Pokemon: Age of War, Book 1. Claws In The Dark

Prologue: The Child in The Woods

North America.. somewhere in the Rocky Mountains... 1942.

Deep in the woods.. in an area still untouched by civilization, a strange looking creature strolled through the woods, carrying a large pack of firewood on it's back.

The firewood might have been quite a funny thing to see such a creature carry, as this particular creature had an unusual affinity to fire in the first place. The resembled a large orange dragon with large green, bat-like wings. The tip of his tail was alight with a seemingly unquenchable fire.. a fire which blazed so hot, no rain or ordinary water could tame it.

The creature in question, was known as a Charizard.. funnily enough.. Charizard took the name of his species as his given name as well, not minding how common a name it was for his kind.. Despite being a citizen of the U.S., Charizard didn't live in the large cities like some of his Pokemon bretheren...in truth, he was rather irritated with society, prefering to live alone in a cabin.. completely off the grid.

He was rather young, having only evolved from his previous form, known as Charmelion, only a few years before.. both his parents had died in the war 2 years ago.. not that he felt that remorseful about it.. they were never close..

"With powers like ours! Every Pokemon needs to buck up and help in any way we can!!" Charizard Senior had said before he and his wife had gone overseas. "Someday you'll need to do that too!! Nazis can't be killed on War Bonds alone!!"

Charizard.. who was the smaller, more lizard-like Charmelion at the time, had just angrilly shaken his head. "But the humans always treat us differently!! What makes them any different from those stupid other guys in Germany!?"

And so after he evolved, (When a pokemon meets certain conditions, they change form and become more powerful in a process called Evolution.) Charizard took up as much camping gear as he could buy, a few books by Mark Twain, and spread his wings, flying into the mountains, where he built a nice cabin that was safely off the grid, save for a large bulky tellivision.. which Charizard had gone through a lot of pain and long work just to obtain.. back then.. tellivision was still only a recent inventions.. only having a 3 inch wide round screen in the center of a seemingly massive bulky wooden box. It took Charizard 12 months of favors and underpaid jobs to get it.. and even longer to find a way to recieve a signal so far into the wilderness. By far though.. it was Charizard's most treasured item.

Anyways.. today was like any other day in the Rockies. Charizard spent the first part of the morning gathering firewood with which he could use to cook dinner. Of course he didn't need matches.. being able to produce a powerful fire hot enough to melt steel into a puddle.Yet.. at times.. when cooking meat long and slow with the intention of not burning it.. the best thing to do was to use a good old fashioned fire place..

As Charizard continued his long treck home (The firewood's weight made flight rather tiring on the wings.) He passed by a couple of deer-like pokemon called Stantler.

The Stantlers stopped in their tracks and stared at Charizard for a moment.

"Whadya looking at?" Charizard said irritably. "Something funny about a fire type living in the woods?"

The Stantlers darted into the woods.. scaring off some actual deer as they did. (Yes, real animals other then pokemon do exist in this book.)

"That's what I thought." Charizard grumbled. "Don't mess with me.. and I won't mess with you.. law of the wild right there.. should write a book on it.."

As Charizard continued to walk on.. there was a rumble of thunder, and rain began to pour down like a waterfall.. when he was a young Charmander.. this might have made him fear for his life.. as his life force was connected to the flame on his tail.. however, now the rain turned to steam before his powerful flame. but that didn't make it any less irritating.