FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Welcome to my break from SI. If I was going to be lazy with that series, I figured I should at least start another one. This is just a prologue, so treat it as such. If it seems to be going quickly, that's simply because I wanted to set up a basic background for the characters.

_ _ _ _ _

I woke up at six thirty a.m. on the dot, like always. How did I know it was six thirty? In all honesty, I just did. There was a clock in my room, but I didn't need it. All that thing ever did was give me a little game to play within my mind. I lay there, counting every second as it passes by.

'Two hundred and ninety-eight.. Two hundred and ninety-nine.. Three h--' I recited in my head. My thoughts were cut off as, on cue, my clock rang out the time; six thirty-five a.m., the time I set it for every night when I'm home, just before getting under the sheets, laying my head down onto my pillow, and falling asleep in exactly eight and one half minutes. How did I know it was eight and one half minutes?

I just did. That's all there is to it. Well.. not really, but I'll get back to that later, for now let me tell you about my day. I got up, walked over to the closet on the opposite end of my room, and reached for the clothes that I had hanging on a rack in preparation for today. Not that today was anything special. I simply like to keep my life in order. Today's set is a simple ensemble consisting of a pair of grayish-blue jeans and a light blue collared shirt made from eighty-three percent cotton, fourteen percent latex, and three percent of small amounts of other materials. How did I know all that?

It says it on the tag, that's why. I placed my affects down on the foot of my bed atop my thin, dark blue coverlet, which I had lifted and placed so perfectly back down when I had gotten up that you could barely tell the bed had been slept in. As I walked to the shower in the adjacent bathroom, I took off what little I had slept in, a blue robe, and hung it on a hook. I stepped into the shower, slid the glass door shut, and turned on the water. As is my understanding, most people wait outside a shower for it to heat up before getting in. Not me; in fact if it heated up at all I would be surprised. I prefer the cold, mostly because I had never been sick in my whole seventeen years of life and showed no signs of starting now.

Without sickness, what reason is there not to enjoy the refreshing chill of icy water? Or the crisp breeze on a winter morning? One could probably tell my favorite color without even being aware of my love for all things algid. A single look at my bedroom, from its fuzzy cyan carpeting to its two azure tinted windows adorning the wall opposite the room's entrance, should be enough to clue someone in that I glorify the color blue. It just seems to fit me. My eyes are a perfect example.

Right now, getting out of the shower and turning to my mirror, I can tell you they are a bit odd. The irises are blue, of course, but there are some random grains of white radiating from my pupils. A bit closer to the center, the white comes together and forms a bizarre electric-looking zigzag pattern. Sadly for me, my eyes being one of the few defining features I possess, my hair is awfully long, so few people get to actually see them. Fortunately, though, my hair is my other distinguishing characteristic. It's pretty much jet black, but there's a shock of white on my right side.

'There's only so much time a day that I can waste admiring my head..' With this in mind, I rushed through my brief daily routine. Clothes on, lights off, I exit my sanctuary. I move down the hall of my parents' home, if it can be called that. We own a private bed and breakfast, a very successful one at that. Our building is located right at the entrance to town, so each and every tourist who walks, runs, bikes, rides, or drives to our fair Cerulean City passes our business on the way in.. I have to commend my parents for that little stroke of genius.

On the way out of the sliding glass doors that led from the ornate lobby in which I know resided to the rest of civilization, I was met by the cool air emanating from the nearby ocean. That blue.. beautiful mass of an ocean. What better place for a guy such as I to live? It has blue in the name, for god's sake!

Once again, I begin the same series of activities I do whenever I'm home. It starts with a walk. I traverse the town, taking in the sights I've seen a million times before, but they always seem new. Each person I pass has a friendly smile and a warm greeting.

"Hey, Chris! How've ya been?" It was Mr. Gregory. He was a nice man, though a bit dull. Maybe that was just his way of hiding the true evils his mind contained..

"I'm fine, Mr. Gregory, have you talked with James recently?" Of course, there was absolutely nothing evil about Mr. Gregory. When I know as little about someone as I do him, I tend to match them with a completely out of character backstory. It's mostly for my own amusement.

"Yeah. Him an' Kyle have been all over the place, winnin' just about every battle they got inta'. Maybe you'll see 'em if ya leave ag'in." James was his son, a good friend of mine. He had moved out on his own in search of a pokemon for himself a while ago. When he found one, a little treefrog.. Treecko, right? Well, he found one of those, caught it, named it Kyle, and just kept on looking for more pokemon.

I don't understand the things myself. Or rather, I don't understand why people use them to fight each other. The way I see it, you have to be a pretty serious coward to put a life on the line like that. Maybe for self-defense.. but why not just take a Judo class or something instead?

At any rate, the next segment of my day has me out on the beach. Rain or shine, sleet or snow, I'm here, relaxing. There was even hail a few times.. I didn't stay long for that. This day, being late-spring, was still a bit chilly despite the season. 'Perfect.' I thought to myself happily before falling asleep.

_ _ _ _ _

I slept for half an hour. How did I know it had been half an hour? I think now is as good a time as any to explain that. A year back, I was a lot like myself now, though a bit less organized, and as I remember it my hair wasn't quite as long. At sixteen, I was still in school, as was James. In the particular school we attended, the curriculum was mainly focused on our history with pokemon. Not only that, the facility encouraged finding one to call your own.

The prospect disturbed me a little. 'One to call your own'. Sounds like slavery to me, and no actions on the parts of the trainers I had encountered had ever led me to believe otherwise. I'm not saying that if I had a pokemon at the time, I would have behaved as such. Quite the opposite, but it just seemed that this was the tradition, and I was one of a very small group of people who thought it was wrong.

Anyway, school had let out for the day. Myself and James were heading home, talking about how our respective days had been. We both disliked the better part of our list of instructors, mostly for all the work they pushed on us. James seemed to think it was worth it though. He thought that our school was the perfect kind for a would-be pokemon trainer. I had explained to him my feelings on the subject on numerous occasions, but to my dismay, he found nothing wrong with taking a being out of its natural habitat and subjecting it to a life of fighting.. That was about the only thing either of us disagreed about, though, so it was easy for me to forgive him.

"So did Mrs. Marks assign the latest research project to your class yet, Chris?" James asked. That infernal thing. We basically had to write a twenty page report about some group of crusty old scientists' theories on how pokemon first appeared.

"Yeah, the damn paper.. I don't know how she--" I cut myself off. For some reason, my heart felt like lead. My eyes were starting to water, and I was feeling sharp pains all over my body. Pains like someone had spent the day slicing up my skin.

"..She what?.. Chris?" By now he had noticed my condition. My eyes were wide, my breaths were fast and sharp, and other than my erratically moving lungs, I was completely motionless. James was starting to get worried. "Chris! What's wrong!?"

And then I heard it. It was quiet, but I heard it. Someone, someone clearly on the verge of death judging from their voice, had called for help. Again, the voice called to me. It was coming from the right, from the woods at the edge of town. James saw me turn my head towards the trees. He was about to ask what the hell was up, but he never got the chance. That instant I took off running, leaving a bewildered James Gregory in my wake.

I dodged trees, jumped over roots, ducked low-hanging branches for what seemed like eternity. That little voice had asked for help a few more times, each time a little more loudly than before. I could tell I was getting close, but the voice ceased its plea. That wouldn't stop me, though. I kept on running, and eventually I found what I was looking for. It was a little blue and black pokemon, a Riolu from what I could tell in the darkness of the forest.

I may not be an expert on pokemon, but I knew enough to realize that Riolu don't belong in the Kanto region. Luckily for the little pokemon I didn't dwell on that fact for long. I approached it as quickly as I could, and as I did I saw its body was covered in small cuts.. in much the same areas I had felt them earlier. The poor thing's breathing was shallow, and I knew the only way for it to survive was for me to get it to a pokemon center.

I reached down to pick it up, but when I came within an inch of its body I felt a sharp pain shoot through my skull. Thankfully the initial brunt of it subsided rather quickly, but I was left with a splitting headache. It took a few moments, but I remembered that the creature at my feet was probably going through a bit more than head pains. I picked it up, not surprised by its light weight considering its small size, and ran back to town.

This time, there was no voice to guide me anywhere, so admittedly I got a bit lost. Eventually, though, I did make it back. When I walked into the Pokemon Center, the nurse gasped. Who could blame her? I must have been a sight; messy, twig filled hair, dirty clothes, and a shirt covered in the blood of a pokemon that shouldn't be anywhere around this area without a trainer.

"My lord! What happened, Chris!?" For a nurse, this one seemed a bit too interested in talking when someone's dying.

"Joy, just shut it and get this Riolu some help!" Though a bit surprised with my attitude, she obliged. Not long after, the Riolu was in a hospital bed being treated. I found the whole situation very odd, as I'm sure anyone would. First of all, this pokemon could talk. That in and of itself is odd, but the fact that it was able to make me feel its pain was just as strange.. Well, as I had heard it, Riolu and Lucario are quite mysterious.

I was seated in the same room as the recovering pokemon while Nurse Joy was looking over its cuts, which she had just finished tending to."How is it?" I asked her.

"It's a she, and she's doing fine. You know, Christopher, with all your talk of how pokemon training is like servitude, I never suspected you would get one." Now this confused me..

"What do you mean? She's not mine." Nurse Joy just smiled.

"Well she is now! Believe it or not, she's wild. I have no idea how a wild Riolu could have gotten to Kanto, but she's here. I doubt she would survive so far from her natural habitat for very long, even after she has recovered, so we have to give her to someone."

"Is there no way to send her back to Sinnoh?"

"Well, there's the transfer system of course, but that requires that the pokemon be in a ball, which leads us back to where I began. You really don't have much of a choice in the matter, Chris." This was certainly an interesting turn of events. I, a person who had always thought badly of being a pokemon trainer, now had to become one. Meh, I could already see how this was going to turn out.

A few days later, the little Riolu woke up, scared. I was still sitting in her room, in a chair by her bed. Her head was darting around, obviously taking in these unfamiliar surroundings. When she caught sight of me staring at her, she stared right back. I could tell that if I was going to be forced to have a pokemon, this was as good a pokemon as any to be paired up with. Better, in my opinion, simply judging by her coloring.

She was blue, which of course, I loved. But what caught me by surprise was her eyes. They were orange, like any other Riolu, but they had those same grains of color moving outwards from pupil as mine do, but where mine are white, hers were an electric blue. Those zigzag patterns were there as well. I stared straight into those bright orbs as she stared straight back at mine. Simultaneously, we began to smile.

"So were you the one who saved me?" My smile disappeared. Yes, she had talked before when she called for help, but that didn't do much to prepare me. The weird thing was that her mouth didn't move, but I just assumed that she was speaking with her mind.

"So that was definitely you talking back there.. Yeah, I'm the guy who brought you here. My name's Christopher Stidolph." I extended a hand, hoping that she understood the gesture. Luckily, she did, and put forth her paw.

"I'm Riolu. Nice to meet you, and thanks for the rescue." I half expected this. If I was to have a pokemon, which Nurse Joy was making quite sure of, I was not going to be like so many trainers before me, just calling my companions by their species like they were nothing special. I had a name in mind for her, but there was something a bit more urgent that needed voicing.

"Just so you know, and believe me this is not my choice, but I am to be your trainer." The Riolu was taken aback, but not for the reasons I was expecting..

"Is that you're way of saying you don't want to be my trainer?" Now it was my turn to be surprised. I obviously had a lot to learn about how pokemon think.

"What?.. You want to have a trainer? Why? I've seen a lot of trainers treat battles as some sick game of chess, with their pokemon as no more than expendable pawns.. And you want that?" Apparently there was something funny, because the Riolu was giggling.

"If you really think of it like that, doesn't that mean you won't repeat the mistake, Mr. Logic?" She had a point.. Besides, whether either of us wanted it or not, we were stuck together for the next few months at least, until I could make it up to Sinnoh. And who knows? Maybe I would get to like the whole training thing by then.

"I suppose you're right.. Hey, I have a question for you." The Riolu rolled her eyes and gave me a look that said 'What else is new?' "When you were calling for help, I wasn't just hearing you, it was like I was feeling you, which at the time hurt quite a bit.. And when I went to pick you up, I got a really painful headache. Can you explain any of that?"

"Simple; I'm not one hundred percent sure of my own abilities. I was about to die and I guess I was just doing whatever I could to survive. Sorry, though, I didn't mean to hurt you. And since I know you're going to ask eventually, I have no idea what I'm doing around here, or half-dead for that matter. All I remember is my old home; a big, cold mountain."

_ _ _ _ _

Well, I don't intend to describe everything that that Riolu and I have been up to for the past year, but there were a few key things that need mentioning. First, I did find out that pokemon training is very fun, but not so much the battling aspect, as I had always assumed. I avoid them when possible, and I almost never battle trainers, but every once in a while a pokemon will catch my eye..

We did wind up going to Sinnoh, on an expensive cruise happily funded by my parents. I found the pokemon there much more interesting than the ones back here in Kanto, most likely because they were new to me. The first Sinnoh pokemon I wanted as a companion appeared to me during my travels around Eterna City, a Buneary. I just found the little girl so cute.. The moment she saw me, she walked over out of curiosity. It wasn't long before she was prodding me with her ears and following me around.

It made me immeasurably happy that I didn't have to battle her, I simply earned her trust. After a little bit of walking around the surrounding woods I asked her if she would want to be one of my pokemon. She immediately made an exclamation in her native tongue, smiled, and hugged my leg. It was just about the most adorable thing I had ever seen..

A few months later when we were near a place called Twinleaf Town, the three of us encountered what would soon become my third pokemon, a little male Shinx. I was instantly drawn by his blue coat, but that's usually not enough for me to add someone to my team. What really sealed it was his attitude. Right when we came upon him he started to stare me down.

That look made the Shinx seem really calm and calculating, though I probably would have liked it less had he chosen to attack me right there and then. Instead, he turned to my pokemon and said something that, of course, I couldn't understand. My Riolu turned to me and informed me that he was challenging my Buneary to a battle. I admired the Shinx's sense of honor, especially considering that he was wild, so I accepted.

The battle began with the Shinx running at my Buneary, obviously intending to tackle her. I told her to use Defense Curl, and she promptly wrapped herself in her ears and braced for the impact. When the Shinx hit, he could've sworn he'd collided with a rock. He bounced back a little, but before he touched the ground, this 'rock' swiftly raised an ear and knocked him out of the air with a Pound move. It hit him hard, and when he stood up, it was apparent that he was having trouble doing so.

Never one to take battles too far, I rushed towards the Shinx and tried to pick it up. It suspected some sort of foul play, made clear by its attempt to run from me. In its current state, though, there was little it could do. I hefted it up and ran to the Twinleaf Town Pokemon Center, the disgruntled Shinx biting my hand the whole way. After I had it healed up, along with my Buneary, though she didn't really need much, the Shinx approached me.

Once again he stared coldly at me, and once again he turned and spoke to my pokemon. This time, though, he didn't want a fight. My Riolu told me that he felt like he owed me for saving him, which I found ridiculous, and that he wanted to be a part of my team. I told him that since I had been the one who caused his strife, he owed me nothing, but the Shinx was adamant. Deep down I was overjoyed, and soon we were off once again to explore more of Sinnoh.

It was around this time that I began to notice a few things about myself. While the four of us were camping out by a lake, I had set my watch to go off so that I could get up early the next morning. In my head, I was telling myself that seven forty-five would be a good time, but with my tiredness I had accidentally set the alarm for seven forty-six. When I woke up the next morning, it wasn't to the usual annoying beep of my watch's alarm, it was to nothing. Just the calm breeze coming off of the lake.

Normally I was a light sleeper, but nothing in as quiet a place as this could have woken me. Sure enough, my watch starts beeping. I looked at it and took note of the time it read. I found this pretty odd, and wondered if I had somehow affected my sleep with my thoughts. I tested my theory out the following few nights, and each morning I received the same brand of strange results.

I discussed it with my Riolu, and she offered that perhaps that night when I had found her had affected me in some way. For all we knew it was possible, and I decided to pursue other possible abilities. On the whole I was unsuccessful, but over time I got better at controlling my subconscious. I reached the point where I could tell myself something towards the end of the day and have myself dream it the following night.

I don't really use that very often; I basically live my greatest dreams each and every day. Just being near my pokemon is all I could ever want.

_ _ _ _ _

The name of the series might have confused you a bit; Christopher's last name, Stidolph, means 'strong wolf', and that's about all I could think of as a name for the story.