So, I'm restarting this story. Don't act like it's that big of a deal because it's not, the first chapter wasn't all that good anyways. The thing is, when I wrote the first draft, it was a spur of the moment thing. I have no idea where it came from but a wave of inspiration just came over me and made me think of this. However, once it passed, I questioned where I was going to go with this, so after taking a step back and a deep breath, I'm restarting. I now have most of this story planned out, so it will be easier to write as well as to read.

So, let's get the boring stuff out of the way.

Disclaimer: I do not own pokémon, only my OC's

Warning: This story will contain various pairings human/human and pokemon/human, as well as a few lemons of the M/F variety, if it's not your thing, get out now.

I know I promised a few people there would be m/m and f/f in here, but, honestly, I'm just not comfortable writing it. I'm not against it, but when I write it, it just comes out wrong, and I refuse to post any work that I'm not proud of. To any yaoi or yuri fans, I apologize.

Now, without further ado, chapter one.

…what was that thing I usually say…oh yeah

ADALANTE!

You know…I thought today would be a normal day. Not that other days are abnormal, it's just something I've come to expect by now, which I'll admit, gets a little boring.

Lately I've been waiting for something exciting to happen. However, if getting slammed down onto the hood of a car while an overweight cop puts me in handcuffs is the only excitement I'm going to get, I'd gladly take normality.

So as I lied face down on the scorching hot patrol car in the middle of summer, I had to wonder why the hell I had opened my big mouth in the first place. It seemed I was always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time…even though I'm always right.

You see, I tend to over think things, and when I focus too much on what's going on in my head, I don't pay attention to what's coming out of my mouth, and, as usual, it got me into trouble today.

…but, maybe I'm starting in the wrong place. Shall we rewind a bit?

(That morning)

My alarm clock woke me up at four in the morning, blaring some random news station. An ungodly hour for most people, but I had gotten used to it by now.

I slammed my fist down on all the buttons at once, not knowing if it was the 'off' or the 'snooze' button that had silenced it, but I figured I'd find out in about five minutes.

I quickly shoved the covers off of me, walked to the bathroom, and took a quick look at myself in the mirror. My shaggy, light brown hair was jutting out in random areas and my emerald green eyes had some of the biggest bags under them I had ever seen. Despite my rather disheveled appearance, I just shrugged and stuck my head under the faucet to smooth down my brillo pad of a head.

I honestly didn't know why I bothered. It was just going to be hidden under the cap of my gas station uniform all day. And I know what you're thinking. 'Dude, you work at a gas station...that's pathetic'. But I'm not some high school drop out who couldn't get any other job. I work there by choice.

Why? Because working there four times a week, plus doing odd jobs around the neighborhood, is perfectly good enough for the life I want. And by odd jobs, I don't just mean doing random handy work. I guess you could call me a private investigator, but I don't do anything important like that.

Mostly I'm known as 'the guy that's good at figuring stuff out'. People have problems, I fix them, and it's as simple as that. Really, it's more like I'm selling them information. I notice things that normal people don't and it just comes in handy sometimes.

You'd be surprised what people will ask for help with, too. So far, it's ranged from a lost vulpix, to finding out if someone's girlfriend was cheating on them.

In any case, it may be a strange job, but it pays well.

I quickly combed my hair, not caring how incredibly weird it looked when it was slicked back, and headed back to my room. As I changed, my earlier question of "snooze or off?" was answered as the radio turned back on.

I got changed as the local news came on.

"Lawrence Henderson, a troubled sixteen year old, was recently arrested for raping his umbreon. When asked, he commented "I did not rape her, she came onto me." Obviously, his defense did not hold up in court and he was sentenced to life imprisonment… In other news-"

I slammed my hand down on the alarm clock again, this time making sure to hit the off button.

"Tch, idiots." I mumbled under my breath.

Really, do the cops have nothing better to do than to crack down on innocent pokephiles? Not that I'm into that kind of thing, but, come on, if someone wants to have a relationship with their umbreon, who are we to stop them?

Time and time again, they keep trying to pass it off as bestiality, but it's been proven that pokémon are sentient.

You know…sentient…as in, they have a mind of their own. It's like people ignore the fact that pokémon have thoughts and feelings and they just focus on the fur and tails.

Yeah, we're different, GET OVER IT!

Every time, people try to pass it off as rape or some other bullshit like it's taking advantage of a lesser minded species. I'll bet you anything, that most pokémon are ten times smarter then humans, and if people were raping them, and they didn't like it, they'd probably attack said person on the spot.

The only reason I'm against it is that it can make for some seriously fucked up children.

You see, humanoid pokémon and humans are compatible enough to have children together, but the whole interspecies thing rarely works out. Normally, the child ends up being a miscarriage. If not, it's born completely mutated. There are only some rare chances when a completely normal human or pokémon is created through this process, but the risk is too great.

That's my position, I'm sticking to it.

I put on my cap and my shoes, headed downstairs, and out the door. As I turned onto the sidewalk, I spotted the paper and bent down to pick it up.

"LOOK OUT!"

I barely had time to stand up before I was being tackled by a gigantic ball of orange fur. I hit the ground with a thud, but managed to avoid slamming my head against the concrete, so I missed any serious injury.

I opened my eyes to find myself staring up at an arcanine. I cocked an eyebrow questioningly. "Uh…hi?"

I picked myself off the sidewalk as a man with fiery red hair came into view. "I am so, so sorry, she evolved recently and she's still getting used to her size."

I scanned him over and then the arcanine. "How old is she, sixteen?"

The man raised an eyebrow "yeah…how'd you know that?"

"She's tiny." I stated bluntly, earning a snort from an annoyed canine. It was true, though. Where as most arcanine's easily towered over any human, this one was at around my height. Granted, I'm pretty tall, but it was still a noticeable difference. As usual, I wasn't paying attention to the words that were coming out of my mouth and began an explanation that wasn't really needed.

"She's smaller than a regular arcanine and growlithes can't evolve until they've matured enough. But why did you evolve her so soon, she'll never grow to full size, now."

"I kind of had to." He explained. "My apartment complex doesn't allow pokémon over a certain weight so I had to evolve her now so she wouldn't exceed that. Don't worry, I didn't force her to do anything she didn't want to do."

I looked to the arcanine for confirmation and she nodded. I scanned over the man again, as I have never seen him before. Like I said before, he had flaming red hair, but it was cut in a buzz cut that made him look completely ridiculous (However, that's just my opinion). He wore tattered clothing, as if he had been wearing the same thing for days now. They had numerous rips and tears in it like he was just attacked by something, but there was no evidence to suggest that. Finally reaching a conclusion, I asked him. "You work at the new daycare, don't you?"

He grinned. "Yep, how'd you guess?"

I picked my pair of blue-tinted sunglasses out of my pocket and slid them over my eyes as I began my explanation. "I've never seen you're face before, so you must have moved here recently, which suggests that you came here with the Goldenrod daycare workers when they decided to expand. Also, you have ripped clothing with at least six different kinds of fur on it, none of it being the orange fur from your arcanine, so you must work with pokémon. You're not a trainer because you don't have a belt full of pokeballs or a backpack, and I'm pretty sure if you worked at the pokémon center, you would be able to afford an apartment that doesn't have weight requirements…no offense. And you definitely don't work at the gym, because an arcanine is not a flying type, so, you work at a pokémon daycare."

He blinked in disbelief. "…geeze…that's awesome. Are you a detective or something?"

I pointed to the hat that clearly read "Gas n' Gulp" and shook my head. "Nah, I'm just a guy who overanalyzes."

"Well, I'm sorry again. Let me buy you a cup of coffee." He offered.

Normally, I don't accept things from strangers, but I was heading down that direction anyways and he seemed trustworthy enough, so who was I to decline? "Sure, my name is Jason Mercer by the way, call me Jace though." I said, extending my hand.

He gave me a firm handshake. "Allen, Allen Kirk. And this is Rori." He said referring to the large canine that had barreled into me not minutes ago.

She nuzzled my shoulder apologetically and I patted her head. "Nice to meet you."

"Likewise." He stated as we started walking. "Not to pry or anything, but why are you working at a gas station? You could easily be a private investigator or something."

"No motivation to be anything else." I said with a smirk.

"Yeah, I know the feeling." He agreed. "I guess I kind of just lucked out. My uncle offered me a job at the new daycare and I love working with pokémon."

"Really? I'd be fine with just one or two, but I don't think I could have a bunch of them puling at me in every direction the entire day."

He shook his head. "No, that's just it. We aren't nearly as busy as the one in Goldenrod. Too many rookie trainers who are too attached to their starters. We usually don't get more then ten at a time, and considering there are three employees and one manager, it's not really all that hard."

I cocked an eyebrow. "Then…what's with the ripped clothes and the fur?"

He chuckled a bit. "A fellow employee convinced the pokémon that I was hiding food in my jacket."

I snickered as I imagined him getting chased around by a group of hungry pokémon. "Sucks to be you."

"Yep."

…

We continued walking and talking for a while until we reached the coffee shop and, after he bought me a cup of joe, we went our separate ways, him to the daycare and me towards the gas station. As I walked through the door, I noticed a teenage boy walking out from behind one of the shelves, walking in a pace that was just fast enough to make me a little suspicious.

Something caught my attention as he passed by and I grabbed his arm to stop him.

"Hey, let go man." He said in a threatening voice which only made me laugh.

"First of all, stop trying to sound tough, it doesn't suit you. Second of all, do you really want to go to juvie for a Butterfinger?"

He went wide eyed for a second but then tried to hide it. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh really?" I asked, already knowing that he was lying. "Well in that case, I have to ask, does looking at candy really turn you on that much, kid?"

He instinctively looked down and noticed the large bulge in his pocket. Realizing it was no use trying to escape, he groaned and took that candy bar out of his pocket, placing it in my hand. I wasted no time in whapping him over the head with it.

"Ouch, what the heck man."

"Next time, I'm having your ass hauled off to juvie."

"Stop threatening me with that juvie crap. I'm eighteen. If I get pinched, I'm doing big boy time."

"In that case, you should be even more scared, ever here of the term 'don't drop the soap'." I said, knowing that would get a reaction.

As expected, he gulped in an overly cartoony way that made it really hard not to start laughing. Doing my best to keep a straight face, I finally let him go. "Get out of here."

He ran out the sliding doors and didn't even look back. I shook my head as I turned to find my manager, Raul, chuckling behind the counter. "How do you do that?"

"He tried to hide a candy bar in skinny jeans. It's not that hard to figure out."

"Even so…" he trailed off.

I examined the broken butterfinger closely, finding that it had been smashed to pieces when I used it as a disciplinary tool. I held it up to show Raul. "Can I just eat this? No one's gonna buy it."

"Be my guest." He answered.

I nodded as I hopped behind the counter and took my place behind the cash register.

He leaned his elbow against the table. "Hey, did you here about that Henderson kid."

I nodded, but didn't say anything, trying to signal that I'd rather not talk about it. He didn't pick up on it.

"I heard that his Dad turned him in. What kind of parent would do that to their kid?"

I shrugged. "The report said that he was troubled, maybe there was some kind of argument between them. Or, maybe his dad is just an asshole."

He snorted. "It must have been pretty bad then, I could never imagine turning my son into the police, especially for something as stupid as pokephilia."

"I know," I said with an eye roll, "It's like the cops have nothing better to do then to separate perfectly happy couples. Even if they are a tad…eccentric."

"Yeah," He responded. "Well, I gotta go do some paperwork crap, I'll see you later."

"See ya." I responded, beginning my incredibly boring shift of cash register duty.

(six hours later)

I was walking home from a particularly boring day at work, fully ready to go home and plop into bed. However, a growl in my stomach urged me to find nourishment. Making a split second decision, I turned onto a path that I knew would take me to a local Home Run Inn. I hadn't had pizza in a while and suddenly found myself craving it.

Still, other than that, everything was turning out to be a relatively normal day. But That all changed as I began approaching a building surrounded by police cars, as well as a huge crowd of people. I quickly recognized the building as the daycare center, but still didn't think much of it. Whatever it was, it was none of my business.

At least, that's what I thought at first, but as the door to the establishment opened, I saw three machokes dragging a pokémon out using odd little contraptions that restrained its movement. To my surprise, I knew the pokémon.

It was Rori. Her eyes were flooded with tears and she was trying to use her claws to pull back against the three fighting types. It was no use, of course, as they easily overpowered her. She spotted me in the crowd and looked at me with pleading eyes, begging me for help.

For once, I didn't think about what I was doing, pushed past the crowd, and crossed the police line onto the crime scene. I knew very well that the fighting pokémon that police officers are issued aren't allowed to hurt civilians, so I wasn't going to get hurt.

I approached them and slipped by with ease, as they weren't really paying attention. I grabbed the metal coil that had been place around her muzzle and tried to yank it off, but didn't get too far before one of the machokes was trying to yank me off.

"Hey, back off, she's with me!" I tried to explain.

They looked at each other, shrugged, and let go. I swear, fighting types are so gullible some times. They returned inside, probably to receive further instruction, so I did my best to get the metal coils off of Rori.

After I got the one around her neck off, she buried her face into my chest and began sobbing. I was a little uncomfortable based on the fact that I barely knew her, but lazily wrapped my arm around her and stroked her mane, trying to calm her down.

"Hey, it's alright…where's Allen? Does he know about this?"

She only began to cry harder at that. Squirming from my already loose hold, she gently took my hand in her jaws and tugged me to come inside. Now, in my experience, it's best not to get involved with these kinds of things, but I was probably already going to be in deep shit for interfering with police business, so I figured that it wouldn't hurt my circumstances.

I followed her inside, and nearly hurled at the gruesome scene in front of me.

There was blood…a shit load of blood, and it was splattered all over the lobby. A pair of cops barely even noticed me as they wheeled some poor guy in a rubber bag past me. There were scorch marks on the tile floor in random places and, if I'm not mistaken, one of them left a vague outline of someone's foot.

It didn't take long for me to piece things together. Someone was killed by a pokémon and they thought it was Rori. At the same time, that was impossible. With all the blood splattered everywhere, some of it would have had to get on her, and her coat was entirely clean aside from a bit of dirt.

Amongst the people inside, were the three machoke, two employees huddled in a corner, and a couple of policemen who were questioning the manager. Against my better judgment, I walked up to them and got their attention the only way I knew how. "Hey, shitheads!"

The overweight one turned in my direction. "Who the hell are you? This is a crime scene, you're not allowed in here." He turned to one of the machoke from earlier. "And I thought I told you to put the arcanine in the truck. It should be half way to the clinic by now."

I shuddered a bit, knowing very well 'clinic' meant pound, and if they were taking her there, she probably wasn't coming back out. "As soon as you start doing your job, then I'll leave. Under what grounds are you putting this arcanine to death?"

He rolled his eyes. "If it'll get you off my back, fine. We have a witness stating he saw it rip apart her owner, then light him on fire, plus, we got a body full of third degree burns that could have only been caused by a powerful fire attack. There's your evidence, now get the hell out."

My eyes widened. It was Allen…the dead body was Allen. The guy who had, not seven hours ago, bought me a cup of coffee. That must be why Rori was so upset.

I glanced at the owner, suspecting that he was the witness the fat cop had referred to. He was twitching hysterically and kept looking back and forth as if he was nervous about something. He was hiding something, that's for sure.

A thought came to my mind. "Let me see the body."

Fat cop blinked in disbelief. "Excuse me?"

I didn't wait for an answer, but instead burst out the door. The two cops wheeling the stretcher were just loading it into the ambulance. I practically tackled the one on the end, sending him sprawling to the ground and before the other one had time to react, I yanked down the zipper of the bag.

I only had a split second before I was being yanked away by fat cop, but it was all I needed. The body, as expected, was horribly burnt, but I could at least make out a few bite marks…marks that were way too narrow to fit the jaws of an arcanine, as well as a random puncture wound off to the side.

I grunted in pain as fat cop slammed me down on the hood of his car, but managed to blurt out my conclusion. "It was a houndoom!"

"Shut up! You're under arrest for trespassing and interfering with an official police investigation. You have the right to remain silent."

"God damn it! Listen to me, it was a houndoom, the owner is lying!" I cried out in vain as fat cop continued to read me my rights and slap a pair of handcuffs on me.

I was almost shoved into the back seat of his car when someone else spoke up.

"Officer!" Came the voice of a female employee with long, blonde hair. He shoved me in the backseat before responding. "Stay calm ma'am, everything is under control."

She dismissed his comment and continued. "…the manager…he owns a houndoom."

He blinked in disbelief before turning and giving me a questioning look. I responded by giving him a smug grin.

He looked around at his fellow officers for a second, as if he didn't know what to do, but he regained his composure. "Alright," he said, pointing to a random cop, "You, go back inside and see if you can find that houndoom, Smith, take Mr. Kirk into custody, Johnson, take this kid to the station, I want to have a chat with him when this is all done."

My grin quickly faded. "You have got to be kidding me."

He responded by slamming the door in my face and some other cop got in the driver's seat.

Unbelievable, I solve a case, save an innocent life…and get arrested for it.

As we pulled away from the curb and my handcuffs began to chafe, I couldn't help but think one thing.

…what the hell have I gotten myself into?

Ok, so, new opening. Same story, same character, Different background. So tell me what you think. Anything constructive or complimentary is welcome.