History of Pokémon Training
NOTE: THIS IS ABSOLUTELY UNOFFICIAL! Do not take this section seriously - it's merely here for fun. That's why it's under "Opinions". It's really a piece of fiction in a more of an essay format. So yeah. Don't think this is 'the truth'.
Eons ago, humans mysteriously appeared in the Pokémon world. Nobody knows for sure how they got there; all that is known is that the species cannot possibly have developed in two different worlds. Some have also theorized that our world developed into the Pokémon world somehow.
But however they may have gotten there, humans originally must have had a hard time adapting to the Pokémon world. It happened that the other creatures of that world, which they later dubbed 'Pokémon' were much more powerful than they were; many of them had developed the ability to breathe fire, manipulate electricity with their bodies, communicate telepathically and do various other things that to the humans were so distant that they considered them supernatural.
Humans were more or less lost in direct competition with the Pokémon. The only thing they had over them was their extraordinary creativity and cunning, which was in fact the only thing that saved them at first from being altogether wiped out by Kabutops or other predators.
However, the humans hunted the likes of Nidoran, and just like what happened in our world when animals were first tamed, the humans adopted some motherless cubs who befriended them. Soon the humans discovered that the young Pokémon had a very powerful instinct for fighting each other without any apparent cause. And one day, after winning an exhausting battle, one of the female Nidoran was wrapped in a white glow and in a few seconds grew into a slightly larger, more adult-looking monster, before the humans' very eyes. What they had just witnessed was Pokémon evolution.
Now, with their trademark cleverness, the humans got a brilliant idea: while it was easy to adopt a small Pokémon and earn its trust, they weren't very useful for the humans, but after they evolved into something bigger and stronger, they were willing to protect the humans they trusted. This was shown when one Nidorina and two Nidorino - the male counterpart of Nidorina - heroically fended off a hungry Kabutops that had attacked the group of humans in their sleep.
Soon the Pokémon had become a vital part of the humans' lives. Every family adopted at least one young Pokémon and let it evolve. It soon became a sport among the humans to let their Pokémon battle in friendly matches against each other so they could evolve sooner. And the Pokémon appeared to enjoy this - it seemed like one of their ultimate goals was more power and evolution, and when they could even trust their humans to make sure they never fought to their deaths and care for their wounds afterwards, they no longer had to deal with the natural risks of too much fighting.
Before long, the humans started studying their Pokémon's fighting techniques. They discovered that the same type of attack could be drastically more effective on one species of Pokémon than another. This led to them starting to interfere more with their Pokémon's fights, occasionally suggesting a better move to make than what the Pokémon was about to do. This practice grew and in the end the humans had started leading their Pokémon through most of their battles. The humans started calling themselves 'Pokémon trainers' and began to study Pokémon battling techniques more. For example, when a Pokémon sprayed water (as some of them could) on another one that liked to use fire to fight, it would severely weaken the other Pokémon, but doing the same to another Pokémon that liked to fight with water was not nearly as effective. The humans made Pokémon types, giving every Pokémon they knew one or two that best seemed to fit their real weaknesses and resistances, just for the sake of making all this easier to remember - the humans' amazing ability to see patterns in everything had made them more capable of figuring out things such as that.
The Pokémon soon realized that their trainers were usually right, and the responsbility for the strategical part of the battle moved more and more over to the trainer. The Pokémon simply trusted them to make decisions and didn't mind so much that essentially they were being controlled.
One day, humans discovered a type of fruit that Pokémon seemed to avoid at all costs. Upon taking these hard-shelled fruits and examining them, they noticed slight dizziness around them and an increased tendency of headaches. They attempted to open the shells, but it was very difficult as if the shell was held together by some invisible force. When one touched a Pokémon by accident, they discovered that the Pokémon was turned into red light and somehow absorbed inside the fruit. There was no way to get the Pokémon out until upon harsh impact with the ground, the Pokémon managed to burst the shell and reform in its normal self outside the fruit. The humans named the fruits Apricorns and started using them as weapons to fight dangerous Pokémon, but soon stopped as they were afraid of approaching the Apricorns out of suspect that the Pokémon might break out of them.
Instead, they started experimenting with the practice of opening them with tools, hollowing them out and putting them back together with hinges on. This caused them to suck in a Pokémon upon impact, as the normal Apricorn would, but being much easier for the Pokémon to get out of, allowing any healthy Pokémon to effortlessly break out of it and additionally making impact with the ground open it. The humans started using this for their own Pokémon as Pokémon battling grew as a sport, mostly because they felt that the battles would be more exciting if neither opponent knew what Pokémon the other would be using.
Then later, after it became common to carry Pokémon inside Apricorns - the Pokémon often did not mind, but if they did, they simply broke out - a breakthrough was made: somebody thought of throwing an Apricorn at wild Pokémon to capture them. Naturally, most healthy wild Pokémon would just break out, but very young ones and ones that had been weakened in a battle were often caught, and the humans discovered it wasn't necessary to befriend a Pokémon from childhood to make it trust humans - as it discovered that Pokémon obeying a trainer had been superior in battle and afterwards the trainer was willing to nurse it back to health, it would often consider this a better way to evolve and become powerful. As described earlier, that was of course very important to the Pokémon. Therefore, when a trainer caught a Pokémon inside an Apricorn, it became a sort of unwritten rule that the Pokémon now 'belonged' to the trainer.
This way of thinking spread out among both humans and Pokémon. Those Pokémon who did not wish to be caught mostly moved to areas that humans did not frequent; others were competitive or had such a sense of adventure that they wanted to be caught, and then they stayed nearer to humans. It became a tradition that a Pokémon should not be caught until the trainer had both proven himself superior in battle and also his respect for Pokémon by not harming the target excessively and healing it after catching it. Unforunately, over the years the second rule has gotten more and more forgotten.
As Pokémon training developed, Pokéballs were invented, replacing the Apricorns for the most part, and a special agreement was made between humans and Pokémon on the rules of Pokémon training after humans and Psychic Pokémon discovered that they could communicate with each other. Pokémon training blossomed, and a new era in the Pokémon world began...
Page last modified February 12 2007 at 17:24 GMT
