Waking up, I didn’t remember where I was for around a full minute and when I did, I finally started freaking out. Thoughts like ‘how is this happening’ and ‘why is this happening’ bounced around my head for close to half an hour before a knock at the door startled me out of my thoughts. “Coming!” I half shouted as I stood up, quickly making my way over to the door and opening it. On the other side was Chansey who quickly greeted me with a single call of her name while pointing downstairs “Chansey!”

After a second of staring, I figured out what I was being told, “Petilil is ready?” I asked. Chansey nodded their head in an affirmative, so I quickly left the room and closed the door behind me before saying, “Lead the way”.

I followed Chansey down the stairs and straight to the main desk, where I had brought Petilil to Nurse Joy late last night. Nurse Joy had seen us well before we got to the desk, she smiled happily and then greeted me, “Good morning young lady, I hope you rested well last night”.

“Good morning Nurse Joy, I slept well last night, thank you for asking!” I responded and quickly followed up with a worried “Is Petilil okay Nurse Joy? I know you said she would be okay, I just can’t help but worry”.

Instead of answering, she turned around and grabbed a pokeball off of a tray that I noticed had other pokeballs labeled so no mix-ups happened.

Turning back around, Nurse Joy arrived back infront of me and handed me the ball, which I took carefully. I backed up slightly, pointing the pokeball just infront of my feet before gently tapping the circle on the front. Red light poured out of the ball, quickly forming into the small Pokémon that is Petilil, who gave a happy shout of her name after seeing me and jumped straight at me. Surprised, I barely managed to catch her before bringing Petilil in front of me and truly looking at her.

Petilil is a small plant shaped like a bulb with a white face covered in a light green cloak and three leaves sticking out of the top of the hood covering its head. “I’m glad to see you’re okay.” I barely got out after examining her before laughing as petilil jumped out of my hands and onto my shoulder, sitting down and happily talking into my ear.

“I’m glad to see Petilil so excited to see you and probably very grateful for the help yesterday,” Nurse Joy said while smiling at Petilils antics on my shoulder. It seems she had correctly assumed the situation and that I had indeed caught Petilil wounded the previous day. “Miss Grey, seeing as Petilil is your first pokémon I would like to tell you how to assure Petilil is taken care of properly,” Nurse Joy said, making it obvious I needed to know this.

Taking my attention off of Petilil to listen to Nurse Joy, I quickly nodded before she continued. “While Petilil as a species can eat pokemon food by absorbing the nutrients into themselves, they mainly need up to an hour a day absorbing nutrients from soil and also sunlight for roughly two hours. They also grow healthier with proper grooming and also enjoy when you prune their petals often.” After telling me about Petilils needs, she leaned down and grabbed a few different colored cases and sat them down on the counter in front of me.

“Take one of these badge cases, everyone who signs up for the league gets a free one of these,” Nurse Joy said while I examined the different cases. I ended up choosing the purple case.

“Now you’re welcome to leave and acquaint yourself with Petilil I wish you luck on your Journey and remember the center is always open and free for trainers on the circuit, and please stay on the routes until you get more experience, okay?” She said while I slipped the case into my backpack.

“Thank you for everything, Nurse Joy, and I will be more careful in the future, I promise.” I responded with a slight blush while moving my hand up to pet Petilils side, who gave out a soft cry of enjoyment and leaned into my hand.

After saying my goodbyes and making sure the room I had stayed in the previous night was booked for the rest of the night, I walked away and realized I had no Idea where to go. I had arrived in this world not even a full twenty-four hours ago. Before I could start to panic, a loud grumble came from my stomach and I decided that first things first, get some food!

I headed into what I now knew was a cafeteria I had noticed the night before, showing my Trainer ID on my xtransceiver to the attendant standing near the door, and sitting down at a booth near the windows. Petilil quickly jumped off my shoulder onto the table and sat down while looking around her surroundings with what looked like a little awe. “First time in a building?” I asked and Petilil quickly nodded her head while saying her name quietly.

Leaving her to enjoy the sights, I got up and found myself a plate containing a light breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast. I barely restrained myself from eating it as fast as possible, and paced myself enough to enjoy Petilils excited face as she scanned her surroundings.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

After finishing my food, I finally asked a question that had been on my mind while eating “Hey Petilil,” she turned to stare at me while I talked “I know you are super excited and grateful to be healed but if we adventure together I plan on becoming a trainer who aims for the top. It will be difficult, and I don’t want to force you to do anything you aren’t comfortable with, are you sure you want to come with me on this adventure?” She put on a what looked like an expression of thinking for a dozen or so seconds before happily yelling out her name and nodding out what looked like a yes.

I smiled “great! Time to get our adventure started, first things first is supplies we are going to need more than what I currently have, and I'm not even sure if we can afford what we’ll need”.

I left the cafeteria and instead of heading straight towards the pokemart for supplies, I decided to find the where the PCs were to do some research. After a brief search, I arrived at the PCs and sat down with Petilil still on my shoulder.

Doing a brief search online, I found out a few things. One the pokemart sold a few basic packages with the most basic being in my price range at two thousand pokedollars with the intermediate at five-thousand and premium set priced at a whopping ten-thousand pokedollars. Two, I had found myself ironically in Aspertia city, so whatever or whoever dropped me off in this world at least had a sense of humor, dropping me off in ‘the’ starting city of the fifth generation games.

The basic set included three regular pokeballs, two potions, an antidote, a large travel backpack, camping meals for a month of travel, a basic camping set with a portable stove and pot, two sets of clothes consisting of a plain gray t-shirt and black cargo pants while also including basic underwear and some socks ending with a basic two-person tent.

I took almost an hour looking at my options and discovered a trainer forum I could log in to using my trainer ID with advice and stories from peoples respective journeys, while all the information would be useful later on for my own training, the most useful thing I found was that apparently every pokecenter had a request board with jobs for trainers to help out local communities while also making cash to fund their journeys.

Deciding to go ahead and buy everything I needed now and then check out the requests after, I went ahead and headed to the pokemart.

I dropped my new gear off in the room I had spent the night in before heading back downstairs and finding the request board, which was quite literally a board with paper requests noting the job description, location and pay.

I found plenty of basic manual labor requests and a few requesting help with wild pokemon around the city, but after reading a few dozen requests, I realized I had absolutely no battle experience or even any idea how Petilils moves even quite worked in a more realistic setting outside the games I grew up with.

After asking around a bit, I found out that there was a practice area with a few battlefields around the back of the pokecenter. I quickly headed outside with Petalil still riding on top of my shoulder.

I arrived to the battlefields and froze as I saw my first pokemon battle. It was between two young kids, maybe around fifteen or sixteen. On the left side of the field was a girl with her pidove currently flying above the boy's patrat.

“Quick attack now!” the girl called out to her pidove. Hearing their trainers command the pidove glowed white and nearly disappeared in my vision, quickly slamming into the boys patrat which fell over unconscious seemingly already having taken a beating earlier in the battle.

I was in awe, seeing an actual real pokemon battle was leagues more exciting than I could have ever imagined even with the rather short bit of one I caught. Seeing pidove surrounded by white energy and then just shooting at high speeds towards patrat really reminded me I’m now in a world where even the weakest of pokemon broke the laws of the world.

The two trainers quickly left after thanking each other for the battle and headed back into the center. I took the field they had just departed from and Petalil jumped off my shoulder understanding what we were about to attempt. With no target, we couldn’t exactly test absorb or encore our few attempts without a target just ended up with nothing happening so I just asked Petilil to perform a few growths.

Listening to my request, Petilil gathered white energy around herself which I was now realizing was most likely normal type energy and then instantly grew a quarter of a foot taller, which was a pretty significant amount considering she was only around a foot tall in the first place.

After getting six growths out, petilil was close to three feet tall and definitely more of a force to be reckoned with we tried another two growths but anything past the sixth seemed to just not end up doing anything, so I’m assuming setup abilities still had the same limit as in the games, although it could only be growth or just a practice issue.

After around five minutes of Petalil getting used to her new body by running around and doing a few hops, she suddenly started decreasing in size, taking around a full minute to go back to her normal stature.

We did this a few more times making sure her movement wasn’t hindered while grown and while she would obviously be a slightly bigger target she still moved at the same speed as she could at a normal size.

For now, it seems we’ve gotten everything out of training by ourselves outside actually physically conditioning ourselves, which would definitely be something we’d need to start as soon as possible.

Deciding we needed to find somebody to battle and test our other moves on, I looked towards Petalil and asked her “Well cutie, how about it? Are you ready to look for somebody to battle?” She let out the cutest battle cry I had ever heard.

Chuckling, I started walking away and said, “Well I guess it's time to find somebody to battle us Petilil, let's go!”