Starter choice

[Kyle's POV]

"WHAT?! What's the meaning of this, Ashy-boy?!" Gary asked out in shock and disbelief, looking at me as if i betrayed him. Delia was no less shocked, looking at me with concern, worried that there was something wrong with me.

"It means what i just said, Gary. I've been thinking about it for a while, and i prefer to wait a few years until i think i am ready than to start my journey right away." I stated, shocking them even more. I then noticed Gary looking down while gritting his teeth and clenching his fists, upset and angered because of my words. Seeing his emotional state, i decided that it was better to clarify what i mean, since i realized that both him and Delia most probably misunderstood what i meant.

"*Sigh* Listen, i am not saying that i won't sit here with my hands in my pockets, nor that i don't care about becoming a pokemon master anymore, and i definitely didn't say that i will quit becoming a pokemon trainer.

What i'm saying is that i don't think that i am ready to travel alone through Kanto yet, less so at the age of 10. I would rather prepare myself for a few years and start my journey later than to start now without having readied properly." I explained, exhaling a sigh of relied when i saw Gary calm down slightly, still shocked alright, but not pissed at me as much as he was a few moments ago, which is a good thing, i guess.

Delia on the other hand gave me a surprised look, which then turned into a happy and proud smile. "Aww. My baby boy has grown up so much~" She told me lovingly as she ruffled my hair, playfully teasing me while secretly winking at me, making me chuckle softly.

"I get it! I get it!" I playfully complained, snickering while i gently took Delia's hand off of my head. I then glanced at Gary, and noticed him sigh softly before a small smile formed on his face, chuckling quietly at mine and Delia's interaction.

When he realized that i saw his smile, he quickly changed it to a scowl, trying to preserve his cool kid persona, making me laugh a little. Soon enough he joined me in the laughter, and so did Delia.

After composing himself, Gary took out a small white box with a symbol on it that i recognized immediately, a golden cross-like wheel with green gems nestled in it. At first i was processing what the hell that box was, but after a few minutes i finally realized, or at least i thought i did, and really wanted to facepalm, but held myself back.

Either way, i gave it an excited look, mostly to not gain their suspicion. Seeing my "excited" look, Gary gave me a smug smile and opened the box, showing me its content, that being the Arc Phone.

"Cool right? I bought it from the newest electronics store that opened here in Pallet recently. It's called an "Arc Phone", the owner himself told me that this is the only one on the whole planet, and being the soon to be greatest pokemon trainer ever, i thought that it would be a gift fit for my future rival. No need to thank me, Ashy-boy" Gary told me in a smug and prideful way, putting the hand that held the top part of the box over his chest, giving himself a hum of approval.

Surprisingly enough it took him only a few seconds before he quit with the selfish act, handing me the phone while looking sideways, a tiny bit embarassed by his own behaviour.

I quickly grabbed the box, lookiny at it with sparkling eyes, i then took out the Arc Phone and turned it in various ways, trying to figure out how it worked compared to a normal phone. The Arc Phone itself had a more "normal" cover, which still had the golden wheel, but it didn't have the head-shape to the top, nor the sharp hoof part at the end, only having the golden parts of both.

Thankfully it worked like a normal phone, taking me only a few seconds to find the button to turn it on. When i pressed it, i was met with a cool-looking night sky wallpaper, but i also saw something that surprised me, a notification, more precisely a message from someone named "Archer".

'Archer huh? A simple yet effective alias' i thought to myself as i stared at the message for a few seconds before clicking on it to open it. As i opened it, Gary and Delia leaned in behind me, just as curious as i was.

"Archer? That name sounds familiar...." Gary murmured to himself while trying to remember where he already heard that name. The moment he did, he facepalmed, groaning to himself.

"That's the owner of the shop.... How did i even forget that?!" Gary explained, sighing to himself as he somehow managed to almost forget who gave him the gift for his friend. Only then he processed the fact that the store owner himself left me a message, curious on why he did that.

"Read it" Gary said without a bit of hesitation, almost ordering me. Despite being a bit annoyed by it, i complied nontheless.

[ Happy birthday, Ash Ketchum! After all, you only turn 10 once in your life! Jokes aside, i hope that you like your new Arc Phone, it's the only model of its kind. You should have seen how excited your friend was, and how much he wanted to keep it for himself. Anyways, here are some of the features that i implemented in the Arc Phone:

-9 petabytes of space (or 9000 terabytes)

-256 GB of RAM

-32 cores/64 threads CPU, Boost clock

45-50GHz, 1 GB cache

-72000 cores, 250MHz boost clock, 128 GB Video RAM, 50 watts TGP GPU

-120 hours battery life

-45 minutes battery recharge

-3 USB doors on the left side

-camera with x50 zoom, built in X-Ray, night vision mode, infrared mode

-Flashlight with built-in UV light torch and laser pointer

-item finding, sound detecting radar

-virtual PC with upgradable Box quantity

-hidden solar panels on the back of the phone

These are the features that i think you should know as soon as you turned on the phone. I left you my contact in case you need me to explain some things about the phone, or if you want to know about the fuctions that i didn't list in this message.

Best Regards. Archer]

{Author note: You may be asking: Yuishiro, did you just turn a phone into a piece of tech that would give multiple gaming computers at once a run for its money, except more useful and as versatile as a swiss knife? Yup, i just did, and these ain't even all the functions, the others will be listed later on for obvious reasons, such as other people being in the same room as Kyle/Ash.}

The moment we finished reading that message, our jaws dropped, and i almost dropped the phone by mistake, making me panic as i quickly and carefully caught it mid-fall, forgetting about the fact that i am still sitting on my bed, meaning the Arc Phone would only fall on either my bed or my legs.

Thanks to my brief fail, Delia and Gary woke up from their stupor, the former looking at the phone in my hand in sheer amazement and disbelief, while the latter looked at it with a bit of envy, both having a general idea and understanding, for one reason or the other, of just how absurd my new phone is from its specs alone.

Delia then briefly glanced at Gary, wanting to ask just how the hell did he even afford to buy the Arc Phone, but held herself back to avoid entering a most probably unnecessary discussion.

Gary on the other hand was staring at my phone intensely, quite clearly jealous, but surprisingly, he quickly calmed himself down and returned to his senses, acting mature for once.

"You really lucked this one out, Ashy-Boy. I'll blame this one on me, but next time we find something awesome, i'm calling dibs. Got it?" Gary commente while giving me his usual smug look, telling me that he was fine.

"Got it. So i'm guessing you're gonna pick the starter first?" I asked, not really expecting anything else from him as of now to be honest, tho this time it's actually pretty fair.

"If it was a normal day, i would have said yes, but since today it's your birthday..... I guess that i can make an exception" Gary replied, surprising me a little, before deciding to tease him a bit.

"Who are you?! And what have you done to Gary Oak?!" I exclaimed with a gasp, pretending to be shocked.

"WHY YOU! You better take it back before i change my mind and pick my starter first!" Gary threatened me, angrily looking at me while a tick mark grew on his forehead, making me and Delia chuckle.

"Alright, Alright. Let's just go to Professor Oak's lab already." I casually complied as i got off the bed and stretch a bit. Before i took another step, Delia gently grabbed my shoulder, and handed me a large,flat rectangular gift box.

"There's still one more gift for you, honey" Delia told me with a sweet smile as she handed me the box, clearly being her gift for me.

I gave her a soft and grateful smile as i opened the box, which contained an outfit set composed by a black jacket with dark red details going down the side of the sleeves, a dark red t-shirt, black fingerless gloves, white jeans with a pair of silver chains hanging on each side, a red belt with silver buckle, red shoes with black details and white soles, and the hat that the canon Ash had during X and Y.

When i saw the outfit, i looked at it with surprise and awe, impressed at how genuinely awesome and cool it was, also making a mental note to compliment Delia on her fashion taste. I then put down the box and carefully took out the jacket, staring at it for a little while.

"Do you like it? You always told me how you wanted to have a super cool outfit that would make you look like an awesome trainer, so i thought of something like this. Is it of your liking?" She asked me when she noticed that i kept staring at it, growing a little worried that she missed the mark.

To her surprise i quickly turned towards her and gave her a tight hug. "Are you kidding me, mom?! This is awesome! It's exactly what i imagined!" I confirmed enthusiastically, both to reassure and because i really loved it. It was so great in fact that Gary was looking at it with wide eyes, also amazed.

"It is pretty nice. At least you now have something decent to wear for when you have to go outside." Gary snarkily commented, giving me a grin while crossing his arms, approving my new drip despite his own.

"Whatever. Let's just go already, i can't wait to get my starter" I put the jacket back in the box while saying that, reminding him that we still have to go get our starters.

[3rd POV]

About half an hour later, Kyle and Gary went to Professor Oak's lab, having just had breakfast and eaten the cake together because priorities. Kyle was also wearing the new drip that Delia gifted him, having decided that it will be his main outfit from now on.

"Ladies first" Gary told Kyle as he moved aside, holding the door for him while pretending to be a gentleman, doing a poor job too.

Kyle just rolled his eyes and walked in, leaving Gary briefly stunned as he just stood there for a few seconds, only blinking, to then quickly recover and sprint inside to catch up to Kyle.

Inside the lab was Samuel Oak, more known as Professor Oak, standing beside a machine with a dome-shaped glass case at the top, keeping something away from view.

"Ash, Gary, you two are finally here. I almost thought that you both forgot that you were supposed to get your starters today." Professor Oak greeted them, teasing them a little about their late arrival, to which they rolled their eyes, making the older man chuckle.

"You look great today, birthday boy. I'm guessing this is one of the reasons on why it took you both so long" Professor Oak observed, complimenting Kyle's new outfit.

"That's... Half true, i guess" Kyle agreed, to then shift his gaze towards the glass case.

"That's not the point, Gramps! Where's our starters?!" Gary retorted, growing impatien as he already had to wait long enough for his tastes. Meanwhile Kyle tried his best to hold back the urge to slap the back of Gary's head.

"Impatient as always, Gary. I suggest you learn to become more patient, unless you want to lose to Ash." Oak commented, hitting one of Gary's weak spots, making the boy quickly shut up, but also noticing that Ash(Kyle) has been surprisingly calm, making him raise an eyebrow.

In the end he simply ignored it, and proceeded to press a button on the machine beside him, making the glass dome open up, revealing three pokeballs lined up to form a triangle.

"Finally! I've been waiting for this all day!" Gary exclaimed as he stared intensely at the pokeballs, eager to walk up to them and pick his starter, unable to wait any longer. He then stopped himself, remembering that he said he would let Kyle choose first, killing his mood and making him puff as he crossed his arms.

"Y-you go first" Gary reluctantly said, making a lot of effort to make that sentence come out of his mouth, surprising Professor Oak, who then focused his attention on Kyle.

Speaking of Kyle, he looked estatic, barely holding himself back from squealing like a fan girl, one of his lifetime dreams in real life coming true, to own a pokemon one day. As he reached out to grab one of the pokeballs, he stopped halfway for no apparent reason, looking at a rather peculiar pokeball on a counter.

Said pokeball was a completely normal pokeball, except for the fact that its top half was black and 2 light blue stripes, while the bottom half was yellow, catching Kyle's attention, since he was pretty sure that there should have been Pikachu's pokeball instead. His surprise was short-lived, and instead replaced by curiosity as he remembered that this world was different from the games, anime and manga, making him interested on which pokemon was inside that ball.

"What's up with that pokeball, Professor?" Kyle asked curiously as he pointed at the black and yellow pokeball on the counter behind Professor Oak's back. Following Kyle's arm, Professor Oak saw what he was pointing at, and the old man's face paled a little as soon as he did, sweating a little bit.

"That's just a custom pokeball i've been working on" Oak explained, lying to the boys as he tried to dismiss Kyle's curiosity, only to fuel his and Gary's suspicion.

"I'm not buying it. Now i'm gonna open it" Kyle stated as he stared at the professor, narrowing his eyes while looking at the pokemon expert. He walked up to the weird pokeball, and quickly grabbed it before Professor Oak could snatch it from his hand.

"Time to see what all of this is about" Kyle said as he gave the pokeball a serious look before pressing the white button on it, causing a white light to erupt from the small object as it briefly opened.

"Shi?"

A small feline shyly cried out in confusion, blinking a few times to adjust to the sudden light that hit its eyes. The feline in question stands at roughly 80cm (2 foot 7.5) of height, and it has a slim body with long, thin legs. Its front half is of a really light, whiteish blue, while the rear is black, minus the hindpaws which are the same blue as the front. On its head are 3 tufts, 2 small ones on each cheek, and a long, wavy one on top of its head, partially covering its eyes, which are large, light orange, and slightly almond shaped.

Its ears have a large, star-shaped markings inside of them, while its nose is tiny and red. Its neck is circled by a black, collar resembling marking, and its forepaws have a yellow band each right above them. At the end of its paws are 3 small, yellow claws, and on its heels and elbows are small, claw-like spikes of the same yellow of its claws.

Lastly its tail is long, and black, being as long as the whole body. The base of its tail is surrounded by spiky black fur, while the tip of its tail is a long pointed yellow star shape.

The little pokemon looked around itself in confusion, before running to hide under a table when it saw Kyle, Gary and Professor Oak, clearly afraid of them, especially of the professor.

'A shinx?'

.....