"Ash, do you know how to catch wild Pokémon?" At that moment in Pallet Town, Ash's classmate Xiaowu was looking at him with a serious expression as he asked.
"That's easy! You just have to battle a wild Pokémon until it can't fight back, then throw a Poké Ball! But I think making friends with Pokémon is better!" Ash immediately gave the standard answer. In reality, though, their teacher didn't recommend that children try catching Pokémon in the wild by themselves. Even a wild Rattata could bite a little kid bloody in no time, and if they caught the plague or something on top of that, things would really get interesting.
That was why the League regulated this very strictly. Unless students had received their own starter Pokémon, they could only try catching Pokémon on their own after graduating from school.
Of course, catching Pokémon on their own still came with risks. The League couldn't set up checkpoints in every town to stop children from going out, so all it could do was teach these children the truth that they had to pay the price themselves. What the League could do was try its best to keep these little troublemakers alive.
"So that's how it works." Xiaowu scribbled away at his notes. He had dozed off in class earlier, and when he woke up, he had been devastated to hear the teacher say their homework was to write about how to catch Pokémon.
Fortunately, he had a good deskmate like Ash. Xiaowu sighed in relief, then slumped back over his desk, looking thoroughly sleepy.
Ash didn't mind. He and Xiaowu could be considered friends, since they had shared a desk before. But at the thought of catching Pokémon, Ash's expression turned strange.
The way Heath had described catching Pokémon seemed