A Late Start

The wine colored door to Damien Jackson’s home slowly shut with a somber creak. Damien watched his mother’s eyes become more distant as the crevice between the door and the frame shrunk until finally they disappeared entirely. The door shut – klunk – and that was his cue to leave.

No, not leave town, but to depart for Professor Oak’s laboratory up the hill. Damien didn’t know much about the journey of a Pokemon trainer, but he did know that he needed a starter pokemon, a pokedex, and some pokeballs. Damien hoped that Oak either had these things or knew where Damien could find them. Once that was over with, the boy planned on coming straight back home for lunch as well as packing his backpack with supplies until the old sack was about to burst.

The outdoors were gray that morning. Clouds covered the sky with a melancholy haze that occasionally sprinkled the ground with a few drops of warm water. The random plopping of moisture prompted Damien to look up in the suspicion that he’d been tagged by a bird or a spitting child high above him. The absence of an object above every time he glanced up, was a bitter sweet reminder that he was all alone walking that path.

Fortunately, the lab wasn’t too far. Damien walked up to the front door and halted. His nerves suddenly got him, a gentle shiver crawling up his body from his toes to his nose. The boy was perfectly warm, but it wasn’t the cold that made him shudder. He was twelve years old – two years older than most of the starting trainers. He was behind… he was also out of his element. The wild terrain of the Kanto region was unfamiliar to him. Damien had grown up in the city. But the boy was determined to learn the secrets of Pokemon and… perhaps… perhaps one day he would be a master.

Damien swallowed his fears and stepped up to the door – which swung open in response to his proximity. The boy almost leapt behind the nearest bush when he witnessed this, but he held his ground aside from a twitch in his upper body to recoil away from the door. After composing himself again, the boy stepped into Professor Oak’s laboratory…