Pokemon had always been around in my life even though I was never a trainer. My family had a growlithe when I was a kid. Once that pokemon had passed away, it had eventually been replaced with two small skitty. They weren't battling pokemon but more of family pets. They didn't live in poke balls either, spending pretty much all their time roaming around our house and fenced in backyard.

Some of my friends had pokemon but none of them were serious trainers. My best friend Dylan had had a magikarp for almost a decade now and had been gifted a totodile not all that long ago. Some of my other friends also had smaller pokemon that lived more as pets than battling partners. Not many serious trainers had emerged from Grand Rapids in recent years.

The lure of the pokemon battling team our high school was considering founding had pressed more of my friends to get pokemon but not me. Whenever I brought up the idea of me getting a pokemon, even paying for it completely myself, things became strange. My mom, normally talkative, wouldn't discuss it. She was adamant that I didn't need my own pokemon and that the skitty we had were plenty good. My dad just got real quiet whenever it came up. He always found something off in the distance to stare at or suddenly remembered that he had something to do.

That all changed when I graduated high school.

For a graduation present, my parents got me a laptop computer for the fall when I was heading off to the local community college which I was expecting. I had no real idea what I wanted to do in college but I was going to need a laptop eventually. The second present was a little more unexpected. It was wrapped inside a shoebox and I could hear something moving around when I shook it.

I tore it open to find two balls inside, half red and half white, with a small protruding button in the center where the two colored halves met. I knew them instantly as pokeballs. I slowly pulled them out, each about the size of a baseball in my hands. Blinking a few times, I looked up at my parents. "Are these what they think they are?"

My dad nodded with a smile. "They're all yours Tim."

I grabbed the two poke balls and pressed the center buttons. They popped open an a white energy flowed out of them. It splashed onto the floor and formed into two pokemon, one from each ball. The first was a orange lizard, with short three-clawed arms, bright blue eyes and a flame on its tail. The second was about half the size as the first. It was a small green lizard with a pinkish underbelly, yellow eyes and a thick tail that looked like a leaf.

I may have never have had pokemon of my own but I knew a lot about pokemon and knew exactly which ones these were. "Charmander and Treecko!"

The two pokemon looked at each other and nodded, as if acknowledging that they were part of a team. For a moment, I wondered how they could possibly already know that but pokemon worked in mysterious ways.

"That's right guys," I grinned. "We're a team now."

I pointed their poke balls back at them and a beam of light shot out of the center button. When it touched them, their bodies converted back to energy and were pulled back inside the poke balls. I pressed the button and the balls shrank down to the size of a peach pit. I couldn't stop smiling as I kept staring at them.

After vigorously thanking my parents, I took off at a run to my friend Dylan's house. I almost bit it out of the sidewalk because I hadn't even taken the time to tie my shoes. After correcting that mistake, I was back huffing along at a decent pace. Or as decent of a pace as I got. I was really not much of a runner.

Dylan only lived around the corner and we had been good friends for a since elementary school. As far as my friends went, he was really the only one I ever talked pokemon with. He only had his magikarp and his new totodile but he was still pretty knowledgeable when it came to things. Dylan had never actually talked about going out into the world and being a trainer but he still had the Pokemon Trainer's Guide that all aspiring trainers read at the beginning of his career. I had actually borrowed it from him once if for no other reason than to live vicariously through the pages. I read the entire book cover to cover. Twice.

I rang his door bell as I bent over to catch my breath. Dylan's dad answered and gave me a quizzical look. He was a big man at almost six and a half feet tall and a rotund belly. Despite being well into his fifties, he still rocked his chest length beard from his days of driving a motorcycle cross-country.

"Hey Mr. Barnes," I gasped. "Is Dylan here?"

"Sure is Tim, want to come in?" he cocked a bushy eyebrow at me. "Maybe have a glass of water?"

I laughed and slipped in the door. I politely turned down his offer of water and walked down the hallway to Dylan's room after slipping off my shoes. Dylan swung around in his squeaky computer chair as he heard me coming.

He was much larger than me but not in a fat way. We were both a little over six feet tall but he was packed with a pretty decent amount of muscle from having been on the swim team since he was six years old. I, on the other hand, wasn't a scrawny geek… I was just long and thin. Not exactly flabby but not in really good shape. Brown hair was shared between us and despite his blue eyes and my brown eyes, we had been mistaken for brothers once before.

"Karp!" came a cry from his desk.

I glanced over at the large fish tank there to see Magikarp happily floating there in all its orange-scaled glory. It looked happy to see me as usual. Or maybe it was hungry. I had trouble telling the water pokemon's moods. Over on Dylan's bed sat a blue alligator pokemon about the size of my charmander. It too appeared happy but then again Totodile never really seemed to be unhappy.

"Hey Magikarp, Totodile," I said before turning to Dylan. "Dude! Guess what?"

"Did a bus of cheerleaders break down in front of your house or something?" Dylan guessed, his round face lighting up. "It's got to be something good since you seem to have run here. You never run if you can help it."

I reached into my pocket and fished out my two pokemon.

Dylan's eyes got huge. "No way!"

I tapped the button and the poke balls grew back to normal size. I tossed them onto the ground and after unleashing their inhabitants, they shot back into my hands where I shrank them back down.

"Dylan, Totodile, Magikarp, meet Charmander and Treecko," I introduced them.

"Charmander!" Charmander called as it waved an orange hand.

"Nice!" Dylan exclaimed. "Did you get them both or did you catch one?"

"My parents got them both for me," I answered as I watched Charmander climb onto Dylan's bed to converse with Totodile, careful not to burn anything with its tail flame. I was glad that it was careful because my happy day could've turned sad really quickly if Charmander burned Dylan's house down.

"No nicknames for them?" Dylan asked.

I shrugged. "I'm bad with coming up with names. I'd name them something and then three weeks later I wouldn't like the names and want to change them. This seemed much easier."

"No offense to the two skitty you guys have but these two are way cooler," Dylan said. "Have you tried battling yet?"

I shook my head and laughed. "I've only had them for fifteen minutes or however long it took me to get here. We're still getting to know each other."

Dylan was silent for a moment and I could tell that he was thinking about something. I watched Treecko lean against the wall and try to look cool or maybe intimidating as I waited for Dylan to tell me what he was thinking. I was starting to get the feeling that each pokemon was going to have a fairly unique personality.

"I think we should do it," Dylan said suddenly.

I shot him a sideways look. "You've lost me already."

"I think we should take the Pokemon League Challenge."