My Pokemon Nuzlocke: welcome, and chapter 1

Hello, all!  Lately, I've been playing Pokemon LeafGreen version (which is a remake of Pokemon Blue Version) with a very special set of rules that some of you may have heard of before: a Nuzlocke Challenge.

The basic rules are as follows:

1.  If any Pokemon is to be "knocked out" by anything,  they are then considered "killed" and you must release them and can never use them again.

2.  You may only capture the first Pokemon that you find in any new area.  If you fail or knock it out, you cannot catch any more.

3.  You must give every single Pokemon you catch a nickname.

I also added in one extra rule to help me out a little bit because I seem to be really uber unlucky with critical hits:

4.  The first time a Pokemon dies from a lucky, random critical hit, they can be saved ONCE.  Only once, and you cannot choose which event.  Only the first time it happens.

Aside from those stipulations, I will be playing it like any normal game of Pokemon--with the intent of writing a STORY about it!  Therefore, I hope you guys get as attached to my Pokemon as I do throughout this whole experience.  

This story is going to be incredibly melodramatic and it's meant to be a fun/sometimes sad retelling of the events of my game as I see them through the eyes of a character who isn't the normal mum hero of Pokemon lore (I don't wanna say it's me but it pretty much is).  Another cool thing about this project is that I'm getting my cool artist-ly friend Jessica Staub to illustrate some of the story! Here's a link to her DeviantArt page.  Awesome, right?  

I'll be updating with a new chapter of the story every week or so, right here on my blog.  Uhm.. I think that's about it, but I hope you guys like the story thus far and wanna keep coming back to the story!  

Without any further ado, Jess and I would like present you with my...

In a land very far away, people have learned to coexist with the animal side of the world—to count them not only as other living creatures but also as friends and partners. This strange land's name is Kanto, and those animals are called “Pokemon.”

In Kanto, it is customary for children in some families to leave with their beloved Pokemon in tow in the pursuit of bettering themselves and their animals friends. They become Pokemon “trainers,” creating teams, helping their Pokemon grow and learning about the birthright they were born into. Many of those children hope to someday reach the pinnacle of trainership: to beat the best trainers in the land at the Pokemon League and become the Pokemon Champion.

This story follows the path of somebody who had never had a chance to strike out on his own; a particularly jaded, foul-mouthed young man from Pallet town.

Chapter 1: Friendship, a first loss and a golden Pidgey.

“Hey! Hey Jade! Wake up, girl! We gotta go meet that old sack of shit at the lab!”

I slapped the chirping poorly-designed Pidgey alarm clock on my night stand. It shut up, though that didn't make waking up at 6 a.m. any better than it normally did.

I looked over at my desk at my Bulbasaur, sunning the bulb on her back in the morning light. She opened one green-lidded eye lazily and growled.

“I knowwwww. I promise, we'll move out of this town sometime soon,” I said, watching as my friend pushed her tiny self up with some vines. “Just think... No more boringass lab work! I just gotta save up uhh... a lot more money...”

A few minutes later, Jade and I flew down the stairs of my mom's tiny two-room house. Literally, it consisted of two rooms, one on each floor: the kitchen, living room and dining room were all crammed on the bottom floor, while my room was upstairs. I looked at my mom sleeping fitfully on the couch with a tiny trace of something akin to guilt, and then instantly regretted it.

I ran across the living room and slammed the front door as I left, waking my mom up instantly.

Ever since my dad left and we moved to this miniscule town I've been working part-time at Professor Oak's lab to help mom pay the bills. I clenched my fist and took a deep breath as I got outside, trying to compose myself as unwanted feelings tried to worm their way through me.

It had been around six years since my dad left, but it never got easier, and I couldn't forget that son of a bitch walking out on us. Years of arguments lead to clothes packed one night, a door slammed and footsteps on pavement echoing away.

I walked all of the two feet that separated my house from the lab and shoved the door open, startling one of Oak's aides, causing him to drop the potions he was carrying.

I barely glanced as him as I went to greet Blue, the only other kid my age who lives in Pallet.

“Hey dude!” he called out from behind a desk, working on his grandfather's computer. “My gramps stole my Charmander for a bit to do some research, so I'm back here doing some boring shit while he has fun.”

I laughed, allowing myself to forget some of my earlier bother. Blue and I had been friends ever since I got here. He also didn't get on too well with his parents (they were both dead, had been since he was 3.)

He stared slack-jawed at the computer screen—a bad habit of mine that he picked up—while Jade and I sat down to wait. Apparently Oak was out for an early morning bit of “research,” whatever that entailed. Mostly, Blue and I did lots of paperwork and dreamed of the day that we could get the hell out of Pallet—the good Professor did most of the field work.

Normally, kids left to begin training their Pokemon from an early age, around twelve years of age or so.  

Normally, they came back home crying a few days later after getting the tar beaten out of their Pokemon by some dickhole stranger with a Charizard.

I'd never left home, mostly because my mom needed me here, and for the most part, I forgot about those dreams I had as a kid—raising Jade to be a huge Venusaur, riding on the back of a Gyarados, breaking down the doors of the Pokemon league with a stampede of six Tauros.

I hadn't trained Jade since I was a kid.  That's why she was still a Bulbasaur, I guess.  I looked down at her as she looked quizzically up at me.

“Bulba?” she queried.

There hadn't been any time or desire, especially after Dad left.

Blue and his Charmander had never really trained, either. Unlike me, he'd never really had the desire to do much it seemed, aside from messing around with video games and fucking stuff up with me-- as much shit as we could fuck up in a small town. Graffiti, knocking Beedrill hives down, stealing shit.

We were real badasses.

“Hey dude, check out this video of a Meowth eating an entire fucking pizza! What the fuc-” Blue called out, just as Professor Oak burst into the room with Charmander on his shoulder.

“Alright, guys! Looks like it's time for me to spill the big secret I've been working on for a while now. Catch!”

He threw two small red devices at Blue and I.

“Holy... These are the Pokedexes you've been working on!” Blue shouted in excitement.

“It's time you two stopped delaying your lives. Blue, you need to experience the larger world. You need to grow up.” Oak said sternly, turning to me. “And you?”

Then he smiled and gave me a hug.

“HEY, hey get off me, you old fuckin' tree!” I said as I squirmed uncomfortably. Oak was a good guy, if a little absentminded and awkward sometimes.

“You need to stop worrying about your mother and work on yourself. You've saved up enough money, especially with a small recent donation from me you'll find at the pokecenter in the next town over, Viridian City," he said, still beaming.  "Your mother will be fine, I'll help her out.”

I looked at him, my face betraying nothing. I was grateful, I was. It's just...

Oak interrupted my thought. “I don't want any thanks. Take your Pokemon, your Pokedexes and get out of my damn lab. I've been training you two to do this for long enough.”

“Training us to do what!?” I said, two seconds after being ushered out of the door with Blue by two of Oak's dorky aides.

“Well...” Blue said, looking around. “I guess we're... free to be trainers now... I guess?”

“I guess so.”

“Hey, let's battle! Come on!” he said, with a light I had never really seen in his eyes before.

“Dude, what? This is crazy. You know I haven't trained Jade to fight at all. We're pals, you fuckhead.”

“Come on.. it'll be fun! DON'T BE SUCH A PUSSY!” he shouted, probably waking up everyone else in town (all three of them) and scaring a nearby Spearow out of a tree.

“SHUT UP. Okay, okay... let's go,” I said, uneasy at the idea.

The Bulbasaur and Charmander faced each other in the dirt in front of Oak's lab, Jade looking confused.

“CHARMANDER, USE SCRATCH!” Charmander charged forward and slashed Jade brutally, knocking her away. I'd never seen him move that fast. He was normally lazy and only moved faster than the pace of a slug when getting to food.

“DUDE WHAT THE FUCK. Jade, tackle him!” Jade obliged, but missed and ran into a wall. After that, she pretty much gave up—letting Charmander pummel her with his claws until I knocked his stupidass out of the way and picked her up.

I looked at Blue angrily, Jade barely conscious in my arms.

I exploded. “What the fuck is your problem?! You've been training your stupid Pokemon, haven't you? You knew this day was going to come. Your stupid grandpa told you, didn't he? Well great, AWESOME. You have the leg up on me, are you happy, you fucking psychopath?”

Blue was speechless, staring at me as I fumed.  All of my anger from earlier in the morning bubbled up inside me.

“You know what, you fucking dick? FINE. I'm going to tear you to pieces the next time we meet. And then I'm going to destroy every other trainer I meet like you, you arrogant son of a bitch. I'm going to prove that I'm worth more than everyone in this shithole town put together, including you and Professor Dickweed.”

Then he got angry, too.

“Oh yeah? Better than ALL of us, huh? Well I've got news for you, asshole. My grandpa is one of the greatest Pokemon professors in the world,” he sputtered. “I've got what it takes to be a champion in my blood. And what do you have? A negligent mom and a dad who never even gave a shit about you? You're fucking nothing. Good luck on amounting to anything more than a little kid who runs away from his problems, just like your useless father.”

I stared at him, fists clenched.  I didn't know what to do.  I just wanted to hurt something.  

I stormed off, leaving Blue behind and only stopping to heal Jade with a potion from my house before running into the forest path between Pallet and Viridian City. Mom was away at work. We spent the rest of that day knocking every Pokemon Jade and I could find out of our way, healing, rinsing and repeating.

It was kind of therapeutic to imagine the Rattatas with heads that looked like Blue's.

Eventually we got some Pokeballs. Jade was getting tired, though she was clearly still angry about Blue's cheap shot earlier. We needed more members on our team if we were going to kick his ass properly this time around.

We went up against the first Pokemon I saw in the area—a particularly nasty Pidgey we'd been trying to avoid all day. Jade had grown pretty strong, but the little Pidgey had given her two nasty lucky tackles already before I thought we could get him. I knew Jade couldn't take another hit—so I tossed a Pokeball and prayed that he wouldn't break loose.

“Hey buddy,” I cooed at him through the ball after a few tense seconds. “I'm gonna name you Jerkoff.”

As we were leaving the path with Jerkoff in tow to the Pokecenter in Viridian, I noticed something glint in the red sunlight of the sun sinking below the horizon.

HOLY SHIT.  THAT'S A FUCKING SHINY PIDGEY.

I immediately threw the Pokeball containing Jerkoff as far away I could, muttering “Bye-bye, Jerkoff,” and used a few tackles from Jade to knock my prize out of the tree and down for the count. It was a girl Pidgey: I could tell from her squawks of protest as I slapped her into her new Pokeball home.

Note: I did kind of break the rules here because you're normally not supposed to catch more than one Pokemon from one area, but this shiny Pidgey was literally the next thing I saw. I've never had a shiny Pokemon before.  EVER.  Deal with it.

“HEHEHEHE, I'm gonna call you GOLDENGIRL because you are so pretty and shiny and you're gonna be my best friend and how the fuck did I find the only shiny pidgey in the world in such a shitty little path between two of the smallest cities in Kanto...” I babbled at the newly-acquired little bird.

Jade shook her head and trundled away—if a Pokemon could sigh, she made a sound very similar to it.

“HEY we're still best friends, I just got us a new, really rare friend who doubles as a trophy!” I called, running after her.

Progress thus far:
Jade, level 11 Bulbasaur
Goldie, level 10 SHINY Pidgey.

Graveyard: 
None (aside from a humiliating defeat from Blue that I won't count because it doesn't change anything...)