I placed my offering upon the stone alter next to the others, a black and gray pokeball I'd built over these past five months. It, along with just three others, stood in contrast to the standard red and white pokeballs also sitting upon table. A dozen offerings in total to go with the dozen candidates standing before the GodKing. A crowd of pokemon and humans surrounded us as The Choosing Ceremony got underway. In a tent off to the side, I could hear the sound of Emberwilde breathing heavily, restlessly, as his tail fire illuminated the tent, casting shadows on the walls for the crowd to see.
I glanced one last time at my custom pokeball before walking away. It took a couple weeks of hiking up the volcanoes to gather enough obsidian to protect it from the fire. I figured if it was created from lava, it should be able to stand up to whatever fire a Charizard could pour onto it. Plus, it gave it a cool, black shine to stand apart from the rest of my competition. It also cost me three months of allowance money for several apricorns from a Johto region trader. He claimed that if you could turn them into a pokeball, they were super effective at capturing fire-types. The gray fruit was almost rock-like on the outside and it took me a couple days just to break them all open. Also, I don't recommend eating the meat on the inside.
I made my way back to the line with the other candidates, my eyes never straying from the GodKing who presided over the ceremony. Back in line, I saw a couple of the other kids shaking from either nervousness or excitement. The 15-foot tall Charizard, intricate designs tattooed with blackened ash on his entire body marking him as the GodKing, let out a fierce roar and a torrent of fire to signal the start of The Choosing Ceremony. All around me, the Lords and Lordesses of the GodKing's court unleashed roars and screams of their own. Fire, Water, Grass, Lightning, Earth, the GodKing did not care about a Pokemon's type, only that it was strong. And the strongest were gathered all around us. Blasts of water, bolts of lightning, beams of sunlight, and other barrages of elemental displays filled the air in similar fashion to the GodKing, an array of colors in the sky.
I knew our clan members weren't the only ones in attendance. Surely the other 2 clans of the Tartarus Isles must have spies of their own observing intently. My own parents in fact had accompanied a group to spy on the Rainmaker Clan. With all of the festivities, it wouldn't be too hard to fly a Fearow over the ceremony; or have a Dugtrio tunnel beneath it; or even slip a human or a Ditto disguised as another pokemon or a person into the village. Any knowledge about the strength of the clan's champion or insight into the Bearer could only help to achieve every clans' goal of winning the year's tournament. And thus, the reason for all of the festivities in just choosing a Bearer: to show these spies that no matter what information they might collect for their leader and clan, it would still not help them against our might and power.
Then Emberwilde, the newest Lord of the GodKing's court and this year's Champion, exited his tent. Not quite as tall as the GodKing but still big for a Charizard, Emberwilde strode toward the alter to begin the Judgement. My heart raced and my stomach turned knowing what was going to happen next and dreading every minute until it did. A candidate is chosen for their knowledge of Pokemon as well as their survival skills. Getting the Champion across the entire Kanto region was the Bearer's first and most important responsibility. However, it was at the Choosing Ceremony that narrowed the candidates down to the one Bearer.
It was all I wanted since I was old enough to dream such things. To travel to foreign lands, bearing the pride and glory of our clan against the best the Kanto League had to offer until eventually returning home to challenge the other two clans' Champions in our yearly tournament. I'd spent the last six months since Emberwilde was announced as Champion designing my offering, putting together what I hoped would be the strongest of all my competitors. Sometimes the tests are difficult to prepare for. For example, if the Champion happens to be a Water-type there are numerous ways an offering can be tested: Would it face jets of water? Plunged into sub-zero temperatures? An endless stream of bubbles? But fire, fire was simple - Fire Burned.
Emberwilde moved to the alter and, without any more pomp and circumstance usually expected from the Champion, unleashed a wave of fire upon all the offerings. Bang! Bang! Bang! went three of the pokeballs almost immediately. I heard the gasps of several people in the crowd. I stood still, unimpressed as the fire on Emberwilde's tail hadn't even yet began to change. It's a relatively obscure fact that the size of the fire on a Charizard's tail is directly proportional to the energy it is exerting in its fire attacks.
As if reading my mind, Emberwilde's tail fire started to grow and with it the fire spewing from its mouth grew wider and hotter until it enveloped the entire alter. I heard the popping of several more pokeballs and the shuffling away of my ousted competition. In just another five minutes, it was down to just myself and another boy. The fire narrowed and grew hotter and hotter as I hoped the materials I used would be enough to stand up to the strengthening inferno. After all my testing with what limited materials I had, only one pokeball survived. I hollowed out the gray apricorn, attaching the necessary components to turn it into a functioning pokeball as the Johto trader had told me. It took even longer to piece together as much of the remaining obsidian to the outside but in the end, I could only cover half of the ball with the black glass. All I could do now was watch and hope my offering would be strong enough to continue to withstand the onslaught of fire poured onto it.
More Pokemon fan-fiction! Yeah, I didn't think I'd be returning to this but here we are. It was supposed to just be a one-shot thing and I hoped to be moving onto more original stories. But I'm a procrastinator and apparently my new method is to waste time on non-marketable projects while telling myself that it's okay because at least I'm still writing. Anyways, at the end of the last post I mentioned that I had a sort-of backstory thought up and a friend of mine mentioned that he thought it was an interesting idea and we started running some ideas back and forth - so here we are. It got a little long but I'll try to get part 2 up soon (I've got most of it written in a notebook, just need to type it all out). Since I know everyone is wondering, Yes, I actually did research for this story and it turns out something called Tungsten is a stronger metal with a melting point of nearly 3x obsidian (thanks Google). So, why did I keep with the Obsidian? Well, because it sounds cooler, I hoped no one was going to do the research, and I couldn't figure out how a 10 year old kid was going to get tungsten (as if climbing a volcano for obsidian is more believable). Also, still haven't figured out the gender of the Protagonist (which is why the Protagonist has never been described with He or She). I did that on purpose in the other story because the protagonist isn't supposed to have an identity outside of being the Bearer of Emberwilde. I've been thinking about getting more into who the protagonist is, but I haven't really worked on that yet. Umm, other things... No, there wasn't an apricorn that made catching fire pokemon easier. I also don't know if the whole fire tail and the fire attacks being related is real or if I just made that up. Yeah, I needed to bring up walkthrough guide for Pokemon just to get through writing all this with some sense of accuracy. Oh, "The Choosing Ceremony," lame name, I know. I really did plan to change it eventually, but #1) I suck at naming things and #2) I looked it up and the first episode of Pokemon is "I Choose You" and I kind of wanted it to be like that in some way. I guess that's it for now.
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