I had called an early end to the day and had set up camp. Descending from the foothills of the mountains and the Dark Cave area we entered a small valley with a rather large lake that stretched for a few miles across the entire north side. South of the lake the valley kept going past the horizon. The valley hosted a few small towns and quite a few apricorn orchards. Every now and then a butterfree could be seen rising from the groves with shimmering dust following in their wake. The easy access to water and the beauty of the natural surroundings had made it an easy decision to stop for the day.
It was a rather popular spot as all along the lakeside camps could be seen. Some tents were solo by themselves while most were in groups of two to three. Old friends and new friends coming together to share part of a journey. Laughter and shouts of battle floated on the wind. Sometimes the trainers stayed for a few days to get some training in or search for team members before the last push to Violet and their first real challenge. The lake’s unofficial name given by trainers was Victory. They hoped to one day walk the road.
One, two, three strokes of a brush through fur. On the fourth stroke it caught on a tangle.
Callie seated in front of me let out a soft growl of “Ur…”
A pet on the head and a little scratch behind the ears cut off the growl. “I know girly. Gotta get you all cleaned up. We’re almost done.”
“Teddi.” she nodded before going back to eating an oran berry.
The battle had given me a reason to break out the grooming kits from my backpack. Dealing with the mud and honey mixture of her paws had been a nightmare. The bribe of a berry had thankfully been enough to keep her mostly still as I worked.
Callie had partially recovered from the knockout as I had traveled. A spritz of potion and a berry had been enough to top her off. She had let out a little roar that had drawn a few looks from other trainers when she learned that Totodile had fallen shortly after her. She was content, even almost happy with the draw after I had explained what a Starter was.
Mal had been moping a bit as we traveled and had went off into cyberspace to sulk a little once we had camp set up. Being a battle hungry AI duck he was slightly annoyed with me as he didn’t get to fight.
As for Dunsparce they were still in their pokeball. I wasn’t exactly sure how happy they would be with me. I was debating on if it would be better to wait to get them fully healed at a pokemon center before letting them out.
Lorewise pokemon wanted to be captured. Sometimes it was even implied that wild pokemon attacked trainers because they were jealous. In the games they listened if you had enough badges because you were a strong trainer. In the anime things were vastly more complicated as pokemon were much more intelligent. Capturing a very smart pet was a lot different from capturing something that could be as intelligent as yourself.
Pokemon could be much more intelligent than a human, if the pokedex could be believed. Professor Westwood the Fifth in the Orange Islands was the professor that wrote the entries and flat out admitted to making some things up in the episode of the anime he appeared in. His ancestor Professor Westwood the First before the various retcons and changes to the lore, was credited with the creation of the modern pokeball in 1925 with the aid of Celadon University. He got the idea after he fed his Primate far far too many drugs in his old age and it fainted. It also shrunk enough to fit into a glasses case…
Early pokemon lore was really weird sometimes.
If the pokedex or the lore was mostly right then more than a few pokemon were vastly more intelligent than humans. Alakazam was one of the best examples with a reported IQ of 5000 and a constantly growing brain. It had to use some of its psychic powers to hold up its head because it was too heavy for its neck. Lonnie had put forth a theory about some sort of Alakazam Deep State once in his ramblings. It made his theory about Joy’s infiltrating society very tame in comparison. Alakazams were super intelligent teleporting precognitive psychics that could read minds. A few mental nudges here and there maybe implanting an idea into someone and…
I held back a shudder and sighed. I was getting side tracked. From my research and what I had seen of this world the whole capture thing tended more towards the game and lore version. Dunsparce was likely a very intelligent snake. If they were well cared for and got to battle they’d probably be happy. I was probably overthinking the whole thing. Still there were little doubts that sprang up now and then so I was putting it off a little.
There were more than a few other things I was putting off. I was trying to avoid thinking about my latest encounter with one of the main characters of the plot.
A few minutes later Callie's fur was finally mud free. “There we go all better.”
With a little grunt she stood and started wandering around my camp for the night. She absentmindedly raised a paw to lick seeking out honey and let out a sigh when she found none. Turning towards me her eyes got big and…
“No Baby-Doll Eyes.” I chided, “Besides I don’t have any honey. We’ll reach Violet tomorrow if we hurry. I might be able to get you some then.”
She pouted but eventually moved down to the lakeside. For a brief moment I was worried she was about to play in the mud and sand after I had just groomed her. But in the end I let out a sigh of relief as she took a seat and watched the water.
From time to time a flash of red would rise up from the lake into the air before falling back creating splashes as they hit the surface. Eventually a rather large magikarp cleared fifteen feet above the surface with their jump. A large loud splash was created when they landed on their side sending ripples across the surface. They liked to compete against one another by seeing who could jump higher.
Seeing she was content I started to make dinner with what supplies I had. I eventually settled on some instant ramen. Instant noodles had been considered by the Japanese to be their best invention of the 20th century. I hadn’t been surprised to learn that poke japan loved them just as much. Firewood was scarce in the area unless you bought some from the little roadside or in this case routeside stands that the locals set up. Turning to my pack I dug out the hotplate and a Wattson Travel Battery.
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Wattson the kindly always laughing electric type gym leader had either created or endorsed the thing. The concept was rather simple: just have a pokemon hit it with an appropriate electric type move to charge it and then you could power or charge any of your electronic devices wherever you were. The slogan ‘As easy as Wahahaha!’ written in bright colorful letters was emblazoned on its side.
It was rather nice to see him making an impact with renewable power. Even if it was rather impractical for large scale use. The man was very concerned about the environment and how pollution would affect pokemon. Sea Mauville was testament to that. It was a very large project constructed and then abandoned by Devon Corp decades ago. It had been meant to extract resources from the sea floor and also hosted a variety of research labs. The decaying rusting and half sunken facility served as a pokemon habitat by the time of the games. It had disrupted and disturbed the local pokemon until it was finally shut down, at least that was the more well known part of the story.
Wattson had been the project lead that oversaw it. He was also the man that shut it down. By the end he would be considered a traitor by some at Devon. One of the labs had made a discovery and stumbled upon a new energy source that used the bioenergy of pokemon. They called it Infinity Energy. The endless energy source inside all pokemon that allowed them to do all the crazy shit they did and make physics their bitch, they harnessed that.
From the documents that could be found there in the games it was implied that they had used a Spiritomb for their research. The pokemon was a collection of 108 angry spirits stuck inside an Odd Keystone. With pokeworld’s trend of humans becoming pokemon, those ‘spirits’ could very well be human souls or ghosts. Lonnie had said something in his ramblings. What was it? ‘human souls as a power source.’ Sucking energy out of a Spiritomb of all things probably qualified.
It was never really clearly explained in the games how Sea Mauville got shut down. However with a man that loved and cared about pokemon like Wattson in charge I didn’t really find it surprising that the Spiritomb conveniently went missing after the breakthrough.
The loss of the Spirtomb wasn’t nearly enough to stop the research. Devon and Sliph Co. had cracked the technology and it had allowed them to become the mega corps they were today. How exactly they had harnessed it, I had no idea and its very existence was likely a closely guarded secret. I wasn’t foolish or brave enough to try searching for it online.
It wasn’t the first time humans had found a way to tap into the energy of pokemon and use it. The last time that Infinity Energy had been harnessed was 3000 years ago. Great kingdoms had been founded, the wilds had been pushed back, and great works had been built with it. It had seemed to be the start of a great golden age.
Then AZ pushed the button.
And there was a dark age instead.
Modern Kalos didn't even know there had been a war.
With a frown I set up the hotplate and set the water to boil.
AZ was still out there wandering. He had been exposed to vast amounts of Infinity Energy. Lonnie had once compared his curse to Cain's. AZ had tried to kill his brother and he now wandered the world cursed with eternal life, marked as different by his freakish height, and forever separated from his beloved Floette.
I wasn't sure if that was harsh enough.
On Route 10 of Kalos there were hundreds of large stones laid out in orderly rows. Psychics would visit it as it gave off some sort of odd energy. Those stones had once been pokemon before they had been drained completely to fuel AZ’s weapon. They were one of the only remaining reminders of the war. I could only imagine how many people and pokemon actually died in the war itself.
In a few years someone would try to use that weapon again but this time to wipe out the vast majority of life in this world.
The water started to boil and I held back a sigh. A battery was enough for me to start getting lost in my thoughts. But they all seemed to lead to the various horrible threats to this world. I couldn’t keep avoiding or putting it off.
I wanted to have a normal journey. I was just a normal guy that loved pokemon and had a chance to live out a dream. I was no hero, I wasn't some sort of protagonist. I had felt it wasn’t my place to change things in this world, to possibly fuck things up. Besides, in the games it had all worked out in the end. Fate or the big llama in the sky guided things, right?
Then I ran into Silver.
That had been a bit of a wake up call.
I grimaced as I recalled the encounter. Usually I was very slow to anger, but I had wanted to hurt him. In my anger I had started spouting secrets that I shouldn’t and couldn’t possibly know. I had acted like some silly mysterious stranger character. Recalling my last line to him still made me cringe hours later. If this had been a pokemon game then I would have given him protagonist naming rights with that line. But this world wasn’t a game. Even if it had been sometimes the bad guys won and a whole lot of them were still around.
Giovanni was still out there training.
Archie and Maxie had tried to recreate the world with their Project Azoth or whatever it was called but had been defeated.
Cyrus would try to create a world without suffering like some sort of evil Buddha.
Ghestis wanted to rule as some sort of evil pope with only him having pokemon and thus a monopoly on force.
Lysandre would try and pull a Thanos impression with the Ultimate Weapon.
Lusamine was a yandere dosed with toxins from an ultra-beast that spiraled after her husband was lost and her children left. The real threat was the ultra-beasts she would bring in and possibly Necrozma.
Rose would trigger Galar’s own Ragnarok, the Darkest Day in an attempt to stop an energy crisis 1000 years in the future.
Professor Sada would completely ruin the ecosystem of Paldea with paradox pokemon if not something worse.
Multiple crises and a few world ending plots spread out over years and I had the knowledge to do something about it.
But, would anyone even believe me?
Was I doomed to be a Cassandra to this world?
I had fallen into this world one day without connections and without a history. I was a trainer a few days into their first season. I didn’t even have a badge yet. If I told people some of the most well respected individuals and leading businessmen in the world were secretly evil and might destroy it, who the hell would even believe me?
I would have been dismissed as some sort of conspiracy theorist in my old world.
Yet, I had played the games I had seen what they had done. I had stopped it over and over again play through after play through. I knew what would happen if I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t a game anymore and I needed to stop treating it like one. The heroes didn’t always win. I wasn’t a hero but I could put my thumb on the scale with my knowledge. Though to do that I needed someone who would actually believe me.
The other option would be to spend years hunting down protagonists to spout warnings and secret knowledge at... Fuck that. I wasn’t going to spend the next ten to twenty years hunting down teenagers to yell at like some shitty Merlin.
I took out my phone, there were only a few numbers in it.
Several long minutes passed in silence before I finally dialed one all thoughts of dinner forgotten.
One, two, three rings on the fourth a voice I hadn’t heard in nearly a week answered. “Grey, how are you? I hope the Journey is going well. That music was a nice touch for the blog. When might I expect another entry?”
I had almost forgotten about that with everything that had been going on. After a brief moment I answered, “The Journey has been a bit more exciting than I expected Mr.P. I should hit Violet city tomorrow. I’ll try and get a few entries lined up.”
“Good good. There haven’t been any issues, have there?”
The silence stretched.
“Gray is everything all right?”
I let out a sigh. No one else was going to believe me, at least not yet. Most of the games had multiple years between them and there was time to stop most of them. But one was happening right now in another region that could end it all. I had even seen the damn opening. ‘The Hunt for the Red Gyarados’ that special that had played in the background at the pokecenter it just didn’t click at the time. This… this would be a test of sorts. The cult would do something right? No one would want to live in the world Cyrus was trying to create. The cult had to have connections. If Cyrus wasn’t stopped… “Well a few things came to mind. How much do you and your friends know about Team Galactic?”
“Oh ho, that name has come up recently. A dear friend in Sinnoh has been rather concerned about them. They haven’t come south have they?”
“No they won’t. But that wouldn’t matter with what they intend to do.” I paused. Did the cult even have the resources to do something? It was a possible end of the world scenario. A world without willpower, knowledge or emotion where time flowed and space expanded endlessly. An existence without suffering but also without any meaning.
“Grey what do they intend to do?” Mr.P asked with concern in his voice.
“I really hope your friend is powerful or well connected because they’re going to need it.”
“They’re both.” he confidently replies, “Now what are they going to do?”
“They’re led by a man named Cryus…