"If our meeting was engineered, can our bond still be real?"
(A friendly heads-up: I originally meant for this to be set in a parallel Pokemon universe. Some details are my own, such as blue-flame Charizard, mechanical Legendary Birds, and Moltres with three different flame colors.)
When Xu Mo was sixteen, he received a special Charmander in Blue Flame Town. Its fire was a rare shade of blue, it couldn't be caught in a Poke Ball, and yet it could calm other Pokemon when they went berserk. As their journey unfolded, he discovered that this Charmander hadn't come into being naturally. It was the product of a forbidden genetic experiment. And he himself had been part of that experiment, too.
The extreme organization known as the Purifiers was hunting them down, the experiment's mastermind was pursuing a deranged plan, and an ancient power stirred restlessly within Charmander. Together, these forces pushed them toward a fate from which there was no turning back. When the truth shatters trust, and evolution comes with pain, Xu Mo must face the ultimate question: if their meeting was arranged, can the life-and-death struggles and growth they shared still be believed in?
