Author's Note: I wasn't trying to write this with some special meaning in mind; it just sort of happened. While I wasn't whipped by the principles of writing when I started this, I was motivated by the fact it entertained me. This is an original story with my own original characters, who can all be viewed from my profile on my tumblr as the story progresses. I do not own the merchandise, company, yadda yadda of Pokemon. While the beginning is lighthearted, in the future it generates some dark themes.

What you need to know about this story before taking it on is that there is a lot of character development. This story focuses a lot on characterization and character development, and, like in dubstep, before anyone drops the bass, there is a build-up. I like to think that some stories can be easily adapted into a movie, but this story is not one of them. It's more like a television show with several seasons. Regardless, I hope you find this story as entertaining as I do.

WARNING: This story will contain violence, language (hopefully not too foul), and some inappropriate jokes made by the protagonist herself.

And now I present you with Untamed. :)

Untamed

Arc 1: The Beginning

1. Too Little, Too Late

I wasn't a stranger to strange things. After all, I built my life upon peculiarities, flaunting a reputation of random moments, unpredictable actions, and nonsensical thoughts or words. I didn't expect anyone to understand it. Honestly, I didn't even understand it myself sometimes. I liked being weird...what I struggled to like was life being weird back to me.

Maybe it was because it wasn't the good kind of weird. I had always appreciated that life would be unexpected or challenging, but I had never anticipated it would be as untamable as it is. I had never thought it would be...this.

I didn't know how to describe it. I didn't know what had caused it. But if there was something or someone I could blame for everything besides life itself, it would be my older brother, Jacoby, because things didn't get really weird until he left.

Jacoby became a trainer when he was eleven, a fact I would hold effortlessly against him and wear as my armor in case he decided to take a jab back. It was possible to legally become a trainer at ten if all of the summer classes, along with regular schoolwork, were completed. Jacoby had not completed any of his schoolwork and was forced to wait another year before he was permitted to leave officially.

When Jacoby learned he wasn't going to be a trainer immediately, he was disappointed. As his seven-year-old sister, I comforted him as best as I could since I did feel sorry for him. However, the moment it looked as if he was going to turn me into Mom and Dad for some harmless prank (and I do mean harmless; I'm not a jailbird thankyouverymuch), I baked this information into a pie and threw it at his face.

"Jacoby, did you hear about the incident at school today?" Mom asked, after she had cornered me and basically fished out the same lie over and over again.

I wasn't going to budge and admit to my crimes, but I had come close. When she first asked me, my lips automatically took the shape of a mischievous smile before I managed to tame my muscles into a frown instead.

"What? The teacher's butt getting glued to the chair? Yeah, everyone heard that one."

Mom stared down at me, probing for a reaction. I wasn't even smiling at this point. Just sort of shifting between both feet and making weird shapes with my tongue to pass the time.

"Do you know who did it?"

"Um…Rochelle?" He was clueless and had been guessing, but he had nailed it.

I took it as a betrayal and burst out the door, flailing my arms and wailing about how Jacoby was a late trainer. All of my yelling certainly did boost his ability to get out as fast as he could and spare him from further humiliation. Before he left, however, he did supply Mom and Dad with several strongly worded hints as to who the culprit for the newest prank was, which resulted in me screaming even louder about how Jacoby was a late trainer, a butt-face, a tool, and a plethora of other names. In any case, Jacoby took his inexperienced rattata named Chewy, scored a badge from the first gym in our hometown of Violet City, and then departed.

If someone wasn't a trainer by the time they were ten, they were probably doomed for normalcy. That was not how I wanted to be. I was restless, and I certainly didn't have the boredom or restraint to stay in one spot. I bolstered my energy and my reckless longing for shenanigans into pranks that I eventually roped my best friends Henrietta and Sophie into. With the three of us, Violet City was in for a heap of trouble. Neighbors and teachers alike became the targets for our pranks. My teachers were so sick of me by the end of each school year that they were willing to bump any failing grades I had to passing so they didn't have to have me another year. If I didn't become a trainer at ten, then the people of Violet City were all but ready to sign a petition forcefully ordering me to go.

When Jacoby left, I hopped up and down as if his departure had implanted springs in my feet.

"Jacoby was late, but I'm not gonna be!" I had continuously declared. Jacoby's departure had lit a flame from underneath me, and I was going to do whatever it took to be a trainer.

But just as quickly as Jacoby's goodbye, Mom and Dad snuffed the fire out.

My parents didn't sign me up for summer classes. I needed to take them if I was going to become a trainer at ten. They were required in order to earn a license, and if I could not take them over the next few summers, I would be forced to take them along with my other classes during the school year, which meant I wouldn't be a trainer until I was thirteen. I couldn't wait that long.

"Y-you said I could leave when I was ten! You said I could h-have any pokémon I wanted!" I whined pathetically, tear-stricken and upset.

My dad held me comfortingly and blew raspberries on my stomach between sobs, but this did nothing to soothe me or even make me giggle. And raspberries always made me giggle. It was an unspoken rule. Surely this meant the apocalypse was coming and that my parents had made the wrong decision by not signing me up for summer classes.

"Well, Chelle, it's complicated," Mom started, but I wouldn't let her.

"You said I'd be able to go with my friends! You said I'd beat Jacoby for sure! You said—"

"I know what I said, Chelle!" Mom cried.

I stared hard at her, relinquishing my impish control over forced tears. I was very talented with crying on cue—something else I had factored into my pranks over the years.

"Chelly, you want to be a trainer? You will be," my dad said firmly. He was wearing the goofy smile that would usually make me giggle.

I gave a squeal of delight and triumph, but my mom only sighed.

"Peter, we didn't sign her up for those classes…"

"Thirteen's as good an age as any," he declared. He shouldn't have said that.

"B-but you said—"

Obviously my parents didn't know how to manage me. Their attempts at comforting me were destroyed by my rage and determination to be a trainer at ten. I had held Jacoby becoming a trainer at eleven over his head like a halo. If I became a trainer at thirteen, he would guiltlessly shove me into a wedding dress and marry me to the blackmail. He would play pin-the-tail-on-the-Rochelle and make it serve as a reminder every time I turned. He was vengeful like that, even though he was too sheepishly nice and joking for his own good. It was part of the sibling rivalry we had secured over the years and had prospered since birth.

Instead of remedying it by going to the school and signing the paperwork needed to put me through summer classes, they did something else. I sulkily came home after chatting with my best friends on my eighth birthday and saw a sentret of all things on the porch, tied by a leash to the window. Realizing what they were playing at, I untied it and shooed it away to the best of my ability, marching inside in what I thought was a victorious manner. However, it wasn't, as the sentret ended up following my every step.

"No, you have to stay outside," I commanded. The sentret blinked innocently at me.

My parents came out of the kitchen while I was in the middle of lugging the sentret out the door. They could see what I was doing but were noble enough to not call me out on it just yet. Dad's inquisitive face broke into a smile.

"It looks like you found Poona!"

"…Poona?" It sounded like a name for foreign poop, but I didn't admit this out loud just yet. I pocketed that to be a tool I could use later on in case this went horribly wrong.

"Yeah, Poona. Your new sentret."

"My new sentret?" I feigned surprise, bugging my eyes out, which wasn't that hard. My eyes were already kind of wide, and my eyebrows, despite being thin, were positioned over my eyes in a way to always look raised, like I was shocked at whatever I was hearing. I didn't like this attribute but couldn't complain too much.

"That's right. She's yours. She's a newborn, too, so she should be pretty harmless."

Okay, Chelle, you got this. I got my fishing pole ready and threw out the bait as I clutched my hand suddenly, biting my bottom lip. Mom was suspicious, but I was reeling in Dad as if he had come along fervently and was willing to stop for seconds.

"What's wrong?" he asked worriedly.

"Outside earlier, she bit me! My hand hurts!" I said, pinching my skin hard enough to make it look like it was swelling or it really had been attacked.

Poona sat loyally by my feet and then heightened herself with the might of her striped tail, which was still growing and looked a little too small for her light brown furry body. She leaned forward to touch my hand, licking it comfortingly. Mom burst into coos.

"How adorable! You two seem like a perfect match."

And that had settled it. They strode away, leaving me with a clueless, generally too amiable sentret and a broken dream. I glared at the young sentret at my feet.

"Well played, Poona. Well played."

I didn't allow this to be the end of it, however. I was determined to make my parents pay for their lazy effort. They had practically shrugged when they realized they didn't sign me up for summer classes and had done nothing to repair the situation. That, to eight-year-old I, was inexcusable.

"I don't like Poona," I announced to my father.

Unfortunately, this statement was hardwired with booby traps that Poona had placed there when she decided to lovingly curl up against me in that moment. She was so affectionate and cheerful that it was considered abuse if I didn't pet her. Absentmindedly, I did so, not helping my argument in the least.

"Why? She seems to really like you," Dad observed.

"She, uh…she bit me," I said, standing straighter in an effort to be taller. Already I was tall for my age and would continue to grow, but emphasis didn't hurt.

"You already said that…and you were pinching yourself as you were saying it."

"That's because…it hurt so badly that a pinch is nothing! I was comparing the pain of the bite to the pain of the pinch…and the bite won. Ow," I added flatly.

"Poona doesn't really have teeth yet, Chelle."

"You're a fool, Dad!" I cried suddenly, with enough volume to make him jump. "Do you see that? She's got you where she wants you! You'll be next!"

Dad was just playing along for amusement at this point as his eyes stopped scrutinizing the newspaper he was reading long enough to stare at me reassuringly. "I don't think Poona's out to get any of us, Chelle."

"And that's where you're wrong!"

I made an escape with Poona following after me, sprinting through our spacious living room to the more jam-packed hallway, which branched off into a total of three bedrooms and one bathroom. The brown walls my mom had spent countless hours painting and decorating transformed all of the carefully arranged furniture, such as the thin glass table placed against the wall in the hall, into blurs. Everything in the house remained to be incredibly modern, with very earthy surfaces or colors and glass structures for decorative objects.

My room, on the other hand, could most likely be used as a lethal weapon against anyone obsessed with organization or environmental cleanliness. It was honestly a hazard to anyone's health but my own, with large, untouchable, and exotically colorful piles scattered across the room, filled with objects I might have either stolen or innocently picked up. At least half of what was in my room didn't even belong to me, but Mom and Dad weren't going to notice this for a long time.

I chose not to acknowledge several stains of yesterday's and last week's breakfast as I plopped onto my bed, which I couldn't even remember the original color to. Poona landed beside me happily.

"You won this time," I ground out through clenched teeth.

Admittedly, I did enjoy her company, and Mom and Dad could see that. After a week, I stomped up to them and confessed what they already knew.

"Okay, so I like foreign poop…" I trailed off evenly, allowing the suspense to hover in midair. They took this pause with some confusion, unsure of what I was really getting at.

"Uh, what?"

"…but this is not the end. You have been warned." I made a gesture to imply I was watching them and then bolted out of the room with Poona at my heels.

I was sated. For now.

It was simply too easy to like Poona, and to dislike her was equivalent to being a heartless monster. Since I liked having my heart and didn't want to lose it by declaring such an obviously prideful lie, I admitted she was a good companion—a cute, naïve, bountiful companion that constantly hopped on her tail, but a companion nonetheless.

A few months later, while I was lying on my bed, I was awakened by a voice that I couldn't identify.

"Food time? Food?"

I sat up slowly and looked down at Poona, who was staring up at me with gracious eyes. I waited, narrowing my eyes at her anxiously. Had she spoken? No…she would have said something I couldn't understand then, and I had definitely heard that. Who was there? Was that Trevor? It had sounded high-pitched, and even though my younger brother was extremely young and hadn't started puberty, I knew he didn't sound that bad.

I was about to flop back against my pillow in blissful, sleepy surrender when her mouth moved again.

"Food now?" Her tail thudded the ground with enthusiasm, sweeping aside some of the clothes that were sprawled on the floor.

I almost died.