Elliot hiked determinedly through the orderly forest, humming to himself. The path he walked on was an apparently simple one, made up of humble dirt. It was, however, strangely smooth and level, clear of roots and stones, and as unvarying in its width as a traintrack. Elliot had never seen anything different, so he did not find this worthy of note.

He had not, in fact, seen much of anything. He was a new trainer, just ten years old, and he had been on his journey less than a week. This is the furthest he'd ever been from his hometown of Russet, and hiking along the rock-free, pressed dirt road, he was filled with a sense of adventure and maturity. There was a simple pleasure in walking and finding a good distance from where you started by the end of the day. His pace varied between brisk and leisurely, and he felt proud he wasn't tired by the walk.

He hadn't caught any pokemon yet. He carried one pokemon with him, a present from his parents. He had seen a few wild pokemon in the forest already, but hadn't attempted to capture them. He wasn't interested in rattata, pidgey, or poliwags.

Around noon, he decided to stop. There was undergrowth in this forest, but it grew in patches, thick, tightly bunched masses that more closely resembled regularly trimmed hedges than wild bushes. Like the uniform sized tree trunks, they were spaced widely apart, allowing them to be easily avoided. On the ground not taken up by bushes, which was a greater deal than one might think, a short layer of even, bright green grass grew. It was the same length as that on the lawns where he lived, and, like the grass there, covered every inch of spare soil, without even intermittent bare patches. The only part of the forest not covered by some form of vegetation, in fact, was the path itself, clear of even small fallen twigs and leaves.

So when Elliot stepped off the path, he did not need to fight through thin branches and thorns to travel. Instead, he stepped easily onto soft green grass, with the sun blocked by the thick tree branches well above his head. He felt grown-up, a trailblazer boldly going into wild territory.

The clearing he came to was picturesque. It had flowers - and, quite oddly, they were the same height as the short grass. There was a large, rounded rock in the meadow, the perfect size to sit on. Elliot did so. He rooted around in his backpack, retrieving a sandwich. Pulling back the wrapper, he took a big bite, chewed loudly, and swallowed.

He was about to take a second bite when he heard a pokemon moving in the tall grass at the edge of the field, and then saw the telltale waving of the grass' tips. He quickly stood, grabbing a pokeball from his belt. Without taking his eyes from the spot, he enlarged the great ball.

One might wonder why it was pokemon were so conspicuous in their native environment. Surely they would have to be practiced at moving around without attracting the notice of others simply to have survived in the wild this long. How could something so clumsy, so inept, have even managed to survive long enough for capture? And, even if the pokemon were so unable to move around without avoiding attention, surely they should have heard Elliot, who had made no attempt to conceal himself, and remained hidden. Yet, time and time again, the pokemon, rather clumsily, wound up revealing their presence. But Elliot did not wonder about this, any more than he wondered at the well-kept forest. The pokemon, after all, was there, and that took precedence, for obvious reasons, over speculation on the course of events which might have led up to it.

Elliot tossed his pokeball. It split open in midair, white light swirling out of it to form into a growlithe. It barked, smelling something in the grass, and charged.

A meowth tumbled out of the grass.

Anyone who had trained meowth would have noticed this one looked quite scrawny compared to their own, but would not have minded. It was, after all, common knowledge that trained pokemon were much larger than their wild counterparts. For this reason, trainers didn't hesitate to capture pokemon which were undersized, knowing they'd soon bulk up.

"Attack, Howler!" he yelled. "Bite!"

Pokemon, as it was commonly known, fight in the wild. But it might still seem odd, if one thought about it, that upon discovery they attacked rather than ran. What drove this response, so futile? And it was similarly odd, if one thought about it, that creatures who had previous experience fighting would so badly misjudge their opponent. And it was very odd that, in such a world, they would ever fight to the point of fainting rather than at least making an attempt to escape.

But they did, as everyone knew, so such oddities were clearly simple misunderstanding with the way pokemon behaved, things which would one day be understood. Of course, with all the time and money spent on researching pokemon, one might have thought such simple behavioral research would have been conducted decades ago. But it was undoubtedly hard for researchers to study wild pokemon, because they rarely did.

The meowth made a few scratch attempts, then collapsed. Elliot tossed a pokeball, and the meowth turned into red light and slid into the open maw of the ball. It snapped shut, twitched once, then dinged, signifying the capture of the ten-year-old's first pokemon.