Three days later, we would be leaving Goldenrod.
I just had to pick up Cape on the Pokemon Center counter—he would be transported here—and we would leave Goldenrod City. I had already messaged the twins, Anderson and Rebecca, and Aiden, who we decided—logically—would come with us, to wait for us at the east exit.
I reached the counter and gave Nurse Joy my trainer card.
“Scott Wood, right?” She asked while checking my trainer card on a machine by the side. She also took back my room key.
“Yes.”
“Ok,” she said as she typed on her computer. “Just wait a minute please, I will be back soon with your pokemon, and the doctor’s recommendation on how to take care of him.”
I nodded and she left through the double doors behind her.
I ignored the sound of Jess tapping her feet.
A tug near my neck made me glance at Valley. The Minccino hung on my new jacket—courtesy of the money from the match—and was looking around the Pokemon Center lobby. Sometimes, she would glare at a pokemon passing by that she thought was strong. They, of course, ignored her. The disadvantage—or advantage if you knew how to use it—of being a Minccino.
After seeing the Gym Match, Valley had become more aggressive.
I think she’s frustrated by how much Cape was widening the gap between them. I would have to speak to her about that behaviour on the road. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, in other regions it would be considered rude, but we’re in Johto. It’s almost expected that in any Johto team, there would be a ‘bully’, an aggressive pokemon that would give sharpness to your team, still, I just didn’t like it.
After some minutes of silence, Jess finally spoke. “Are we really going to take Fancy Pants with us?”
“Yes.”
She scoffed again.
I don’t really know why Jess didn’t want to travel with Aiden. Dragon’s trainers were the ones that got most of the top sixteen rankings in the Silver Conference, and the ones that won the most. The last one had five dragon trainers among the top eight, and one finalist. If you wanted to win the Conference, you had to pass through them. In that context, Aiden was the perfect candidate for us to train against. He might not be the strongest dragon trainer—quite green, actually—but there are things to learn, even from the weak.
He also seemed like a fine guy when we spoke that day. He had agreed to some terms that we put forward.
Blackthorn trainers had a reputation regarding ego, so I had to make certain things clear from the get-go.
The nurse returned with a small trail that had a pokeball and a folded letter on the side. She took the pokeball and gave it to me.
“Here is your pokemon,” she said as she passed me the pokeball, and then she grabbed the letter. “And here are the instructions that you have to follow to get your Heracross back on his feet as soon as possible.”
I took the letter, thanked her, and then grabbed my bag. Jess already had hers on her shoulders. With one last look around the lobby, we left the Pokemon Center, our temporary home this past week.
-
The first day was good. We had covered a lot of ground since we decided to use the first day to just walk and begin training tomorrow since we were late to meet the others. Our three newest companions fortunately agreed. Even though Aiden seemed tired by the end of the hike, which made me think he didn’t walk much.
Katy, Ronald and Emilia had obtained the Fog Badge and were halfway back to Violet from Ecruteak. They now had three badges. Meanwhile, Jess was probably already in Violet City waiting for her match against Falkner.
The Violet City beginner’s tournament would start in two weeks, so we had to hurry.
We will reach the mountains after tomorrow, but we will not slow down or stop for a day as we might have if we had more time. We decided to just walk around the mountain range in the hopes of stumbling into a lost fire type.
Regardless if we catch them or not, we will then rush to Violet.
Right now, we were setting up camp in a nice spot we found on the Goldenrod plains. The gigantic city’s surroundings were mostly farmlands, even around the road we were taking, so today we had a very galarian feel to our journey.
“How are you doing, Cape?” I asked as I gave him his medicine.
Cape swallowed the foul drink with a grimace that turned into a smile. The Heracross was sitting on a soft towel. The lines that broke through his exoskeleton were still there but very faded, as if he had spent a few months in a hospital. An organic cast held his broken arm and would continue to hold it for a few more days. The fact that he only needed three days to get this better made me think about how different pokemon training must have been a century ago.
Valley nudged my leg and pointed behind me where Mesa floated. The Baltoy was looking confused at the instructions on how to set up our new tent, he didn’t know how to read yet. Something I had to remedy since he wanted to read.
“Just a second, buddy,” I said to Cape and turned to Jungle. “Keep an eye on the old bug.”
Jungle gurgled happily while Cape rolled his eyes.
I walked near Mesa, and he floated to me the instructions. I looked at the four-page instructions and sighed.
-
An hour later, we had our new—and bigger—tent all setup. Despite the hefty price, all my pokemon could now sleep outside their pokeball, even Cryogonal if he wanted.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I left my pokemon with Cape and moved to the place between the three tents, where the campfire was.
The twins and Jess were already there, sitting on one of the two trunks we had picked up from the forest to put around the campfire which was not yet lit since it was not that dark. I decided to sit alone in the second trunk.
Jess had Blade, her Zangoose and Wave, her smiling Mantyke, were out. The Mantyke was playing with Anderson’s Chinchou.
Both twins were electric type trainers. Their uncle’s an electrical engineer who caught a few electric type pokemon to help with his work. Anderson and Rebecca grew up with them, and when they were kids, they decided to become electric type trainers.
Anderson’s team had a Flaaffy, an Electrike, a Chinchou and a Tynamo.
Rebecca’s had a Jolteon, an Electrike, a Magnemite and a Pichu.
Besides Anderson’s Chinchou, Rebecca had her Magnemite floating around, and both Electrike were also out, running around the camp to spend enough energy so that they were able to sleep later, which was a common problem with electric type.
The three people from Sinnoh were talking about their respective cities, how they grew up, what were their common hobbies, and which TV programs they watched. Since I didn’t have anything to contribute to the conversation I took the time to analyse and write the breakdown from our match against Whitney.
After an hour of work we used a match to start the fire. Mesa and Valley got here. The Baltoy began to levitate the things we would need to cook, pans, pots, knives, cutting boards, can openers, and also the food we would cook.
Valley gave one task to each one of us. She gave me the cutting board, one knife, and some vegetables. Rebecca knew how to cook a little so she would help us while Jess and Anderson took care of our preparing our pokemon’s food.
The twins found all of this strange, but went with the flow.
Aiden joined us a little later. The exhausted teenager sat down on the same trunk as me.
“That’s a very organised operation. I’m impressed.” He said, and Valley stuffed her chest.
I nodded. “We’re making vegetable meat soup. You’re going to eat?”
“Ah… Yes, I will.”
“You want to help us cook or you’re going to help with the cleaning?”
He hesitated for a while, “I will help with the cleaning.”
I nodded and continued to work on the food, now I needed to cut the meat.
“So what we will be doing tomorrow?” Aiden asked after a while.
“We have a very common routine. We start the day by training, normally we train moves and strategies in the morning, and then we walk for three hours until lunch.” I stopped a little to cut a particularly hard piece of meat. “After lunch, we train again, but this time we have friendly spars between our pokemon. Then we walk for another two to three hours and set camp. At the camp we train for another hour, just to strengthen what we learned during the day, and then we eat and sleep. That’s our routine.”
He nodded.
“I learned from speaking to Jess during our walk today that we will go see the eastern mountains.”
“That’s right, we want to see if we can catch a fire type.”
He nodded. “And when we get to the mountains, how high are you guys planning to go up?”
I stopped cutting for a second to think about what he asked. Everyone knows that mountains are like wild forests. The deeper you go into a wild forest, the more powerful the pokemon you’ll find. For mountains however, instead of going ‘deeper’ you have to go up or down the mountain to find powerful pokemon. These places have a very well-stabilised pecking order. The stronger the pokemon the higher or the lower he is. Go down into profound caves and you’ll find powerful rock or ground type pokemon, go up and you’ll find powerful fire or flying pokemon.
Needless to say, this was dangerous, and that’s why our group would go around the mountain, just near enough to catch a wandering and weak fire type, not nearly enough to attract something that lived inside of it.
“We aren’t getting close to the mountains. We’re just going around,” I said, looking at him.
His eyes widened in surprise, which I found strange. He wanted to go there? And did he really think that we would?
“You can say what’s on your mind.”
“What I… Learned from my studies into pokemon training is that a pokemon becomes stronger the more adversity it encounters, stronger pokemon being the easiest adversity to find.” Aiden said that in a half-stated, half-asked tone.
“That’s true.”
He spent some more time in silence. “And… From what I could gather, your Heracross is only as strong as he is because of a situation in Ilex Forest.”
“… Interesting,” I said. At the other side of the campfire, the chatter continued but quieter now. “So, the relative that investigated us for you gave you the Ranger report on our situation?”
He leaned forward, and his body language changed to something more confident—to him at least—now that he knew we were talking straight. Of course, I grew up around kids so I can easily recognize childish confidence. I remember my younger days in the orphanage when I, or another bigger kid, would tell a little one something and they would scoff.
Like the time this kid—I can’t remember the name—was swinging really fast on the swing and Maggy told him to go slower. He didn’t listen and ended up with a broken leg.
“I know what I need,” he said. “My clan has been training pokemon for hundreds of years. We know how to make our pokemon powerful, and you guys now do too. You guys fought three strong Seviper and now you are strong yourselves, strong enough to go after more challenges.”
I laughed. “We fought three strong Seviper and now we are strong? That’s so reductionist it’s funny. Yes, that’s true, but we also entered that situation unwillingly and we both agreed that it was dangerous and that we shouldn’t repeat it.”
Aiden narrowed his eyes. “What exactly are your objectives here?”
“Here?”
“I mean this year. Do you guys want four badges? Seven? Reach the conference?” He glared at me.
“We are both shooting for the conference at least, but we don’t need to, and won’t, run that kind of risk.”
“I agree, you don’t need to,” that caught me a little off guard, “but it’s always good to be as strong as possible when we reach the conference.” He said as if he was reading a textbook. He then looked around at the others across the campfire who now were fully silent and listening. “And we are four trainers and at least ten pokemon between all of us. You guys are already stronger than normal for this time of the year, we should use that to press on, and try to enlarge the difference between us and normal trainers.”
“That’s true, but we will not do that now. The conference is months away, we’re in no hurry to explore the wild right now.”
“The earlier we start the better.” He leaned forward. “We don’t even need to go that high. Again, you guys are strong. You guys won against Whitney and before that against the Seviper—”.
“Dragon types are weak against fairy types.”
His body recoiled back as if he’d been struck. That was a sensitive topic for the young dragon trainers of Blackthorn. The older trainers had little problem with that statement. It was somewhat true. But the young generation—raised with pride, or arrogance, that only life experience tempered—reacted badly to that statement.
“That’s out of context.”
“As out of context as saying that ‘we fought Seviper and now we’re strong’. The truth is that our pokemon almost died. They didn’t because Cape is strong, not the other way around—”
“But now he’s stronger, and now you can take more risks, you can—”
“Listen very well, Aiden Hageshi,” I waited for him to quiet down before continuing. “If you’re here looking for danger for your pokemon or ours, I suggest you leave tomorrow morning. I already have a kid to take care of, but she learned her lesson. Jess and I—and now the twins—are travelling together to train with and against each other, and occasionally, to catch pokemon. We are not interested in doing dangerous things or putting our partners at risk for strength. You understand me?”
We glared at each other for a few minutes until Aiden huffed. He got up and went back to his side of the camp.
I looked over at the other side. They stopped looking and went back to speaking about Sinnoh.
“Let’s finish the cooking,” I mumbled to Valley and Mesa, who were looking at me with wide eyes.
Not that I was hungry anymore.