Pokemon Regression

Chapter 2: How to Catch your Pokemon

It didn't take long for the newly-enabled trainers to scatter apart. Less than a minute after Oak gave us the go-ahead I found myself alone in the replica forest. There were plenty of friendly-looking bug type Pokemon wandering in the bushes, but even in my first life I'd known better than to pick one of those as my partner.

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with bug type Pokemon, they're typically Battlers that peak early, but have low potential. If you really want to make it as a battler, you want to pick a Pokemon with high potential, rather than one that grows strong rapidly. 

Your first partner is an inseparable bond, after all.

I'd already given it much thought. If I could have a different partner, what would I pick? Flying and Bug types are easy enough to find, normal types are everywhere. If you go to the coastal towns then water types aren't too difficult to find either.

Fire types, however, are very rare. You do find Ponyta in the wild occasionally, but the majority of Kanto's fire types are incredibly hard to find.

But I'm currently in the Pokemon Storage of a rather famous Pokemon Professor. Compared to the routes between towns, or even a lesser Professor's storage, the amount of rare Pokemon I can find here is unthinkable.

And so I pushed through the bushes, ignoring the regularly irregular Pokemon, and looking for something exceptional.

After a few minutes of searching, I came across a Pokemon that certainly was unusual.

A small rat-like Pokemon with a tail that curls up, large incisors and bright blue eyes. A Rattata, but not just any Rattata. 

A three-legged Rattata.

Ah, so we meet again.

I must admit that my Rattata was a rather unusual case. His fur was always the wrong colour, a slightly green yellow. Because of that, I called him Yeller. When combined with his missing limb, blue eyes, and his tendency to walk on his back legs, when I first saw him I'd thought I had encountered some rare never-before-seen Pokemon. Unfortunately for all his quirks, he's just a Rattata.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Yeller. He was a good partner who stuck by my side for the entirety of my past life, and a small part of me longs to catch him again, for old time's sake.

But things will be different this time. I have to be better this life, I can't afford to handicap myself like that. Catching Yeller would be walking straight down the path that led to my death. To Red's death, to my mother's death and maybe even to Chee's death... I couldn't do that again.

With a breath I grasped my Pokeball and turned away from him, searching deeper into the forest. 

...

It had already been a few hours since I started searching, and the sun was more than halfway across the sky. Even though I had scoured the terrain as thoroughly as I could, I wasn't seeing any rare Pokemon at all. The best I'd been able to find was a Mankey, who beat away my attempts to capture it and ran away.

So now I stood by the side of a lake, staring blankly at the red fish flopping about helplessly in the shallow water in front of me. A Magikarp.

I'm ashamed to say that I was seriously considering catching it.

Magikarp was one of those high-potential Pokemon that I mentioned earlier. But only if you were lucky. If a Magikarp evolves, it becomes an extremely powerful Pokemon called Gyarados. However, Gyarados is not very useful outside of water, as it is quite large and can't move properly on land. On top of that, Magikarp itself is practically incapable of growing stronger without the assistance of an already trained Pokemon.

I shook my head. I can't take Magikarp as my first Pokemon, it's just not a reasonable choice.

Giving up on the Magikarp I pushed past some reeds, and was surprised to see another kid exploring the lake. I genuinely expected everyone else to be done by now.