Pokemon Beyond the Tall Grass: Chrono, the Kindred Spirit

Seven years ago

It's a sunny day in Ecruteak city. A young boy with short blonde hair and green eyes is running back home after having worked at the dance theater for most of the afternoon. The boy's feet patter on the ground as he runs back home, his slender but toned build letting him take long strides as he runs for home in time to get some food for dinner. Tonight they'd be having chicken with fried rice and peas. He licked his lips as he thought about the warm food that he'd be getting when he returned home, making him run even faster so that he could eat sooner.

Then suddenly, he hears a noise. He slows to a stop as he looks around for the source of what sounded like a kitten's meow.

Mew~

He whipped around as he heard the tiny sound once again. In the shadows of an alleyway inside of an old box lay a tiny kitten with purple fur and a hook shaped tail. It stared at him as its tail wagged lazily, the rusty collar around its neck giving a small jingle as it mewed at him again. It's jade colored eyes and slitted pupils staring unblinkingly at the young boy as it sat in its box, not moving from its spot. The boy blinked at it before approaching the small kitten carefully, the kitten soon growing nervous and starting to growl at him. He stopped a few feet away from the tiny thing and held out his hand to it silently, offering it as a chance for it to smell him. The kitten didn't leave its box however, instead choosing to hiss and growl louder at him to go away. With a sigh of defeat, the young boy gets up and leaves the alleyway to return home.

As he ate dinner that night, he couldn't stop thinking about the tiny kitten pokemon that he'd seen. The poor thing must be hungry if it's stuck in a box rather than safely with its trainer. Or did it even have a trainer? The thought of the poor kitten pokemon having been abandoned by its trainer droned in the boy's mind as he laid his head onto his pillow that night. He couldn't stand such a thought. Not for one more moment. It was then that he decided to take the kitten some food tomorrow after he'd finished working at the dance theater for the day. He was just cleaning the place anyway. Maybe the Kimono Girls would even be willing to help him out some with this? He didn't know, but he knew he couldn't just leave the poor thing to fend for itself like that. It wasn't right and he knew it.

So the very next day just before he got out of work at the dance theater, he asked one of the kimono girls if they would help him take care of the small kitten pokemon in the alleyway. She was only too happy to hear that the boy had taken pity on such an unfortunate life, happily helping him by giving him some moist pokemon food to take to it after he got out of work. Dark clouds started to cover the sky as he ran out of the theater to the alleyway with the food, making him move faster than he usually would to get the food to the kitten before it started raining.

The kitten's behavior was only the same as it had been the previous day, the creature hissing and growling at him from its box as he approached it. But he wasn't afraid. Smiling at it, he carefully set down the moist food and backed away from it to let it know that he really hadn't meant it any harm whatsoever. The kitten was hesitant at first, looking anxiously from the food to the boy several times before its curiosity finally managed to get the better of it. Slowly it crept out of the box that it was inside of and sniffed at the food before lapping at it and taking small bites. The small bites quickly turned into ravenous gulps as it wagged its tail happily and purred for the first time that the boy could've heard. Satisfied with his good deed, the boy left the kitten alone to eat its food.

But fate had other plans for the unfortunate kitten pokemon in the alleyway. What was supposed to be just a light rain that night from the dark clouds quickly turned into a roaring and howling thunderstorm, the heavy rainfall battering at the boy's window's as he looked out into the night. He couldn't stop thinking about the tiny purple kitten in the alleyway, alone and without any real shelter from the rain. It didn't take long before he'd ran downstairs and out of the safety of his house, the kitten's safety the only thing on his mind. He quickly found it in the alleyway again, now soaking wet and crying out in terror from the storm. Despite how the kitten had previously behaved when he'd seen him before, the boy ran over to it and quickly picked it up into his arms. The kitten not only didn't growl or hiss at him this time, but it actually snuggled into his chest and mewed in fear of the storm. This got the boy to quicken his pace as his shoes spattered into the variously sized puddles all over the city, making quite a splash as he threw open the door to his home and closed it behind him. His mother saw why he'd left the house and the kitten that was soaking wet and in distress in his arms and quickly got the boy a couple of large towels to help dry the poor thing with.

Soon enough, the kitten was dried off thanks to the boy's kind efforts and shivering in his arms underneath the blankets of his bed, the storm scaring it beyond belief. The boy smiled as he silently pet the tiny kitten pokemon, lulling it to sleep until the storm finally ceased, allowing the two of them to finally fall asleep. And such was the beginning of a beautiful friendship between pokemon and human, the kitten quickly bonding to the young boy while disliking interactions with others. Even so, the two were inseparable and soon the kitten bore a new collar with two clean, fresh metal tags on it. One had the kitten's new nickname on it: Jade

The second tag however, bore the kitten's new owner's name.

Chrono Novaria