Floaroma Town was a majestic, beautiful location that utterly defied anything I had ever seen before in how utterly peaceful and charming it was.

The only thing that came close to the sight of sprawling fields of flowers of every color from my old world was the Dutch tulip fields, but I had never seen them in person.

Countless hours must have gone into carefully arranging the fields to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible, and I made it a priority to pick up a camera of some kind at the next chance I could get.

Canals had been dug into the earth, carrying crystal clear water to the fields, and occasionally we could see a spray of water coming out of the canals. At first I had thought it was a sprinkler system of some kind to keep the flowers watered, but I quickly learned how wrong I was when at one point a Buizel stood up.

It looked at us curiously, stopping its spray of water into the fields. I raised a hand in greeting, and it lifted a paw in response before turning back to its chores.

The more I looked, the more Pokémon I could see helping to tend the fields. Grass-types like Roserade would move in between the rows of flowers, stopping every so often to tend to a particular plant, and Combee were buzzing around, pollinating as many flowers as they could.

In one particular field that didn’t have any flowers at all, I could see the soil start to till itself in long strips. I was about to ask Ted what was going on when a Diglett popped its head out of the ground at the end of the row, smiling happily at its work.

Mount Coronet loomed in the near-distance, its peak shielded by a layer of clouds that proved how high the mountain truly was. To my surprise however, most of the trip to Floaroma had been surprisingly flat.

The end of Route 204 and Floaroma Town itself were all set in the bottom of a massive valley. I hadn’t even considered that it was a valley at all until I had seen the peaks of the tall hills to the west. There was a constant light breeze coming off of Mount Coronet, and I realized that it truly was the perfect place for the windmills and wind turbines of the Valley Windworks.

Of course, despite how beautiful the fields outside of Floaroma Town were, I couldn’t fully appreciate it due to basic biology.

I scrunched up my face as I tried to hold it back, but the urge was too great, and my entire body jerked as the sneeze burst out.

“That’s twenty!” Ted roared with laughter.

Venus, the traitor, was practically falling off my shoulders as she laughed as well.

“I hate you all.” I grumbled as I wiped futilely at my eyes and nose.

The Eevee leaned over and licked my face in apology.

It would have been a lot more meaningful if she still hadn’t been snickering the entire time.

I hadn’t even known that an Eevee could laugh like that, it sounded like she was chittering or something.

Flowers had never been something I’d liked. It wasn’t even a matter of being told as a kid that flowers were only for women, although that had played a role in my early life. No, the issue was that I absolutely could not stand the smell of flowers.

It didn’t matter what kind of flower it was, it could be the sweetest smelling flower on the planet, but it would still completely overpower my sense of smell and give me a headache.

The aesthetics of flowers were nice, and some of them could be incredibly beautiful, but they still inevitably caused the next best thing to a migraine.

I didn’t even know if migraine medicine existed in this world or not, and I had made it a priority to check out the next pharmacy we came across.

The trip to Floaroma Town had been, thankfully, completely uneventful. It had only been a full day's worth of travel after the Route 204 incident, and the closest we got to an encounter with a wild Pokémon was a particularly irate Combee.

Zetian had taken a perverse delight in proving her dominance over it with a quick battle, and after that it had meekly followed her and pointed out the best flowers for her to gather pollen for the better part of an hour, until it had finally turned away.

But the most exciting thing to happen was the battle between myself and Ted.

It had been a rather one-sided affair, even though Rakkyo had stayed out of it. Instead Ted’s team consisted of Switchback the Hisuian Sneasel and Mayfly, the Scyther. Even though they were probably around the same “level” as my team, the difference in training was astounding.

/^\

“You’re not bad.” Ted said around a mouthful of trail mix after the battle.

“But I’m not good either.” I finished, and Ted looked conflicted.

“No! I mean, yes, but it’s complicated.”

He swallowed, and looked at my team, who were mournfully eating their lunch after their resounding defeat.

“Listen, I have a decent amount of experience in training Pokémon. Specifically finding and training rare Pokémon, they’re my speciality.”

I frowned. “I thought your specialty was Pokémon environments, like Professor Birch?”

He waggled his hand back and forth. “Finding and studying rare Pokémon environments tend to lead to finding rare Pokémon. It’s a whole thing that would take too long to go into right now. Regardless, I’m not trying to brag right now, but I’ve been at this for a couple of years and I know a few things.

First, you’re a new Trainer. Don’t worry, that’s not a bad thing, but it’s painfully obvious right now. You’re better than some of the other new Trainers I’ve seen, but you still have a long way to go.”

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“How’s that?”

“Well, your Pokémon listen to you.”

I blinked. “Isn’t that supposed to be how it works?”

“You’d think so, but like all things, the reality is a little more complicated. It often takes a while for Pokémon and Trainers to build that bond where they listen to each other. A lot of times you’ll see hesitation and miscommunications with new Trainers. Venus and… Zetian?”

I nodded.

“I haven’t heard that kind of name before, it’s interesting. Regardless, they listen to you and trust you enough to follow your orders; that’s very good.”

“There’s always a “but” though.”

It was Ted’s turn to nod.

“But you’re still issuing orders when you should be giving strategies. If you tell Venus to use Quick Attack, she’ll use Quick Attack. But now your opponent knows that you’re going to use Quick Attack, and if they’re smart, they’ll already have a plan to deal with that.”

I remembered Rei and her Tyrogue, and how they had rarely used actual attack names in our battles together.

“I think I see what you’re saying.” I said slowly, turning the problem over in my head.

“Unfortunately it just takes time and experience.” He said, shrugging. “I can give you pointers if you want, but ultimately it’s up to you in order to figure out the kind of style you’ll use. A lot of Trainers will have code words, or they’ll create strategies and tell their Pokémon which ones to use. At the highest levels of competitive battling, it’s not unusual to see the Trainers give no commands at all unless it’s a completely unexpected situation.”

“Like Cynthia.” I said, remembering one time I had seen her battle on the TV at Roark’s lab.

“Like Cynthia.” Ted shuddered. “Steven Stone would be bad enough as an opponent, but he at least has a theme, something to plan around. Cynthia? I wouldn’t want to challenge her even on our best day.”

/^\

I had spent the rest of the trip to Floaroma in relative silence, thinking over Ted’s words.

He was obviously a lot more skilled at battling than I was, if he had a fully evolved Flygon he would have to be.

Did I want to be a full-time battler? No.

I’d already decided that a while ago. Battling could be fun at times, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life.

At the same time, we’d been in a few scraps already, and I had a feeling that before everything was over we’d go through a few more. I really should make strategies for the future, and not just make sure we were fit enough in the present.

Venus was still a blank slate until she evolved, or if she even evolved at all.

An Umbreon would have a vastly different battling style when compared to something like a Flareon or a Leafeon after all.

But Zetian…

I frowned in thought as I looked at the Combee happily flitting through the fields, stopping when she found a particularly good flower.

Right now we were training Zetian’s speed, which was always something to have plenty of. The thing was, while Combee could be a fast Pokémon, a Vespiquen wasn’t.

Zetian would eventually evolve, I was sure of it. But a Vespiquen’s fighting style was a lot different than what she had now. Zetian would be bigger, stronger, and bulkier. But at the same time, she would also be slower as well, less agile.

Vespiquen weren’t the best defensive walls in the game, as they had few resistances that they could come out unscathed from. Then again, this wasn’t a game now, was it?

I nodded to myself as we kept walking. For now, Venus would practice what she could, but I would start training Zetian for the future.

A memory sparked to life as I looked at Zetian happily flying around the fields of flowers, and a smile spread across my face.

I think I know exactly who could help.

My plans for training came to an end as we crested a small hill, and caught our first glimpse of Floaroma town proper.

In the games, it had always been a little lackluster. A Pokémon Center, Poké Mart, two houses, and a flower shop where you could trade in berries. The anime had gone a step further if I recalled correctly, featuring a Contest Hall.

“It looks like the Netherlands.” I muttered, starting at the quaint town before us.

Floaroma Town looked like a place that belonged on a postcard. The buildings in the town center were all made of stately brick and sloping tiled roofs that were faced with blocky facades that covered the smooth lines. There were a large number of open squares in the town’s layout, and I could see people flocking around various market stalls like Combee around their hive.

Like Jubilife, there were only a few trucks on the roads, which seemed to be either bricks or cobblestones of some kind and bordered by more canals. There were absolutely no cars that I could see. Instead everybody seemed to be traveling around on bicycles, which were slightly different than the ones I had seen before.

While some people like Rei had very fancy racing bikes, these seemed to be a bit more heavily built, and the vast majority of them I could see had baskets installed on the handlebars.

On the outskirts of town the buildings changed from brick and tile townhouses to half-timbered cottages, the wooden beams peeking out from pristine white walls. To my eternal delight, there were even a few cottages that had straw roofs.

In the near distance there were a number of windmills, their wooden and cloth blades moving slowly but steadily with the breeze. A bit further away I could make out the tall white forms of actual wind turbines, their giant blades providing energy to the valley and beyond.

I really wish I had a camera now.

/^\

“Are you sure about that?” Ted asked dubiously as we stepped out of the store.

Floaroma Town wasn’t quite big enough to support a dedicated store just for cameras, and most of the interior of the building had actually been a print shop.

“I mean, they had digital cameras for sale.” He continued. “Or even a normal film camera.”

I rolled my eyes as I fiddled with my new toy.

“Yeah but those are boring. This is cool!”

Ted looked very nonplussed. “It’s an instant camera. It’s about the farthest thing from cool.”

I gasped, holding the blocky camera close. “You take that back!”

“Those film squares are more expensive for a pack of ten than a regular reel of thirty shots! Besides, the camera itself is bigger than any of the more modern ones in the shop.”

“It’s beautiful!” I argued back. “It’s great to be able to take a photo and see it right away.”

Ted paused to root around in his backpack for a second before pulling out a somewhat battered digital camera. “That’s what this one does. And I don’t have to waste film to do it.”

I muttered as I looked over my new camera. The Silverfilm 151 was basically a brick of black plastic that screamed “early 2000’s,” but I loved it regardless.

With my healthy amount of reward money left over, I had purchased enough film to keep me going for a good long while, and even picked up an album book with plastic sleeves to keep them all safe in.

“So now that that’s over with.” Ted said, stuffing the camera back into his bag. “Is there anything else we need here? Don’t get me wrong this is a beautiful town but…”

But there’s not much to actually do. I finished mentally.

Floaroma Town was gorgeous, but it hadn’t taken us long to realize that besides the flower fields, there wasn’t much to do in the town.

It might be fun to visit later when I wasn’t on a schedule to get to Eterna City for Rei’s competition, but for now…

“There’s only one place I’d like to stop at.” I said. “But they’re not located in the town itself, and hopefully it shouldn’t take too long.”

Ted shrugged and adjusted his pack, before gesturing for me to lead.

It’s time to see a man about some honey.