. But you're, like, crazy smart, even smarter than Jesse, and if I stick with you then I can learn from you, and prove them all wrong."

"Jesse wouldn't you travel with him and his group?"

Roy snarled, "Yeah, my own brother thinks I'm going to be a complete screw-up."

Antonia was standing there studying him, but her moon-shaped face was impossible for Roy to read. Still, he had himself convinced that she was his last, best chance, so he asked her again, "Please, Toni, let me travel with you. I promise I won't get in your way or anything."

"I suppose that we could give it a try," she answered after nearly a minute of silence, "at least as far as Pewter City."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" Roy said. He made a move towards her to shake her hand, or clap her on the back, but Antonia kept her distance from the enthusiastic boy.

"We'll talk more tomorrow morning," said Antonia slowly, "but right now I need to get my bulbasaur looked at and then I'm going to bed. You should, ah, try to get some sleep too." Then, Antonia shifted her pokémon to one arm, eliciting an annoyed croak from the bulbasaur, and finally took Roy's hand in a quick, mechanical handshake. She quickly released it and stepped through the sliding doors, leaving Roy outside smiling to himself.

Roy slept in late the following morning, missing the other new trainers in his class saying their goodbyes. He was still sore enough about how he had been treated by Jesse and the others that he did not mind. Still, he was looking forward to getting on with his pokémon journey. He had a late breakfast at the pokémon center's café and then went outside to face the day.

His good mood evaporated as soon as he saw Antonia sitting on a park bench. Roy could tell that she was mad at him even before she said in a flat voice, "You're late."

"What do you mean 'late'?" Roy asked. "We didn't set a time last night. Thanks for waiting for me though! Can my charmander have some of that pokémon food?"

Antonia's bulbasaur looked up from the bowl of kibble he was eating from and then moved to scarf the rest of it down. Undeterred, Roy's orange-scaled charmander sauntered up next to the squat pokémon and tried to peer past the bulbasaur's head to see if there was any food that he had forgotten.

"You're late," Antonia repeated again, with a little more heat this time. "While I was waiting for you, everyone left. They'll make it to Pewter City ahead of us, and we'll have to work twice as hard to catch up with them."

"Okay, okay. What do you want me to say? I'm sorry," Roy said. "I didn't think it was that big of a deal. It's just a few hours. What difference does it make?"

Antonia breathed in and out twice before giving Roy an answer. "You said last night that you wanted to learn from me. Well, get ready for your first lesson then. Battle me."

Both Roy and his charmander looked at Antonia as though she had suddenly grown a second head. Even her own pokémon did not seem enthusiastic about the idea, but he still dutifully scampered away from his food bowl and to Antonia's side. "Come on, Toni," said Roy with a disarming grin. "It's just a little mistake. I promise it won't happen again."

"You're right. It won't. But you're still going to battle me."

"But my charmander has hardly eaten anything! It wouldn't be fair!"

"You should have thought about that while you were sleeping in. Now, come on, let's battle." With that, Antonia, with her bulbasaur in tow, started walking around the pokémon center to the rudimentary battlefield which lay behind it. Reluctantly, Roy and his own pokémon partner followed after them. He saw that Antonia had taken up a position on the far side of the battlefield and so he stood opposite her across the expanse of dirt and boundaries drawn in white chalk. At his trainer's insistence, Roy's charmander trudged toward the center of the field and stood there for a moment, idly scratching his belly and stifling a yawn.

"Are we really going to do this?" whined Roy.

"Yes," said Antonia. "Now, since there isn't a judge available, we'll battle until a knockout or a surrender. Bulbasaur and I are ready whenever you are."

Her stilted, formal language impressed the seriousness of the situation on Roy, but now instead of wanting to avoid a battle, he was actually looking forward to it. Sure, Toni was smart and all, but he wasn't so dumb that he didn't know that a fire-type pokémon had an advantage over a plant-based one. If she wanted to pick a fight with him and his charmander, then he would show her just what they could do.

Roy ran through a quick mental list of his pokémon's capabilities, and then he gave his first order, "All right, Charmander, hit it with your claws!"

Charmander stopped scratching himself and the orange-scaled pokémon's eyes narrowed before he launched himself across the dividing line of the battlefield. His short but sharp claws were outstretched and they found purchase in Bulbasaur's hide. To Roy and his pokémon's surprise, the explosive start of the battle did not seem to faze either Bulbasaur or Antonia. The former did not do more than grunt in pain, and he was ready when Antonia ordered for him to use his growl technique. A cry resonated from deep in the squat pokémon's throat, and it was so fierce that Roy's charmander let up his attack and struggled to backpedal away from the other pokémon. As his feet were treading backwards, Antonia gave a sharp order, "Hit it!", and Bulbasaur was happy to oblige.

Antonia's pokémon rammed into his taller opponent's midsection, and Roy could hear the air being knocked out of his charmander's lungs in a heavy whuff. He managed to stay on his feet and land some glancing strikes at the plant growing out of Bulbasaur's back with his claws. Bulbasaur shrugged them off, however, and he used his lower center of gravity to knock against first one of Charmander's knees and then, when he tried to steady himself, the other one.

"Get out of there!" Roy bellowed. The pokémon battle before his eyes was nothing like the masterful displays of skill and power that he and Jesse had watched on television or at town festivals. It was just a scrum between two stubborn creatures who had more grit than good sense. Charmander kept trying to scratch at Bulbasaur's more vulnerable sides, but, aside from a few knocks to his head, the shorter pokémon was able to interpose his less sensitive bulb in the way of Charmander's attacks, while at the same time headbutting Charmander's soft underbelly. It was hard to look away from the ugly melee, but Roy managed to peel his eyes away from it just long enough to look at Antonia. His opponent didn't look scared, or worried, or even excited. Behind her thick glasses, she was watching the two pokémon go at it like it was a math problem that she had been asked to solve. Of course, she doesn't need to be worried, Roy thought, she's winning. Sure enough, Bulbasaur was pushing Charmander back across the ring, and it was clear to Roy that his pokémon was stalling for time more than anything. It was up to the trainer, Roy, to come up with a way out of this.

Okay, he thought frantically, Charmander's a fire-type pokémon, right? So, he has to have some attack that he can use. "Charmander!" shouted Roy. "Breathe some fire on him!"

Under the steady rhythm of Bulbasaur's attacks, Roy's charmander took in a deep breath, but before it could be converted into fire, Antonia shouted, "Hit him in the throat!" and her bulbasaur launched himself off of the ground to drive his hard skull into Charmander's neck. The orange pokémon coughed and wheezed and stumbled backwards out of instinct. But Antonia and Bulbasaur refused to give him time to recover, and the other pokémon launched himself at Charmander again, hammering his side until Charmander toppled over onto the dirt floor of the outdoor arena.

"Do you give up?" asked Antonia, and it was the way that she asked it, without any meanness or joy at her victory, that got under Roy's skin the most.

"Not a chance," he spat out, "not while we've still got something we can try." Then, Roy commanded, "Charmander! Use your tail!"

There was no hesitation on Charmander's part. Antonia's bulbasaur was already in mid-leap when the other young pokémon swung his tail around in a wide arc, leaving a trail of glowing embers in the air as he slammed it into bulbasaur's body. The squat pokémon's attack still connected and sent Roy's charmander reeling, but as the bulbasaur retreated there was a singed patch on his blue-green skin.

Both pokémon were panting heavily now. Antonia looked curious, while Roy's face glowed with triumph. But when Charmander tried to pick himself up off of the ground, his legs gave out and he crashed back onto the dull earth of the battlefield.

"Come on, Charmander, you can do this!" Roy said, and the pokémon tried once more to lift himself up, but could not do more than prop himself up on his stubby arms.

Antonia and her bulbasaur watched the display wordlessly, until Roy's charmander fell down again. Then, Antonia said, "I think that your pokémon's beat, Roy. Let's get him back inside the pokémon center."

"No, we can do this," insisted Roy. "Come on, Charmander, get up!" The pokémon lifted his head, but did not go any further beyond that. Both trainer and pokémon were breathing heavily, the latter panting. The charmander attempted a defiant roar, but it turned into a hacking cough. Only then did Roy's obstinance falter. "All right," he said, "you win, Antonia." He raised charmander's poké ball and recalled his pokémon in a burst of red light. Then he walked off of the field with his head hung low.

After returning her own pokémon to his poké ball, Antonia followed after Roy, not quite running but walking at a brisker pace than she normally would have used. She still did not catch up to Roy until he was already inside of the pokémon center. As Antonia entered the sliding glass doors, he was handing over his charmander's poké ball to the on-duty nurse.

"Please make my pokémon better," he said morosely, and then turned away when Antonia appeared at the counter next to him and echoed a similar request to the nurse.

Before bulbasaur's poké ball had left Antonia's hand, Roy was already crossing the lobby of the pokémon center to sit in one of its chairs. Antonia followed him and sat down on the same sofa that Jesse and the others had been sitting in last night. Neither of them knew what to say, so the two new trainers just sat there for a few minutes, watching the other while attempting to conceal it.

It was Roy who spoke first. "Thank you for the battle, Antonia," he said through barely parted lips.

"You're welcome, Roy," said Antonia automatically and then, "You and your charmander did very well for your first battle, I thought."

"I lost," said Roy coldly. "I lost with a fire-type pokémon against a grass-type. How does that even happen? Jesse was right, I'm not cut out for this. He didn't even say goodbye to me." He looked up at Antonia and found the girl biting her lip and looking as uncomfortable as he had ever seen her. "You don't have to say it, Toni, I already know what you're thinking."

"You do?"

Roy tried to look Antonia straight in the eye, but her owlish expression made him falter and his attention dropped down to his tennis shoes instead. "Yeah, you want to tell me that you don't want to travel with me either, that I'd just be dead weight. I mean, already I wasted your morning with getting up late and that joke of a battle."

Antonia shook her head, strands of brown hair brushing across her forehead as she did so. "You're wrong, Roy. I haven't changed my mind, at least, not yet."

"You haven't?"

"I promised that I would go with you at least to Pewter City. We can, ah, decide what to do after that later."

Roy's entire demeanor changed in an instant. Whereas before his body had been hunched over in his chair with his arms on his knees, now it uncoiled like a spring, snapping the boy out of his seat and onto his feet. "Really, Toni? That's great! What are we waiting for? I'll go check with the nurse and pick up our pokémon and then we can go!"

The two young trainers left the pokémon center not long before noon, but determined to make the most of the rest of their day. "Okay, Toni, you're the boss," said Roy. "Where are we headed?"

Antonia pointed down the main street of Viridian City. "North. That will take us to the Viridian Forest, with Pewter City on the other side."

"Awesome," said Roy. As they walked, he spun his backpack around to his side and pulled out the sandwich that he had brought for lunch. With a mouth full of bread, meat, and cheese, he said to Antonia, "We'll have to have a rematch sometime. I mean, your bulbasaur is great and all, Toni, but he has a lot more experience battling than my charmander. Once my pokémon and I know what we're doing, it won't be such a one-sided fight, you know?" When Antonia didn't say anything, Roy finished chewing, swallowed his food, and then asked, "Did you hear me? Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," Antonia replied without looking at Roy. "I didn't expect to be traveling with anyone else. I think that I just need a while to get used to it."

"It's cool, it's cool." Roy barely finished two more bites of his sandwich before he asked, "You've always been the smartest kid in our class, Toni, even if you are a little weird. Didn't anyone else ask you to travel with them?"

"No, nobody asked me," said Antonia and she kept walking with Roy by her side.

The pair's progress towards the Viridian Forest came to a halt with the sudden appearance of Jesse and a few of his friends. The other group of new trainers was laughing and talking animatedly until they saw Roy and Antonia. Wordlessly, Jesse's friends glanced at their leader and he stepped forward, meeting Roy who did the same.

"Hi, Roy."

"Hi, Jesse," replied Roy. He was smiling, but his hands were balled up into fists by his side. "What are you still doing here? I thought you'd be in Pewter City by now."

Jesse smiled back at his brother, and said, "Well, we thought that there might be some pokémon worth catching off the beaten path, so we made a short side trip."

"Uh huh," Roy said. "Well, looks like you're having fun at least. Toni and I are going to get moving though."

When Roy jabbed his thumb towards her, Antonia flinched, but she recovered quickly enough and moved to stand by Roy's side. "Hi, Jesse," she said a little breathlessly.

Jesse's eyes narrowed slightly as he took in the sight of his brother and Antonia next to one another. "So, you too are traveling together, huh? I never would've thought…"

"Yeah, Toni's really something! She's a crazy good trainer already, probably best one in our class, I'd say."

"That good, huh?" Jesse asked. He was still wearing his smile, but his words sounded too serious for his expression.

"I'm sure you're a really strong trainer too, Jesse," Antonia said quickly. "I mean, all of us have only been pokémon trainers for two days, so, ah, none of us are really that strong, but-"

Now, it was Roy's turn to interrupt. "Hey, speaking of battles, how about we have one, Jesse? Just you and me."

First, Jesse's smile grew wider, and then he raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you're serious, Roy? Look, my pokémon are kind of worn out from the training we did this morning. We've got to get to the pokémon center. Another time, okay?"

"Well, we could go with you to the pokémon center," offered Antonia. "Since we're all here, then we can all go through the forest together."

Jesse looked over his shoulder at his friends. Then, he said, "No, that's okay. It's real cute how you two are traveling together and all, and we don't want to intrude."

Both Roy and Antonia exchanged puzzled looks as Jesse joined his ensemble. "Cute?" wondered Roy aloud.

The larger group of trainers headed the same way from where Roy and Antonia had come. As they walked away, one of Jesse's friends called back at them, "Have fun, lovebirds!" and then everyone in their group was laughing.

Roy's knuckles grew white and he gritted his teeth. A hundred angry curses flooded his brain all at once, but before he could utter a single one of them, he glanced at Antonia and found the girl's face red yet strangely immobile. Roy took a deep breath, and as he let it out, he felt some of the tension slip between the fingers of his opening hands.

"Forget those guys, Antonia," he said with an air of affected indifference. "Let's get going."

Next to him, Antonia let out a breath of her own and then nodded. "Okay," she said, but a blush still colored his cheek and her mouth was still set in a hard thin line as the two of them turned their backs on Jesse and his friends and continued walking towards the Viridian Forest and the summer which lay ahead of them.