Introduction Part I-A Trip to the Valley

Lance sighed. He wondered if anything interesting was going on in the valley. People always would battle pokemon there, at least if there was any battling to be done. Lance always found the battles exciting, although he didn’t know many of the kids participating, because they were all older than him. He thought they were cool, and he loved to hang out with them, even if they didn’t pay much attention to him. As he started to walk out of the yard, he heard his mom call him.
“Honey, where are you going?” his mom yelled out the window. Lance’s mom was nice, and she was younger than all of his friends’ moms, being only in her mid-forties. She had the same dark brown hair as him, although he had his father’s brown eyes.
“I’m going to go down to the valley, to see if anything is going on, ok?” Lance called back. Lance thought that any eight-year-old should be able to do whatever they want, but his mom thought otherwise.
“But you haven’t had any lunch yet,” his mom said, right as Lance held up the sandwich he had made for himself. “Well, I guess you can go.” And that was enough for Lance, as he ran off through the woods, with only a quick “goodbye!” to his mother.

As Lance neared the top of the hill, he heard a crowd of people cheering in the valley below. A battle was taking place! He rushed down the hill, his hair flaring out from under his dark green beanie. He scanned the crowd for his friend, Tom, who was his older sister’s boyfriend.
“Tom, Tom!” Lance said, trying to squeeze himself between the older boys legs.
“Hey, kid, what’s up?” Tom asked, trying to figure out where exactly his girlfriend’s brother was.
“Who’s battling right now?” Lance asked, straining to see above the crowd. Tom hoisted him up onto his shoulders. Lance thought Tom was a pretty cool sixteen-year-old. “Hey, who’s that kid with the black hair? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”
“Neither have I,” said Tom. “He must have traveled here from somewhere.”
“You mean he’s from the mainland? Wow!” On the island of Cintros, visitors didn’t come very often, except from the nearby island of Ringos, but Lance could tell he wasn’t from there, as he was using a strange pokemon Lance had never seen before. The crowd around Lance started to cheer again.
“Yeah, none of you can take me! Who’s next?” This was the newcomer, who had just won the battle. The islander’s Weepinbell was no match for the traveler’s pokemon. It looked like a small, black dog, with yellow rings on it’s body in multiple places.
“Hey newcomer, I’ll take you on! Two on two, right now!” Lance looked around to see who was brave enough to face this powerful trainer, until he realized that the person who said it was right under him: it was Tom.
“Ok, bring it on! Go Umbreon! Go Misdreavus!”
“Let’s go!” Tom retorted. “Ninjask, Bellossom, go! Bellossom, use your Stun Spore attack! Ninjask, follow it up with a Fury Cutter!”
A cloud of yellow dust bellowed out of Bellossom towards the enemy, while Ninjask flew towards them, claws ready to strike.
“Umbreon, Misdreavus, you know what to do!” called the foreigner from across the field. The dog-like pokemon charged through the yellow mist of spores and Crunched down on Bellossom, knocking it unconscious, while the newly arrived ghost pokemon sat there, doing nothing. Ninjask was starting to close in on it. It was very faint, but Lance thought it looked like the strabge pokemon was starting to glow… he was sure of it now, and it grew brighter by the second.
“Now Misdreavus, Hyper Beam!” A large blinding light shot out of the pokemon’s small body. When the crowd finally recovered from the flash, Nincada was lying in the dust.
“Ha, that wasn’t a challenge at all.” The newcomer flashed a cocky grin.
“Oh well, you tried guys, come back,” Tom said as they were beamed back in to their poke balls.
“You don’t even deserve to be called a pokemon trainer,” said this powerful newcomer. Lance noticed a shadow at the top of the hill in the valley. “Why don’t you go back and cry to your mommy? Ha! What a loser.”
“You leave him alone!” called the mysterious figure from the top of the hill. “I’ll take you on, and you definitely won’t like it!"