We stood around the small, unconscious form of misdreavus wondering what we needed to do next.

Or rather, Sableye and I stood, while Porygon hovered. Hobbes was still in his ball — I wasn’t sure if the effects of perish song would be removed by switching him out, and I didn’t want to risk releasing him before getting to a pokemon center in case they weren’t.

And I only presumed we were wondering what to do. That’s what I was thinking, certainly, but Sableye looked more angry than anything else. Which was understandable — it couldn’t be fun to be someone’s punching bag without ever getting the chance to punch back. I was just happy he wasn’t trying to attack the unconscious wild pokemon.

We’d found and defeated the source of the fear attacks, as Gym Leader Brock had requested. But what should we do now? Even if the misdreavus accepted its defeat as a sign to never bother another trainer, we couldn’t just leave it out here. It was an unconscious pokemon far from its normal territory — as much as the games and show often taught otherwise, wild pokemon could be absolutely savage against those they considered ‘outsiders’. If we were to leave now, the misdreavus unsheltered and unable to defend itself, I doubted it would see another sunrise.

…which I supposed would be a solution to the fear attacks. But as soon as that thought entered my head, I brushed it aside. That was not the type of trainer I wanted to be. Sure, misdreavus were a ghost pokemon that literally fed on the fears of others. Many would argue that it was better off dead. But I knew pokemon could be more than just their pokedex entries, that even the ‘worst’ pokemon could be better than their base natures.

Or at least that’s what I wanted to believe. I glanced at my two new friends, to Sableye poking one of the red stones around the misdreavus’ neck with a stick and Porygon hovering cautiously behind him.

“Don’t try to eat those,” I warned the gremlin pokemon, and he looked at me askance. “I’m pretty sure they’re basically the physical manifestation of fear, or something like that.” If anything, this made Sableye even more intrigued, but he at least stopped poking them with his stick. He moved to poke the misdreavus’ forehead instead, the stick passing clean through.

I smiled. Until I was proven otherwise, I’d try to look for the best in pokemon, be they wild or my own. And perhaps even after proven otherwise.

That still left the question of what to do about the unconscious misdreavus. I cursed my lack of financial foresight — if I’d had an extra empty pokeball this could’ve been resolved easy-peasy, and I resolved to always carry at least a couple extras on me should I ever get out of my current financial woes. But in the meantime…

I cautiously leaned over misdreavus and poked its forehead with my finger. Just like the stick, my finger and then hand passed through with no resistance. I was tempted to try and touch the necklace, instead — the stick had been able to touch the red pearls — but I held myself back. I had no idea what special properties they might have, and even if I could safely pick them up, I didn’t want to try to drag the misdreavus along by its neck.

“Sableye, do you think you can carry it back?”

Sableye turned to me with its gemstone eyes.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that. Porygon can probably help with magnet rise, but neither of us can actually apply any real force. As a ghost type, you should be able to.”

Sableye reached down and poked the misdreavus with a single finger. And, sure enough, the opposing ghost-type was pushed away by his touch. Sableye turned to me with a barked exclamation of his name.

I was still a novice when it came to understanding my new pokemon. Porygon’s beeps were completely indecipherable, but I’d gotten better over the past week at understanding the meaning behind Sableye’s cries. It wasn’t nearly to the level that I could understand Hobbes, but it was more than I could interpret from wild or other trainer’s pokemon.

Thankfully, Sableye’s body language made his question perfectly clear. Why should I carry it?

“I mean…we’re kinda doing this for you…” I responded, and when Sableye simply looked at me uncomprehendingly, I elaborated. “That’s why we’re doing this job for Gym Leader Brock. He isn’t directly paying us with your food, but it’s close enough. He’s giving us the exact amount needed to keep you healthily fed with the gemstones you need for the next month. It’s why we were at that shop yesterday. Why we accepted Brock’s request in the first place.”

I had thought that was obvious — Sableye had been present for the entire conversation, after all. But either he had been more distracted than I’d thought by the rocks in Sal’s Emporium or he simply didn’t grasp all the nuances of our words. Because when understanding finally dawned, he didn’t hesitate to pick misdreavus up and throw the tiny ghost pokemon over his shoulder.

I chuckled. “Porygon, see if you can lighten his load.” Porygon beeped at me before a single spark of electricity shot from his body to the misdreavus, and Sableye straightened by just the slightest amount. “It’s a long walk back to the city — let us know if you need a break or another use of magnet rise.”

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In my head, I imagined a sudden burst of commotion when we stumbled into the pokemon center two hours later. Nurse Joys calling for help, chanseys running forward with carts filled with potions, and other trainers looking on in curious worry. Something like what I had seen in my mom’s many favorite emergency room TV shows, though with less fake Nurse Joy wigs.

Reality was nothing so dramatic.

A few trainers looked up when we walked in from the darkness, but they just as quickly looked back to their phones or their own pokemon. We walked to the back of the line for healing, which was thankfully short this late in the evening. When we got to the front of the line, even the nurse — just a regular nurse, not a Joy — barely reacted to seeing an unconscious ghost-type being carried outside of a pokeball.

Who knew? The place built to take care of injured pokemon wasn’t surprised to see one.

What finally did get a reaction was my admission that misdreavus was wild. The nurse said something to the unfused wigglytuff at his side, who waddled into the back and returned a few moments later carrying a pokeball. A flash of red light later and a machamp-poliwhirl fusion stood menacingly over the unconscious ghost-type. “We’ll need to head to one of the back rooms to help you further,” the nurse explained. “What can you tell me about this pokemon? Moves, weakness, potential typings... anything you noticed might help.” As he spoke, the polichamp moved to grab the misdreavus from Sableye, only to have its lower set of hands pass right through.

“It’s a misdreavus, a ghost-type,” I explained. A moment later the polichamp’s eyes began to glow, the spiral on its stomach slowly rotating, and a purple light encircled the misdreavus, gently lifting it into the air. The nurse gave a gesture, and we all followed him down a hallway to a small, empty examination room. “It normally only lives on Mt. Silver, at least around Kanto. I don’t know how this one got here, but it’s been scaring trainers on Mt. Moon. I was given an assignment by Gym Leader Brock to find the source of the attacks, and after I knocked it unconscious I couldn’t just leave it there. So... here we are,” I explained as the polichamp released the misdreavus from its psychic hold onto a large examination table and then stood with its arms crossed — one pair across its chest and the other behind its back — over the unconscious pokemon. “Oh, also, it knows the move perish song, which I have a question about. One of my pokemon heard the song, but I withdrew him before it activated. Is he safe to release, or will he need to be healed first?”

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The nurse, who had been looking more and more worried as I’d continued my explanation, gave me a distracted smile.

“As long as he was withdrawn before the song triggered and knocked him unconscious, he should be fine, though if you like we can examine him and restore him to tip-top shape.”

I gave a grateful nod. “That would be great, thanks. Could my Sableye also get some healing while you’re at it?” Neither of my pokemon really needed the healing, assuming the nurse was correct about perish song. Sableye had been in worse shape after some of our training sessions than he was after the battle with misdreavus, but there was no need for him to suffer any temporary aches when we were already at the pokemon center.

“Of course,” the nurse said, and I withdrew Sableye before handing over his and Hobbes’ balls. “For this ‘misdreavus,’ though...I’m going to have to make a few calls.”

I nodded. That wasn’t unreasonable, since I was sure it wasn’t every day that an unconscious, wild pokemon on the restricted list was brought in for healing. I pulled out my phone, which Porygon immediately phased into, and settled in to wait.

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The hour of waiting passed quickly, all things considered.

The polichamp never left its post over the misdreavus, standing menacingly without taking its eyes off of its charge. It might have made me nervous, but I was too engrossed with the new game Porygon managed to download onto my phone.

It was this world’s version of Pong called ‘Fetch’d’ — instead of controlling paddles, I moved what was supposed to be a farfetch’d’s leek back and forth to keep a floating pokeball from bouncing past. Functionally, it worked exactly like the classic game, and the appeal of it over ‘Ekans’ was that it could be played two-player, with Porygon taking over the role of the AI.

It wasn’t the most exciting, and the game itself felt a little sketchy with the way banner ads that weren’t appropriate for children kept popping up, but I felt secure about my phone’s safety with Porygon managing security. And the occasional beep or bzzt from my phone every time I lost or scored a point proved my pokemon was having a good time, which was what mattered the most.

It was starting to get late, though, and I was feeling the exhaustion from hiking all day. So after passing the phone to Hobbes, who had been returned along with Sableye with a clean bill of health after a quick healing session, I closed my eyes and tried to get comfortable in my plastic chair.

I must have dozed off, because Sableye was the one playing on my phone when I startled upon hearing the door open.

“Gym Leader Brock!” I exclaimed, hopping to my feet and rubbing my eyes.

“Marcus, I hear you were successful in your quest. And much quicker than expected.”

“Yeah, I got pretty lucky. And it turned out to not be too difficult. Just a misdreavus outside of its normal territory.”

“That’s what I was told,” Brock responded before turning to the still unconscious misdreavus. It hadn’t stirred once during the trek down the mountain or in the hour of waiting since, so I hoped it would be okay. I didn’t have much experience with pokemon being unconscious for any length of time, since I’d never waited to heal Hobbes whenever he’d been knocked out in my youngster battles. But hopefully the fact it had been triggered by a perish song rather than blunt force or a more physically destructive attack meant there wouldn’t be any lingering damage.

“How did you get here…” Brock mumbled, looking down at the small pokemon. But he didn’t spend long in contemplation, pulling a pokeball from his belt and tossing it at the unconscious ghost-type. It only rocked twice before dimming, signifying a successful capture, and he turned to the still-watching polichamp. “Deliver this for healing for me, please. I’ll come pick it up in a few minutes.”

“Champ,” the pokemon responded, accepting the ball and carrying it from the room.

And then Brock turned to me.

“Sorry you had to wait so long. I didn’t expect you to find the culprit so quickly, and was dealing with some gym business.”

I shook my head. “It’s no problem. Like I said, I got lucky — I expected to spend at least another couple days hiking all over Mt. Moon. Waiting at the pokemon center for an hour is nothing.”

He smiled. “Well, long or short, you were successful at the task I assigned you, and you deserve your payment.” He pulled out a couple of bills and passed them over. “I’m glad to see my trust in you was well-founded.”

I took a moment to admire my newly restored funds. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t all that much, close to what I’d started my journey with before I’d purchased supplies in Celadon. But I didn’t need to buy a splicer with this money, at least not immediately, and even after just a week of feeling the pinch it was relieving to have a bit of a buffer.

I turned back to Brock. “Did you know it would be a ghost-type?”

“I suspected. I’m no ghost specialist, but after a while as gym leader you start to notice trends with reports like these. This fit the profile of a potential ghost-type attack.”

“So you sent me to handle it? Because I’m from Lavender Town and have ghost pokemon?”

He shrugged and gave me a smile. “I didn’t know you were from Lavender Town, but…yes. In addition to those other reasons I mentioned before you accepted. Ghost pokemon are rare, and often require a…unique mindset to successfully train. I’m not saying you’re a type-specialist or anything like that. But a trainer your age with two ghost-types already? I was willing to gamble on you over anyone else we had available to investigate. And it seems my gamble paid off.”

I nodded. I supposed his logic made sense, and it wasn’t like I could — or wanted to — argue against my results. But despite growing up in Lavender Town and training Hobbes for years, I’d never considered myself a ghost expert or specialist.

Now that he brought it up, though…it bore consideration.

Type specialists were extremely common among trainers, for reasons I still didn’t entirely understand. A majority of the most powerful trainers, including all eight gym leaders and the Elite Four, were type specialists, with all their pokemon falling into one or a couple of types.

Some claimed it came down to the difficulty of training pokemon of different types, that splitting focus too much between strategies and conflicting moves weakened the team. Others claimed it was about the bond between trainer and pokemon, that each trainer naturally connected with a certain type and could better train and battle with pokemon of that type. And others still insisted it was fully strategic, allowing trainers to set up environments and arenas that are most beneficial to their type and have them persist throughout the battle.

Those all had merit, yet I had a hard time believing they outweighed the benefits of type diversification, of having a pokemon capable of countering whatever situation or pokemon they might face. Regardless of the reasons, though, it was tough to argue with results, and most trainers that made it past the first two gym badges ended up specializing.

I’d originally planned on becoming a generalist trainer. There were simply too many cool pokemon of too many different types for me to consider limiting myself to just one. Yet maybe I should reconsider the possibility?

I shook my head. It was another factor to consider, along with Seb’s philosophy of ‘vibing’ with caught pokemon, but it wasn’t something I needed to deal with immediately. Three pokemon were more than enough for the first gym — splitting my focus with a fourth or fifth pokemon so soon after catching Sableye and Porygon would likely just slow us down. I could consider how I wanted to further build our team after getting the first badge.

I looked back at Brock, who stood by the door looking ready to leave. “What will happen to the misdreavus? If I’m allowed to ask.”

“Of course. I’m not sure, yet. For most pokemon like this, we like to re-home them into their native habitat. That might be difficult with this one — misdreavus feed off of fear, at least partially, and it’s learned humans are an easy source of fear. We don’t want to release it on Mt. Silver only to have it immediately find its way back to a population center. Otherwise, we’ll need to find it a trainer. For a restricted ghost-type, that usually means Elite Four Agatha.”

“Thanks. For letting me know, and for this.” I held up the hand that still clutched the wad of bills.

Brock gave me another smile, his eyes disappearing completely. “You earned it. I look forward to seeing you again in my gym — don’t make me wait too long.”

And with those final challenging words, he was gone.