Chio Hall, Episode 1: Break In! Apartment Mystery! (Reupload)

[beetmint]

Not exactly a repostober story but one I didn’t finish, so I cleaned it up a bit to post it. This is an episodic Pokémon story starring a man who doesn’t care much for Pokémon. It's also a pseudo sequel to Gen 3. I need to work on this one again...

My name is Chio Hall. It’s short for Pistachio. I guess I should describe myself because this is more of a journal that I bought on a whim. My skin color is dark, (it’s okay, you can just call me black, please don’t say I have like, hazelnut skin, that’s just weird. Imagined if I called you marshmallow skinned.) My hair is green (not dyed), my eyes are black, I like wearing neutral colored shirts, and in general I’m not really that interesting of a person to be around or look at. I live in Oldale town and walk, sometimes jog, to a building in Petalburg City where I work at an office with emailing and phone calls for various companies related to Pokemon. I don’t own a Pokémon.

It’s greatly annoying to my commute that I have to constantly avoid peoples eyes because everyone assumes the other has a Pokémon, and it’s doubly annoying when children come running up to you for battles and call you a loser and wimp for not having Pokémon. I have nothing against Pokémon, or trainers, or the battling lifestyle. I just don’t care.

I live a quiet and mostly boring life (ignoring the problem above), and I hope it stays that way. People always suggest I capture some type of Pokémon as a pet, but I’d rather not have to deal with something that would want to battle or attack me or get some sort of medical disease that I can’t pay for. I’ve never gotten a license or gone on a journey. And for some reason, I’m the family disappointment despite my brother going missing for years. He was the Pokémon trainer. I wasn’t.

...I just don’t get the hype, sincerely. And living in such a Pokémon centric world makes it immensely difficult to simply not have one. I don’t buy Repels because people would get more mad, but do you know how many times I’ve written down the word Pokémon already…? I thought keeping a journal would be fun, but instead I’m just venting to myself.

My problems began when a relative or cousin or something along those lines to one of my coworkers came into the office and chatting up with everyone after just saying they went all the way to a new academy in some far off region. They showed off their Pokémon. It was a pair of mice or something. There used to be this type of thing before Pokemon called an animal but they're pretty rare these days.

“You won’t believe what I saw there! There’s a business man gym leader who’s even more boring than Chio! Can you believe it?” And there she goes again, joking about my perceived personality.

One of the coworkers— who barely had any Pokémon either— raised her hands in shock. “More boring than Chio? How rude!” She looked at me. I yawned. If this was some sort of new way to get me to get out, it wasn’t working.

The trainer (her name was something like… April? March?) turned to me. “And his whole team was made of normal Pokémon, can you believe it?” I stared back at her.

She tried again. “His name was Larry, the exceptional Everyman! And for Chio…?” I blinked and wondered if I could finish my work at home today. I think August noticed me not paying attention because she stomped her foot a bit. Her mice Pokémon jumped up. I’ll be honest, I forgot they were there.

“Chiiooooo!” She whined and pointed dramatically to me. The crowd turned around as well. I suppose I should turn around in my chair, so I did just that. April (I just remembered her name was actually April, her mother was May… so was the grandmother August? How’s that work…), had in her one hand a poke ball. “Battle me!” She exclaimed. I shrugged.

“No Pokemon.” I always said.

“Come on! You’re so…” and this is the part where everyone in the office said their usual spiel. It’s so close minded and alienating. I have nothing against Pokémon, for sure… it’s people I have a lot against.

Boring. Dull. Dim witted. Close minded. Certainly you could have just one Pokémon? Even TV shows and movies have Pokémon in them! Everyone has one but you. You’re not normal, Chio. Why didn’t you go on a journey with me, Chio?

Chio. “Hey, Chio!” It was Daisy, the coworker who called April rude before. I didn’t speak with her much, despite us both living in Oldale. She was a trainer too, but retired after the Hoenn league with the weather disaster. She specialized in grass types. I don’t know why all of this was coming to the front of my mind now.

She smiled at me. I guess she noticed I stopped paying attention after a while. “If you caught a Pokémon, May and everyone else would stop bothering you about that, at least.” I scoffed and turned in my chair again. Yeah, right. They’d all just start ganging up on me asking for battles and giving advice and telling me to get more Pokémon… then it would all crash down. Better to not set up for disappointment.

Daisy’s smile turned to a frown. “I don’t think it would be disappointing.” Shoot, I said that last part out loud? “I just think you should think it over more. You wouldn’t want to be alone, right?”

I’ve thought about it for years. I already skipped out of the trainers league at 10. I already went to a regular university at 16 with a non Pokemon related degree, hard as that was. I don’t want a Pokémon!

I think my face must’ve told it, because Daisy turned around to leave, turned back to me, and handed me a poke ball. “Just in case!” She said.
I threw it in the trash.

A few minutes later, I pulled it out of the trash. Best to get rid of it in an area where people wouldn’t complain about it.
(Thinking more about Daisy, she was nice, but I dont know what made her move from Mauville all the way to here. All her Pokemon were grass types, and one of her Pokemon (which is never plural, which is weird), had like, babies? It was so weird. Even weirder than the fact that she’s not related to that one trainer who lives in Kanto who’s hugely famous. People named after flowers are pretty common all over.)


Dark. Escape. Need to. Cruel. No light. No purification. Human? Bad. Powers? Gone. Tubes. Pain. Water. Swim.
Breeze. Grass. Small town. Humans. Hate. Need to hide. Empty house. Empty room. Tired. Rest…


After work where all I did was make calls regarding advertisements, I headed to the Pokemon center. Yes, I know after all my rambling that I’m hypocritical for going to a center, but the thing is that they sell really cheap meals and I like saving money. I noted that there’s a poster up for the next Pokemon league tourney. Well, less of noting and more of it was blatantly all over the walls with trainers crowding it. There was also some sort of blue… one. Pokemon. I don’t know, it was really round, and a balloon, and it had no one around to get it. I ended up buying a berry for it and giving it, well, I more or less tossed it into its short arms. I did not look back, and that’s the only nice thing I’ll do for a Pokémon, so in the end, Daisy won. As I yawn and walk back to my small home, I consider either watching a show or reading a book, but I decide against it all and head to my room for bed.

There’s a Pokémon on my bed. I have never had a Pokémon. I look to the window, which was still only ajar. I look to the bed again. It looks like an onion. It’s on top of my pillows. For all I know it could be some kind of psychic warrior Pokémon that uses blasts and could blow up my entire house. Why is it in my room.

I close the door and head outside. I turn on my completely regular phone. “Pokémon entered my room help”. I search online. All I get are results on Pokémon training and videos of people having their Pokémon in cute positions for useless views. I try again.

“Unknown Pokémon in house how do I get rid of it”
All I get are advertisements for poke balls. Great. I always advocated for some form of pest control here but this town, no, this whole region lives and runs by Pokémon.

I go out for one day in my life to buy food supplies at the store so I can eat and now this happens. Can I tell it to leave? No, it’s wild, it’ll attack me.

Suffice to say, I took all my stuff out of the room that I could. I took another look at the thing on my bed. It didn’t even twitch. I shut the door. It closed with a click.