Pallet Town
Three Trainers left town that year. Their story starts before their journey.
Not even they could remember how long Red, Green, and Leaf had actually known each other, but the answer seemed to lie somewhere in their shared hometown.
Few actually realized that of the three, only Green Oak had been born in Pallet; he and his sister Daisy hailed from a long line of researchers, and spent their childhood with their grandfather as their parents often travelled in the name of science. Green knew it was in his blood to become a Professor, and at times he got so caught up in something he forgot to sleep for days, but he resisted the trade still despite his obvious curiosity. The fact his parents had died during an experiment just days before the starts of his pokemon journey years before had never entirely left him, though the scar his subsequent anger had left on his and Red's friendship had long since healed.
Red's mom had moved out to the countryside when she found her husband suddenly missing midway through her pregnancy with Yellow. With no real family to turn to, she managed to find a job as Oak's housekeeper, and for a few years, the two DeViridean and two Oak kids had grown up almost as siblings. Red would share tales from his mother with the others of his father's talents, about his most famous battles both in pokemon and the war. While none of the kids realized that today, Red's mother survived not off any army pension as she claimed, but instead because the Professor - kindhearted and with more money than he could possibly spend in his dwindling years - paid her $3 a piece for her homegrown tomatoes, Red had stopped recounting the fairy tales she'd told him as a boy.
Leaf Blue was unique amongst the trio, both in that she was an only child and that she properly had both parents for her entire childhood; these were facts that went largely unnoticed by both boys, who were too busy making fun of her for being a girl. But their town was small, and as the only girl near their age and not related to them, she quickly changed from an object to torment to a prize to be won. She had retaliated by developing both a sass that let her mow them both down, and the ability to beat them both at their own game. She caught her Jigglypuff before any of them got their starters, was waiting for them both on the Pewter Gym's doorstep with badge already in hand, and was the first to hand Prof. Oak a dex with a new picture, "data unknown" reading beneath. To this day, neither boy had battled her, despite the two Champions' strength, because they knew what would likely happen.
"We should go see Pallet again soon," she said suddenly as she looked at her old Pokedex, and the boys nodded. There was some wonder though as to whether it would even feel the same, with Yellow away on her journey and Daisy long since married and moved to the city, but they also knew this was the time of year where new trainers most often left on their journeys...