To The Top [ Pokemon Fanfic. ]

Chapter 1 - Start Of A New Life

I ran my hands through my hair for the hundreth time in the past five minutes. My throat was clogged, I could barely breathe.

My eyes were stained red from tears. I was sitting in the small one bedroom 'house' that I lived in with my parents & big brother. Except that since the previous night, my brother left my life forever.

It was so hard to believe, that this would happen. That my brother would somehow become so sick from a mere Poison Powder from an Oddish. He went on for days without treatment, & what once could have been cured if he had gotten medical attention, became a huge issue that could no longer be helped.

Even if he did manage to find medical assistance, my family & I didn't have enough money to pay for whatever treatment it was that would have been needed. We were already struggling to get by as it was, so his fate had been sealed in since the beginning.

I was nothing but a young & poor 17 year old girl living in the city of Lavender Town, a town with one too many tales of ghosts, which, if I do say so myself, were probably true.

My family & I lived on a farm, in a small room. Just one small room, with no kitchen, or bathrooms. We had to use this porta potty located outside. The farm belonged to a wealthy man, women, & their spoiled snotty son, who was about 7.

On this farm, they had their own Pokemon. There were two Ponyta's, about four Tauros', a Growlithe, the owner's guard dog, & some Goldeen in the small pond that I loved to sit by, just so I could watch the Goldeen swim around. Occasionally Butterfree's would fly in the garden, in the spring when the flowers bloomed beautifly.

It was me & my parent's job to feed & take care of the Poke'mon, & to do other labor related things like planting flowers, & helping grow crops for our masters, as they requested us to call them. In exchange for this, we would get two free meals a day, water to drink, & a place to live. We did not make money, which was why we were so poor. But we were grateful to have everything we needed to survive, which was a roof over our heads, & food & water.

My brother wasn't home very often, however. He was, as he liked to call it, 'the money maker'. He would travel Kanto & win tournaments with his Pokemon, & with that money, he'd buy us clothes, take us out to dinner every once in a while, & just help us as much as he could financially.

He never made a huge fortune, but he made enough for us to get by & have a few things, like clothes. My brother was an excellent Pokemon trainer. In fact, I thought he could have competed in the Pokemon League. But for some reason, he didn't. He had taught me everything, from how to catch a Pokemon to battling.

I wouldn't like to toot my own horn, but I was very wise when it came to Pokemon. I knew which type was weak against which, pretty good battling strategies, & other stuff like what berries you should & should not eat if you were lost in a forest. He taught me everything, because he used to say that one day, when he became a popular trainer from winning tournaments & made more money, he would send me on my very Pokemon journey.

I was fascinated with the idea, I loved Pokemon. My brother perished just as he was beginning to get noticed as a reputable trainer by even Lorelei herself, a member of the Elite Four, who were some of the best trainers in the entire Kanto and Johto region!

I flickered my eyes to the corner of the room & reached then under my pillow, to grab the note my brother Randall had left me before he died. In the note, he explained how much he loved my parents & I.

'Katrina... I need you to be strong'.

How could I ever be strong when my world had been taken away from me?