#4: charmander

The boy looks at it with those cold red eyes of his, studying it with a surgeon's intensity and fixation on detail. Oak stands next to the dimly-lit dais while the laboratory lights palpitate arrhythmically overhead, scratching at a spot on his wrist and feeling the seconds trickle by like sand. His grandson Gary is irritable and fidgety; the professor, on the other hand, is as patient as he wishes to be.

"What is it?" he finally asks.

"Well, it's a Charmander, Fire-classification, number four in the Kanto Pokédex-"

"I don't mean that," the boy cuts in. "I want to know what it can do. What its strengths and weaknesses are. What it's worth."

Red's tone shifts almost imperceptibly, a hint of a challenge rising through the placid exterior as he touches the little dragon with a gloved finger. It snorts a match-sized flame through its nostrils, testing its potential master with combined senses touch, smell, and taste. Oak, nonplussed and in a strangely confident mood, decides to take his guest at his word.

"It evolves into a charizard with the right amount of training. When it does, you'll hardly find a better form of transportation other than a dragonite, and unless you've got ties with the old dragon clans, there's a slim chance of you ever getting your hands on a dratini, much less finding one in the wild." Red still seems unfazed, so Oak continues. "They're loyal. You take a charmander and you raise it until it grows up, and it'll die for you. It's an apex predator; you can't put it to sleep, you can't stop it with paralysis, you can't cripple it with poison, you can't put it out with some water and ice or crush it with stone. Teach it to battle, and you've made yourself a killing machine.

"Oh, it's surly. Arrogant. Patronizing, if you can't discipline it when it starts getting bigger and tougher. It does have dragon ancestry, after all. It's a mess to raise at times. Few veteran trainers have ever found themselves up to the task. Fewer still have ever won against a charizard at its prime."

"Except for Lance," Gary chimes, smirking, "the first to do both."

Oak listens as Red makes his decision. He takes the Pokéball and holds it out.

"Good luck."

Outside, the young charmander blinks. There is a sharp light carving through the mounds of green and rough brown, and the rocks are rough beneath the soles of its feet. Here it is warmer than it was in the dark space, and the human with the black fur is sitting next to it. The human proffers a finger again, which the charmander sniffs and sneers at. It wags its tail, sending tiny embers dancing toward the extended digit.

"Listen to me," the human-boy says. "You're mine now, so you'll do as I say. If I tell you to sit, you will sit. If I tell you to fight, you will fight. You will obey only my orders and my orders only, unless I say otherwise."

Still disdainful, the charmander spits a gout of smoke at the human and turns to bolt, but before it can take so much as a single step an impossible weight settles around its tail-flame and refuses to budge. It shrieks and goes into hysterics. It hisses magma and claws at the boy's hands and does everything it can to get free, but the boy holds tight and does not let go. Ever.

Eventually, it stops thrashing and looks at the human with resignation. It knows it is beaten. Softly, the human takes it and cups the small body against its chest. The charmander hears the sound of a heart and feels the heat of skin. It laps at the boy's neck and nicks with its teeth, drawing a bead of blood. It shivers and mews softly. The boy smiles.

Soon, it goes back into the blackness, and the boy picks up his satchel and leaves.

They do not come back for a long time.