Joey leaned back in his chair and considered how today was quite possibly the most important day of his life. However, as he looked down at the simple nine-page exam he'd finished writing, three hours ahead of the deadline, he couldn't help but lament that the day was also quite boring. Questions about nutrition, wilderness survival, league regulations and Pokemon moves.
All dumbed down so that even the most mentally deficient twelve-year-old would have a chance at answering them. After having lived a long and fulfilling life which had involved at some point being at university in his last life, the simplicity of this exam and its disproportionately high stakes just felt like some sort of scam to him.
Looking at the other examinees, their cute little faces scrunched up in absolute concentration or despair, he silently apologized for what he was about to do. The exam time available was four hours. He'd finished it in one. He'd been staring at the finished thing for fifteen minutes now. It had become clear to him that if he had to do so for another second, he was either going to fall asleep or have to punch himself in the face to prevent that from happening.
Considering both options were similarly, if not more disturbing, he decided to simply raise his hand instead. He locked eyes with the Alakazam that was officiating the test, alongside a thirty-something man with a league shirt and black slacks. The Pokemon blinked at Jonathan, before poking the human invigilator with one of its silver spoons. The brown-haired man's attention focused on Jonathan with a frown, and he stood up from his position at his desk to come over and ask if he could be of help.
"Everything alright, do you need any clarification?" he asked, as he leaned down to speak with Joey and looked at his exam and ID, which he had lying on the desk. The invigilator looked concentrated as if checking that the freckles of the child in the picture matched Joey's and that his hair was the right shade of brown.
"I'm done," Joey whispered with a nervous glance around the sterile white room. Some kids were already pausing to look over at what was happening, like Carvanhas smelling blood, or shopping addicts smelling discounts.
The examiner frowned. "Are you sure?" he asked, before unceremoniously picking up the exam papers and glancing through the pages. Blocks of neatly written text met his vision and he apparently approved of what he saw as he didn't wait for the answer to his own question. "I see that you are," he muttered and collected the papers, letting Joey take his ID and leading him from desk to door.
Joey felt, rather than saw the glares of either fear, displeasure or superiority he was receiving from the other test-takers, who radiated those emotions depending on how well they thought he had done and what reasons he had for finishing early.
"Go to the front desk and get your results, Alakazam will have them sent through by the time you get there," the invigilator said after he'd handed Joey's papers to the yellow psychic Pokemon, who flipped through all nine pages in approximately five seconds and whose eyes lit up with purplish energy. Joey closed the door to the exam hall and sighed a breath of relief, leaving the anxiety-inducing atmosphere behind him.
"Sheesh," he muttered as he started making his way through the government building towards the front desk, passing ugly green plastic chairs and uninspired paintings shamefully hiding behind high-reaching plastic plants.
Eventually coming to the front desk, manned by a blue-haired lady in an orange blazer, the young boy tapped on the wood to get her attention. She looked up with a frown and sized him up, seeing the ratty blue shorts and yellow t-shirt. Joey pulled his cap further down to hide his face and with it his greatest shame.
With his reincarnation, he'd gone from a beautiful son of a bitch with a clear sense of style, to a young, and thus by default, stupid-looking child.
"Jonathan Joestar?" she asked, suspiciously, after having tapped around a bit on her desk computer.
"Call me Joey," Jonathan said and held up his ID, soon-to-be youngster license, for her to see.
"Quick one, aren't you?" she said with a small smile, before pulling a surprised Pikachu face, "and a near-perfect score as well, I see I can just send you in to get your Pokemon. No one's going to score higher than 99% and we have enough pidgeys available even in case someone does."
She picked up a phone and ignored him after that, which definitely happened more to children than adults. He stepped back so it wouldn't seem like he was listening in on the conversation.
He didn't have to wait long in the badly decorated entrance hall, and was glad for that, for he would have probably lost his soul after a certain period. That was at least his understanding of how bureaucracies functioned, especially government ones.
It was a young woman with honey-blonde hair in a green-breeders outfit who arrived, holding a bucket of poke-chow in one hand and a Poke-Nav in the other. She smiled beatifically and bid for Jonathan to follow, which he did. The journey thankfully took them out the back of the horrid regional office of Saffron and into a fenced backyard filled with trees and ponds. He gleefully noticed the now-present Pokemon.
They were all stuck mingling inside a pen made out of wooden fences, and just from the outside a vast variety already became apparent. There were Caterpies eating leaves, Pidgeys picking at the dirt and some Rattata looking around nervously. The rats didn't really look like they wanted to be there, in the open, but seemed unwilling to let the wooden door of the fence out of their sight.
Truly, from the vast choice of future champions and elite four contenders available in the pen, one could clearly see the great care the league put in brandishing its youngsters with proper starters.
The mismatched pair of adult and child stopped in front of the entrance, at which point the former turned to the latter.
"Considering you finished your exam so fast, you have quite some time to pick a starter. Do you maybe already have an idea of what you want?" she asked, with a smile.
Jonathan thoughtfully scratched at the non-existent stubble on his chin and adjusted his cap. He wondered how to communicate his training philosophy and the plan he had to become the youngest generalist conference winner ever. He'd spent nearly twelve years now thinking about the knowledge he'd carried over into this world from playing the Pokemon games and watching the show, and combining them in a sort of unholy Hegelian dialectic, with the newly attained very real information he'd gleaned from his classes, the Pokenet, and the library in this new world.
There were a variety of Pokemon with different advantages and disadvantages. In that context, he had considered a variety of perfect team compositions that would help him achieve his goal in the most efficient way possible.
However, since he couldn't completely control in what order he would find what Pokemon, he had decided to centre the building of his team on a few universal qualities that were present in any species. Qualities that were much more relevant for success than being of a specific typing.
"I want a hard worker that's capable of adapting to different situations. In other words, a motivated Pokemon with some modicum of intelligence," he thus explained to the breeder, who gave him a surprised smile.
"Well, I meant more which species of Pokemon you'd like, I understand that due to Saffron having the fighting gym the preference is usually with the Pidgey line. Especially due to their relatively high-grade evolutions," she said.
Jonathan shook his head, "I don't have a preference. We just need to be compatible personality-wise. Although, maybe you could tell me what you have. I'm curious now."
The breeder stepped up to the enclosure and met the gazes of the Pokemon who'd walked, crawled and hobbled up to listen to their conversation. "Well, as you can see we have a selection of rattatas, Pidgeys and Caterpie. There should be a Meowth somewhere in there, but it seems to be hiding. A good collection, all in all. How about you take some food and go meet them yourself," she suggested and offered Joey the bucket she'd been carrying, from which he took a fistful of hard brown pellets.
Not thinking much of it Joey entered the enclosure through the door and bent down to observe the first brave Pokemon that approached him.
He let a Caterpie with gigantic eyes, full of innocence and naivety eat a pellet from his hand, the bonding moment interrupted by a Pidgey jumping onto the caterpie's back and demonstratively showing off its wing-span. Joey flicked the little bird on the forehead and caused it to fall back and off the Caterpie with an undignified squawk.
"No bullies," he chastised, before moving on.
Slowly but surely he moved through the grass and the trees, handing out pellets here and there, not finding the spark he was looking for. It was all great fun and he got to pet almost as many Pokemon as that one time a Growlithe breeder allowed the orphanage to visit their ranch.
It was when he only had one pellet left in his hand, and most Pokemon had lost their interest in him, that he was approached by a lone male rattata, who chittered his name excitedly. He barely reached up to the boy's knees and so Joey had to bend down to give it the last pellet. Instead of immediately eating it, however, the rattata gripped it in one of its tiny purple paws and ran off, handing it to another rat, before returning. He then demonstratively went on his hind legs and did a few faux-punches with his paws, while speaking enthusiastically.
"Rat, ttata, ttata, ta," he chittered as he went through its little shadow-boxing routine, weaving under and over the strikes of an imaginary opponent as it delivered right hooks and fast jabs.
"You're a fighter then?" Joey asked amusedly, at which it excitedly nodded and wagged its tail.
Joey nodded his head and flexed his bicep at the rat, showing an impressive muscle definition for his age. "Good," he said.
He hadn't had much to do in this world, other than train himself, read and prepare for his Pokemon journey. After all, he wasn't allowed to leave the city until he had a Pokemon of his own, or he was old enough to weigh the risks himself. In that way, it wasn't that surprising that he'd ended up being quite athletic.
The rattata flexed its left arm right back at Jonathan after taking a few seconds to consider the gesture, and the boy was surprised to see that there was some power already present in the rat. He laughed heartily. "So you're not afraid of physical training, then. That's great, a strong body is the foundation for any battling endeavor. But battling also consists of moves, which require an intense meditation on type energy, you think you're up for that?" he asked.
The rat looked up at him with a serious expression, before sitting down and considering for a moment. Jonathan let it ponder as he looked around. While some Pokemon were watching him in interest, some other examinees seemed to be talking to the breeder at the door to the enclosure and thus most Pokemon had gathered there to look at the new attraction. Suddenly feeling a light stub on his right knee he looked down to see that the rattata was bumping him with its snout.
After he noticed that he had gained Jonathan's attention it excitedly ran in a circle, before settling on a battle-ready stance on all fours. The atmosphere shifted slightly, and Jonathan thought he detected a white glow coming off of rattata's fur as the wind stilled to signal that the little rascal was gathering energy to perform some sort of move. Going by the position, with Jonathan as its target.
Instead of being scared, Jonathan simply laughed and entered a horse stance, knees bent and arms raised. "Oh, so you want to show me what you're capable of?" he asked. "Well, there's no better way to see your resolve than to experience it on my own body. Show me what you've got!" He encouraged and steeled himself for what was probably an incoming Tackle.
He knew that the 0-tier Pokemon were defined by the fact that without significant training, they had the same threat level as a normal human, which is why it was Pokemon of this tier that were given to youngsters as starters.
The quadruped's leg muscles visibly tensed as it glared at its prospective trainer and the glow around it became stronger, becoming starkly visible even under the strong summer sun.
Rattata suddenly blurred and disappeared from its spot.
Surprised by the sudden Quick Attack, rather than the expected Tackle, Jonathan barely caught the little bugger after he harshly impacted his stomach. He threw himself backwards with the rat in his arms to bleed off some momentum and ended up rolling once or twice. Finishing on his back, with a quickly forming bruise, he held up the probably around four-kilogram heavy rat, who chittered and wagged his tail so excitedly one could have mistaken it for a canine. Jonathan lifted the Pokemon in the air as he lay there and as he looked past the Pokemon's large incisors and into its large, hopeful red eyes, he knew that he'd found the partner with whom he would make the world fear the name Joey.
-/-
Of course, that dramatic statement wasn't the conclusion to the chapter about Joey's acquisition of the youngster license, as he still needed to go tell the breeder what Pokemon he'd picked. Although, with the way he was carrying rattata like a princess, it would have been hard to overlook the decision. As he walked past the kids now picking their own starters, mostly encircling the pidgeys, some of them took time away from trying to get close to the brown and cream-coloured birds to laugh at Joey's choice of pokemon. The breeder, however, smiled at him, seemingly pleased, before sending him away to get to the next step of the day.
Leaving behind the bird-thirsty youngsters Joey eventually ended up in a small office inhabited by a bored male clerk.
Upon giving the man, whose appearance was just as unassuming as the beige colouring of the office, his ID, the clerk scanned it through a document printing terminal. It came out not much different; same name, same picture, just that there was now a boldly printed 'Youngster License,' on the left upper corner. Right above Joey's headshot and a trainer identification number.
The clerk explained the monthly stipend issued on a youngster's account at the beginning of every month, for the time period of one year and that Joey now had access to a Pokemon Center's facilities and a discount at the Poke-Mart. The basic PokeNav, which also served as a battle registration tool and as a portable transfer terminal for all wins and losses one incurred, was given to him with the information that the accompanying backpack would be handed over in a later room.
After having handled that step, Joey was sent to the adjacent office, where another breeder, this one male, attached an everstone collar to Rattata and gave a similar short lecture on things most youngsters were already aware of, but which the league probably had to mention for legal reasons.
The whole speech boiled down to the fact that Rattata was a 0-tier Pokemon because, in its unevolved state, it was only about as dangerous as a child, aka Joey. Evolving him would require winning three badges and any premature evolution by removal of the everstone could result in a loss of license.
Next Joey and a newly unevolvable rattata went to an office in which he was told that youngsters had a carry limit of one until they won their first badge, upon which the youngster license would be upgraded to a trainer license. This increased the carry limit to two, the stipend and additionally allowed the capture and training of 1-tier pokemon, like Oddish, Weedle and Spearow.
A trainer that got their license this way, however, would still not be allowed to travel, at least until they finished the one-year tenure they'd started as youngsters. Once that finished they would begin receiving a full trainer's stipend, and only lose it if they were unable to gather five badges by the end of the next circuit.
The last office was the final one, where Joey got a backpack shoved in his face by a slowking, who seemed uninterested in communicating further. This endeared him to Joey, and he mentally ranked the pokemon as his third most favourite league official he'd had to deal with that day, mostly because he didn't talk.
Leaving the building by the front entrance, Joey opened the backpack to pull out a pokeball belt and one pristine white and red pokeball.
"Ok, buddy, in you go, just for a second. To register you as my pokemon, so that no other trainer comes up with the stupid idea to catch you," he said to his companion and tapped him with the button of the pokeball. Like magic the ball snapped open, transforming the rattata into a beam of red light and sucking him inside, it snapped shut like a fly-trap afterwards. Joey did good on his promise and released his starter immediately after and watched amusedly as he shook itself from nose to bottom in a confused manner once he materialized on the ground.
"Did you actually take a rattata?" someone suddenly asked behind Joey, causing him to turn around and find himself staring at one of the other examinees, this one with pidgey on his shoulder.
"Huh?"
The black-haired kid shook his head in faux disappointment, tousling his odd puffy white blouse. "You know that you have no chance against the gym with a weak pokemon like that. You might as well have chosen a magikarp, but wait... at least their final evolution sometimes appears in conferences," the boy said haughtily, while the pidgey on his shoulder preened.
Joey glanced down at rattata, who for all intents and purposes was taking the abuse quite well. Sure he was standing on his hind legs and baring his teeth threateningly, but that was quite mild. Pokemon were drawn to conflict since most of them had an innate desire to grow stronger. In his admittedly limited experience, rattata not challenging the boy and his pidgey to a fight showed a fairly restrained nature.
"Excuse me, who are you?" Joey eventually asked once the boy's tirade was over.
The offender grew red in the face and harrumphed, "I'm Michael, you better remember that second place. You might have beaten me in the exam scores, but I challenge you to a pokemon battle!" he proclaimed.
Joey looked around, to check if he wasn't perhaps being recorded for some sort of prank show. The bustle of Saffron seemed normal, with businessmen and engineers running around frantically to and from different buildings. There wasn't any indication that anything was wrong.
Something that Michael had said piqued his curiosity, however. "If I was second place, then who was first?" he asked, ignoring the challenge. He idly bent down to pick up rattata, so he wouldn't accept on his behalf.
Michael snorted, "Some girl named Sabrina, she didn't even show up today." He looked at Joey expectantly.
Joey realized that he was still waiting for an answer to his challenge. "Ah," he started as if just remembering. He didn't really want to battle yet. Youngsters didn't get any fancy pokedex with a scan function so he didn't know what moves rattata had, and neither had the two acclimatized to each other yet. However, this wasn't just his decision to make, so he looked down at his starter, who was turning in his arms.
"What do you think?" Joey asked, "I don't know your moves yet, we have no rapport and I haven't trained you at all. In a few weeks, I'd accept the challenge and win easily. But now, it would essentially be a coin-flip."
"Hey!" Michael shouted at the implication that he wouldn't be able to win after a few weeks, but similarly to Joey, focused his gaze on the pokemon making the decision.
A light struggle against his hold ensued, which Joey interpreted as a desire to be dropped to the floor. Once that was done rattata took a combative stance on all fours, baring his sharp incisors and saying some choice words to the pidgey. It was hard to understand the exact wording of the, "rattataratatata," but the general gist was quite angry. From the horrified look the pidgey gained it might have also even been offensive. Joey really hoped that rattata had issued a sophisticated burn against the fluffed-up bird rather than just calling its father a dumb bastard.
Disregarding the potential low-level discourse of 0-tier pokemon, Joey looked through his backpack for the PokeNav he'd dropped in there.
Michael did the same and the two newly christened youngsters sent each other a quick challenge, the program responsible for logging that information setting the odds at 1:1. Joey chose the lowest possible bet, the one for 10 poke-dollars, since anything more would represent more than 1% of his weekly stipend.
"I can't believe you let your pokemon choose your battles," Michael scoffed as he idly recalled the pidgey on his shoulder. The bird had carried a far-away look throughout the official part of setting the challenge and disappeared with a surprised squawk. Maybe it had come up with a retort to rattatas witticism?
Joey shrugged. "It's a partnership, he seemed to feel quite strongly about it."
"Whatever, let's get to the field. The one by the Pokecenter should be fine, you're gonna need it after," Michael said and the two walked off. It was an odd feeling walking shoulder to shoulder with someone you were beginning to actively dislike. But since the dislike wasn't quite personal yet, Joey could at least just stare blankly ahead as they walked and didn't need to make some sort of awkward conversation.
If anything it was rattata filling the silence, chittering excitedly whenever they passed a high building, another pokemon, or a hot-dog stand. Some weird looks were beginning to fly Joey's way for having his pokemon out and running beside him, but the boy simply didn't feel like returning the obvious country rat during his first time in the big city.
Generally, trainers were encouraged to keep their weapons of mass destruction in their balls, but considering rattata at this point represented a 0-tier threat and could probably barely demolish half a bowl of pasta, Joey decided to ignore that general suggestion.
The youngsters eventually arrived at the gravelly battlefield behind the Pokecenter and naturally took up the two opposing positions of the large Pokeball marking on the floor. They were lucky in the sense that today was the day that the youngsters and the trainers were getting their Pokemon and that they thus didn't have to wait in line for the battle.
Joey glanced at Michael, and his, quite frankly, weird outfit consisting of a puffy white shirt and a pair of white shorts. He knew that the kid was obviously trying to develop some sort of brand, likely from the advice of some older sibling or from the poke-net. However, he was mostly being an eye-sore and a walking crime against fashion, so Joey was a bit salty at the existing possibility that he might lose this battle because rattata was apparently easy to rile up. Of course, complaining about an overly-enthusiastic pokemon was dumb, so he shoved the thought aside and summoned his boi to the battlefield.
Rattata walked on a bit stiltedly, as if just realizing what he'd gotten himself into. "Come on rattata, let's show this ball of feathers who's boss!" Joey shouted encouragingly, at which his pokemon squared up a bit.
Michael released his pidgey to his side of the arena and made the very unfortunate, for Joey, decision to shout, "To the skies, pidgey," as he did so.
Joey mentally cursed at the bird's ascension, worried that air supremacy could end up being the deciding factor in this battle. Rather than waiting for any sort of countdown to start the battle, the two hadn't arranged one, he started calling out the moves he thought Rattata might know.
"Rattata, use Focus Energy, and if you don't know how, then use Tail Whip!" he shouted and sighed as the rat took a few seconds to process the command, before starting to cutely wag its tail while looking at the circling pidgey with wide eyes.
"Pidgey, Peck that rat," Michael said confidently, at which his bird just continued flapping around.
Rattata got to wag his tail cutely for another few seconds, lowering its threat level in the eyes of its opponent, before Michael realised that his pokemon didn't know peck and instead ordered it to, "Tackle!"
With surprising speed, the pidgey heard the command and executed it.
Knowing that this was the point where he had to make a quick decision between two possibilities, Joey made his choice. In essence, rattata was unable to reach pidgey at all, due to being grounded. This meant that he could only damage his opponent when it tried to attack him. It could do this in one of two ways. Either, by dodging the attack and retaliating in a devastating counter, or by meeting the attack head-on. The former was preferable in most situations, but as he'd seen with his previous command of tail whip, he and rattata probably weren't synched enough to execute it yet. Which left him with only one option really.
"Rattata, meet the pidgey head-on with a Quick Attack!" he ordered and watched as white energy was built up around his pokemon, barely visible to the naked eye under the bright spring sun. The pidgey descended, its Tackle was a move inherently less powerful than Quick Attack, so while the whole thing was a gamble, it was more in Joey's favour. It galled him that he didn't have another strategy and he winced when pidgey and rattata met in mid-air, rattata having jumped up on its powerful legs to meet its adversary. The two crashed with a loud thump, which reverberated throughout the air, causing all other sounds to cease for a second.
As the two fell to the ground life resumed and both Joey and his opponent simultaneously ran to the middle of the field to check up on their starters. Both of them had swirls in their eyes and were obviously out for the count, lying on top of each other like two drunk friends.
"It's a draw," Joey muttered disappointedly and was about to say more when Michael interrupted.
"Wait!" he shouted excitedly as pidgey, the one on the top of the duo, started stirring and shakily rolled down off of rattata to land on the ground like a discarded beer bottle. A large bump was growing on its head. It was by no means ready to continue battling, but unlike Joey's pokemon, it was at least conscious.
"Ha, I knew you were nothing special!" Michael hawked shakily, his hands trembling, his pidgey nearly falling to the ground as he returned the bird.
"Catch you later, loser!" he shouted as a goodbye and promptly ran into
the Pokecenter, nearly tripping over himself as he did so.
Joey pulled out his PokeNav and saw his battle record turn to a 0-1, a little icon of a rattata battling a pidgey being set as the first match in the history of his account. It hurt to lose, but he didn't mind. Losing was always a lesson, whereas winning was seldom good for more than just the ego. One could, essentially, fall up the ladder. It was a skill he thought he'd mastered over the years. The only issue was that he wasn't solely dependent on himself anymore. If rattata lost the will to continue after this setback, Joey would have to go out and look for a new starter.
-/-
As he watched rattata, newly healed by nurse Joy, excitedly punching the air and angrily chittering its name in Joey's room, probably cursing the pidgey he'd lost to, the boy thankfully concluded that he had worried over nothing.
In a way, it made sense for a rattata to not be that affected by losing. After all, in a way, they were a species created for the sole purpose of losing. A small Pokemon that usually never weighed more than four kilograms and which was only given to youngsters because of its commonness, it was essentially, the perfect underdog.
"I think we've had enough excitement for today, but I'd say that starting tomorrow, a week of training should be enough to beat that pidgey in a rematch," Joey proposed to the rat. The starter in turn crossed his arms and shook his head.
"Rattata," he said and went down on all fours on the blue carpet, baring his teeth.
"You want to find the pidgey right now, and show it who's boss?" Joey asked curiously, getting an enthusiastic nod in return. He looked around the little room that he inhabited in the Saffron orphanage. A rickety bed, a closet and a small table with textbooks and pens scattered on it. A window that showed it was night outside.
"I didn't agree with battling the pidgey right then and there, you know," he reprimanded. "But I respected your opinion and did it anyway. That's what a partnership is about. But now, we've tried your method, I think it's only fair we now see the validity of mine."
Rattata seemed to contemplate for a moment, before holding up its little paw, one little digit outstretched.
"You want to train for one day, then go battle?"
"Rattata!" The pokemon agreed with a hefty nod and more air-punching.
"Four days," he retorted, "we need at least that, in my opinion."
The starter seemed hesitant, causing Joey to sigh.
"I'll get you a berry if you manage all four days without complaining," he tried to negotiate.
Rattata chittered excitedly, its pupils taking on the shape of oran berries, before nodding vigorously.
"Deal, but now we sleep," Joey said, before yawning with outstretched arms. He was tired. Throwing rattata one of his blankets he watched as it made a nest in the corner behind the desk.
His fears about the pokemon losing its will to battle had obviously been unfounded. If anything, the little guy was more fired up than ever. Joey was slowly coming to the realisation, however, that while he'd gotten a very spirited and motivated starter, he hadn't necessarily received the brightest.
That didn't matter as much, however, as the pokemon was still quite young and would mature eventually. Also, thinking was the job of the trainer anyway. For all that Joey had lost his first battle he was still confident that with some time, there wouldn't be a single youngster in Saffron capable of matching him.
Perhaps this was an arrogance inherent to his position as an adult competing against literal children, but somehow he'd also seen a certain something in his starter today. The gutsy attitude of someone unwilling to give up, to look back, to falter. In other words, Joey had seen potential.
In the end, only time would tell if rattata, or himself, really had it in them to belong to the top percentage. But for the moment Joey went to sleep confident in the belief that if nothing else, they wouldn't go down without a hell of a fight.