Pokémon

[Celadon's Penultimate]

[Philote]

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Arceus!

[Philote]

Are you sure?

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Or Mew. If it's Rhydon, I'll cry...

[Marvelous Miscreant]

You're kidding right?

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Wait...first, how? You mean chronological, right? Can't mean Bulbasaur, that's too easy...

[Marvelous Miscreant]

Well bulbasaur is number one.....

[Philote]

Bulbasaur is the first pokemon in the pokedex.

Mew is the ancestor of all pokemon supposedly.

Rhydon was the first pokemon ever designed.

And you already guessed why for Arceus.

[Philote]

[Philote]

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[Celadon's Penultimate]

That's why I got confused.

Gotta admit, they got me there.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Somebody wrote

I remember the day war was declared, me and all the other guys from Pallet Town went down to the Pokemon Centre in Viridian City to sign up. We were laughing, joking, and even battling in the queue. We all thought it would be over before Christmas.

They're all dead now. 'Fast' Gary went in the first Cinnabar landings. Took a Signal Beam right between the eyes.

'Bugcatcher' Floyd ended up going nuts after his Metapod bit it and ran out into No-Mans Land, screaming about how comfy his shorts were. He didn't make it ten feet before he got bisected by a group of Kingler.

I don't know what happened to Ash. He was the youngest of us all, and he had to lie to the recruiter to sign up. He never said much, but sometimes at night, when the Beedrill were overhead, you could hear him sobbing. One morning we woke up and him and that Pikachu of his were gone.

The other day my grandson came to see me and showed me the Rattata he'd caught. He said he couldn't wait to get his license so he could take on the Pokemon League. He doesn't know what I did in the war - no-one does.

Somebody) wrote

It is a strange burden we bear, those of us who fought in the war and came back. There aren't many of us. When I see my son playing with my Vulpix, it's strange to think that that little fox is now gently playing with a child. I remember teeth dripping red with blood when it killed a Wooper infiltrator in the night - water type, so Vulpix's fire wouldn't do much good. But I think Vulpix remembers, too. He has that look in the eye, when my son manages to sneak up on him. I always fear that one day, Vulpix will forget that the war's been over for years, and turn on my son like he was back in our little foxhole in hell. My son wouldn't dare imagine how terrible those days were, when we ran out of food, the Deliberd convoys were blown to hell by Raichu sneaking through the jungle, so... we did what we had to do. Snorlax fed our entire company for a week...

My son hasn't asked about the war. Nor has my daughter. I wonder what I will tell them, if they do ask. How can you tell a child what the war was like, but to say that it was hell? Hell is just a word, after all. At least I know that my daughter, Arceus bless her heart, just wants to fiddle with machines. I gave her an old pokeball to mess with, but... I live in fear that one day, the pokeball's targeting matrix will forget the difference the techs programmed into the thing... whatever arbitrary difference there is between pokemon and people. They can feel pain. They can feel hatred. I saw both. We all did.

Somebody wrote

You ever wonder where these punks come from? Those screechy brats wailing at you to give them their stunky back after you wallop him and that dumb animal for threatening a 50 year old man. Kids turn bad, sure but this bad? Bad enough to take a loaded stunky on a crowded train car bad? Bad enough to teach, really teach some poor captured sop about the unique properties of the Voltorb Charge, when applied to say, the human skull. No, you get bad kids everywhere, but these guys aren't just bad kids.

Most kids whine about pokemon until their parents fish whatever happens to be sitting inside a nearby trashcan and call it a present. Then they run off with their friends, holding mock battles and dreaming of becoming the Pokemon Champ until some quiet guy passing through town gets the challenge from this idiot kid with a zigzaggoon. And the kid gets trounced, trounced hard. He'll go cry in a corner somewhere but the zigzag is still there, so he begins to feel a little better and finally he grows up like anyone else, a dream, a job, and a pokemon to remind us that some stuff just isn't gonna happen. That's my story. Its all our stories. Dreams deferred and an aging 'goon that at the very least kept you company all those years.

But there's also that one kid. Every podunk town I ever lived in had that one kid. You pick em out because they have the weirdest fashion sense but they love Pokemon and the Pokemon love them back. And finally one day they'll get a pokemon and vanish into the woods like they've waited the entirety of their lives for this day. Most times that's the last time you'll ever see them. World can be dangerous for a 10 year old on his own, mutating pyrokinetic monsters notwithstanding. See plenty like him though, just passing through town. Quiet, but driven. You pick em out by the faded clothes and weird fashion sense, then you point them to the PokeCenter, and most of them thank you briefly and rush off while you sit there and ponder the efficiency and value of the universal veterinary care system the country just put up.

Anyway, they're good people, most of them. But out of thousands of little podunk towns throwing out thousands of these "trainers" ever few years, only one guy gets to the top and hold the trophy for that year, and only a few hundred show up to take part in the tournament. Sometimes you wonder where the kid from your town went, maybe you will see his face among the hundreds of "honorable mentions". Its fruitless most of the time, he's gone somewhere he ain't coming back.

There's things a lot worse than fainting in the world, but not in the wilds and caves between the cities. The rangers do good rounds, and they take pride in their ability to pull some dumbass Trainer's rear end out of the fire, through any danger and over any obstacle. No, its not in the wilds that trainers disappear, its right in the cities, sometimes inside the towns they came from. Training is hard, it isn't difficult to find some trainer down on his luck, over gambling at the Game Corners or lost most of his wallet to a streak of bad battles. No one battles a man with no wallet, so you can't pay for food, no home to go to, starting to think of selling his pokemon when out of the blue:
Looks like you could use something to eat.
If you join us, we could help you become the best trainer there ever was.

And bam, you were jumping at the mention of free food, you grab your pokemon and give them to the guy (he asked so nicely and he's helping me so much) and you get a weird outfit and dye your hair green but you don't care, you have shelter, and food, and a bunch of people just like you, trainers just a little down on their luck, taking advantage of this incredible, kind, benevolent guy. You do what he asks sure, you owe him enough favors, and you take the pokemon he offers you because yours are out training with his special group.

By then, you're already gone. You and your new friends go out to hit some guy in the street because he disrespected the boss, leave something for the family to remember you by. Your individually unrecognizable with the absurd uniforms and the communal, unlicensed Pokemon you used for the hit, but it doesn't stop the guilt. You ask after your old Pokemon but they're gone, out for "extended training", more likely sold for fighters and scrap. And you can't leave, no one ever leaves the Galactica Family. So you stay, and you sink, and you revel in petty and cruel destruction because you have no power over the tiny ball around your life.

The next time some whiny punk tries to roll you with an under leveled Stunky, look at him. Did he get a starter from one of those Pokeprofessor Sponsorship deals? Maybe he caught one himself in the grass in his backyard, some rare breed that got him this far? They walk into the wilderness of Sinnoh expecting to take over the world. Now they stand here on some empty, grassy route, trying to extort a briefcase from a man twice their age. Team Galactic, Rocket, whatever, the name doesn't matter, it'll continue as long as the Pokemon League stands. All criminals start as a steely eyed kid and a pokemon, walking into the wilderness from some podunk little town.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

[Philote]

Peta's Pokemon Parody

[Philote]

[Celadon's Penultimate]