First Day Of My Life || Catch Para
TAGGING → Sofia Correia and Grayson the Growlithe
TIMELINE → Monday, January 11th 2010
SETTING → Viridian City Police Academy
SUMMARY → It’s finally the day where all the new cadets have to go and pick up their new Pokemon, and Sofia is running late as usual. But for once it doesn’t bite her in the ass.
This was it. This was the moment Sofia had been waiting for for as long as she could remember. She’d spent years thinking about what it would be like to finally have a Pokemon, and while she’d come up with multiple scenarios and situations where someone would finally gift her with a starter of her own, never could she have imagined being in the situation she was in now. It wasn’t the age thing that bothered her, because while she would have loved for this to have happened sooner, the fact that it was happening at all was what mattered. No, the thing that Sofia had trouble with wrapping her head around was the fact that she was about to enroll in the Police Academy.
And of course she was running late. Her mom had tried to slip her some money so she could stay in a motel in Viridian City the night before, but Sofia had refused and promised she’d be up in time. For once she wished she could have just listened to her mom. Although it was her mom’s fault that she was in this mess to begin with, considering she’d been the one who’d convinced Sofia to enroll, despite her never showing interest in the Police force. But her mom had sacrificed so much to take care of her that Sofia just couldn’t say no. When her mom had wanted her to go to Celadon University, Sofia had tried her best to get in, but her grades just weren’t good enough. A part of her had hoped that would be the end of it and that her mom would just accept that she wanted to be a trainer. But then her she’d started extolling the virtues of the life of a Police Officer, and Sofia knew what she had to do next.
Almost skidding past the entrance to the Academy, Sofia dug her heels into the ground and reached out for the door, letting herself in and waving at the receptionist as she passed her. While training didn’t start for another day, the building was relatively empty considering the other cadets were meant to be there to choose their companion Pokemon too, which of course was a bad sign because it meant that she was running even later than she thought.
Following the various signs through the building, Sofia eventually found herself out in the training field behind the Academy. There in the center of the field was a group of cadets, all congregated around a pen filled with Growlithe puppies. Most of them seemed to have already found a partner and that made her feel anxious and just a little sick to her stomach, but Sofia continued on until she was standing with her new peers. Most of them barely paid her any mind, and some even openly rolled their eyes as they took in her slightly disheveled appearance, but Sofia simply returned the gesture and squeezed past them to get closer to the pen.
It was just as she thought; just about every Growlithe was spoken for. All but one that sat in the corner, watching on as its siblings found new homes. Ignoring the others around her, Sofia climbed straight into the pen - a move that would later result in her first caution - and knelt in front of the last Growlithe. As soon as he saw her, he jumped up and ran around her, sniffing her as best as he could before resting his front paws on her knees. He was a little thing - much smaller than his siblings and clearly the runt of the litter - but he was full of energy and that was something she could relate to.
For most of elementary and middle school she’d been the smallest in her class, but everyone knew better than to mess with her. She was the scrapper - the one who knew how to make boys twice her size cry without much effort. This Growlithe - her Growlithe - would be the same, she told herself. And while it was possible that she was telling herself all of this in an attempt to make herself feel better about being so late, Sofia couldn’t help but latch onto the idea that somehow she’d found a diamond in the rough. Either way it didn’t matter because she was attached and by the way he was licking her face, she figured that he was attached too.
Sofia grinned at the little puppy and raised him up so that he was eye level. He licked her cheek again and she laughed. So maybe this wasn’t what she’d pictured at all when she’d tried to imagine what getting her first Pokemon would be like, but it didn’t matter because this was infinitely better. This was real. “I guess it’s just you and me, buddy. Let’s show these guys how it’s done.”