It was mildly disappointing, Astra mused, that her heartfelt departure would be met with monotony. It wasn’t that she was asking for problems! But…

She glanced around Route 102 for the dozenth time. It was the same here as it had been at the start, albeit with more patches of untended grass. A few times it would veer north or south over hills to bypass outcroppings of trees, seemingly at random. There had even been a few Oran bushes scattered at odd intervals—she had considered grabbing some, but her pack was already stuffed with various berry products and dried fish.

And that’s all she had seen; not a single wild Pokemon had even bothered to accost her.

Astra sighed. If she remembered the distance from her village to the city right, and boredom wasn’t playing any tricks on her sense of time and space, it would still be quite a while before it came into sight. She hadn’t known what to expect, really. Perhaps that she would face down a horde of other human trainers upon this one road, each one vying to strike her down before she could continue? It felt a little foolish, in retrospect.

There was, simply put, not really anything happening at the moment. Her mind wandered, feet plodding onward thoughtlessly. For the sake of it, she plotted out what to do once she reached her destination again: according to the professor she needed to find and defeat eight ‘Gym Leaders,’ and…she had no idea where they all were. She had a pretty good guess for the first, but all eight couldn’t be in one place, could they?

For the first time, Astra realized that she had no idea where to go after she reached the city ahead, either in failure or success. She stopped walking, caught in her own head. Then she reached down and bundled up the fabric of her cloak, pressed it to her face, and screamed. The sound was muffled by the layered fabric, and it seemed to do equally well in keeping her stress from escaping. What was she supposed to do there!? She didn’t know! She—

...Wait. Wait! She had forgotten! Stopping for a moment, she lowered her backpack to the ground and rooted through a pocket, retrieving the rectangular device the professor had given her. The shiny red casing of her pokedex glinted in the morning light.

She had mostly ignored the small device in all the excitement of receiving Treecko and the party thereafter, but surely it could help her figure out what to do? What had he said…? ‘Cell phone, map, camera, and payment device.’ She didn’t know what a cell phone or camera was, nor what ‘payment device’ meant, but a map would be incredibly useful—maybe it would even tell her where all the Gym Leaders were? That seemed like something a trainer would need.

Re-equipping her backpack, she continued down the road, fiddling with the buttons. How did she activate it? The two buttons on the right did nothing, nor did the cross-shaped pad on the left, and the two small buttons to the lower right of that fared much the same. Two buttons on the corners of the top side similarly failed to produce any result, although she did notice an odd, square recess with some sort of prong in the middle. ‘Ext?' She didn’t understand.

The backside didn’t have anything special on it aside from some screws. Was this how it was put together? The bottom, however, produced a small switch on the left, conveniently labeled ‘On / Off.’ Opposite that, There was another round recess on the opposite side accompanied by some sort of wheel embedded into the corner. They were labeled ‘Phone’ and ‘Volume’ respectively. Volume? Ah, so this controlled some sort of sound function.

Astra grinned at the sight of the power switch, and reached out to flick it, but stopped dead in her tracks at a sudden thought. Turning back to the phone's hole and the volume wheel, she stared at the helpful labels intently.

She should not have recognized these symbols. She had never had any understanding of human writing; the only bits and pieces she had ever seen, other than during her foray into the city, had been the terse groupings of symbols on scavenged cans and bottles. How was she reading these things? Where had this understanding come from?

The letters suddenly felt extremely alien and unsettling. Disquiet and fear battled within her mind as Astra returned her attention to the surrounding forest; as if some culprit was hiding in the shadows, sinisterly…helping her read? It may have seemed silly, but the discomfort remained. Someone had messed with her head, implanted comprehension where before there was none. Helpful as it was, Astra felt violated. You weren’t supposed to do that.

She stood there for a few more moments, thoughts going in circles, until eventually she shook herself out of her stupor. Astra had no idea what had caused this, or even any way to begin figuring that out…but what she did have was a job to do. Still vaguely uneasy, she snapped the switch to the ‘On’ position.

Just like in the lab, a brilliant white screen appeared, filled in by an unknown but colorful logo. A moment later it was replaced as the screen turned a calmer blue, filled with disparate icons.

A little section on top showed a small sun. ‘Weather,' it said. Astra glanced at the sky. Yep, sunshine. This seemed a little redundant. There were also three numbers to the side, underneath which were two more words and another number. She had no idea what that meant. The rightmost number in the trio incremented upwards by one as she watched. Huh.

Several of the words and icons remained incomprehensible, even with her new…gift. Experimentally, she poked the cross-shaped button and the one icon that was highlighted became unhighlighted while another one, in the same direction that she had pushed, lit up instead. She tried it a few more times and smiled at one mystery solved: it appeared to select a desired icon.

One of the icons was labeled ‘Map,’ and it immediately received all of her attention. She made this icon light up and experimented with the other buttons. The left shoulder button didn’t do anything, but the right one made the entire screen seem to rotate, bringing up even more arcane icons, though the screen was not full this time. Trying again, this time the reverse was true; the right one failed to do anything and the left one rotated the screen to the original set.

Re-selecting maps, she pressed the ‘B’ button, which did nothing. Pressing ‘A’ seemed to do the trick however, as the screen flashed white once more, showing a bigger version of the map logo. It soon faded into a rather confusing image: a big mass of green surrounded by blue, crisscrossed with yellow lines and red and blue dots. More green areas were scattered around the empty blue areas.

She stared at it for a moment. This was…a map? A map of ‘Hoenn,' apparently. Then the green would be land, right? And the blue would be water? What were all these yellow lines and colored dots?

One yellow line was flashing red, in the lower right corner of the main green landmass. The image was too small to really see anything useful. A few presses and one accidental program restart later, and Astra was able to enlarge the area.

‘Route 102,' read a line of text next to the flashing yellow line. The line connected ‘Oldale Town’ to ‘Petalburg City.’ Was that where she was? She was heading toward a city, and she was vaguely aware that there was a vast expanse of water if you traveled from the village in a certain direction. It was her best guess.

So, these red and blue dots and dashes were cities? If that were the case, then the yellow lines running between them could only be roads! The pathway behind her connected to Oldale town and Littleroot Town. Littleroot seemed to be in the direction the Professor's lab was; so if she estimated the time it took to get to the lab, and compared it to the time it took to get to the city…

Astra stared at the very small area of the map. She zoomed back out. Back in. Back out. That…was very large and she was suddenly feeling very small. How was she supposed to travel to all these places!?

Wait, she only needed to visit the ones that had Gyms, the Elite Four, and the Champion. Which were those? The city she was traveling to had a gym, so she examined its icon for a moment, trying to see if it had a clue. It was red…and that was it. She examined the map as a whole again. Seven blue dots, nine red dots. Did that mean red cities had gyms? No, that didn’t add up. Ugh. She might have to visit them all anyway. At least she knew where she was, if not where to go.

One of the buttons under the selector pad seemed to bring her to the starting screen. What else was on here? The ‘Pokemon’ icon brought up a screen with six rows. Five were empty, but one was occupied by a little caricature of Treecko; it appeared to be monitoring his well being. How did it know? Her friend appeared to be fine, in any case. Maybe a bit hungry.

‘Pokedex’ brought up a grand list of nothing but question marks; the only notable exception was, again, the presence of Treecko in the first slot. Selecting that brought up a few bits of info such as average height and weight for his species, and a small blurb of descriptive text.

After that were a host of icons that she couldn’t begin to understand. ‘Account, Album, Calculator, Calendar, Camera, Clock, Contacts, Dial’…the list went on. Astra’s eye twitched. What even were all these things? Why did the humans have to make such a complicated device!?

She warily eyed the unknown icons. Which one should she investigate next? The selector hovered briefly over ‘Music,' but after a moment she decided against it; there were more important things to do. Moving onto ‘Clock,' she opened the new screen—

“Hey!”

Astra jerked forward, stumbling over her robe. Catching her balance, she accidentally flung her pokedex into the air. Panicking, she reached up to catch it, only for it to bounce back and forth between her grasping hands as if she were a particularly lucky yet inept juggler. A moment of lucidity had her psychically hold it in place for a fraction of an instant, allowing her to finally take hold of the flying device. Astra was only able to relax for a moment however, as the sound of laughter rang out. Eyes wide, she turned to see who had startled her so badly.

It was a human child. Brown hair and eyes, wearing a wide-brimmed yellow hat and teal sleeveless shirt with a yellow stripe running across the chest, as well as a pair of brown shorts on which hung two pokeballs. He also had a massive net anchored to a hoop on a stick hanging over his shoulder, which was rather bizarre.

Also, he was still laughing at her.

“Ahaha! Ahha, ah, sorry, sorry that was just—pfff,” the human coughed, composing himself. “I didn’t think I’d scare you that bad!” he continued, smiling.

Astra stared at him, silently reinforcing the illusion on her face and hoping he hadn’t noticed any mistakes that might have popped up in her panic. But then reality caught up to her as she realized he had seen that ridiculous display and she flushed red, embarrassed beyond comparison. This wasn’t how she expected her first encounter to go…!

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Ehe, yeah. At least you caught your ‘dex, right?” he said, scratching the back of his head at her lack of response.

“Yes.” She glanced at the device and quietly tucked it into her pack. “It’s undamaged.” He didn’t seem to notice anything wrong, so she felt marginally safer, if still jumpy.

The boy squinted and twisted one of his fingers in his ear. “You talk funny.” He shook his head, then a flash of recognition passed his face and he pointed at her dramatically. “Hey! If you have a pokedex, you must be a trainer, right!?”

Astra blinked. “I became one just yesterday. Why?”

“Oh! That means you’re super new!” the boy exclaimed. “Well, you should know that should your eyes meet a fellow trainer's in the wild, that’s basically the same as challenging them to a battle! And trainers can’t back down from a challenge!”

Oh, was that how that worked? How odd. Wait, this boy was challenging her to a fight? She stiffened, a sudden tightness strangling her heart. A flash of recent memories rushed by, a Zigzagoon barreling down at her, endless rows of Poochyena fangs flashing in torchlight—

Stop. Breathe. She was a human now. They…they wouldn't do that, right? Her eyes widened at another recollection of combat. No, this was like in the city! A challenge to test each others' Pokemon! A game for fun!

Astra felt a small grin creep across her face, excitement replacing terror. “What’s your name?”

The boy pointed his thumb back at himself, a smirk matching her own emblazoned across his face. “My name is Rick! I’ll take you on with my bug Pokemon!”

“My name is Astra,” she countered, “future Champion. Remember it!”

Simultaneously, the two trainers grasped their pokeballs, sending them flying into the air. Dual electrical screeches cried out into the air as Treecko materialized, already prepared to face down his opponent—which turned out to be a rather small Wurmple. Astra’s eye twitched, and even though Rick’s face was the epitome of seriousness she could only feel like this was some sort of joke.

“Wurmple! String Shot!” Rick declared, taking advantage of Astra’s incredulity to get in the first attack.

“Wurm wurm!” the bug Pokemon squelched, spraying a fine mist over the area. Treecko squawked as thin webbing began to coalesce in the air.

Astra snapped back into focus at Treecko’s distress. Thinking quickly, she recalled the few tactics and abilities Treecko already knew and came up with a rudimentary strategy: Beat the worm into paste.

“Left, then close in with a Pound,” she ordered. “Avoid the webs!”

Treecko darted sideways, dashing through what little space remained between the fine threads that were increasingly littering the air. The Wurmple turned to follow him, but her Pokemon was too fast for the bug; a small twirl, and Treecko’s tail impacted his enemy with a meaty thud, sending it flying to his master’s feet.

Rick scowled as his Wurmple wobbled back to its feet. “Fast, and I didn’t even hear any commands…Wurmple, Tackle!”

“Wuuuurm!” it shouted, wriggling forwards, head-spike lowered for the charge.

“Meet it head on, dodge and Tackle it from the side,” Astra ordered, visualizing the action as she communicated.

“Tree…” Treecko grinned. Dashing forwards, the lizard held himself low to the ground. At the last moment he jerked to the right, causing the Wurmple to stumble as it charged right past him. He then reversed his momentum, latched onto the side of the worm Pokémon, and threw it to the ground.

Damaged and shaken, Wurmple attempted to get up one more time…but an additional tail slam knocked it out of the fight for good.

“Ko!” Treecko crowed, victorious. Astra grinned at him, silently emitting pride and gratitude over their telepathic link.

Rick made a frustrated sound. “Come back, Wurmple!” he commanded, returning the Pokemon to its ball. Clicking it back to his side, he pulled out his second ball. “Let’s see how well you do against this guy!” he shouted, throwing the ball into the air. Astra tensed as the device released its payload, red energy resolving into…

Another, slightly bigger Wurmple. Astra squinted at Rick. What was this kid's deal?

“Close in and slam it,” she ordered. Treecko once again rushed into the fray, advancing rapidly.

“Wurmple, into the webs!” Rick countered. “String shot, wide area!”

Wurmple took off into the webs left behind by its predecessor, spraying another mist into the air. The webs which had begun to dissolve instead thickened rapidly, growing more and more interwoven. Treecko darted forward, jumping and sliding between, above, and below the ever-closing strands. Just a bit closer, and he could end this fight—

A sticky string detached from its holdings above and fell into his path. Treecko’s eyes widened as he tried to avoid the sudden obstacle, awkwardly leaping over it. He couldn’t, however, avoid the threads in the path of his descent. Crashing into the sticky white extract, one arm and his tail were grabbed by the webs and stuck in place, refusing to release him no matter how much he struggled.

“That’s it, Wurmple! You’ve got him!” Rick cheered. “Hit him with a poison sting!”

Wurmple crawled down its webs, the spikes on its tail glowing a sickly purple light.

Astra’s eyes widened at the sight of the encroaching creature. “Treecko, get out of there!” she frantically ordered.

Treecko redoubled its struggle against the sticky webbing and slowly, tiny holes began to tear through the webbing as the trapped Pokemon strained against his restraints. The holes began to give way—and then Wurmple was upon him. With a meaty thwack, the bug stabbed its poisonous tail spikes into Treecko’s sides, the force breaking him out of the weakened strands and sending him sprawling outside the webbed area.

“Treecko, are you okay?” Astra asked, wincing. She hoped he didn’t get poisoned. Poison hurt deep, the pain spreading with the foul substance through every vein it could reach, and having experienced it before, Astra could rate it as one of the worst experiences of her life. She had a couple Pecha berries that she’d brought along for situations like this, but it was pretty early to start going through the handful she’d brought and furthermore she couldn’t exactly toss one at him in the heat of battle.

“Tree…” Treecko hissed through grit teeth, standing back on his feet. He radiated out feelings of intense pain, but it wasn’t spreading—so he was hurt, but he wasn’t poisoned. Astra sighed in relief, then focused back on the fight. He couldn’t take another hit like that.

Rick grinned as his Wurmple maintained the elaborate webs that now took up a good chunk of the road. “Let’s see your Pokemon get through this, quiet girl!” he taunted.

Astra grimaced at the thick wall of string. There was no way Treecko could dodge through that. If he were bigger he could simply overpower it, but as it was…wait. Astra examined the hazardous strands one more time, a plan hatching in her mind.

Treecko smirked as he received new instructions. Dashing forward, he began weaving through the outer webs, dancing between the sparser threads.

“Tree tree!” he called, taunting the worm. Wurmple chittered angrily at the flagrant display.

“What, this again?” Rick scoffed. “Wurmple, string shot, cover the entire road!”

“Wurm!” it said, spraying ever more string across the road. The bug Pokemon advanced further and further, creeping its territory onwards. Soon enough, webbing began to criss-cross everywhere, obscuring the road and even Astra from view.

Rick observed the progress with satisfaction, but frowned as something occurred to him. “Wurmple, stop!” he ordered, examining the battlefield now that the obscuring silken mist was gone. “Wait,” he realized, “Where did that thing go?”

Astra grinned.

Rick’s eyes widened as he heard a triumphant cry from above. Jerking his head up, he spotted Treecko, coiled like a spring on a branch far above. To his dawning horror, he realized his Wurmple’s advance had coated the ground in webs at the cost of leaving the air completely exposed.

“Treecko, Slam!” Astra commanded, and Treecko shot off the branch with a fierce cry, accelerating toward the confused Wurmple below.

“Wurmple,” Rick cried, ”Watch out!” But even as Wurmple turned to look, it was too late.

Treecko spun in the air and slammed his tail down, delivering a gravity-assisted blow to the unprepared bug. Wurmple impacted the ground violently, briefly crying out in pain before collapsing to the dirt, the one massive strike knocking it out cold. Treecko cried out in victory over his enemy's unconscious body, injured but triumphant.

Astra had won.

Treecko, not seeing any new opponents appearing, hopped off his unconscious enemy and scurried over to Astra. Darting up her robes, he snuggled himself into her arms again. She pet him on the head, muttering praise with a smile.

“Ugh!” Rick grumbled, recalling his Pokemon. “Down and out. Man, you’re good!”

“Your Wurmple are really strong; I’ve never seen them make so much webbing before. For my first challenge, it was really interesting!” she returned. “I suppose that means I win.”

“Yeah, yeah. Man, I didn’t even hear you tell your Pokemon to do anything!” he complained absently, searching his pockets. Pulling out his own pokedex, Rick and Astra stared at each other for a couple seconds before Rick snapped his fingers, appearing to realize something.

“Oh yeah! You said you became a trainer yesterday, right? Did you visit the professor in Littleroot? It would explain the Treecko,” he muttered to himself, then continued normally, “If you win a trainer battle you also win some money off the loser. Even Gym Leaders do it! Pretty cool, right? I guess the Prof forgot to mention it.”

Astra blinked. What was ‘money?' More things she didn’t know! Ugh. She had a strong desire to hold the boy in place and interrogate him for all he knew. “I didn’t know about that. How does it work?”

“Oh, sure! Here, get out your pokedex, I can walk you through it.”

It turned out that one of the ‘apps’—a shorthand term for the various features on the device—handled this aspect. Rick helpfully walked Astra through setting up a ‘macro’ that would allow her to get the matter over in one button press in the future. Apparently her registration also gave her a ‘Trainer’s account’ at a ‘Bank.’

“Every trainer gets one,” Rick explained, “and you get a stipend twice a month to pay for food if your account is low. If you’re completely broke you can get the League to pay for you, but they get mad if you do it too much.”

Astra nodded, starting to puzzle out the strange terms. ‘Pay for food?' Money must be some sort of barter tool. She had been given a certain amount when she received her trainer license, and had won a much smaller portion from Rick according to the numbers on the screen. How useful was that?

“This number seems...low?” she questioned, testing his reaction.

Rick grimaced. “I know it’s not a lot. I’m a beginner too, you know! It only pays out, like, a fraction of what you have.” He turned away slightly at saying this, scowling at the ground.

“Ah, no, it’s fine!” Astra backpedaled. Was not having a lot of money shameful? She had no idea! What even counted as a little or a lot? “I wasn’t expecting any of this at all, so it’s nice to know. Thank you, you’ve been a big help!”

He scratched the back of his head, embarrassed. “It’s no problem, really. Anyhow,” he said, returning his device to his pocket, “I should get going. You’re heading to Petalburg right? Shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes from here.”

Astra nodded. “It was a fun match. I hope you have a nice day!”

“Same!” he said, walking the way she had come. He flashed a smile backwards as he went on his way. “Maybe someday we’ll fight again, ‘Future Champion!’ Good luck!”

“Thank you!” She waved him farewell as he continued down the road. Returning her attention to Treecko, the little lizard Pokemon seemed to be sleeping—wait, no, he was just relaxing.

She poked him in the snout, to which he opened his eyes and glowered at her. Smirking, she fetched a few dried berries from her pack and offered them to her companion; hopefully a few Oran and a bit of Pecha would help him recover from the fight. Idly, she ate an Oran herself as Treecko nibbled down, pleased noises filling the silence.

After he finished his snack, she recalled him to his pokeball and returned to her investigation of the pokedex. Maybe one of these apps would tell her what a ‘minute’ was.