Friendship Evolution

Friendship evolution. It sounds so nice. After all, if we evolve because of our friendship with our maste-, er, trainer, he or she must be a really good person, right?

I was a cute, happy little pichu. I had hatched from an egg that my trainer had gotten from the pokemon daycare. I didn't know who my parents were and it took over a year before I saw a real pikachu. To make up for it, I was very close to my trainer.

The way my trainer saw it, if you raise a pokemon from an egg it would be stronger and far more loyal then its wild counterpart. And if a pokemon is as hard to evolve as a friendship evolution, that evolution must be very strong, after all. In general, she felt, the harder it was to evolve a pokemon the stronger the evolution must be. After all, dragonite was super-powerful, and look at how hard it was to get one of them!

She didn't mind when I lost the occasional battle. In fact, she rarely used me against strong trainers because I wasn't very strong myself. She never minded. She would just have me fight much, much weaker opponents then the rest of the pokemon. That it, when I battled at all. She kept me out all the time though, and would play with me constantly.

I loved her. I didn't mind not fighting much because I would shock myself. I figured she must not want me to battle because she understood it was painful. And so one day I evolved.

It was strange and rather frightening, but when the glow faded I was bigger and stronger. I soon found out I could now shock other pokemon without shocking myself! It seemed great.

She then recalled me. I felt a bit scared. I had never been in a pokeball more then a few hours at a time. Still, I didn't think it would be for too long. Soon she would keep me out again.

The day after I evolved, she sent me out against a strong tauros. I won, but just barely. She was a bit annoyed, but didn't get mad because I did win.

She did get mad on the next battle, which I lost. And the next. Here she was, keeping me in reserve so I would be ready to fight the last and strongest, and what did I do? I lost. She was so mad at me for that.

She didn't use me for a while. Being kept in a pokeball so much made me figure out how to open it from the inside. At night I would get out and find some wild pokemon to fight. I fought and fought and slowly got stronger. You see, I figured that since I was an evolved pokemon and all, I must have had something wrong with me, I must have been extra weak or something, so I would have to try extra hard.

She would still use me occasionally, and one day I won. I kept training at night and getting stronger. She started using me more and more.

I trained devotedly. I wouldn't let her down again!

I was fighting so much more then her other pokemon, both in and out of trainer battles, that I soon became her strongest.

We fought in a fierce six-on-six battle one day. Her other pokemon were all fainted and the other trainer had only lost two. She sent me out.

I beat almost all of them. In fact, I nearly beat the last one, even though it was grass and I had a type disadvantage. Was my trainer happy? No.

I had lost. As her special friendship-evolution pokemon, my losing was not acceptable. Even though I had done so much more then her other pokemon, she dared to expect perfection and nothing less from me.

She didn't let me battle or out for several days. I trained all night long during that period so that next time I wouldn't lose. And when she started to use me again, I won.

Then she sent me out in a one-on-one battle with a nidoking.

Okay, maybe nidoking doesn't look all that much like a ground-type. But it is. And I knew it.

Unfortunately, my trainer didn't see it that way. 'Use thunderbolt!' she said, then when I, ever obedient, used it without effect, rather then take the hint she yelled at me like it was my fault.

So, went she kept telling me to use electric attacks, I decided to take matters into my own paws. I started using moves like quick attack and swift. Since nidoking wasn't part rock or steel, they worked fine.

And you know what? I won. Was she happy with me, proud I had won even with a type advantage? No. I had disobeyed.

She was livid with rage. If I wasn't going to obey her, why had I evolved in the first place? Wasn't I her friend? Why would her friend disobey her?

For a while I just sat there, listening to her rant as she worked herself up to the point where everything bad that happened was my fault. If I had lost a battle under any circumstances, it was my fault for being too weak, even though most of a battle is what moves a trainer uses. If I had knocked out a pokemon she wanted to catch, it was my fault for being too clumsy, even though she had chosen my attacks. If she hadn't used me in a battle that she had lost, it was my fault for not being dependable enough to use, even though the choice had been her's.

And I started to think. Sure, when I was a pichu she had treated me great, but what had she done for me recently? I had trained myself when under her guidance I always lost. I had won a battle that I would have lost if I listened to her.

And then she started yelling about all the effort she put into raising me, what a weak and worthless pokemon I had been, how she could never have gone through all that trouble if she had realized my second stage would have been as weak as the first.

So you see, she had never really cared about me. I evolved because I thought she was my friend. She didn't really have to be one. She treated me well because she knew I wouldn't evolve if she didn't.

Of course, when I attacked her then ran off, everyone was shocked, no pun intended. I hadn't really hurt her, just paralyzed her for a minute so she wouldn't recall me. But all the people were surprised. After all, she must have been a great trainer. I had evolved because of our friendship, hadn't I? So they just chalked it up as another pokemon going nuts after evolution, and left it at that.

I saw my old trainer recently. She was playing with her new smoochum.