FicWad

Authors Note: Mweh! Lookit, I figured this part out. Anyways, just as a note this is my first time writing anything so there may be a few problems, and perhaps inconsistancties. Forgive me please! And forgive me for misspelling the previous word I'm sure you can find. Anyways, enjoy!

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When Ericka disappeared from view, Zach wasn't that sorry, as his sister had been giving some evil glances over her shoulder, and he had no doubts she was thinking about doing something awful to him. However, he was now alone, except for his possibly savage Chikorita, although the pokemon as of yet hadn't tried to devour him.

The rain was slackening off some, but it was still steadily falling, and Zach was miserable. His jacket didn't have a hood, so water was dripping into his face, and his hair, of which he was very vain about, would probably be in horrible shape the next day.

Normally Zach wouldn't have been caught off guard, but this was a special occasion, being as he had just received a pokemon, was walking in a downpour therefore meaning few pokemon were out and about, so he wasn't likely to be attacked.

However, anyone knows that just because something wasn't likely, it was probably going to happen. Zach was unfortunate enough to take refuge under a tree that currently had a fairly grumpy Hoothoot in it, as the bird pokemon didn't have a waterproof place to sleep, and was tired being nocturnal. Whether it was simply Zach walking into line of view, or a noise he made, she decided that she was in enough of a fit to take her temper out on the young trainer, and Zach found himself falling to the ground with a startled yell and covering his head up with his arms, as something small, feathery, and soft suddenly attacked his head.

"Chiko!" His Chikorita assumed a braced stance and taunted the Hoothoot, as he had decided to be the scared boy's guardian back at the lab, and would continue to think so out of it. Taunting the Hoothoot was no problem since it had keen hearing, so he didn't even have to talk much louder than the rain. "Chiko, chik, chik, rita!" Upon hearing the insult, the Hoothoot switched her attacks from Zach to his Chikorita, who battered by tackles without being able to get in one of his own.

Seeing his pokemon take damage to protect him gave Zach courage he didn't know he had, and he looked up enough to see the battle, and help Chikorita in it. Although both of them were new to battling, he was fairly certain they had a chance of winning. The first thing to do was to lower the attack power of the Hoothoot, so that Chikorita could withstand its tackles for a longer period of time-The only way to do that, at the current time, was to, "Chikorita, growl! When she gets low enough, tackle her!"

The grass-type growled at the Hoothoot, who was startled for a moment, and her attack lost its power as she came in for a weak tackle, that was diverted as Chikorita ploughed into her, knocking her to the ground. She stood up and began to take off again, but before she could, Zach ordered another tackle, and Chikorita complied, tackling the Hoothoot back to the ground again.

This sequence repeated itself until the bird didn't have the strength to attempt getting up again, and then Zach stood up, going to get Chikorita and run as far away from this place as he possibly could before the Hoothoot regained her senses. As he bent over to pick up his pokemon, one of the pokeballs fell out of his pocket...And the Hoothoot disappeared in a flash of red light.

Horrified, Zach eyed the wriggling contraption with a gaping mouth, squeaking as it 'dinged' in the manner of a pokeball that had successfully captured a pokemon. "Ack! Now what am I going to do? I can't keep her...She'll eat me!" Chikorita sighed in hopelessness, nudging the pokeball towards his trainer, as it wouldn't be nice to leave the Hoothoot stuck in it out here. Zach was forced to take the Hoothoot's pokeball and place it in a pocket with shaking fingers; terrified the murderous bird would pop out and attempt to kill him again. He decided he'd see if Ericka would trade one of her pokemon for it, as he couldn't believe Ericka would capture horrible pokemon.

Carrying Chikorita as a reward for his excellent performance in the pokemon battle, as Zach didn't have any berries on his person to give him he left the tree, sighing as he realized that the rain was still pouring. Hopefully it'd slack off before the next day. He'd hate for his second day as a trainer to be as miserable as his first. Zach feared he was coming down with a cold, which he didn't really enjoy.

The path that had taken thirty minutes to travel that morning suddenly seemed to become longer, growing in length since he entered the lab. It was only because it was raining, the mud sloshed everywhere, and he wasn't running at a breakneck pace, but he was still surprised to discover it was nearly forty-five minutes since he set out. And only one pokemon sighting-Not that that was surprising, being as it had been raining the entire time and all. Sniffling, he wiped his free hand across his face, sighing and awaiting the time he would be able to sleep in a warm, dry, bed. Unfortunately, it wasn't even lunch yet, so he probably wouldn't be doing that for some time.

He was beginning to estimate less than ten minutes before he reached Cherrygrove, when a pair of Rattata charged onto the road, one of them taking fright at his appearance and dashing off. However, the other was on the 'fight' reflex of the flight or fight, and charged toward Zach in a tackle attack. Letting Chikorita jump out of his arms, Zach immediately set him into a tackle of his own, followed up by a growl.

However, this battle wasn't going to be as easy as the one he had fought against the Hoothoot-The Rattata met Chikorita head-on, and the two grappled for a moment, before Chikorita growled and began to knock back the Rattata, until the rodent whipped around in a tail whip, knocking Chikorita back a few feet, and leaving his guard down, during which the Rattata charged forward again, tackling.

Chikorita found himself being thrown back by the Rattata's tackle, rolling over on the muddy path, but standing up again. Hearing Zach call out for a growl attack, he complied, unconsciously leaking the aroma from his leaf that was beginning to calm the Rattata down, although not enough to end the fight prematurely. Tackling the startled pokemon, he found himself again being hit by a tail whip, once more negating his growl attack and once more being thrown back and hit by a tackle. The two pokemon were at a stand-still, their attacks being of close strength, negating each other's stat changing attacks. It would, ultimately, come down to who had the most endurance.

Zach knew this just as well as Chikorita did, and was quickly coming up with a plan. "Don't tackle Chikorita, just use growl and dodge as best you can!" His pokemon complied, occasionally being tackled or hit by the tail whip of the Rattata, but the other pokemon missed more than not, and his attacks gradually grew weaker, until they were merely a joke of a tackle. Besides that, Chikorita's aroma had begun to really take effect, and when Zach finally ordered a tackle, it proved to be the last move of the match, as the Rattata turned and fled, not sure why it had been fighting in the first place.

Grinning, Zach hugged his pokemon which seemed to annoy Chikorita, so he stopped and set him down. "That was great." Zach had come to decide that he wasn't going to be torn into little bitty bits and left for scavengers or worse, devoured by the Chikorita, and had even begun to like the grass-type. Of course, his Hoothoot was a completely different story, but he had decided not to worry about it until he had to.

It proved to be less than ten minutes when he saw Cherrygrove, and set into a jog at the prospect of escaping the rain. He'd stopped by the pokemon center and heal his pokemon, then head home to show his parents his pokemon.

That brought back Ericka's comments. 'A more...Manly pokemon." What was wrong with a Chikorita? He knew that his dad would have preferred him to get a fighting type-Zach could certainly use the body-guard with his wimpy frame and horrid fighting skills-But there hadn't been any. Anyways, Chikorita had chosen him, not the other way around. Not that he was complaining. But Chikorita was a perfectly good pokemon.

He sighed. It'd probably just another of his down-comings. Zach just wasn't the son his father had wanted, unlike Tyler. But Tyler had disappeared years ago, and they hadn't heard word of him, or from him. Ryki, his older sister, was even considered more boyish than he, although he couldn't argue with that...Even Ericka, though once more he couldn't argue. At least his mother and younger sister, Molly, remained more girlish.

The pokemon center was one of the first buildings, and it had evidently been seeing enough of the mud-covered trainers to have laid down mats on the floor. Zach did scrape his shoes somewhat clean before entering however, returning Chikorita to his pokeball for transfer to the pokemon nurse.

"Hello, Nurse. I'd like my pokemon to be healed please." He dug Hoothoot's pokeball out of his pocket, handing over both to the Nurse, who smiled at him.

"We'd be glad to help. Why don't you take a seat and wait some? It'll only take a short while, but your Hoothoot's in a bit of a bad shape."

Zach walked over to an empty chair, pulling his pokedex out of his pocket. He hadn't checked the thing out as of yet, and wanted to figure out what it could do. He was startled slightly when a greeting flashed across the screen.

'Welcome, and thank you for activating Pokedex #2354. After this message you will find a tutorial, showing you through my more popular features, and a voluntary help system for the features not including the tutorial, or any questions you may have after finishing the tutorial.'

The screen went blank for a moment, before an oddish started to speak on the screen, the words flashing through in a little speech bubble. He was relieved it didn't make noise-There were quite a few people in here at this hour, and it'd be kind of embarrassing to have his pokedex rambling in the near silence of the pokemon center.

'The most commonly used feature of the pokedex is the pokemon information system. To activate it, merely take your pokedex out during a battle, or access the information by either pressing the green button, or using the access word 'Poke-Info'. A screen will appear listing the data of the pokemon.'

Zach blinked, as the screen flickered, and then showed the proper steps for accessing the information, even going so far as to have a little chibi form of him speaking 'Poke-Info'. He wondered who programmed the pokedex that it had his image, or if it simply scanned him and created one on its own.

'Another common feature is the map of all the Regions, although the one of the Orre Region is not yet complete, and inaccessible. To access this feature, either press the yellow button, or say the access word 'Map.'

Again the screen flickered, and again Zach found himself watching himself saying Map, and pressing a yellow button. He looked around furtively, but found no one was looking strangely at him, and his pokemon were not yet healed, and so returned to watching the tutorial.

'The next feature is the customize feature, in which you may customize your pokedex's personality, or way of offering information. Here you may also turn sound on or off, enable the newly installed phone feature, music feature, or battle-help feature.'

He wondered how you were supposed to give a pokedex a personality...He didn't know what he wanted his to be. The way it was was fine, so he wasn't going to mess with that, and likely mess it up. Sound he didn't mind being off, but he felt that he'd probably want it on later, and the last three features seemed to take over from the Pokenav...Which he didn't mind, as he didn't own one of the devices.

'To customize your pokedex's personality, simply hold the green and yellow button, and then switch choices with the yellow, and press the green when you have made a selection.'

Again his little Chibi-self popped up and began to show him how to do it, and he wondered if his head was actually that ovalish. It kind of reminded him of a ponyta.

'To turn on the sound, press and hold the yellow button, and then press it once more, and then the green button, or simply say 'Sound', which will change the sound feature to the opposite of which it is set on.'

Zach was kind of annoyed with his Chibi-Self now. The little figure had the goofiest grin on his face, and was still jumping around showing him what to do.

'The turn on any of the features, merely press and hold the green button, toggle with the yellow, press the green to make your choice, or say either, 'Phone, Music, Battle', to activate or de-activate. If you wish to access these features manually once on, press the blue button, toggle with the yellow, and choose with the green. Or say 'Phone Select, Music Select, or Battle Select.' Upon entering a battle, the battle feature will automatically start up, unless you decide otherwise.'

His Chibi-self popped up again, and went through the steps. Annoyed, Zach was quite glad when it announced the tutorial was over, and flickered into a screen in which his Chibi-self ran around in circles in pure fright of a Bannette. Despite the fact that this was quite a cruel joke, he didn't bother to mess with it, instead flipping the device shut and stuffing it in his pocket in time to hear his name called, and head up to the counter to receive his pokeballs. "Thank you."

"No problem. Have a nice day!"

Zach left the pokemon center, and headed to his house...In which he would have to face his parents, younger sister, and Ericka. He hoped Ericka hadn't gone on a pokemon catching spree, as it would make him feel bad, and he was now dreading telling his father which pokemon he chose. He had no such worries about his mother however, as she would think Chikorita just darling. That would only present another problem when dealing with his father though.