From: Nick -New and Improved- (ncnc123@aol.com-see-sig) Subject: [PW!] A Battle of Forest Pokemon! Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon Date: 2000-12-10 19:42:54 PST Last Time, Hito decided to become a Pokemon Trainer. Now she's heading towards Pewter City. --------------- A Pokemon Trainer. It didn't sound right. A Pokemon Trainer. No, it still wasn't right. What was wrong with it? Hito still didn't know. Something about it just sounded wrong. A few days ago, Hito had decided to become a Pokemon trainer, and fulfill Forest's dream of becoming a Pokemon master. It was a pretty popular dream. But that wasn't all that surprising. When the whole economy of your country, or at least the majority of it, is dependent on Pokemon, and the goal of many trainers was to become a Pokemon master, which was not all that hard of a goal if you were really good, it happens. Several people had managed to defeat the Elite Four before her, after gathering eight of the badges from throughout the country. It was a frequent news story all the time. Well, maybe it wasn't all that common, but it must have been at least once a year that one person or another defeated each of the four members of the Elite Four. The media always made a huge deal about it, but Hito had never paid that much attention to it. It had never really interested her before. When she was growing up, Hito had rejected heading out on a Pokemon journey at the age of ten. She had enjoyed staying at home and helping her parents raise the various fire Pokemon on the farm. And after that, Hito never regretted that decision. She had been able to spend a lot of time with her parents, before they died. But all that was over now. Her parents were dead. She had no home. Her only goal to fulfill the dream of a boy she had met a little less than a year ago. Her only companion a fire Pokemon that she had managed to get from her home before the bank took away everything. She was alone, wandering through the forest. All she knew was that she was heading in the general direction of Pewter City, in order to get the Boulder Badge. All Hito could see in all directions was green. Green trees, green leaves. The ground she walked on was dirt, of course, but a lot of green leaves were scattered on that as well. The normally blue sky was covered over by tree branches too, preventing her from seeing the sky. Hito slowly made her way through the forest, pushing the branches out of her path as she traveled. It appeared that this forest had not been traveled through regularly. After several hours of making her way through the thick growth of the forest, Hito came to a clearing. It wasn't too wide, maybe five meters in all directions. But that was not what really caught Hito's attention. In the center of the clearing, two Pokemon seemed to be facing off for battle, a Caterpie and Paras. The two Pokemon didn't seem to notice Hito's intrusion upon their battle. The Caterpie struck first, using it's tackle attack to lunge at the enemy. The Paras, due to his slower speed, was unable to dodge the attack, and felt the full force of the Caterpie's blow. After the attack, the Caterpie rolled of the Paras and readied itself the next opportunity to attack. But the Paras had already recovered from it's attack and launched a scratch attack against the Caterpie. The battle continued, with the Caterpie using a variety of Tackle and String Shot attacks, and the Paras continuously using the scratch attack, probably the only attack it knew. Both Pokemon started to get weaker as the battle continued, until, with one final scratch attack, the Paras emerged victorious in the battle and the Caterpie slowly and obviously in pain crawled back into the bushes and out of sight. Hito had felt sorry for the Caterpie, of course, as she watched the battle. But she knew that it would recover, and be good as new. The battle she had just witnessed had obviously been for territory, as the victorious Paras was making it quite clear by marking it's territory. That was a natural part of a Pokemon's life. So was searching for food, finding shelter, water, and various other things. Or, at least that was part of a wild Pokemon's life. Trained Pokemon, on the other hand, led an entirely different life. As Hito walked through the forest, now back in the thicket, she continued to think of the battle that she had witnessed. Soon after, a couple of hours really, Hito left the forest. She continued to be lost in thought as she walked through the route just northwest of Celadon City. Soon, by not taking the established routes and going off the path instead, Hito would be in Pewter in less than a week. However, instead of being terribly excited about it, she was hesitant to hurry to the Pewter Gym. Something really was not right, in her opinion. TBC.......?