Rating: PG, because when people have no clue what to rate their story they rate it PG "for safety" and because there is some mild violence in here, too.
Author's Notes: This is my first parody 'fic, and I have no clue if it's at all funny. Basically, I wrote it because I was bored and fed up with the generic fan fiction that seems to permeate this site. Anyway, if you read this, please review so I know if this is remotely good.
Chapter One: Land of Cliché Beginnings (Pallet Town)
When Jake awoke, he could not at first realize why excitement suddenly began to bubble in his veins. He lay beneath the covers pondering what could possibly be so special about this morning as opposed to all of the others that he had awakened for. Wait…it was something like him…going to see the Professor…and pokémon.
With that stunning realization, he leaped from his bed and bellowed, "I'm late!"
His slowpoke alarm clock, however, wished to contradict this: its cheery face read 4:18 AM.
"Never mind, I'm not," Jake observed as he became aware of the clock's proclamation. A feeling of impending doom began to creep over him. "Oh, no! This is terrible! It's an absolute rule that a person who wants to become a trainer has to be late for their appointment with the Professor!"
He sat dejectedly on the end of his bed, pondering how to deal with this unexpected occurrence. He couldn't very well go to get his pokémon at this hour; he was far too early. Eventually, he decided to just crawl back under the sheets and arise at a suitably late hour.
When he awoke for the second time, he found to his annoyance that he was exactly on time. Muttering to himself about bad omens and the importance of untimely arrivals, he pulled the snorlax-patterned comforter back over his head and lay there for another fifteen minutes, biding his time.
When he at last emerged, having decided to wait an extra five minutes just in case, he was ready to go about the process of preparing for his trip in suitable last-minute fashion. He ransacked his room, pulling random items of clothing out of his drawers and tugging them on, the consequence of which being that he ended up wearing his green treecko t-shirt inside-out and one brown and one yellow sock , then proceeding to throw whatever items came to hand into his trusty backpack (no self-respecting trainer-to-be would ever dream of packing beforehand).
He bolted down the stairs to the kitchen where his mother was, naturally, waiting patiently for his arrival. "Late, are we?" she observed as he collapsed into one of the kitchen chair and began inhaling the plate of scrambled eggs that waited there.
"Duh," he grunted around a mouthful of yellow mush and orange juice. "Almost messed up, too. I got up way early."
"That's nice, dear," his mother replied, having heard only a series of muffled grunts that might have passed for an irate gorilla.
Swallowing his last huge mouthful, Jake leapt from the chair and dove to his mother to give her the required hug before leaving. "Where's dad?" he asked her as she released him from the embrace.
"Oh, your father? He's, um, off at work…or something. He's really sorry that he couldn't be here to see you off," his mother replied, puzzled by the question. "Call home often, dear," she added.
"I will mom. See you later," Jake added, sprinting madly for the door and bursting from the house without a single look back. He dashed up the hill at the south of town and over to Pallet's most famous establishment: the Oak Pokémon Laboratory. Upon reaching it, he wearily pounded on the handsome oak door and leaned against the wall, panting and waiting for it to be opened.
When it did, Jake's legs nearly gave way with shock. "Professor, what happened to your face?" he gasped.
"What face?" Professor Oak replied, mystified by Jake's terror. In essence, he had none, merely a blank head graced by grizzled gray hair. "Oh, you mean how I don't have one?" the Professor asked kindly upon realizing what had caused all of the confusion. Jake nodded mutely, still too shocked to speak. "It's because I'm a soulless character whose only purpose is to move along the plot," explained the Professor, voice still cheerful. "Now come in, you're late as it is."
The faceless man led Jake into the bowels of the Lab, eventually halting in a small storage room. Rack upon rack of red-and-white pokéballs were crammed into the sterile white room, creating a confusing maze of dormant pokémon. The Professor cheerily bustled in amongst the numerous shelves, and Jake watched him with unease. The faceless character had unnerved him. He'd never met the famous Oak in person but he had always sort of assumed that he was more than just a hollow plot device.
"Ah, now here's just the thing," the Professor announced from behind one of the shelves. "A nice regirock. The perfect pokémon companion, indeed." he reemerged, holding the creature's minimized poke ball out to Jake.
"A regirock?" Jake gasped. "You mean the regirock?"
The Professor apparently mistook Jake's awe for dismissal. "Hm, you're right, nobody really likes the regis much anyway, do they?" he observed, carelessly tossing the pokéball behind him and back into the maze of storage shelves; Jake heard it clack to the floor somewhere in the distance. The Professor soon followed its lead, weaving back in amongst the racks of potential pokémon. "No, I suppose you're right. You're much more the entei sort of trainer, I'm sure of it."
Jake was stupefied. Since when did the Professor give trainers powerful legendary pokémon to begin with? "What about charmander, bulbasaur, and squirtle?" he asked tentatively as the Professor continued to scrounge.
"Them?" the Professor asked with a surprised edge to his voice, which floated out from somewhere deep withing the bowels of the shelf maze. "Yes, I suppose I have some of those on hand, too…somewhere. Hold on a minute, then, one charmander coming right up."
"Wait! I don't want charmander!" Jake called desperately after him.
The Professor's head poked around one of the racks, its nonexistent eyes staring in consternation and Jake. "Don't…want…charmander?" the Professor asked in consternation. "My dear boy, everyone, simply everyone picks charmander!"
"Well, I'm not going to," Jake replied meekly. The Professor continued to stare for a few more minutes, then disappeared.
"And which one is it, then, for the boy who is too good for charmander?" he asked irritably, voice drifting back to Jake.
"Bulbasaur, please," Jake replied, completely deflated.
The Professor at last reappeared, clutching in his hand one very dusty pokéball. Jake reached out for it, but the Professor kept a very good grip on it. "Are you sure you want this one? I have some very nice vulpix and eevee here in the back," he asked in an almost pleading tone. "Don't you even want it to be an unusual color or something? I think it might look very good in a nice shade of violet…"
"No," Jake replied firmly. "All right," the Professor sighed, holding out the pokéball, which Jake rather snatched, afraid that he might withdraw it again. The faceless Professor then reached into one of the pockets of his white lab coat and drew forth a slim red device, one which Jake recognized to be a pokédex. After giving that to Jake, he continued to stand there, right hand stroking his flat chin, pondering. "I seem to have forgotten something," he muttered pensively. "Let's see, you have the pokédex, you have the pokémon," he suddenly stopped stroking and snapped his fingers. "Of course! Wait just one moment!" He scurried out of the room, leaving Jake alone with his pokédex and pokémon. Jake decided to program his pokédex while he waited.
Flipping open his pokédex so that it unfolded like a book, he was immediately awed by the number of buttons that presented themselves to him. The screen on the left-hand flap flickered to life, displaying a cheery welcome message, and a tinny, perky voice emanated from the device. "Greetings! I am your new pokédex, version 1,203,746.5-Kanto. Please enter your personal information to begin."
The screen wiped itself blank and replaced the welcome message with a blank trainer card and several empty fields. Jake filled them in obediently, having discovered that some of the numerous buttons were actually a keyboard with all of the usual letters and numbers.
Name: Jake Skyreem
Age: 10
Place of birth: Pallet Town, Kanto.
Physical Description: Short, curly brown hair, brown eyes, 5'5 in height.
He pressed the enter button, only to have the pokédex bleep angrily at him. "Error!" it snarled. "Incomplete personal description field! Please go into excruciating detail about personal appearance, including clothing description!"
"What?" Jake asked in surprise. "Why the heck would I need to do that? Who really cares about all of that stuff?"
"Why simply everybody wants to read a lengthy, overly descriptive paragraph or three about the protagonist's appearance," the pokédex explained, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Forget it, I don't have time for that," Jake snapped irritably. The Professor would be back any minute with the whatever-it-was that he went to fetch, and he wanted to be done with the pokédex programming before that.
"Come on, just a little bit about your attire?" the computer whined. "And what kind of hair color is 'brown,' anyway?"
"That's what color my hair is," Jake replied, beginning to grow angry.
"Oh, please. It should be something more interesting…'fiery red' is a popular selection."
"Forget it," Jake growled, shutting the pokédex's cover. The device, unused to being treated in such an unprofessional manner, vindictively erased the "brown" from Jake's personal description, replacing it with the much more fitting "turquoise."
Jake's hair obligingly became a stunning blue-green hue just as the Professor burst back through the door, puffing as he lugged along a large cardboard cutout of something. "Silly me, I forgot to get you a rival!" the faceless man chuckled, propping the cutout up against one of the racks so that it faced Jake. He paused as he noticed Jake's sudden change of appearance. "Been programming your pokédex?" he asked Jake sympathetically.
"Err, yeah, how did you know?" Jake asked, being as of yet unaware of his hair's miraculous transformation as it was safely out of sight on the top of his head.
"Nothing, I just guessed," the Professor replied, deciding not to break the news to the new trainer just yet. "Anyway, here's your rival. His name is Terry, and I'm sure that you two will learn to loathe each other." Jake now saw that the cardboard cutout that the Professor had brought was one depicting a boy of about his age and height, one arm upraised as though prepared to throw something, his black hair spiked according to the latest Kanto fashion, mouth set into a frozen sneer. Professor Oak proceeded to press a pokéball into the cardboard person's upraised hand, where it stuck miraculously as though it had been glued there. "I'll leave you two to get to know each other, then," the Professor continued. "I have work to do. When you're ready to go, Jake, just leave the way that you came in." He bustled out, leaving Jake to stare at the cardboard boy.
At first nothing happened, then suddenly a haughty voice began to emanate from the cardboard, though Terry's mouth didn't move. The voice sounded oddly muffled, as though Terry had been smashed up against a pane of glass and was now beginning to speak to Jake from the other side. "Ha ha, you picked bulbasaur, you dweeb. Everybody knows that's a stupid, weakling pokémon."
"No it's not," Jake replied defensively. He felt a small twinge of guilt, realizing that he hadn't even let the poor creature out of its ball yet.
"Just the sort of excuse that I would expect coming from a hopeless loser like yourself," Terry retorted. "I bet that you can't even battle with the worthless thing."
Jake began to feel an irrational hatred of Terry creeping into his consciousness. "Take that back!" he bellowed.
"No!" sneered Terry. "In fact, I'll just sit here all day, insulting you, until you beat me in a pokémon battle."
The option of simply walking away from Terry or perhaps just ignoring him never occurred to Jake. "All right, fine. Go, bulbasaur!" He threw his new pokéball down to the floor of the lab, where it expelled its resident with a starburst of silvery light. The small green pokémon turned to give Jake a bemused look before focusing her red eyes back on Terry.
The pokéball in Terry's hand dropped to the floor with a clatter. "Go, charmander!" Terry commanded, and on its second bounce his pokéball disgorgeda red lizard before levitating mysteriously back to his hand. "That's the pokémon that you should have picked," Terry taunted. "Everybody knows that charmander's the best."
Jake, excited at being in his first battle, whipped out his new pokédex to scan the charmander, even though he was already familiar with its species.
As he pointed it at the patiently waiting lizard, the pokédex gave a sullen bleep and announced, "Target is a female salamence, level twenty-eight, knowing attacks guillotine, frenzy plant, and metronome."
"What?" Jake asked in shock. "That's not what it is!" he cried, shaking the pokédex wildly. "It's a charmander! Even I know that!"
"Fine, so it's a charmander," the pokédex replied sarcastically, "at level fifty-nine, knowing attacks blast burn, slash, scary face, and fly. You're screwed, kid."
"Oh, come on!" Jake pleaded with the machine.
"Next time, try to follow the rules, okay, mister brown hair?" the pokédex sneered before falling silent.
"What a fool! Can't even work his pokédex properly!" Terry shouted gleefully. "Charmander, let's get this over with. Scratch!"
"Oh, no you don't," Jake said hastily. "Bulbasaur, use tackle."
Charmander used scratch.
Bulbasaur used tackle.
"Umm, bulbasaur, what was that?" Jake asked his pokémon, who was now sporting three oozing cuts on her forehead. She merely looked up at him, mystified. "Shouldn't you have, you know, charged at the opponent and knocked them over instead of just 'using tackle?''' Jake clarified. The seed pokémon merely blinked, then returned her attention to the charmander, which was struggling back to its feet, tail flame flaring up angrily.
"Tackle again, bulbasaur," Jake commanded.
"This time use growl, charmander," commanded Terry.
The battle was over quickly. Bulbasaur obligingly tore down the field at her opponent, throwing her small body into its creamy stomach. The charmander choked on his growl as the breath left his body and he was knocked once more to the floor. Though he wildly clawed at bulbasaur's green hide, she merely continued to bludgeon away at him with her bulk. At last he gave in, lying panting on the floor.
"Aww, man," whined Terry. "Return, charmander." A red beam of light erupted from the pokéball in his hand, encircling the comatose pokémon and drawing it back into confinement. "You may have won this round, but the war is far from over," Terry announced. "I'm the better trainer, you'll see."
"Hah. Sure," Jake scoffed. "Come on, bulbasaur, let's get moving. Next stop, Viridian City!" He turned to leave, only to realize that his pokémon was not following his lead. "Uh, bulbasaur?" he asked, turning back.
Bulbasaur ignored him, instead cautiously approaching terry. She was curious about how the apparently inanimate object could be speaking and, indeed, battling with pokémon. She drew closer, sniffing uncertainly at one cardboard leg.
"Get away from me you stupid pokémon," Terry raged. He was powerless to stop her, however, and she ignored him. Bulbasaur experimentally butted his leg with her head, only to recoil in terror as his sneering visage suddenly loomed overhead, coming closer by the second. She scrambled wildly away, the cardboard boy falling flat on his face behind her. The pokéball was jarred from his hand and rolled across the floor, coming to rest some two feet away.
Bulbasaur dashed back to her trainer, anxiously looking back at the toppled Terry. Jake had no remorse, however. "How do you like that, you cocky twit?" he asked, feeling incredibly superior. Then, bending down to scoop bulbasaur up in his arms, he departed the lab, emerging into a sleepily stirring Pallet Town.
He released bulbasaur, who proceeded to sniff with interest at a dandelion in full bloom to one side of the dirt path leading to the Lab. "Good work, bulbasaur," Jake congratulated her. "That really showed the twerp."
"Bulb bulba saursaur bulba," she replied distractedly, scratching at one of the already scabbed-over wounds form her recent battle with charmander.
Seeing this, Jake remembered that she needed healing after her fight. "Hang on just a minute, I've got a potion in here somewhere," he muttered, rooting around in his backpack. He shoved aside a jumble of extra clothes and underwear and dug past the pile of coins that had previously resided in hisgrumpig bank but failed to find the potion that he knew must be in the bag somewhere. Grumbling irritably, he began to pull out the backpack's contents and see if he could organize it a little better. Out flew some chewing gum, two issues of Trainer magazine, and a much-loved copy of Training Like the Pros: Learn How to Become the Best in Twenty-Five Easy Steps. Out came a lone wigglytuff slipper (what was that doing in there?), some of the spending money that his mother had given him, and, at last, the potion.
Abandoning any attempts at organization for now, he shoved the excess junk back into the backpack, briefly marveling at how a storage area so small could swallow half of the contents of his room, and turned the nozzle of the potion. He bent down and gently misted bulbasaur with the healing liquid. She winced as the stinging astringent touched her wounds, but then relaxed as the chemical began to do its work. In no time at all her scrapes and scratches had disappeared as if by magic, and Jake had only had to use half of the bottle. Closing it once more, he tossed it haphazardly into his backpack and heaved the bulging bag onto his back.
Contemplating bulbasaur's pokéball, which was still clutched tightly in his left hand, he asked, "You want to stay outside your ball?"
"Saur! Saur bulba!" she replied adamantly. Jake took that as a yes, clipping the device to his belt and turning to face what he hoped was north.
"Well, it's off to Viridian, then!" he announced, striding forth bravely. Bulbasaur trailed along behind, occasionally stopping to smell the flowers and wonder why her trainer was headed for the ocean.
Upon realizing that he had been headed the wrong way, Jake mareepishly did an about-face and marched off once more, this time actually heading in the general direction of Viridian. As he reached the town's outskirts, however, he barely had time to appreciate the vast expanse of waving grass that lay before him before his eyes fell upon a distraction.
A girl was striding towards him, a girl like none he had ever seen before. She was obviously immaculately described, right down to her woefully impractical miniskirt and high-heeled boots. Jake had the irrational urge to fall to his knees and worship the ground that she walked upon. Bulbasaur, drawing level with her trainer, merely sniffed disapprovingly as the stranger approached.
As the girl drew closer to Jake, who was miraculously still on his feet, she flipped her stunning silver hair away from her face and announced cheerfully, "Hi! My name's Mary, but my numerous friends call me Sue. I challenge you to a battle!"
----
Meanwhile, Terry remained, alone and forgotten, on the floor of the lab. "Hello?" he called plaintively, voice even more muffled than before. "Is there anybody there?"
Hearing no response, he tried desperately to inch closer to charmander's pokéball in hopes that he might be able to release the creature so that it could help him back up. His cardboard limbs failed him, however, and he remained stationary. Giving a resigned sigh, the cardboard boy said, "I may be incomprehensibly superior to that jerk Jake, but sometimes being cardboard is a real drag."