Horsea floated happily next to Grant on a small ball of water, as Grant walked out of the Pallet Town gates. It had only taken Grant a second more to come to the decision that if he could manage to get a dragon scale it would be well worth the early days of struggling to win easy battles.
“Let’s see what you can do.” Grant muttered as he held up his holo watch and scanned Horsea. A holographic Horsea floated over the watch along with various rows of statistics. Grant only had eyes for one column, however.
“Move set: Leer, splash, Smokescreen, Water gun” Grant was honestly pretty disappointed with the list. They would have to be very creative if they hoped to get their first badge. He would need to worry about that later, for now Grant needed to get home, and show his family that he had done it. Grant had actually received his first pokemon. Grant couldn’t hide the grin on his face as he walked through the grasslands outside of Pallet Town.
While Grant was busy looking forward to seeing the looks on his families faces when he showed them his pokemon, his Horsea had become aware that he and his new human were being followed. The grass was high on either side of the road, and Horsea had noticed it moving off to their left, matching their pace. Horsea tried to show the human by tugging on his wrist, but that was no good. So, when a mean looking pokemon came charging out of the grass at them, Grant was caught completely by surprise.
“Stop that Horsea.” Grant said absently, still caught up in his thoughts. Horsea was pulling on his wrist for some reason. His tail felt oddly smooth, and not the rough hard scratchy feeling Grant would have expected given the look of Horsea’s scales. A bellow from his right tore Grant out of his thoughts. Wide eyed, Grant turned to spot a charging Tangela. Vines whipped and snapped all around the charging pokemon, and Grant knew instantly his Horsea had no chance at beating what he expected was a battle hardened tangela. Its body was crisscrossed with a myriad of scars, and Grant just knew this Tangela had been in dozens of life-or-death battles. Grant opened his mouth to give his Horsea a command, but it was too late. The three-foot-tall mass of vines smashed into Grant, bowling him to the ground. Horsea let out a cry of alarm and fired off a water gun at the Tangela. It had no visible effect.
“Horsea use smokescreen.” Grant managed to get out as he did his best to beat back the Tangela that was trying its absolute best to kill Grant. Vines kept sneaking up towards Grant’s neck as the Tangela sat on his legs, keeping him from standing back up. It took everything in Grant to keep the Tangela from wrapping one of its thick vines around his neck. Horsea released a cloud of inky black smoke, completely obscuring the area. The smoke only covered three or so feet in every direction around Horsea, but that was enough for Grant. With the Tangela caught off guard, Grant was just barely able to pull a leg free from the bulky Tangela, plant a booted foot in its chest and kick, sending the pokemon stumbling back off of Grant. The living bush was lighter than Grant had expected. He then hurriedly rolled away from the Tangela before it jumped back on top of him. When Grant finally got back to his feet, he was bruised and cut up, but he was grinning. This battle wasn’t glamorous, but it was still his first ever pokemon battle, even if he was the one fighting the pokemon and not Horsea. He couldn’t dwell on that long, as surely the Tangela would be making another charge any second.
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The charge never came. As the smoke slowly cleared, Grant and Horsea were revealed to be alone. Grant had a hard time believing they had scared it off, but clearly it had run away.
“Maybe once its ambush failed it decided to run off?” Grant asked Horsea.
“Ho.” Horsea said. Grant was disappointed. The Tangela had been strong, and he might have been willing to use his one free pokeball given to him by the foundation to catch it. Having the Tangela would have certainly given him a little more fire power while he trained up Horsea to be a little more battle ready. Horsea floated over to Grant. He looked worried at the blood leaking from a few of Grant’s cuts, but Grant waived dismissively.
“Don’t worry about these. I’ve had much worse before trust me.” Horsea didn’t seem appeased by this, so Grant promised to have a Pokemon Center nurse check the cuts when they arrived at Viridian Forest. There was a small village of sorts on either side of the forest, and both had a pokemon center. They were there, because while Viridian was much more tame than other forests it was still extremely dangerous to travel through. Grant hadn’t been in any risk when he passed through the first time, but a pair of foundation trainers had escorted him and another kid his age. This time he would have no escort, and he wouldn’t be seeing the boy from before, since he had told Grant, before Grant left Pallet, that he and his zubat would be staying around Pallet to train. Grant had been tempted to join him in the training, but Grant felt it was better to just get the trip done with as quickly as possible. It would take Grant and Horsea 8 hours of walking through the grasslands until they would arrive at the village. Given that it was already 2 o’clock according to Grant’s watch, he was fully intending to walk through the night. Unfortunately, only two hours after the Tangela attacked Grant and Horsea were stopped.
“I challenge you to a pokemon battle!” Grant had seen the girl and her Mankey approaching. How could he not with her traveling the opposite direction as him, but he had not expected the girl dressed in a yellow flowery dress to challenge Grant to a battle the instant he was close enough to hear her shout.
Challenges had certain rules that if broken would have legal repercussions. While all of these rules were important, the one that Grant was most concerned with at that current moment was that challenges could not be refused. Well, they could be, but the fine Grant would need to pay was far higher than the cost he would have to pay to the winner of the challenge if he lost, and frankly Grant didn’t have the money to lose on a fine. There was also the fact that your challenge record was available to the public and played a role in your rank in the pokemon league. Refusing challenges would be recorded, so Grant really had no choice but to accept. He just didn’t think the odds of him winning were very high.
“What do you think Horsea.” Grant asked, keeping his voice low so that the girl who was fast approaching couldn’t hear.
“Sea.” Horsea said, steel in his tone. Horsea was ready. Grant nodded to Horsea as the girl stopped ten feet away.
“We accept your challenge.”