First Flight - Chapter #1
The second of my multi-chapter fics.
First Flight:Chapter #1 - Falling Meteor~
Disclaimers: I do NOT own Pokemon, its characters, its locations or
anything associated with it. It all belongs to Nintendo.Brendan never had a chance to get out of the way in time. He only had a few seconds notice when a rumbling crash like
distant thunder above made him tilt his head skywards to catch sight of what
appeared to be a small, azure boulder tumbling down the side of the mountain on
a trajectory headed straight towards him. The boulder dropped over a cliff ledge overlooking the road
and rolled down the face, spinning right into the back of Brendan's legs and
bowling him over. Unhampered even in the slightest, the boulder continued on
its wild and uncontrollable course until it bounced and flung into the burly
trunk of a nearby tree, and was finally brought to a stop. "Owwwww..." Brendan whined, scowling up into the sky as he lay
supine in the middle of the rocky path. "Of course I'd be hit by the single rock that happened to roll down
the mountain at the exact moment I
was passing by and the exact place
where I was standing out of the entire mountainside." After a minute or two, when he had finished grumbling,
Brendan painfully got up again, his legs feeling as good as splintered
matchsticks. He hobbled slowly over to where the boulder had crashed and
was shocked to see it wriggling at the foot of the tree. What Brendan had taken
to be a blue boulder unwound from the ball it had curled into to exonerate
itself as a tiny, round-snouted creature. Brendan pulled out his Pokédexto scan
the new discovery. "Bagon, the Rock Head
Pokémon. To realize its dreams to one day soar in the sky. It will hurl itself
off cliffs and as a result, its head has grown tough and as hard as tempered
steel.""Huh...so it's a Bagon," Brendan said, returning the Pokédex
to his pocket. "I bet the reason that you rolled down half the mountain and
into me was that you jumped off from somewhere pretty high up trying to fly." The Bagon chittered agitatedly to itself with its eyes
closed. "Hey...are you okay?" Brendan asked, gently. Drawing even
nearer to it, his eyes widened as he saw that the Bagon was cradling its left
arm at an awkward angle. "Oh no, you're injured..." Brendan surveyed the Pokémon with attentive concern for a
moment while it whimpered quietly. Then he stood up to gauge the circumstances.It was coming upon dusk and he was several hours away from
the nearest town with a Pokémon Centre. Once night truly fell, the duvet of
darkness would render him much more vulnerable to wild Pokémon attacks. "I guess we'll just set up camp for the night and bring you
with us for now," Brendan surmised. He leaned down to carefully lift Bagon off
the ground and carry it but failed. It may have only looked like a boulder, but
it sure weighed like one. "Halo of Arceus, just how heavy are you?!" Brendan hissed
through his teeth as he persisted, succeeding only in budging the creature a
few inches.At his words, Bagon broke out the waterworks and began to
bawl its eyes out. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Brendan hastily excused himself. "I
didn't mean it like that!"In the end, he simply gave up and called out his Grovyle
instead, who lifted Bagon up easily without any trouble at all. They began searching for a shelter for the night and after
about half an hour, Brendan found them a modest but cosy cave tucked away into
the side of the mountain that was suitable.Brendan set about collecting usable pieces of firewood
littered around the cave mouth. Once he had a good strong fire crackling inside
their new home, he released his Kirlia from its Poké Ballas well and fed his
Pokémon. While they ate, he improvised a splint for Bagon, using a
straight tree branch he had picked up while hunting for firewood and binding it
securely to Bagon's arm with a Silk Scarf from his own backpack that had been
gifted to him by a kind lady in Dewford Town. While he worked, Brendan caught Bagon eyeing his green and
white unusual knit cap curiously. "What, the hat? I never take it off, even when I'm indoors. I've
gotten used to wearing it all the time. Bad habit, I guess."After he was done and the splint had been applied, Bagon ran
around in dizzying circles like a windup toy, jubilantly flapping its strapped
up arm in tandem with its good one. After several laps, it turned to make a
break for the cave entrance and, waddling as fast as its tiny legs could carry
it, made a dashing leap right off the edge outside. Brendan's jaw dropped in disbelief. "Oh, you are kidding
me." A few moments later, Bagon was sitting back beside the fire,
now with both its arms in splints and looking thoroughly crestfallen and
slightly sheepish. "Un-believable,"
Brendan huffed, stared down at the thing with his arms folded. Bagon's lips trembled as if it were about to burst into
tears again."Well, since it doesn't look like you're going anywhere
soon, you might as well stay with us a bit longer," Brendan sighed, reaching
for his Grovyle's food dish and jerking it away from the quietly munching
Pokémon. "Here...you're probably hungry," Brendan said, kneeling down
to place the dish in front of Bagon whose miserable face transformed at once
into one of delight. Behind Brendan's back, his Grovyle sulked. Unable to pull the bowl any closer to itself with both its
arms immobilized, Bagon simply smashed its head down into the tray sending
pellets flying everywhere as it scoffed greedily while Brendan watched in
amusement. When it came for Brendan to put out the fire for the night
all of his Pokémon were already fast asleep by then, and Bagon had gone
outside. Brendan went outside to check on it and found the big-headed
Pokémon sitting on the edge of the cliff. "You're not thinking about jumping off again, are you?"
Brendan asked incredulously but Bagon shook its head adamantly. "What are you doing out here all by yourself, then?" Bagon jabbed a stubby arm upward. Following the movement,
Brendan craned his neck to see the stars overbrimming the night sky in a vivid
display like grains of sand along some celestial shoreline, glimmering as they
tread the endless expanse of deep velvet blue above them. "The stars?" Brendan then remembered what it had said on
Bagon's entry on the Pokedex. "Oh, the sky! That's right, you wanna fly some
day, don't you?"Bagon nodded happily. "Bit hard to do without wings," Brendan observed dryly. "But
I guess that doesn't stop you from trying." Together, the two gazed into the
bright night, admiring it in companionable silence.After a long while, Brendan felt a light weight against his
side and glanced down to see that Bagon had drifted off to sleep sitting next
to him. Unable to carry it, he cumbersomely dragged the snoring creature along
the ground back into the cave and carefully covered it with a spare blanket
from his backpack before returning outside to enjoy the view for a little while
longer. He pulled out his Pokedex and flipped it open, navigating to
Bagon's file. "Bagon, the Rock Head
Pokémon. To realize its dreams to one day soar in the sky. It will hurl itself
off cliffs and as a result, its head has grown tough and as hard as tempered
steel. It's final, evolved form is the Dragon Pokémon, Salamence."Brendan sat there for a long time with an unfathomable
expression, gazing at the last line contemplatively. * * *The next morning, as soon as day broke, Brendan and his
Pokémon descended from Meteor Falls to travel to Rustboro City. There, the
resident nurse removed Bagon's splints and examined it arms for fractures or
breaks. "Just a few bumps and bruises, nothing major!" the nurse
cheerfully assured a vastly relieved Brendan when she eventually returned to
the waiting lobby wheeling Bagon out in a steel trolley. "You don't need to
worry - Bagons are remarkably tough and cliff-jumping is a pretty common recreational
behaviour for their species so they're quite used to it, believe it or not!""Thank you! I'm sorry for the trouble," Brendan said
gratefully. "Not at all! He's a cutie, isn't he?" she added dotingly, as
Bagon squabbled furiously while helplessly rolling back and forth on his back in
the trolley like an upturned beetle, his short tail thumping frantically as it
tried to right itself."Yeah," Brendan couldn't help but let slip a goofy grin. "He
is."After Bagon was discharged from the Pokémon Centre, Brendan
decided that he might as well restock on supplies while he was in the
city. Bagon followed the teen around as he made his rounds,
waddling after him wherever he went. Brendan stopped at the Poké
Mart to restock on Super Potions, visited the Pokemon Training
School where he chatted with a few students and received a Quick Claw from the
teacher to whom he thanked profusely while bowing low, ran into Mr. Stone who
insisted on dragging him over to the Devon Corporation headquarters for a visit
to show him the company's latest experiments on Pokémon fossils, which were
deemed to be "promising". By the time that he was finally done, the sun was waning
amidst a fiery orange sky that was streaked with comets of pink clouds as
bright and fleecy as cotton candy. Ornate iron-wrought street lamps began
flickering awake to embrace the early evening. He glanced down at his new companion."What say we go for some ice cream?"Brendan purchased two of what the vendor had named Vanillish
Cones - vanilla soft serves decorated with a goofy smiley face sketched out of
blue icing and edible blue sugar crystals all set in a waffle cone dyed with
blue food colouring. Brendan stared at his cone, trying to process how
ludicrous of an idea an ice cream Pokémon was. Afterwards, they wandered down to the large pond in Route
104 and found an old and shoddy wooden bench fronting the water to settle down
onto. As Bagon plopped himself down, the entire bench splintered
into two with a loud crack. The small Rock Head Pokémon was dumped onto the
ground and promptly burst into a storm of noisy tears."Sheesh, I didn't know you were that sensitive about your
weight," Brendan said.They moved to the next bench over which thankfully retained
its integrity, albeit with a ponderous groan of wood. Brendan handed Bagon his unfinished cone as the Pokémon had
upset its own after it had toppled over.As Brendan watched Bagon eat, he recalled what he had read
on the Pokédexthe night before. "Bagon, listen," Brendan said, quietly. His eyes were
downcast and he was absently fidgeting with his hands. "Look...I - I can't keep you any longer."Bagon gazed up at him uncomprehendingly with its head cocked."I...I just can't." Brendan's voice cracked, as his coherence
collapsing into a rambling heap. "It's...when I was a kid...you don't get it...don't
understand why...""Why I wear this
stupid hat!" he burst out, and without warning, he tore off the offending
headpiece in anger to reveal three parallel scars, stark white and unsightly,
inflicted on the right side of his skull, viciously tearing through a scalp of
otherwise kempt dark flat hair."When I went cave exploring with my dad when I was eight, I
got separated from him and got so scared. And then...and then I ran into a
Salamence - and it did this to me, and ever since then..." He trailed off, unable to bring himself to articulate the
trauma that had followed - the frequent nightmares that had extinguished any
hope for peaceful sleep or the fact that he couldn't so much as look at a photo
of Salamence in an encyclopedia without being seized by an all-consuming terror
that left him unbalanced and short for breath. "Every time I see these scars in the mirror or in my
reflection I get reminded of how ugly and repulsive they make me look," Brendan
said in self despisal. He replaced the hat on his head, carefully adjusting so
that it was sure to cover up the ghost of his childhood wound. "That's why I wear
this all the time now. I got sick of people staring and pointing at me."His eyelashes bristling with hot tears, Brendan wiped them
away with his forearm and gazed down at Bagon, who was bouncing up and down,
completely oblivious to the trainer's anecdote. "I - I don't even know if you can understand what I'm
saying," Brendan gave a shaky laugh that was half a sob of amused hopelessness.
"I mean, I know that you Bagons are pretty thick-headed and because of that,
you're not as good as other Pokémon with picking up on complex human
language..." Bagon continued to bounce, chattering joyfully as it enjoyed
its ice cream."If I keep you, I know that you'll become strong. So strong.
And that one day, you'll become a Salamence. And when that happens, I just...I
just can't. I won't be strong enough to be the trainer you need, anymore. I'm just
too scared and too weak to do it - I'm sorry. You deserve someone stronger and braver than
me. You deserve a normal, fully functioning trainer who can form a healthy
relationship with you. I can't give you that. I'm sorry."Bagon had probably not understood a word of everything he
had just said. "Bye, Bagon." After a few moments, Bagon glanced around to see that Brendan
was no longer sitting with him anymore and was gone. Believing that the trainer
had simply gone to get more ice cream for them, he wiggled to settle himself comfortably into the bench
with his stumpy legs outstretched over the edge, ecstatic at the idea of more Vanillish Cones to come.