[Pokémon] Red with Envy

(Hello, I'm back off a two year hiatus, I'm writing the intro to a story I've had an idea for, for a long time. Depending on how well received this is (My last one was not) I'll continue. This story picks up after my character defeats Green in HG/SS.


"I want Red", Clara said, leering at Professor Oak; up to this point she had battled the best and beat the best. Red was the ultimate challenge. "Eh…How do you know about Red?" Professor Oak asked rather curiously.

"I traveled all through Johto and Kanto, All people have ever spoken about was how great Red is…" Clara said, sternly raising both of her eyebrows as to show how serious she was about battling the legendary trainer from Pallet.

"You'll never win" A familiar voice said coming from behind the both of them. "Green? Why do you say that?" Professor Oak asked taking note to Clara's now defensive posture. "I battled Red and I've battled Clara, Red attacks with precision and accuracy he never uses the same strategy in battle."Green said, crossing his arms and folding his hands.

"Clara, your strategy is far too sporadic to take on Red in a full Pokémon Battle. "That's why your friend Ace beat you in the Sinnoh finals" Green said again, this time locking eyes with Clara.
"You're using the Strategy of your friends, and that's not going to get the job done against Red, I suggest you take this time as the Johto Champion and determine what makes you, you." Green said blowing off an arrogant sigh and silently strolled down the dusty road to his home.

"Are you alright Clara?" Oak asked, placing his hand on her shoulder. "Y-yes…I'm fine" she said, glancing at her badges. She had collected and beat the eight gyms of Johto, then turned around and captured the eight gyms of Kanto as well. It was in those brief moments that she realized Green was right, not just with the copying of the styles of Ace and Juan but even their ambitions.

"I only went to Sinnoh because Ace did, when he beat me in the Pokémon League, I stopped training Pokémon." She said looking down at her Feraligatrs pokeball. "Then, there was Hoenn" she finally admitted. "Juan went to Hoenn to try and become a better trainer as well, his passion for training made me want to do it, and I was crushed by multiple trainers."

She said again, looking into the sky as the envious clouds began to hide the vibrant sun rays. "I started in Johto; because I knew no one would be there, it'd just be me on my own journey, and I achieved that."

She said, finally looking back at Professor Oak. "It's what I want to do; I want to defeat Red", Clara said, balling her fist up in the process. The highly regarded professor said nothing her just nodded his head; acknowledging her new goal. "I'll make Arrangements for you to go to Mt. Silver and the Jade Valley" Oak said pointing his index finger in the air.

"The trainers in the Jade Valley are horrendously powerful Clara, you'd had better be on your "A" game" Oak said, placing his hands behind his back. "Tell me a bit about your Pokémon?"

Oak asked trying to register Clara's Secret Clearance to the Jade Valley. "Well first, there is Feraligatr; he was given to me by Professor Elm back in New Bark Town. "Then I have Pidgeot, it was the first Pokémon I captured, next was Victreebel, then Nidoking, followed by Magneton and lastly Dragonair" Clara said thinking about when they were all registered in the Hall of Fame together.

"Here ya go" Professor Oak said, handing Clara an updated trainer's card. "What's the Jade Valley like?" she asked a bit inquisitive. "It's a huge Region in which you'll have to compete in multiple coliseum-like tournament battles. "It's the last place I knew Red was going; if you're going to find him that's the best place to start".

Oak said giving Clara a stern glance, deep down he knew her determination to be a legendary trainer was driving her to press on in her training. "You can stay at my home for the night" Oak said, heading down across town to his Lab.

Clara followed closely behind him, pulling out her Pokegear to call her mother. "Hello Mom, It's me Clara" She said happy to hear her mother's voice. "I'm doing great Mom; I just defeated the 8th Gym leader here in the Kanto Region." She explained still exhausted from the whole endeavor.

"Tomorrow I'm heading out to the Jade Valley, so I'm going to rest up at Prof.Oak's home, I was just letting you know; love you, bye!" she said, hanging up the phone heading off towards Oak's lab.

The whole reality of being Johto League Champion was still surreal to her, she couldn't believe she actually managed to win a tourney with Pokémon she raised herself, as opposed to the powerful ones she just caught in Sinnoh.

The Pokémon she captured back in Sinnoh and Hoenn; she gave to her brother and sister. They adored Pokémon as well and the both of them grew up hoping to be some type of Pokémon trainer.

"I never used to do battles, I used to just be a Pokémon Coordinator, I watched a battle between Ace and Juan one day and I just wanted to do it." She said sitting down next to her huge Feraligatr.

"I remember when Professor Elm, gave me you as, a Totodile" she said running the belly of her most loyal friend. "Tomorrow we begin a tough journey…will be putting ourselves on the line…we're Johto League Champions". She said which brought a smile to the face of the huge Pokémon. "Let's rest up" she said leaning over and going to sleep.

The morning broke, with the sun slowly creeping over the sleepy people of Pallet. The overnight dew, cascaded across the grass throughout the night leaving the huge tree leaves fresh for Pokémon like Ladyba to soak up the moisture.

The sight of Bug Pokémon always reminded her of, her trusted bug Pokémon Beedrill, for the time being it was watching over the rest of her Pokémon back home in Redwood City.

"You're leaving so soon?" Oak said wiping the morning sleep from his eyes. "I sure am, I have a long trek ahead of me" she said thanking Professor Oak for everything. "I took the Liberty of updating your Pokedex, as well as stocking up items you'll need for the adventure." He said handing Clara her backpack. "Wow, I don't know how to thank you!" Waving bye, she began her way towards Viridian City and towards Mount.Silver.

I tried to read this to offer some review, but I'll have to start by saying that this was difficult to read. Without proper paragraphing, I kept losing my place moving from one line to another. They kept merging together or I would skip the next line. To make this easier to read, hit the Enter button twice to make a new paragraph, so that there's a blank line in between them.

You'll also want to watch your grammar. Right in the first sentence of your fic, you have a few basic grammar mistakes.

"I want Red" Clara said leering at Professor Oak; up to this point she had battled the best and beat the best, Red was the ultimate challenge.

Click to expand...

You're missing a comma after the first "Red" and after "said", and it would read better if "Red was the ultimate challenge" was a separate sentence.

If the grammar was cleaned up a bit (perhaps ask for a beta reader to help with that?), then this would be easier to read and I could review it more.

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it.

Even if you spaced everything out, it is still hard to read. Not because the words are jumbled up, but because the dialogue isn't spaced out properly. For example:

Editman said:

"I want Red", Clara said, leering at Professor Oak; up to this point she had battled the best and beat the best. Red was the ultimate challenge. "Eh…How do you know about Red?" Professor Oak asked rather curiously.

Click to expand...

You have two speakers in the same paragraph. As soon as Professor Oak starts talking, the readers would understand it better if his dialogue was on the next line. So the correction would be like this:

Editman said:

"I want Red", Clara said, leering at Professor Oak; up to this point she had battled the best and beat the best. Red was the ultimate challenge.

"Eh…How do you know about Red?" Professor Oak asked rather curiously.

Click to expand...

This happens a lot in your story, so you really want to fix those, otherwise it can get confusing.

Editman said:

"I traveled all through Johto and Kanto, All people have ever spoken about was how great Red is…" Clara said, sternly raising both of her eyebrows as to show how serious she was about battling the legendary trainer from Pallet.

Click to expand...

The bolded word should be lower cased. This is probably a typo though. Also, I don't think raising both of your eyebrows shows you're serious. When I do that, I look surprised. Trust me, I just did it in front of a mirror to make sure. You could condense the whole bit and make it, "Clara said sternly" or something.

The whole bit with Green was a bit random, in my opinion. He just showed up from nowhere, yells a bit, and then Clara cries in the corner. I suppose that would speak about their character, but it's still really weird in the first place. There also wasn't really much build up to Clara's reaction. The pacing was really rushed in this case. I don't think Green (or Blue, depends which canon you're going with...) would be in Pallet anyway. As far as the games go, he's never really at his gym, but he's not home either. He goes everywhere, like at the Seafoam Islands and whatnot. I would suggest starting the fic with a battle with Green instead. In that case, Clara could celebrate and ask Green where Red is. Then Green can do his scoffing and jeering and bring Clara down. That's just my take though.

Editman said:

"I started in Johto; because I knew no one would be there, it'd just be me on my own journey, and I achieved that."

Click to expand...

You don't need the semicolon here. Actually, it shouldn't be here. A semicolon only separates two independent clauses. Here, however, you have an independent clause followed by a dependent clause. You could go without punctuation after "Johto".

Editman said:

"The trainers in the Jade Valley are horrendously powerful Clara, you'd had better be on your "A" game" Oak said, placing his hands behind his back. "Tell me a bit about your Pokémon?"

Click to expand...

Okay, so first off, "you'd had" is grammatically incorrect. "You'd" is the conjunction of "you would", so the sentence would read, "you would had". There are two verbs side by side, and neither of them is a helping verb. Take out the "had" and it's fine. Also, what Professor Oak commands ends with a question mark. But the problem is, it's a command. You don't need a question mark for a command. Unless you worded it as, "Would you. . . ?" then you'd need a question mark. Long story short, replace the question mark with a period.

So enough of the mechanical nonsense. That's not interesting. I will say that you should really look over some parts because you have commas in awkward places, dialogue bits missing punctuation within the quotation marks, and some of the wording is just weird. As Astinus has said above, I would suggest getting a beta reader if grammar just isn't your thing.

Your description is vivid at times. You describe a scene with a few words but your word choice is good and it creates a clear picture. On the contrary, what the characters are actually doing seem to be repeated actions. Most of them have something to do with their hands or their eyes. The characters' actions aren't really informative, and some aren't necessary. For example:

Editman said:

Oak said giving Clara a stern glance, deep down he knew her determination to be a legendary trainer was driving her to press on in her training.

Click to expand...

At this part I was a bit weirded out. The comma is serving as a comma splice and should be replaced to a semi-colon. Next, the "deep down...." sentence is worded excessively. Also, the verbs were, in my opinion weak. Personally I would have changed it something like:

Oak stared at Clare, if just for a few moments. He nearly smiled as he recognized her enthusiasm closely resembled the legendary trainer's. Her passion gave her the will to train, the will to achieve. He faced away from her and slowly strolled towards his home.

Click to expand...

This is merely a suggestion, but I hope you get the idea. This kind of gives more feeling to the readers. It gives a connection and more description.

And that pretty much concludes my review. I hope I didn't sound so harsh. I'm too tired and I feel sick. Actually, I am sick but that's besides the point. Try brushing up on a bit of your wording and sentence structures. I noticed that a few of your sentences sounded the same, so you might want to spice it up a bit. Your characters could be expressed more vividly as well. Just try not to incorporate physical actions too much. That sounds really backwards, but you can describe characters with their thoughts rather than them fixing their hair.

I'll stop here and I bid you adieu.