This time as I headed down the forest edge towards the ranches on the outskirts of town I only had one pokemon out with me, Brandy, ready for round two with any pokemon that we came across. I found it interesting how much more aggressive Brandy, and all the other members of my team were now that they were eevee’s. Before hand it would be a rare occurrence that any of them would get riled up over anything, but now they were willing to throw down at my command. I’m not sure that any of them had a true lust for battle, maybe that would come later? That said Brandy had shown some true enthusiasm when I had asked if she was willing to battle that rattata again if we came across it.
“Rattatata!”
Speak of the devil, is that Giratina now?, and he shall appear. With an almost swagger a rattatata ambled out from behind one of the nearby trees and stood directly in my path. A rustle of bushes nearby made me think its friends were in there watching it. The rattatata looked directly at Brandy and let out a series of chitters at it with a smirk on its face. Brandy’s hackles started rising and she let out a growl in response.
I’m guessing that it remembers us. Is it smack talking her?
“We aren’t going to talk no trash talk from a rat Brandy! Lets bust out some of those new moves! Tackle!”
With a cry eevee leap forward at my command catching the rattata by surprise. With a smack of impact she knocked the rattata back several feet with it landing on its back. Scrambling around the rattata took a moment to get back to its feet. That’s right rattata, she’s not going to be a push over this time. With a glare rattata braced itself and developed a slight glow to it. What’s that? Basic glowing colour indicated normal type energy. Low level rattata. Not moving. Maybe focus energy? Thinking quickly I tried to guess what it might be doing.
“Brandy get ready to dodge, he is coming in for a heavy hit!”
With a cry the rattata almost seemed to blurr as it shot forwards to were eevee was standing ready. Thankfully my warning gave her enough heads up and at rattatas first sign of moving she leapt sideways dodging what looked like a quick attack.
“Tail whip!”
Leaping at the turning pokemon eevee spun and slammed her tail into the rattatas snout knocking it back again.
“Rat!” it cried in pain.
We have you now you bastard I thought to myself in glee. Now is the time to try learn something from the wild pokemon as the battle looked to be almost won.
“Brandy, you have this! Try and copy that quick attack move it just did.”
Looking at me briefly out of the corner or her eye she gave me a bark before focusing on the injured rattata. Gnashing its teeth at her it gave a weak glow again before shooting towards her. Knowing it was coming eevee leapt above it letting the rattata shoot past underneath. Turning to face it she braced herself before glowing slightly and shooting forward and slamming into the back of the rattata, which sent it flying into ground with a thud. Struggling the rattata bearly managed to get back on its feet before facing us.
“That’ll do Brandy, we’ve won this.”
With a cry of victory Brandy bounded back over to me and did two quick laps of me before coming to a stop facing the wounded pokemon.
“Lets stop there rattata. We won this time and I don’t want to catch you for my team. How about we call it one all and you go recover with your friends?”
Glaring at my eevee it seemed for a moment that it was going to try again before gnashing its teeth in frustration and slowly limping back into the tree line without breaking eye contact with us. Pausing briefly before it disappeared it snapped its teeth and said something to eevee that made her tail shoot up and growl slightly before it left.
“Great job Brandy! Who’s a good girl! You are yes! And you even learnt a new move on the fly!”
As she leapt around in celebration over her first victory I had a thought. What was to stop her from teaching that move to all my other eevee’s? That’s probably an advantage that I have as that any move one learns, they all can learn. At least until I start evolving them. Shit if I want to collect them all how do I stop them from evolving into the same pokemon? Can they stop it them selves? Or do I need to buy everstones? Something to ask Anna later.
Reaching down to my new magnetic belt which could hold a full 6 pokeballs on it I released the rest of my team, which Brandy leapt into talking to them, I assume about her recent victory.
“All right Brandy” I interrupted “ I had a thought. Can you teach the rest of the team the new move you just learnt? Quick Attack.”
With a nod and a back Brandy started explaining to the rest of the team what I was talking about. As I sat down and had a drink of water I watched over the next 30 minutes as the rest of the team figured out how to perform Quick Attack from her. It was dizzying watching the 5 of them shoot forward rapidly in different directions. Shaking my head I wondered if the move was able to be used differently or it was always a straight forward movement. I’ll have to try watch some other peoples matches to learn new moves and what they look like. I didn’t believe everything would be as simple as tackle, tail whip and quick attack and I doubt its like the games were they level and suddenly know a move. Plus side they can know more than four moves. Asking that of Anna yesterday had gotten me a look as if I was an idiot before answering yes of course they can, why couldn’t they?
With a whistle I returned 4 of my team leaving Gin out to give her experience in the next battle. Hopefully we can find a few more low level pokemon while we head to the ranch.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
A few hours later we came upon a sign welcoming us to Riverside Ranch. It should have taken us under an hour to get here as it wasn’t actually that far however we had manage to find another couple of rattata to battle, a pidgy (which I called a draw in the end as we were able to dodge all its attacks but had no way of hitting it in the air) and had ended up running full tilt away from an angry group of spearow and hiding in a hollow log before they got bored. I can understand why Ash had problems with them in back when the show first started. As it was most of the team had gotten some experience in battling other pokemon and had come out victorious which had done wonders for their confidence and getting used to the 3 moves that they had all learnt. I was still pretty sure I would lose against an actual pokemon trainer but we all have to start somewhere right?
Walking past the sign I could see a wide open grassland spreading out into the distance with what looked like a river creeping up one side, which Im guessing is what gave the property its name. A short distance past the sign was a small wooden building that had the sign shop hung above the door. Recalling Ale back into his pokeball I opened the door and entered the building which caused a small bell to ring.
“Just a moment I’m just out back” called out a male voice from somewhere behind the counter. Looking around the store reminded me of a English Farm shop with a variety of vegetables lined up on a couple of tables and a small chilled cabinet that had glass bottles of milk inside, with the picture of a pink looking cow on the front.
“Puuuuuuur”
Turning behind me at the sound there was a massive Persian lying lazily above the door on a shelf. Thats one way to stop theft I thought to myself. The pokemon looked like a small tiger and as it lay there cleaning its paws and showed some scary looking claws emerging as it did so.
“Don’t mind him, he just likes showing off. Big ol softy he is. Barely scares away the rattata’s!” Turning around a large man with a bushy beard had emerged from the door behind the counter. “My name is Daniel. How can I help?”
“Yes hi, my name is Josh. I was actually wondering if I could ask you a couple questions if you aren’t too busy?”
Daniel cocked an eyebrow and looked around. “Only you and me here, Josh was it?. Ive got 5 minutes.”
“Well Ive got two questions really. I had been asking around back in Viridian as I am trying to track down a ponyta for my team. So first question was do you know if the farm here has any they would be willing to trade? And second question was if there was any seasonal work going at the moment? I’d be happy to do some work to go towards a pokemon or just to earn some money really.”
As I was speaking Daniel sat in the chair behind the counter and leaned back in it while listening to me. “Well that wasn’t what I was expecting” he replied.
“O? What were you expecting?” I asked curious.
“Well judging by your backpack and belt I’d guess you are a trainer doing the circuit?”
“Well about to start to be honest. I’m taking a break from my last job” I lied. Anna had said going around telling people I’m from another planet would make most people think I am crazy.
“Bit late aren’t you? Doesn’t matter, we have had plenty of trainers come in begging for food as they have run out on the way to Viridian. The lot of you need to learn to carry more food” he grumbled. “Very rarely does one come in asking to do work for us.” Leaning forward he let out a sigh. “Sorry to break it to you though we actually are in a quiet period and aren’t looking for workers so you’ll have to try another ranch for that. And I can speak on behalf of the owners that they won’t be looking to trade any of their Rapidashes anyway. They are extremely fond of the ones they have. They are actually upset at the moment as one of their youngest was expecting to foal soon and ran off to have it in the forest. So they are actually down one.”
“Well dang was worth asking.”
“Why a ponyta if you don’t mind me asking? Plenty of wild pokemon nearby if you’re needing to fill out your team?”
“To be honest I just think they would be a really good fit for what I’m looking to do. And I’ve always like them.”
Well horses technically, but their basically the same I bet aside for the whole on fire thing.
“Fair enough” Daniel replied before pausing. “Do you want to come have a look in the stables? I can show you some of the owners if you’re not in a hurry?”
“That would be awesome!” I replied. “You not worried about leaving the store?”
Walking towards the door Daniel snorted. “Please, we probably only get one or two customers a day. Most of the milk and meat is sent directly to the city. Follow me.” He said waving his hand at me.
“So you said you were just starting a circuit? Have many pokemon yet?”
It was good to know that me doing it at 22 wouldn’t make people look at me oddly. “A couple of eevees actually” I replied. I had decided to downplay how many I had most of the time, one or two eevees is extremely lucky or expensive. A team of 5 is basically unheard off.
“Really?” Daniel turned to me surprised. “How did you manage to get two of those? They are very rare from what I hear.”
“My family has always had one and my parents eevee had twins and they gave them to me. Ended up moving around a bit and decided to see the world a bit, long story short.” Any technically true if you change eevees to dogs. “Want to see them?”
“If you don’t mind!” Daniel said with a smile.
I released Brandy and Rum from their pokeballs and Daniel and I spent the next 5 minutes simply playing with the two of them. Moments like this made glad to be here in pokemon world where I could take my team with me everywhere. We continued on to a large building in which as we walked around the front of it I could see had plenty of open stalls with clean stone walls and large canvas beddings in the back.
“As you can see every thing is generally fire resistant, the rapidashes don’t burn anything they don’t mean too but every now and then accidents happen as I’m sure you know. And if you look over there you can see the ones not out at work today.”
There was a large circular grass field surrounded by a single wooden rail in which two large rapidashes where happily grazing away. At Daniels call the two horse pokemon lifted their heads and came galloping over.
Holy crap they are fast! I thought to myself as the two pokemon seemed to just fly across the ground towards us before stopping at the last moment before the rail. I suppose the rail is only there as a reminder. No way you could hold these to anyway against their will.
With a niegh and a snort the turn pokemon reached over the rail nudging Daniel and sniffing around his pockets. With a laugh he reached in and pulled out to little white cubes and gave them one each. “They know me too well these two. I never should have given them sugar cubes way back when I started here. Go on, hold out your hand and give them a moment. They won’t burn you.”
Doing as he said I ended up rubbing the two large pokemon for awhile while they in turn spent some time sniffing me and the two eevees with us over the rails. Deciding I had been here long enough I thanked Daniel for his time, and the two pokemon, and with a goodbye Brandy, Rum and I left the ranch.
Once We had left the ranch I turned to my too eevees. “Right guys I’ve got an Idea. You too remember what those Rapidashes smelt like?”
Rum and Brandy barked in confirmation.
“Early on he said that one had escaped into the forest to have its foal. Im going to let the whole team out and we are going to try and find them.”