I'm definitely going to bother my analytical friend with those first two or three paragraphs at some point. Oh, and excellent referencing of the Mustoid Mycelium of the "Series of Unfortunate Events". I, too, like Lemony Snicket's books. I am wondering though, as to when you will introduce the Pokerus Virus into your story titled "Pokerus". Not nagging, but curious. Best of luck with the story.

~~~~~~~~Nathanael of Sinnoh~~~~~~~~

"I still have a lemony taste in my mouth."

Ha ha, very funny. I get it.

Also, more barista stuff for you, when you pour cream in coffee it sinks straight to the bottom before billowing out from below. Change that description or I will sue your story.

How dare you compare Petalburg Woods to Tiny Woods? Petalburg Woods is for whiny ten-year-olds who overlevel all their pokémon and then think they're tough for one-shotting wild pokémon. Tiny Woods is for BADASS MOTHERFUCKERS who are trapped in an unfamiliar body that they can barely control but have to learn to attack with if they want to LIVE. And there's none of that pansy shit with wands and orbs and convenience of moves being set to the ABXY buttons, there's countless menu options and frustrating controls and TERRIFYING MUSIC. Tiny Woods doesn't fuck around – it makes you its BITCH!

Okay maybe there is such thing as playing too much Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.

I love how there were two pokémon POV segments in this chapter, but I kind of feel like they're too...human. Especially Cheshire. They sometimes act in ways that are much more human than animalistic. Like when Cheshire pretended to be having a heart attack, or "En Gardevoir". I'm more curious about where they learned those mannerisms. Actually, I think it's the starters who act more human than the other three. How did Birch raise those guys? By plopping them in front of a TV and letting them learn from Saturday morning cartoons?

Also, though this was more noticeable in the previous chapter, I like how East is worried that West has a crush on him, but he's the one acting nervous and carefully choosing his words and actions around her. If I didn't know better, I'd say HE'S the one who's starting to develop a crush on HER! Actually, there's no evidence to suggest otherwise, so I'll just accept that shit as canon! East x West confirmed! Try to prove me wrong, beeyetch!

By the way, if you don't give me a Cheshire POV in the next chapter so we can finally figure out what he's talking about with Cardinal and how good of friends they REALLY are, I'll smash a fucking chair. I want in on that cheeky bastard's brain!

"...Roxanne being the gym leader?" East asked. If he knew gym leaders, this Roxanne chick was going to be a freak. All of the gym leaders in Johto were. Especially Morty...him and Whitney."

You accidentally went from narrating his thoughts to having him speak them. You might want to edit this.

I'm starting to notice why the human characters aren't as fun to read about as the pokémon – they're both super neurotic. Like, they go crazy with their thoughts and overthink everything. You write them doing that in a very skilled manner, and I can really feel how they're feeling and what they're thinking...but maybe you do it TOO well. It's stressful to read. I sometimes have to skip a paragraph of nervousness and/or freaking out to ease my nerves. You way want to tone that down a bit in future chapters to prevent readers from feeling overwhelmed.

I'm really starting to like the pokémon. Like, East is pretty okay, and you know my thoughts on West (she now kind of reminds me of Spongebob for some reason), but Cardinal and Cheshire, and Apple and Chris are much more interesting to me than the human characters. Maybe I've been playing too much Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.

Wait, there's no such thing as playing too much Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. Moving on.

I honestly felt like the plot was pretty slow, but the pokémon are now making it more interesting. The main problem I can think of is that the wording isn't always the greatest. Sometimes the narration is just too vague and I have no idea what it means. I had to reread the part where Treecko advised East on how to get his shoe off at least five times before I got it. I still don't get the café scene and the seat-switching.

Also, the part where East decided that Treecko was about to attack him seemed kind of...forced. Like, there wasn't enough build-up to the vision, and even the situation seemed wrong. Treecko acted very upset, but more in an "intense frustration" kind of way. The vision came out of nowhere, and I thought that it was more likely that Cardinal had somehow planted it in East's mind rather than East thinking of it instead.

But seriously, we need way more pokémon-only scenes in the future. More perspectives from a pokémon's point of view. That's so much fun to read. Also, I'm curious about why the ball didn't shake when Cardinal was being caught. I suspect something more than her just acting sort of shy and meek!

Anyways! Onto the next chapter!

Nice first chapter, I highly doubt East's grumpy mood and commentary will ever get old XD

Oh, the joys of food poisoning. Nothing quite like having your entire digestive system hate you for eating something.

I totally sympathize with West though, having been in a similar situation several times, each time with at least one guy who had to put up with me. Y'know, up until now I've never really thought about how boys feel whenever a girl isn't feeling too well and he has the choice of either playing the role of "Tough Guy" or simply letting her be like East did. Huh.

Anyways, as always, this story is gold. Seriously. You've got lovely descriptions, such as the one that introduced the forest (that whisper thing was amazing) and you've got some spot-on witty humor. Two thumbs up to that.

In fact, there weren't many things wrong with this chapter at all. One thing I caught, however, was that in the sentence right before the first line break, there was no punctuation. Also, "West was in a pretty bad way," has some weird phrasing, at least to me. Other than that, there were a couple of spots where it felt like a word was missing, such as a "to." But the rest of it? It couldn't have been better.

Oh and by the way, did you make a reference to The End from A Series of Unfortunate Events when East and West were talking about wasabi and fungi? I thought they cured it with horseradish, though it's been a long time since I've read the book and I can't really remember much about it. Ah well.

Stay spiffalicious,
Silent

Ah, it looks like you haven't given up on this story. I'm glad!

I sympathize with West... I got food poisoning from the place I'm at, and it is NOT fun...

East is really paranoid. It's pretty funny. XD

Although this probably isn't very helpful, I found this chapter to be kind of unclear at some points. (Sorry... I don't really know how to explain it.)

Some parts of the chapter were a bit confusing. I got the concepts of the "broke" part at the top, but I don't understand the relevance in this chapter. Also, what was East almost done with in the following quote: "The entire time, the only thought that went through East's mind was that he was almost done."

That first paragraph...It's perfection. So far, and I'm enjoying this entire thing, that paragraph is my favorite. Your description of the grass is particularly brilliant.

Dang...only into Chapter 1 and already loving it! Your dialogue skills are on point! :D

Woo! You're back!

Man it's a good thing you didn't let a hiatus kill this story. It's just so FRICKEN good. And from judging the quality of this chapter, it seems like you're still giving it every last bit of effort. I'm...actually quite jealous of your ability to continue a project even if you haven't worked on it for a while.

Looks like we finally get to meet Norman, eh? Gotta love West's thought process. However, it only confirms - or at least suggests the eventual confirmation of - a suspicion I've had since I started reading this: That you purposely nicknamed the characters East and West to sound like quote unquote "cute couple nicknames" because they would eventually end up together. Whether they end up together or not, though, is still up to you. Besides, the names are still pretty reflective of their opposite personalities and would make a cool duo name. But still... It looks like DESTINY. I mean, now you even have East suspecting West has the hots for him. You know you want to...*nudge nudge*

Anyways, I absolutely loved the way you wrote all the interactions between East and West. The whole scene was glorious. And I see that you haven't forgotten about the whole 'Inside Out within West's head' thing (still haven't seen the movie, by the way...I will get to it eventually).

"This is a situation we vets call the 'awkward silence.'" This made me laugh way harder than it should have. I did see one mistake in that section, though: the 'we're' in "we're finished the conversation" should have been 'we've' unless you added a 'with' between 'finished' and 'the. '

"Let's remove it and teach children how to diffrentiate a to the x and square root of a parabola instead. Because they're going to use that in life. " Story of my life right there.

Oh and I noticed a crack starting to form in the fourth wall. Looks like someone tried to cover it up with duct tape and glitter glue.

-Silent

This is really great! I love how you've written the characters and their interactions, and the battles are really fun to read.

Absolutely amazing read, read it all in one sitting, enjoyable and written well. I hope to see more soon.

...I... did NOT expect this ending. Woooooooow. This was both hilarious and kinda shocking.

ANyway, so yeah, first encounter between East and West. Definitely apart from each other, aren't they. Well hopefully, battles are gonna happen, and East will have a chance to get back at his dad for forcing him into something he doens't actually care about, lol.

...I... hope he took the right Pokemon. I love me some Mudkip.

Absolutely lovin' the nicknames for the Pokémon, especially Cheshire. It seems really fitting, considering both Treecko and Cheshire Cat have trademark grins. West needs to step her game up. Chris and Apple? Be more creative, woman.

Also, why are you STILL making East order coffee with a shot of lemon? Gah. Even HE admitted that it was gross. He's going to end up destroying his taste buds.

And the Pokémon interactions. THE INTERACTIONS. They're perfect.

As far as mistakes go, I only noticed that café was spelled both with and without the accent. Other than that, nice work!

And I just noticed that every single one of these paragraphs begins with an 'a'. I only added the 'and' to the beginning of this one to keep it up.

-Silent

I find East's analytical nature amusing. He is pretty good at analyzing a person or pokémon and applying "treatments" to them to try and get them to do respond in a certain way, yet he lacks certain capabilities in understanding certain things emotionally, and when he makes an error in judgment, it usually is not very small. (Although, it can be quite amusing.) I am looking forward to more from you!