SINUHE (some 'mature' content)

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

This is my attempt of a NaNoWriMo. A Pokemon fanfic strongly insipired by Mika Waltari's Sinuhe The Egyptian.

Sinuhe The Trainer

Book One: The Reed Boat

1) Introduction

I, Sinuhe, the son of my father Senmut and his wife Kipa, write this. Not in order to praise the gods or Legendary Pokemon in the land of Kem, for I am weary of them, nor in order to praise the Pharaohs or their Pokemon, for I am weary of their deeds. For my own and my Pokemon's sake I write this.

Everything returns as it was and nothing is new under the sun and a man does not change although his Pokemon evolve and his Pokemon learn new moves.

I, Sinuhe, saw a trainer harming his own Pokemon. I saw Pokemon turning against their own trainers, poor trainers turning against rich trainers and Legendary Pokemon clashing. I saw once powerful Gym Leaders losing humiliating losses.

But that was how it was before, too. Also in the times of the herdsman kings a man who started off with a Rattata ended up controlling Legendary Pokemon. Also then came beggars and stole the Pokemon of noblemen.

I begin this book on the third year of my exile on the shores of the Eastern Sea, whence ships put out for the land of Punt. I was banished from Thebes on the sixth year of the reign of Pharaoh Horemheb. This was the command of the King, the Pharaoh who was my friend, once.

But he who has once drunk of Nile water will forever yearn to the Nile again; his thirst cannot be quenched by any other water in the world.

Why can't I be a Taillow? Why can't I be a free Wingull that flies past the guards back to the land of Kem? I'd build my nest in the middle of multi-colored pillars of the temple of Groudon, where the wealthy pay their respects. I'd build my nest in the middle of the mud huts where the poor lead their miserable lives together with their Oddish, because they didn't have enough money to buy Evolution Stones.

Sweet was my youth, sweet was my folly. Brittle pen and smooth papyrus, bring me back my childhood, and my first Pokemon.

This was written by Sinuhe, an exile, more deprived than any deprived in the land of Kem.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

2) Gift From Gods

Senmut, whom I called my father, was physician to the poor people and their Pokemon in Thebes, and Kipa, whom I called my mother, was his wife. And they didn't have a child. Not until the days of their old age I came to them. In their simplicity they said I was a gift from the gods. Little did they know what evil the gift would bring them.

I was born in the reign of the great King Amenhotep III and in the same year as the one who desired to live by truth and whose name may no longer be named because it is accursed. Though at the time nothing of this was known. There was great rejoicing at the palace when he was born, and the King brought many sacrifices to the great temples of Ammon, and other gods and also the temples of Legendary Pokemon he had built. The royal consort Taia had until then hoped vainly for a son and this is why he, whose name may no longer be named, was proclaimed heir with elaborate ceremony.

But he was not born until the spring while I had come the previous autumn. The day of my birth was unknown, since I came drifting down the Nile in a little reed boat. My mother Kipa's Swampert and Psyduck were playing in the water when they noticed me and started calling their trainer. Also Taillows were flying around below me and made voices but I was silent myself and Kipa arrived there thinking I might be dead. But she thanked her Pokemon, brought me to her house and let her Darumaka use Incinerate on the charcoal fire until I woke up, whimpering.

My father Senmut was returning home from his patients, together with his trusty old Meganium and Chansey. When he heard my voice he first thought Kipa had caught a Purrloin or a Meowth, but my mother said, "It's not a Pokemon, I have a son! Rejoice, my husband Senmut, for a son has been born to us!"

My father was angry and called her stupid but then Kipa showed me to him and he was moved by my helplessness. This was how they adopted me and let their neighbors believe I was their own child, that Kipa had borne me. My father took his best copper bowl to the temple of Arceus and let the priests register me as his own son and he also gave me my Cyndaquil as a starter Pokemon.

My parents didn't tell me I wasn't their own son until I became a youth. Not until then Kipa showed me the reed boat. Its struts were yellowed and broken and sooty with smoke. It was tied with Bird Keeper's knots, but nothing else it could tell me about my origin.

[Mikachu Yukitatsu]

3) Soldier's Honor

My father Senmut lived upstream from the temples of the Legendary Pokemon, in a squalid, noisy quarter. Near his house lay the big stone wharves where the Nile boats discharged their cargoes with the help of their Machokes, and other strong Pokemon. In the narrow alley ways were the seamen's and merchant's taverns and the brothels to which the wealthy also came. In our neighborhood lived tax collectors, noncommissioned officers, barge masters, a few priests of the fifth grade, and their Pokemon, of course. Along with my father, they formed the most respected part of the population of the squalid quarter.

Therefore our house was spacious in comparison with the mud huts of the very poor. We even had a garden a few paces long where our Pokemon could play and practice their moves. Twice a week a woman with her Mr. Mime came to help my cleanly mother Kipa to clean the house, and once a week a washerwoman fetched our linen to her wash place.

In this rowdy quarter where more and more foreigners came, in this quarter whose degradation was revealed to me only as I grew out of childhood, my father with his neighbors, and their Pokemon, upheld traditions and old, honorable customs. At a time when among even the aristocrats of the city these customs lapsed he and his class kept representing the Egypt of the past and paying respects to gods, Arceus and other Legendary Pokemon.

But why to speak now of what I only later understood? Why not rather remember my Cyndaquil beating my father's Meganium for the first time, why not rather remember me catching my first wild Pokemon, a Sandlie straight from the waters of Nile. I even received really valuable and strong Pokemon like a Rampardos from my father who had got them as rewards from his most high-ranked patients.

My mother Kipa read me many fables when I was a child. She told me about Sinuhe, what was the origin of my own name. Sinuhe, to whom had been revealed a frightful secret in Pharaoh's tent, and who ended up in various adventures escaping from dangers. She told of a shipwrecked man who returned from Hydreigons' nest with many treasures, of gods, Ghost Pokemon, Legendary Pokemon like Raikou, Entei and Suicune, Pharaohs of old and other stories.

While my mother amused me with her fables on the evenings, my father educated me during the dinners. Sometimes when we saw a gang of sailors reeling along the street, yelling drunkenly, he waited until they had gone just in case but then began his lesson:

"Wine enjoyed in moderation is the god's gift to us, and rejoices" our hearts. One breaker hurts no one. Two loosen the tongue, but the man who drinks a jar of it wakes to find himself in the gutter, robbed and beaten."

Sometimes a breath of perfumed ointments would reach the veranda when a lovely woman went by on foot, robed transparently, in her liquid eyes a glint never seen in those of the virtuos. When I gazed spellpound upon such a one, my father would say gravely:

"Beware of a woman who calls you 'pretty boy' and entices you, for her heart is a net and a snare, and her body burns worse than fire."

It was no wonder that after such teachings my childish soul began to fear the wine jar and beautiful women, though both became endowed with the perilous charm of feared and forbidden things.

Already as a child, I was let attend my father's consultations; he showed me his scalpels, forceps, and jars of medicine and explained their uses to me. I found the lancing of a boil a thrilling operation, and I would proudly tell the other boys all I had seen to win their respect. I always followed carefully my father's examinations and questions he posed when addressing a new patient, until he said, "This disease can be cured," or "I will undertake your treatment." Also Pokemon he let me see himself treating, and I soon came aware how to take care of a Pokemon, hit by Solar Beam for instance.

There were also patients my father did not feel competent to treat, so he would write a few strip of papyrus and sent him to the House of Life, but after a patient like that vanished from sight he would often shake his head and sigh, "Poor creature!"

When I became seven years old, I was given some new Pokemon, like my Venonat, and my mother also took me to the temple of Ammon, which was among the mightiest temples of the whole Egypt at that time. An avenue bordered with statues of all the Legendary Birds, Beasts, Golems, Lake Guardians and Swords Of Justice led to it, right through the city from the temple of Cresselia and Darkrai. We witnessed the sacrifices offered by the priests.

When we were back home, after the meal, my father Senmut pose me an important question.

"Now you are seven years old, Sinuhe. You have to decide what you want to be when you grow up."

"A warrior!" I said at once, and was puzzled by the disappointment in his face. For I enjoyed the war games children played together with their Pokemon. The Type Advantage system fascinated me and everyone sure were Pokemon trainers, but who I adored most were those who used them in war. Moreover, a soldier didn't need to know how to write. I had heard horrifying tales how difficult it was to learn how to read.

But my father asked my mother for a bowl, went to his workroom, and filled the vessel with cheap wine from a jar.

"Come, Sinuhe," he said and we left the house and strolled through the city alleys. We stopped to look at serfs in the river bank. "Would you like to become like them?" asked my father. I thought it was a stupid question and didn't answer. No one wanted to be like porters.

But soon I figured out what my father was driving at. "They don't know how to write." he said on a serious tone. "Nobody succeedes in life or death if he cannot write."

My father hurried with his steps. He stopped near a big refuse dump. Trubbishes and Grimers gathered around it and he bent down and peered into a low mud hut.

"Inteb, my friend, are you there?"

Out crawled a verminous old man leaning on a stick. He was missing an arm and had no teeth.

"Is... that... Inteb?" I gasped. Inteb was a known as a hero who had fought in the Syrian campages under Thotmes III, the greatest of all Pharaohs. Some even told he had been able to capture more than one Legendary Pokemon.

My father offered some wine to Inteb as they sat on the ground. "My son Sinuhe means to be a warrior," my father said smiling. "I brought him to you, so you could tell him about the glorious life and Pokemon battles of a warrior."

"In the name of Rayquaza! Is the boy mad!" the old man cried.

"If I had a mouthful of wine for every curse I have uttered upon my life and my miserable fate as a warrior I could fill the lake that Pharaoh has had made for his Water Pokemon, which, as you should know, includes Blastoises, Sharpedos, perhaps even a Wailord."

"But," I said my chin quivering, "isn't the soldier's profession the most honorable of all, and his Pokemon..."

"Honor! Mighty Pokemon!" said Inteb, the hero of the armies of Thotmes. "I tell you that of all professions the warrior has the most wretched and most degraded one. Look, boy! This scraggy neck had once hung with golden chains and this waist had once a belt with six Master Balls. It was I who caught a Salamence and was offered a Heatran and controlled Moltres once. But look at me now, boy. My youth was left in deserts and my mightiest Pokemon I had to give to be freed when I was taken prisoner after Thotmes III finally was taken down in a secret coup d'état. And my life has been like a valley of death ever since I lost my arm. I need not mention the pain of the wound when the army surgeons scalded the stump in boiling oil after the amputation. That is something your father can appreciate. Blessed be your name, Senmut! You are a just man, a good man! But the wine is finished!"

"But a warrior need not know how to write." I managed to whisper in my fear.

"Indeed!" Inteb turned to my father, who ordered more vine with his copper bangle. "A warrior don't have to be able to write, only to fight. If he could write, he would be an officer of the most valiant who he sends to the fight. He would be allowed to keep his mighty Pokemon! Thus it is, my lad, if you would command men and lead them, and catch Legendary Pokemon, even greater than I ever did, such as Lugia, for your very own, learn how to write!"

"Your father is a good man. Blessed be your name, Senmut!" he repeated after getting more wine. But I began to tug my father's sleeve and Senmut led me away.

So I buried my martial dreams and no longer resisted the idea of going to school already next day.