23 My Decision (23)

"You guys are back!" The familiar voice of Professor Rowan greets us as we enter the lab. Chimchar should of also gotten back so there isn't any need t worry.

"I've gotten Piplup!" Dawn says happily as she lets go of the penguin. Piplup now free of her grasp, makes his way to the table which originally had his food.

Looking over to where Piplup was going, you could see a Chimchar with an embarrassed look and a Turtwig who was currently still eating.

"Now that they are all back, you guys can pick your starters." Professor Rowan says cheerfully. Dawn and I now very excited, walk up to the table where the three starters were at.

"Dawn you can go first." I tell her as she gets a glint in her eyes.

"Have you made your decision already?" Professor a Rowan asks Dawn with a knowing look. Dawn not paying attention, walks up to the starters with a giddy look.

It seems like she will make the same decision as in the anime. She has bonded quite a bit with the penguin so I wouldn't blame her.

Even then the other choices aren't bad anyways if she picks the one I wanted. Waiting in suspense, it takes a little bit before Dawn worded out her choice. But after a bit she finally spoke.

"I choose you, Piplup!" She points at Piplup with a pose. Piplup now excited, jumps at Dawn which makes her and Piplup fall over. It was the expected choice so there wasn't much to unpack there."Haha, calm down Piplup, let me get your Pokeball first." Dawn says as she stands up and takes the Pokeball Professor Rowan was handing her.

"It's now your turn." I hear the Professor say as he grabs the other two Pokeballs from his pocket.

'I already made the decision a long time ago.' I though to myself with a grin. Looking at the two starters that were left over, I walked up to the middle Pokemon

"I choose Chimchar." I say holding out my fist. Chimchar seeing me holds my fist out at him starts celebrate. At first he was sad he wasn't picked by Dawn but he still got a trainer in the end.

"Chimchar!" The Pokemon cheers out as he fist bumps me. Happy with the decision I made I walked over to Professor Rowan and grabbed Chimchar's Pokeball.

Turtwig seeing this starts to get a sad look but gets cheered up by the assistants as they start to dote on him.

At first I wanted to pick Turtwig and get Paul's Chimchar, but there's a problem with that. There are a whole lot of reasons why I wouldn't want that Chimchar.

The guy has mental problems and PTSD. I'll be honest here and say that I'm not a therapist and am not committed enough to help out with a team member with that.

Ash had to hug Chimchar while he was attacking in his Blaze form multiple times which I would not recommend as it would be extremely painful if you were not the protagonist. I'm not willing to hurt myself knowing it would burn me. I don't know how Ash went unscathed but I wont be the same unless i retrain the guy with my psychic powers.

I don't want to baby sit the guy as he goes rogue.

At times he doesn't even follow your command as he gets scared? This is because of his experience with the Pokemon who almost killed him. In the anime he freezes up more than just a few times because of this.

On top of this he can't even control his blaze ability. He basically goes rogue and attacks everything he sees which includes his trainers. Multiple occasions in the anime Ash gets attacked by Chimchar. In the end he was able to "control" it somewhat but I still don't want a handicapped Chimchar at the start.

I mean in the final battle against Paul was Infernape really in control of blaze?

"You picked the other trouble maker." Dawn chimes in seeing my starter. The both of us laughed a little at her comment as we proceeded to look around the lab which was still the same as it's previous state before we left.

"Clean up the mess." Professor Rowan tells his assistants with a sigh as he notices our glances at the lab.

"Yes sir!" The assistants all say in sync as they start to fumble around trying to clean up the place.

"Turtwig!" The Turtwig chimes in happily as he eats some extra food.

While this was happening though another assistant comes by with two interested devices I've been itching for.

Professor Rowan seeing my interested look starts to smile.

"Before you guys start your journey though, I'd like to give you guys a gift." He says while ushering us closer. Dawn and I quickly making our way over, spot two devices with one of them being pink and the other purple.

Professor Rowan grabbing the pink device, opens it up and starts to talk.

"This is what you would call a Pokedex. An extremely useful tool that can help you identify a Pokemon. You just have to point the camera at a Pokemon and it will tell you it's basic information." Professor Rowan says with a proud look as he turn around with the Pokedex in hand. Aiming the device's camera at Turtwig, a voice starts to talk from the speakers of the Pokedex.

"Turtwig, the tiny leaf Pokemon. The shell on its back is made of soil. On a very healthy Turtwig, the shell should feel moist."

Dawn hearing the voice, gets an amazed look. It's something was would obviously help us out on the journey a lot, but this feature alone wasn't the reason its so special. There are publicly sold Pokedexes but they don't have all of the little widgets one from a Professor like Rowan would have.

"This isn't the only thing it can do." Professor Rowan said excitedly. "Caught Pokemon can be scanned on the Pokedex to show their move pools, physical status, body size and EVS. EVS also known as effort values are something extremely important that you guys have already learned about no?" He says looking back at us.

Both of us nodding at his question start to eagerly look at the Pokedex as we wanted to immediately try one out ourselves. Professor Rowan getting an amused look hands us a Pokedex each with the purple one being handed to me.

"Also take these." He says not finished. Both of us looking like lost puppies, look back at Professor Rowan and he hand us each ten Pokeballs.

"Thanks Professor!" Both Dawn and I shout giddily as we thanked the Professor. After a short chat and a few goodbyes with the assistants, we made our way outside and got on our bikes.

Ready for the journey ahead…