Unoriginality 1: An Original Trainer Story

Pairs

Inside the pokemon center, a roomful of trainers conversed, chatted, bickered, flirted, blushed, yelled, muttered, and sulked. Despite the chaos, they were clearly organized into boy-girl pairs. Most were all but bouncing off the walls, with the occasional boy or girl looking annoyed by the antics of their companion. A few were engaged in screaming matches, while some others sat looking jealous as the other half of the pair chatted up someone of the opposite gender, flirting shamelessly.

Into the room another pair entered, two calm fourteen year olds. They walked together, but not almost on top of each other or further apart as if they had been fighting. Neither the boy nor girl looked as if they were subtly trying to put distance between themself and their companion, nor had one latched onto the other. They looked around calmly.

The boy of one pair had finished flirting with the girl of another pair and noticed the newcomers. The three headed over. "Hey," said the boy, a thirteen year old with unruly brown hair. "This is Marina, and I'm Taylor." He rolled his eyes. "We're stuck with each other because Oak ordered me to help out his daughter on her journey. Didn't think she could handle it on her own, you know." He snickered.

"Well if you hadn't almost killed me by knocking me off that cliff, I wouldn't have needed your stupid charizard to catch me!" snapped Marina.

"Maybe if you weren't such a ditz you wouldn't have been so easy to trip. It's not like I wanted to be stuck with an ugly flat-chested girl like you either!"

"Hey, you're the one..." Their arguments faded into the background as they moved off.

The remaining girl spoke up. "I'm Evelyn, a psychic from Saffron. Sabrina prophesied that Harramond and I would need to travel together in order for a great evil to be defeated." She sighed. "Otherwise I'd ditch him in a heartbeat. I mean, just look at him -" She gestured toward the boy, who was attempting a headstand in front of two other girls. "And he trains dark types, ick. So how did you guys get roped into traveling together?"

The two newcomers exchanged looked. "We...didn't," said the boy after a moment, sounding slightly confused. "We met up at a city a month or two ago and decided to travel together for a bit."

"What!" exclaimed Harramond in shock, losing his balance in shock and falling over.

"You decided?" repeated one of the girls he'd been showing off in front of, sounding incredulous.

"You mean, like you both agreed?" said a different boy, sounding wondering. A second later a pinkish-blonde girl shot out of the crowd and glomped him, knocking him to the floor. "Sam-chan, I missed you!" she squealed, tightening her grip.

Sam let out a long-suffering groan. "I can't believe it. Minnie here just saw me one day and decided to travel with me. I've done everything I can to ditch her, and absolutely nothing works."

Minnie giggled happily. "I love you too!"

"I don't love you!"

"You're in denial!" she squealed gleefully.

Sam groaned again. "So why on earth did you decide to travel together, then?" he asked, making no effort to get up.

"Why not?" asked the girl, exchanging another confused look with the boy.

"Why would you want to stay with someone who's your total opposite, who you fight with 24-7, and who's totally nuts?" demanded a different boy. "What's wrong with you? Why would you willingly do something like that?"

"I wouldn't be traveling with him if he was like that," said the girl after a few seconds. "We get along well, that's why we thought it'd be fun to travel around for a while together."

"What?" chorused the dozen pairs who had gathered around by this point.

"But doesn't it annoy you how he'd always saying you're stupid and ugly and violent, and chasing after other girls?" asked a girl.

At the same time the boy next to her asked, "She's not always hitting you for looking at other girls?"

"Wait, you mean, you don't fight, except like, when one of you is talkative and the other's really quiet, so you just get on each other's nerves? That kind of thing?"

The new pair was silent for a few seconds, looking at each other. "It's not just me, right?" asked the girl.

"No," the boy said. "This is totally nuts."