I woke with the sun on the following morning -- apparently, it's much easier to wake up early when there's a sunbeam through a gap in the leaves overhead pointed directly at your face.

Who knew.

Luckily, despite Hobbes' vigilance -- or likely because of it -- our campsite hadn't been visited by any angry pokemon overnight. I did wake up a number of times throughout the night, but that was simply due to my unfamiliarity with the hammock, and each time I was able to drift back to sleep in just a few minutes after shifting my position. It left me somewhat groggy as I slowly woke up and found a tree to relieve myself before preparing breakfast, but that grogginess was dispelled when I remembered what today would contain: Merraga.

If we were quick, we'd get to the town before lunch. I wouldn't have enough money to splurge on buying a meal there, not so early into the journey when my pack was still loaded with supplies, but that was fine. It wasn't the town itself I was looking forward to, anyway -- it was what I would hopefully find near the town. If we were lucky, hopefully later this evening.

With the extra pep that came from that realization, I scarfed down a couple of pop-tarts and then hurried to pack up the campsite while Hobbes ate his pokechow. And within an hour of waking, we were back on the road.

We saw even more pokemon near the road as we walked in the early morning compared to the day before: bibarel, aipom, buneary, stantler, skwovet, and so many more. Many of these species hadn't existed in the Kanto region a few decades prior, but recent efforts to diversify and intermix pokemon across regions had resulted in explosive growth in many pokemon species, particularly the normal types which didn't require as niche of an environment to thrive. From the perspective of a pokemon trainer, I appreciated the efforts, as there were so many more cool pokemon I had access to compared to those from a few years prior, but from the perspective of a conservationist, I questioned the wisdom of the intermixing.

I knew how badly invasive species could destabilize and wreck an environment back on Earth. How much worse could it potentially be when the invasive species literally had magic superpowers?

Regardless of my perspective, there wasn't anything I could do about it, so I chose to enjoy the walk through nature. Though there were more pokemon up and about at this hour, none of them were as aggressive as some of the ones we'd encountered the day before, and they all either ran off or ignored us as we passed. We made good time, and a few hours into our walk I noticed the trees starting to thin as we neared the edge of the forest. And then, thirty minutes later, we left the last of the trees and entered rolling fields, a few tall buildings backdropped by small mountains marking Merraga in the distance.

"Wooo! Almost there, Hobbes. How you feeling? Nervous at all?" I asked.

"Mi mii, kyu."

I chuckled. "Don't worry then, I can be nervous for the both of us."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Our pace picked up even further now that we were out of the forest and didn't have to worry as much about a pokemon jumping out at us. It was still a possibility, as grasslands had their own unique ecosystem of pokemon just like forests, but we'd at least be able to see any larger pokemon coming long before they arrived -- and we didn't have to keep our eyes up for pokemon dropping from the canopy.

It was nice to be under the open sky again.

The area to the north of Merraga was primarily used for farming, and the fields we walked through had likely once been just as wooded as the forest we'd exited. After a few minutes, we encountered someone else using the road: a farmer riding a mudsdale pulling a plow.

"Howdy!" the slightly overweight man called as we approached, and I lifted a hand in response.

"Morning!"

"Mii!" Hobbes called his own greeting.

"What brings y'all to Merrada? Not often we get strangers passing through," he called as we got a little closer, pulling up on the reins to slow the mudsdale beneath him. Now that we were closer, I noticed his somewhat strange outfit: a white and black ensemble that fully covered his body, complete with suspenders and a wide, flat-brimmed black hat. Coupled with his bushy beard, he looked exactly like a stereotypical Amish person from Earth.

Were there Amish people in Kanto? Now that I was looking for it, I noticed the plow was entirely mechanical as well, lacking any technology that I'd expect to find on a modern farm implement.

"Just started my journey. Got a pokemon I've got my eye on that's near Merraga," I said, choosing to not comment on his strange appearance.

The man looked me up and down before glancing at Hobbes next to me, and then nodded with a slight frown. "Don't be rushing into anything you can't take back," he cautioned. "There're no shortcuts to bein' a pokemon master, ya know."

I smiled. He'd evidently deduced my plan, and I supposed I wasn't the first person to come through here with the same idea. "Don't worry, we know what we're doing," I said, and then my grin turned somewhat sheepish. "At least we think so."

The man's heavy look lightened, and he laughed. "Better to be underconfident than overconfident, I always say. But I'll trust you've got it well in hand. And if not, well, we've all gotta make mistakes to learn."

With those somewhat foreboding words, he bid us farewell and continued on his way down the road, Hobbes' and I continuing our own trek in the opposite direction. It wasn't particularly encouraging to hear the man's skepticism, but Hobbes and I had given this a lot of thought, and we wouldn't be dissuaded from our goal by the words of someone we'd just met.

In no time at all, we made our way into Merrida, and I was surprised to see the entire town was comprised of Amish-looking people without a hint of electronics in sight. I hadn't realized Merraga was an Amish town (Amish likely wasn't the correct word -- technology-shunning people?), as there hadn't been anything on the pokenet about it, at least not that I'd seen. Of course, people who shunned technology weren't known for being terribly forthcoming about themselves on the net, and the pokenet was significantly less reliable and widely used compared to the internet on Earth.

Either way, it didn't affect my plans, and after a quick stop along the side of the road for lunch, we resumed our journey to the biggest building at the edge of the town: the old Silph Co. offices.

Obviously abandoned and disused, I had no plans of stepping foot inside the building itself. After several decades of abandonment, it was likely a deathtrap of dangerous pokemon and unstable flooring on the brink of collapse. But the fields just beyond the building were reported to be one of the few places in Kanto infested with a very unique pokemon. And after just a few minutes pushing our way through the grasses, we came across one of the purple bobs with a cheesy smile and pinprick eyes, Hobbes leaping forward with a cry of challenge.

A ditto.