The Point of No Return

Thirteen and a half, he catches his third pokemon.

He is visiting home, not staying. He wants the distinction clear because, while he's already finding this whole trainer business a bit tedious and a lot less exciting than people claimed it would be, everyone knows only absolute losers drop out with just a single badge and Anderson is not anyone like that. You've got to prove you have what it takes to get at least a couple badges if you want people to take you seriously as an adult.

He wants that so much and so much more now, other kids sneering at his slow hick drawl, how he comes from the ass end of nowhere, and he refuses to agree with them, does not see anything worth running away to in the big cities they're so proud of being from, he loves his family and his town and his endless and eternal forest, he wants there to be no confusion that he chose this no belief that he's settling no question that he didn't choose this wholeheartedly. He doesn't care what anyone else thinks. It's his home, not theirs, and nothing about it needs to change. They're the ones who should change.

He'll need to raise more pokemon, though. He's got a teddiursa and a fletchling at the moment and two pokemon is just not enough, even if they're already a handful to deal with, he'll need to get a third pokemon. And what better place to pick up another one than around where he grew up and where he'll come back home to someday?

He's barely walked out of his house before he sees a weave of zigzagoon, no doubt sniffing around looking for trash to make a mess of. Garbage eating garbage pokemon. "Go, Fletchling! Tackle them!"

"Et!" his fletchling chirps, fluttering at them. They scatter every which way, all of them zigzagging dizzily to make it hard for his pokemon to target any one in particular. She ends up tackling the rearmost one. It rolls up in a ball, squeaking loudly, and another one twists backward and headbutts his fletchling off it. The ball unrolls and the two of them vanish through a hole in a neighbor's fence. Well, that's Mr. Greenfield's problem now.

He continues through town, toward the outskirts where cooler pokemon might be found. Still far from there, he hears something rustling in a bush and gets excited by the possibility it could be something rare but all he finds is a minun near the bottom. Bleck. "Teddiursa, attack! Use fury swipes!" Having a teddiursa for a starting pokemon is bad enough, especially with the lazy thing taking his sweet time evolving into a properly impressive ursaring. He doesn't need some stupid cute minun on his team as well, like some sort of girl.

"Nun!" squeaks the minun as his teddiursa claws at it. Despite his order, the move's basically scratch still, none of the rapid speed he's seen from experienced trainers' pokemon using the move. "Nun!" Electricity sparks on its cheeks and it smushes its face against his teddiursa, who lets out a cry and jerks backward, away from the high-voltage nuzzle. Released, the minun speeds clear in what looks an awful lot like quick attack, but without the whole attacking part. "Mi!" More electricity is sparking on its cheeks.

"Hey, don't just let it go," he complains. "Come on, keep swiping, take it out already."

"Ted!" His teddiursa gamely jumps into the bush to where the minun's retreated and claws at its side again. A spark of electricity jumps across and the teddiursa flinches back, then growls and leans forward to swipe at it again, scoring deep red lines down the minun's side and sending the pokemon tumbling off the branch and down into the dirt, where it curls up, quivering.

"Good job, Teddiursa," he says, even if it wasn't really all that great, and returns his pokemon to the pokeball.

He finds a weedle on the underside of the branch of an ornamental cherry tree planted at the side of the road. Bug pokemon like weedle are for weirdos and kids whose parents wouldn't, or couldn't afford to, get a starter pokemon, but removing bugs from people's trees before they chew them all up is an important job for pokemon trainers.