My First Shiny

My first shiny Pokémon was caught before I even knew what shinies were. On my first playthrough of Alpha Sapphire, I found a Plusle. This was my first ever time seeing a Plusle, and I thought it was cool because it looked like Pikachu, so I caught it. Little did I know, it was shiny. I nicknamed it "Pikachu."

I eventually found out it was shiny. Unfortunately, this Plusle would not be mine forever. Due to the nature of trades throughout generation six, I traded my Plusle for a normal Raichu. In the XY/ORAS era, to communicate, people would name their Pokemon whatever they wanted to trade for. Whenever I showed off my Plusle, people assumed I wanted a Pikachu. Its shiny was also easy to miss, so most people did not know its "value." I also didn't know you could rename nicknamed Pokemon, I thought the nickname rater actually "rated" nicknames based on an algorithm.

A Notable Random Encounter

One day, I let one of my friends at school use my 3DS for the bus ride home. I let him mess around in the Safari Zone in Alpha Sapphire. This friend was familiar with Pokémon and owned Omega Ruby, but they weren't at the point where they could access the Safari Zone, so it had numerous Pokémon they hadn't seen in-game. My friend eventually ran into an unusual-looking Doduo. I had told him about shiny Pokémon before, and he handed me the 3DS and asked me if this was shiny. It was a shiny, of course, so I ended up catching it. This Doduo ended up being transferred up to Ultra Moon before ultimately being lost forever when my 3DS was accidentally factory reset.