“You will?!” Anna bounced out of her seat.

“Yeah. I’m sure that if my game knowledge is even vaguely correct I can give you a few pointers in the right direction towards some rare pokemon or something.”

Are the fossil pokemon a thing? Ash in the tv show even finds live ones in some caves or canyon from memory. Potential locations of the legendaries. If a couple of the eeveelutions are not common knowledge what else do I know that might be useful? Wasn’t there a crystal onix early on?

“Well what can I help you with?” Anna asked. “If you’re going to keep telling me your secrets surely you want more than some paper work?”

“To be honest Anna, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” My breath hitched for a moment. “I’ve just lost my home and have no money or job. If you give me a place to stay and help I think that’s a fair trade at the moment.”

I must have looked pretty sad at that moment as Brandy whined and put her head back on my lap. Anna got up and got me a box of tissues from a cupboard. “Its alright, I’m not going to cry. Its just going to take awhile to really sink in you know? Part of me really hopes this is actually just a coma dream or something.”

“Well if you need some time to comes to term with, ahhh your situation, you are welcome to stay here.” Anna said slightly awkwardly staring down into her wine.

“Ill take you up on that for awhile while I learn how this world works and earn a bit of money. But if Im stuck in pokemon land I’m going to adventure. If I don’t have any responsibilities other than my team, and I can take them with me I am going to wander all over the place. And collect them all.”

“You going to try catch every type of pokemon?!” Anna exclaimed incredulously. “Where would you even put them?!”

I laughed. I think the beer was starting to get to me. “No I don’t mean every pokemon. I couldn’t afford to feed all of them! I just mean I’m going to try get all the eeveelutions. I have 5 eevees’s and I’m sure I can either find a couple more or maybe one of the girls would like to have a litter at some stage” looking down at Brandy I gave her a pat. She just chuffed at me and turned to face the other direction.

“Well that’s your money problem solved right there. Do you know what the breeders sell eevees for? Tens of thousands. Each.” Anna exclaimed pouring herself another wine. “Especially as yours won’t be registered to the eevee breeders guild and they get to control who and when you breed them. And that would be amazing. I don’t think I have ever heard of a single trainer having all of the eeveelutions. Plus you would really stand out if you had an ice and fairy type as well. How do you get the fairy type by the way? Can you tell me?”

“Well that’s suppose to be the trickiest evolution of them all” I started to explain getting up to grab another drink from the fridge while Anna waved her hand in permission. “Supposedly an eevee evolves into a Sylveon when they truly love their trainer. Similar to a Espeon which is happiness during the day or a sun stone but more intense I think”. Brandy next to me sat up and started paying close attention to what I was saying. Seeing that I looked at her and tried to explain. “You wouldn’t know either Brandy but you can change shape again but this time it will be into a form even stronger and with a specific type of power.”

“Eevee? Ee ee eevee?”

I got the impression she was asking me to explain further. “Yeah like if I get you something called a water stone and you touched it, or does she have to eat it?” I asked looking towards Anna.

“No they don’t eat it! It’s still a rock!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah a water stone if you touched would turn you into a Vaporeon, a water version of you. You would grow this big long tail and fins and would be able to swim and breathe under water!”

Brandy looked shocked at that news. It was still weird being able to have a conversation with one of my dogs.

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“Vaporeons can also change their cells into water temporarily allowing them to be basically indistinguishable from the water itself” Anna chipped in.

“Huh I didn’t know that. Other types you could turn into would be a fire type, Flareon, which would let you breath fire, Jolteon which would let you control electricity. No more getting shocked on fences if you were like that”

“”Vee” Brandy said with a shudder.

“Electric fences?” Anna asked

“Yeah we had them back home to help keep sheep and cattle in paddocks. Ahhh sheep are like Mareep and cattle are like Tauros but with less magic” I explained.

“I can’t imagine an electric fence would deter a mareep” Anna mused.

“What do you guys do here?” I asked. “Like what meat do you guys eat? Is it pokemon or do you have normal animals here?”

“No it is pokemon meat but there are ranches that breed docile pokemon for it. Supposedly they are almost like different pokemon from ones you find in the wild. And anything not suitable if supposed to be released into the wild. I don’t really know much more than that, I’m more of a town girl.” She said with a shrug of her shoulders.

“So do trainers eat wild pokemon on their journey? Or feed them to their team?”

“It is a good thing you have me or you would get in a lot of trouble! People generally learn these things growing up here. You are not to seriously harm or eat wild pokemon on the routes and the rangers enforce it. This generally makes the routes safe and the pokemon there know that and wont fight to the death, but if you go off the designated routes that safety goes away and wild pokemon may seriously attack both you and your pokemon. As a result the would pokemon beyond the routes are far stronger that ones that are on or near the routes. That makes them fair game but League rules generally state that unless you have several badges to your name trainers or the public are not to explore off the routes for their own safety. Plus pokemon are pokemon. Like Pidgeotto, instead of keeping him in his ball all day when I am working he fly’s around the local area doing his thing. I don’t think I have had to buy you food in weeks?” She asked Pidgeotto who seemed to be following our conversation from the corner.

“Pidgy Pidgeotto!” He squawked looking proud of himself.

“I did know that” Anna replied.

“Care to share?” I asked.

“ O he was explaining that actually controls the airspace around the block here. He is evening starting his own flock!”

Pidgeotto fluffed up his feathers looking very proud of himself.

“Very cool my man” I saluted him with my beer. Saluting a bird, weird times. But fun. So on the routes who do you tend to see? If I’m going to be exploring who am I likely to meet? Are the people on their journeys really young or?”

“Well the traditional time for people to go on their journey is spring of the year they turn 16. That means they are travelling around during the best weather of the year and the Pokemon League tournament is in the fall before winter comes. So you generally would run into lots of teenagers but you meet the odd person in their 20s taking a break from work or doing their journey late. There is an age limit on the pokemon tournament otherwise you could have people training for years challenging young people. I think its 25 onwards if your still competing you are in the Ace league which is way way harder than the junior league. Amazing battles but sometimes not as fun to watch as junior league.” Anna mused.

“So I wouldn’t be out of place if I was wandering around?”

“No no you would be fine, you’re what 22? Plenty of people have another round of the gyms before they age into the Ace circuit.” She explained with a wave of her hand.

“Cool cool cool. That said I think I would try evolve some of my team before I go challenging gyms. Be a lot easier with some fire, water and grass pokemon.” I mused. “Though carrying all my stuff around is going to suck. I don’t think I can keep the motor bike especially if what you say about the price of fuel is true. I need a horse. Can carry both me and my stuff, lives off grass. Do you know of any nearby?”

“By horse do you mean a ponyta? If so we are a long way away from their natural territory. You would have to buy one off of the ranches unless…..”

Anna trailed off in thought. “Unless what?” I asked.

“Well I heard a rumour earlier today from a friend of mine from another clinic that one of the ranches actually had some of their rapidash’s expecting foals in the coming weeks and they were preparing to go and monitoring them”. She sounded jealous as she was explaining this. “You could go and ask if they were willing to sell or trade one of the foals when they are ready to be weaned. That would be about the only way to get a ponyta locally unless you can pay for an official breeder to procure one.”

“You know what, I will. I mean I won’t trade one of my team for it but I know how to work on farms, maybe I can trade some work for the opportunity. Worse case I get to see how farming works here in pokemon land.”

“Its worth a shot. Maybe the rumour is just that’s and they don’t have any foals expected.” A yawn escaped Anna. “Okay I need to go to bed, I don’t get up till quite late. If you want to get started on the paper work its there on the table and if you fill it out before I need to go to work I can take it with me and get it verified by my boss at work.”

“Ill do that and maybe take my team for a wander around tomorrow while you work. Thanks again Anna.”