It’s a Spring day and five year old Rob is walking, no running, down the beach. He has no recollection of why or how he got there but he knows that it is urgent. There is a group of people not far from him that he doesn’t know, yet whenever they look at him they have to turn away, seemingly blinking away tears as they do. There’s a medic there as well who takes one look at Rob and tears up, but why? Then he sees her, his mother, lying in the sand pale and gaunt. There’s tears in her eyes and she’s only taking short pained breaths. Rob wants to ask her what happened but he can’t, he can’t speak and he feels his eyes water. His mother says something but it’s too soft to hear, holding her hand he leans in closer hoping to know what she has to say. Trying with all her might she whispers two words that puzzle him, “We’re sorry”. And that’s all she says as her eyes glaze over and her body goes limp, “I’m sorry”, is all he can manage before grief takes him and he loses the battle of control. He cries for what seems like a life time holding the small stone that his mother gave him to his heart and realizing that he would never see his parents again. Rob Cinders awoke from his dream with a start, he was drenched in sweat and all of the muscles in his wiry frame were tightened to the point of snapping. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were wide. After a few seconds of gathering his bearings he noticed that his zangoose Ferra had brought him a dead rattata as a present (she thinks that she’s showing affection). He then took one deep breath and said under his breath, “It’s going to be a screwed up day.” After burying the poor thing in what must be an overcrowded back-yard (she already took out 3 pidgeys, 2 sentrets, and 5 rattatas) Rob brushed his teeth and got dressed for the day. He had a seemingly endless supply of the same wardrobe consisting of a white long sleeve shirt under a black short sleeve shirt with jeans as the pants of choice. The over shirt had orange fire designs on each sleeve and besides that it was a very plain thing to wear, especially for a gym leader. He, however, prided himself on the fact that he was a very normal looking gym leader, thinking that appearance meant nothing if you weren’t very strong. Having been the leader of the fire gym on Pyrem Island for 3 of his 16 years Rob had a pretty good gig going. Gym leaders were thought of in the highest regard in the Sanwedge Islands, a group of 8 islands to the east of the Johto region. He is given free living space in the gym building, generous pay, and local celebrity status; the only problem was that it got a little boring. This is especially so since Rob hadn’t faced a decent trainer, except for his friend Seph, for the last 2 years. So Rob decided to help out with the trainer’s school in the morning, getting extra pay and allowing him to teach others, even if the people he was teaching weren’t the greatest trainers. Heck, that’s an understatement; they couldn’t battle a breeze and come out on top. He had fun though and the school stopped caring about him showing up late about 2 months into his first year (he set a record for consecutive days arriving late at work at 62, and has been trying to best it this year with 49 so far). Today he was going to be late again, but who cares? It’s not like anyone else wants to teach those dingbats. He had to arrive in style however, so Rob took a breath and yelled, “KOMODO!” It took a second but soon something flew out of the nearby mountain and flew to where Rob was standing. Now saying that Komodo the charizard is big is an understatement, he is fucking massive. All 8 feet 500 pounds of him landed right in front of Rob with a massive tremor to follow. The scary thing is that he doesn’t have the belly that most charizards do, he’s all muscle. You see, Komodo is an uncomplicated beast; he has three things on his mind. In this order it goes eat, battle, eat, sleep, then repeat for the next day. Because of this all of the other pokemon on Rob’s team respect and follow him, also because he’s a scary looking guy, but mostly because of his training. He’s Rob’s oldest companion and they trust each other with their lives, not that Komodo has much to be afraid of but still the trust is there. Rob clambered onto Komodo’s back, which to him was like putting on a small cape, and they were off. Flying over Pyrem Island for most people would be a breath-taking affair. There are two forest covered dormant volcanoes on the East and West sides of the island and a beautiful coral reef just off the shores of the world’s most famous beaches. There is a perpetual rainbow over the eastern mountain, and a slight mist seems to cover both. Pyrem gym was on the East side of the island in Pyrem City, the largest city in the Sanwedge Islands, and the trainer’s school was on the West, so Rob got a great view of the entire island during the flight. To Rob, however, this was an everyday thing and he took it as if it was nothing. As he neared the school he noticed that someone was waiting for him, “Damn” he muttered. It was the superintendant of the school, Carl McDonalds Jr. (no joke). With a name like that he was already going to be a little crabby, which isn’t helped by the fact that Rob is constantly late for work. He seemed to hate Rob because Rob wasn’t short, bald, or in the possession of a name which consists of two fast food places. “Late again” he noted as Rob touched down. “Really? I thought I was perfectly on time!” (Guess whose being sarcastic). “You being sarcastic?” he retorted (Carl liked to state the obvious). “Yes, yes I am” Rob said hoping to catch his nemesis off guard. “Yeah well, wait, what?” sputtered Carl. “I’m sorry that I have a sense of humor and a full head of hair, and that you’re jealous of both,” Rob was taking the offensive now. “Well, then, ok um don’t let it happen again!” Carl wasn’t too bright. “Will do,” After successfully warding off Carl with a clever mix of witty humor and insults that went straight over the bald man’s head Rob was feeling good, maybe today wasn’t going to be screwed up. One look at his schedule for teaching told him he was wrong. He was doing battle practice, what seemed at first like fun and a way to get training soon changed after Rob got a look at the students (he refused to call them his students). Ever since one kid asked him if his metapod could use scratch Rob has taken a disliking to the class. Today they were practicing status moves in a battle, which Rob was pretty sure would end up with the metapod kid yelling about why his immobile fighter isn’t moving. Walking into the class room (which actually was more of an open field for today) Rob noted that all of the kids were there. Of course he didn’t know their names, he usually called them by the pokemon that they had. “Ok class, today we’re going over statuses,” one kid raised his hand, metapod boy, “Yes?” “Um, Mr. Cinders, if my metapod gets statusisfied- “Statused” “Yeah if he gets statusified will he move more?” The kid looked like he was truly distraught about this. Rob took a deep breath to lower his blood pressure, which sky-rocketed after such an enormously stupid question. “Why would he move more if he is not only unable to move to start with, but also weaker than he was before?” Rob asked in the calmest way possible. The kid looked at him blankly and sort of tried to put the two together, and then was about to say something before Rob cut him off, “Now that that’s out of the way we can get to the lesson, there are many status problems, including, burn, paralyses, poison, sleep, confusion, and even attraction.” Again he was getting nothing from his audience but blank stares and an occasional empty nod. A girl raised her hand this time, she had an azurill. “Can we get attracted?” she asked with a serious tone. “Excuse me?” “Can we get attracted to the pokemon?” she looked serious, and sadly, so did the rest of the class. “Why would the pokemon use it on you?” Again looking completely serious she asked, “What if they’re both boys, are they gay?” The class snickered, probably because she said gay, and Rob looked at her wondering if she was actually messing with him. “Pokemon don’t become gay for each other” This seemed to satisfy the little girl and the rest of the lesson went off without a hitch, and then came the battle part. It’s not that Rob doesn’t enjoy watching kids who don’t know what the heck their doing yell at their poor pokemon to do stuff that they don’t understand, it’s just a little pathetic to watch. This time the metapod kid was shouting at his armless compatriot to use seismic toss, which Rob was pretty sure isn’t in the thing’s move pool, and his opponent was telling his magikarp to use iron head, not as stupid as his opponent but still not going to happen. This time around he didn’t even try to correct them, not like they would listen to them. Finally he turned and saw something that blew his mind. “Use will-o-wisp!” a boy told his vulpix. Rob took a double take, at first not believing that the child not only used an attack that his pokemon could learn, but using one that had to do with the lesson plan. He tried to remember the boy’s name. “Is it Eric or…… BEN! That’s his name,” Rob muttered wondering how exactly he got Eric. He watched as Ben let his opponent’s geodude get close and then he would blast the bejeezus out of him with a will-o-wisp. He then used his vulpix’s superior speed to dodge the geodude until the rock got too tired to fight, it was simple but hey, no one else in the class thought of it. He was so surprised by the boy actually knowing what he was doing that he forgot about the rest of the class. It was devolving into chaos as children told their little fighters to do things that Rob was sure weren’t even attacks. He swore one kid actually said, “Use splodey move weedle!” Needless to say it was time for class to end, and Rob gladly let everyone go except Ben whom he wished to talk to about becoming a gym apprentice. Hoping that he could win over the only competent child in the entire class Rob told him about the amazing training and how he could become a gym leader himself. He of course left out the fact that Ben would get paid next to nothing, do countless errands for Rob, and work with a person who would verbally berate him at any chance (gym apprentices in the Sanwedge Islands were the interns of the pokemon world, with a dash of child labor thrown in.) He told Ben to think about it and sent him home, and then he got a call from the gym. Apparently someone from Johto sent him a letter…..