Title: And So It Happens

Chapter: 1/4(Prologue)

Author's notes: (This will be a somewhat long but necessary, I assure you, note) I implore you, dear readers, to bear with the bad prologue. It is my hope that the later parts will be better written. I can also promise that this will be a relatively long fic. This will also end up a Tensaishipping fic (DaigoxYuuki or Steven/Ruby) with Championshipping (WataruxSatoshi or Lance/Ash).

This fic will be written, technically, in an AU setting. The world is still the same (based off the games) but because I could not decide which canon to follow, I mashed the game canon, special manga canon and animecanon together. First piece of evidence, of course, lies in the fact that Championshipping is only visible in the anime. In the game, interaction is limited to the few scipted lines, while in the special manga, Wataru has never actually met Red (or, if you prefer, Ash). This can also be noted in the choice of names, I have actually chosen to use the Japanese names out of personal preference. In the case of Wataru and Satoshi, this is because these names are used in the anime. Along the way, there will be people popping up whose identities should be guessable from context and description. However, just in case, I will provide a name list that can be referred to.

Next, I hope for some forgiveness as the uninformed author of this fic. Bad writing, I will not make excuses for, because I am by no means a new writer. On the other hand, I ask for some space from those who are finicky about facts. Even though I have cleared this problem by mentioning that it is an AU, I have tried my very best to get my facts right. However, seeing as I have never actually really watched the anime (except for selected episodes), and have only read one book of the special manga, there is an extremely high possibility that I have made several mistakes along the way.

Finally, I thank you for taking the time to read this (probably) extremely long author's note and hope that you will enjoy this piece of fiction.

Disclaimer: Pokemon and all other names do not belong to me. I am simply using them for creative expression - will put them back neatly when I'm done.

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(Monologue of a prologue, courtesy of protagonist number one)

My name is Yuuki. I am a nineteen-year-old boy (or do I qualify as a man?). I have two parents, a father and a mother, like everyone else. I'm also relatively sure that I'm not an alien experiment, so you can be at ease. My entire family lives apart. My mother lives in Littleroot town, where my own pokemon journey began many years back - but I'll get to that soon enough - and refuses to leave. She may act as if she were a pushover, and seems to listen to whatever my father has to say, but my mother is a strong-willed woman in her own right. Sometimes even father is afraid of her.

My father is the Petalburg city gym leader, and specialises in normal-type pokemon. He's slightly obsessed with pokemon, and is rather fierce. In recent years he's calmed down lots, even though I am beginning to suspect that he's still as crazy as he was in his younger days. I don't like my father very much. He's risen 'obsessed' to an art form. My version of 'obsessed' is no where near his. If mine is a stage play, his is a full blown musical with surround sound and psychedelic light shows.

I have no siblings, but I can't accurately say that I had a lonely childhood. My life involves myself, my mother, my father (involved, in his case), my childhood friend Haruka, my mentor Mikuri, and there is no et al after that. The rest were mostly pedestrian (in both senses of the word) participants that were not major movers in my life. Perhaps one or two of them I remember more, such as the professor, Roujin and Tsuwabuki Daigo.

And me? I've moved away from my family a long time ago. I earn my own living, and participate in pokemon contests as a hobby. My pokemon team consists of a Swampert, Zuzu; a Mightyena, Nana; a Castform, Popo and a Delcatty, Coco. Some people have had the audacity to laugh at their names, but I beat them fair and square so they can't laugh anymore. And what's wrong if I take care of my hair, at least I don't allow it to fop around as if it were made of twigs. There are other stranger, and vainer, people out there, wait till you see them, and only then can you compare vanity. Like my old mentor, Mikuri? Yeah, him. Wait till you see how long he takes in front of a mirror. We began training at ten every morning, even though the both of us are early risers, because he has to primp in front of a mirror. I swear it's true.

Don't tell him I said that.

My journey as pokemon trainer, as people so love to term it, starts in Littleroot town. It is not the place of my birth, I was born in Johto, but it is where my residence in Hoenn first is. Professor Birch, a famous and lauded scholar of pokemon, had given me a pokemon as a thanks for saving him from a Poochyena, or had it been a Zigzagoon? I no longer remember, but it makes very little difference - it was a pokemon, that's all that's important. The pokemon he had given me had been a Mudkip, who I named 'Zuzu', now a Swampert. My father had been in town (a rarity!) that day, and had given me three other pokemon - a Skitty, a Poochyena and a Ralts. It sounds extremely benevolent and kind of him, but those were all spares of his which he couldn't be bothered to train. Rethinking your opinion of him now? (I have to thank him for his choice in 'extras' however, my pokemon are so cute, if I should say so myself!)

I can't possibly tell you everything that has happened to me in between the beginnings of my journey and what I am now, because that would not only be self-gratification, it would also be extremely boring self-gratification. I think we can give that a miss. In a nutshell (a very small nutshell, for nine-years of my eventful life): I managed to get all eight gym badges from the Hoenn gyms, but never participated in the league championships themselves. By the time I had reached the sixth gym, I had been sick of battling - you don't have to know my reasons - but I had to persist, as the gym badges would allow me to use certain HM moves outside battle. For a while, I studied under the current Hoenn league champion (please do not begin to think about how glorious that might seem, it was a most painful time of my life) before he returned back to his duties as a gym leader in Sootopolis city. Blah, blah, blah. I then spent the rest of my time participating in pokemon contests, which are much more interesting than battling in my opinion - at least your pokemon remain clean and neat. I then moved to Mauville city, permanently and with the blessing of my mother (I don't think my father even knows), but still travel periodically.

That's it. Surprised? Were you hoping for some big, marvellous and fantastical adventure? I mean, I could always concoct a story to your liking, if you want, something about a pokemon trainer who managed to conquer all the gyms and league championships in the three regions. But then again, that wouldn't be about me, and I would have no personal interest in it. (I know, I sound self-absorbed, but that's what you get.) Bear with me, I fear I am having a little too much fun with this slightly meaningless soliloquy, but it is almost the end.

I find that I am somewhat fond of making use of parentheses, which some may consider a bad habit but I am not inclined to be swayed by their grammatical evangelism - if you will forgive my misuse of the term.

I shall be frank here, since I feel it is my duty to be truthful in self-expression. I do not take well to ugly things. Call me shallow, if you so wish, but coarse, unkempt and boring people do not interest me. Please do not race to object, by 'ugly', I meant character-wise - I'm not as shallow as I used to be. At the same time, however, I believe that politeness and social grace is over-rated, even though I can grudgingly admit that it is sometimes necessary and useful. Before you begin to accuse me of hypocrisy, I must say that I never thought of myself as a particularly nice person. I am sure that people who have met me before agree that I am not a very sociable person, so please attribute any trace of my sarcasm to my unwillingness to immerse myself in unnecessary conversation. For that reason I have few friends, and those that I have are either as sarcastic as I am, or extremely forgiving. I do not know how they put up with me. Would you forgive me though, if I told you I wasn't always like that? I think it's something that comes with one growing up. The only two people who I know still go -Kira! Kira!- (yes, with the capitals as well as the exclamation marks) after turning eighteen are Mikuri and his own mentor, Adan (my dai shishou). Pray that I won't become like that.

That sounds depressing, even to myself, but I'm certain that more entertaining things will happen. After all, if life is perpetually boring ('boring' perpetuates more 'boring' and a vicious cycle ensues) then it wouldn't be much of a life, would it? I wouldn't be able to tolerate that. Even if nothing happened, I'd make stuff happen.

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People always want to know how a great trainer's journey starts, and take great interest in the personal lives of these trainers. Every other mediocre trainer keeps close watch on the upward path of each and every league champion, past or present, in hope of being able to spot some minute strategic detail or tactic that they can mimic so that they themselves can follow in the footsteps of these great pokemon masters - ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Be it training regimes, pokemon types, genes or even towns of origin, the crowd of speculators never ceased to formulate theory after theory on the reason of success in the road to becoming a master, as if there was a secret formula to mastery. Curiously enough, most have never noticed that several of the best trainers in the past decade have never conformed to their idea of a perfect trainer, with perfect pokemon, perfect upbringing, perfect genes and perfect luck. Instead, they represent a diverse range of personality and character - Tajiri Satoshi, Ohkido Shigeru, Wataru, Tsuwabuki Daigo, Mikuri and so on.

These are just a few of those who have achieved the attainment of the highest honours of a trainer's journey - champion status. Touted by the league organisers as the strongest trainers in the lands, they lay claim to the legacy of champions before them. They are seen as the unbeatable, the strongest of the strong, but yet all they have really earned by becoming champions is the ability to confer their status to the next trainer who comes along and wins. In the end, they are only humans and not battle machines, and only a couple of enlightened persons amongst the plebeian masses know this.