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Alrik Rey was exactly 4 candies away from his favorite pokemon.

It has been a long road. There had been dozens, of not hundreds, of eggs hatched in vain with the attempts to find the elusive Charmander. Niantic had made a promise at the beginning of the month to release more of the main three "starter" pokemon, but so far all he'd ever seen was Bulbasaur after Bulbasaur. He'd already raised a Venusaur up to the highest level possible for his trainer rank, so why waste his precious pokeballs on more of the little green flower toads??

He'd heard a rumor through the grapevine at school that there had been a score of Charmanders lurking around the skate park. Alrik would have much rather gone home and gotten started on Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue (he'd convinced his sister to preorder it and been third in line to nab it the day before!) but priorities were priorities. He'd snap up the opportunity before time ran out on the little fire lizards.

Glued to his phone screen, the teenager ambled his way past some indifferent skaters, keeping his head down as a few guys cheered nearby over a clever trick.

It took him a second to register the fact that someone was calling his name. Stopping in his slow wandering pace, he finally glanced up from his phone to see a familiar looking redhead hopping over the railing.

"Oh, Mr. Z!"

He smiled at the gym teacher, who seemed equally surprised to see someone from the same school wandering around in that part of the town. Well, he did smile - until he found himself being knocked forward by a skater performing a finishing move near a ramp.

The blonde teenager went sailing forward with a loud oompth from the shove to his back, his phone launching yards ahead of him.

He gave the teacher a sheepish grin as one hand moved to rub against the back of his head. The knock had taken the wind from his lungs, but there was no injury...well, at least, nothing physical. His pride was still sore from the tumble and from the fact his teacher, of all people, had been the one to catch him.

Flipping his phone over, he winced at the small crack at the top - his mother wasn't going to be thrilled to hear that he'd busted up another screen. At least the middle wasn't cracked and he could still make out the words on the screen. If his mom wouldn't buy a new one, he might be able to sweet talk his older sister into chipping in to help for the cause.

"Pokemon Go."

Eyes lifted up to meet the concerned teacher's gaze and he gave him a small, awkward laugh. "You know, catching the little critters and all? Gets the kids out and about, getting exercise while they video game."

He allowed himself to be ushered away from the skaters and their tricks, though his bewildered look gave away his confusion as to what his gym teacher was talking about. Backside Ollies? Kickflips?

Was this how Penny felt when he'd casually toss out gamer lingo into their conversation?

His thumb brushed against the crack on the screen again, the teenager already feeling irritated at himself for letting his phone break as it had. "This isn't like the games for the DS." Pausing, he glanced up at the redhead, "Or gameboy - what you guys used to play as kids."

"Anyways, yeah - similar, but not the exact same. More simplified. You go around and look for little monsters pretty much wherever you walk."

Hitting the app button, he let the game load in and immediately clicked on the nearby Pidgey, starting an encounter with the monster. "See, like this little bird here. I'm going to toss out a ball and try to catch it."

One finger flicked across the screen, sending the red and white ball flying in the bird's direction. After a few shakes, the ball clicked shut, sealing away Alrik's new prize (which he reminded himself to transfer out later).

"See? Easy."

"Oh, those are the spinners!"

Without further prompting, he made his way out of the park, gesturing for the teacher to follow suit. He forced himself to keep his pace slow, but the excitement was evident in his hand motions for the older man to follow. "They can't battle other players outside of gyms - yet - but I'm sure they'll implement a system in soon. In the meantime, you just work on leveling and catch more pokemon."

Finally across the street, he approached the colorful mural and then put his phone up for display once again, the blue diamond now lighting up into a spinning circle. "You get free stuff from these - here, swipe and try it!"

"Nah, I'm not worried about it."

Well, not too worried. Plus, not having any money to his name but the five bucks currently sitting in his pocket meant not having any on hand for any kind of phone repairs. He'd much rather drop it on a grab 'n go pizza from Little Ceasers and leave the phone repair up to his sister or his mother to fix.

"I'm at thirty-five, but that doesn't mean much other than how high you can level your pokemon. I'd stick with just working on catching some stuff first, Mr. Z."

He flashed his teacher a grin, which faltered only slightly as his stomach began to loudly rumble. Guess he shouldn't have been thinking about pizza.

"I should probably jet - my si---I mean, Miss Rey expects me home for dinner soon." Another stomach rumble, another tell-tale sign that his metabolism was working as well as a teenage boy's was intended to work.

Giving the teacher a brief wave, he started jogging down the sidewalk towards the nearby bus stop. Pausing for a moment, he remembered one important tidbit - "Don't forget to pick blue when you're picking teams!!!" before disappearing over the hill, phone still out and in his hand.