~~ Chapter 3 - Rail ~~

I stepped over a piece of metal rail, dashing through, not letting my feet? Whatever the lower appendages on my legs were? Tarsi? I hadn't really thought leavanny had tarsi, though I clearly had tiny appendages on the front of my blades which helped grasp particularly small objects. In this rail-yard, the sun-heated ground was incredibly hot. I couldn't stay on a piece of gravel for too long. Two things were definitely different between regular Earth and this one, if it even was earth.

There were almost no roads capable of holding vehicles like cars or trucks. Whatever this city was, they got most of their shipping by train; not much shipping seemed to be going through regardless— I hadn’t even noticed the first train until a couple of days-or-so-prior. Either I'd been learning to get used to and process things like a pokemon, and missed the earlier trains, or the place just wasn't the busiest.

The second thing that I'd been noticing as different is that, well, there just weren’t that many humans. Sure, there were a few out and about, and I wasn’t exactly in the midst of a city, but it was miles between houses and buildings. Signs of civilization outside of the occasional outpost, house, or people on bikes were far between. Either this area just wasn’t densely populated, or this world’s humans just weren’t the apex predators they were in my past life. Which, well… This was Pokemon. In comparison to the world I grew up in, here, humans weren’t always portrayed as the apex predators in the pokemon worlds I knew about. So it wouldn't have surprised me if there was a mechanism in this world that was keeping the human population from exploding.

Arceus, the sun and heat is nice, I thought, crossing over another row of tracks. Vibrations and rustling pulled me out of my half-dazed reverie. I stood straight, turning my head to look behind me to see two pairs of garbage bags rolling around, probably sweltering in the sun, here on the edge of a trainyard.

Trubbish—their faces showing. The animated bags of trash shuffled their way over, slowly approaching my location. My leaves and headdress apparently failed to deter these would-be predators. The toxic/garbage-types are probably all omnivores, eating whatever they can get a hold of.

I flipped out my blade-arms in a display of my razor-sharp leaves, but neither their faces nor their continued approach suggested they had registered my threat. The sun was beating down, there wasn’t any water or food for me nearby. I could eat soil for the nutrients from the ground, but the sugar in berries was what gave me that extra boost to get up and recover from a day of running. And well, I can get that from literally eating dirt. I needed berries or fruits, roots and nuts.

Going into the city while following beside the railroad would miss human notice, but, well, if it was going to attract these particular hungry city-dwellers… Not the best idea.

Not wanting to fight with the trubbish or spend my razor leaves for a pair of walking trash bags bumbling their way towards me, I turned the other way. Crossing the hot gravel was a mass of oily, purple goop sliding in my direction, leaving a trail of slime over the ground it passed over. I could taste the toxins in the air as they drew closer, looking for a meal.

Trying to walk into the open railyard was a bad idea. The trains might not be moving a whole lot, but that just seemed to mean it was a perfect place for the refuse of pokemon to live. I couldn’t imagine the trash-and toxin-types were terribly-desired pokemon. I reflexively raised my right blade-arm as the grimer spat at me, deflecting their poisonous sludge with grafted leaf. My welcome overstayed, I dashed, clearing as much distance from my would-be pursuers as I could. I ran across the railway, purple sticking to my blade.

It was faint, but while running, I noticed that the leaf on my forearm was starting to turn purple, dark veins spreading amidst the green, threatening to enter the root system of my arms. I’d been hit with a pretty toxic piece of poisonous slop. After getting a good distance away from my pursuers and only seeing a few roosting bird-types in trees near the edge of the rail yard, I paused from my dash and inspected the leaf. It was turning purple, the lines in it threatening to spread to my arm.

With my healthy arm. I took one blade and sheared the poisoned leaf off at the base where it was attached to my forearm. A numb feeling was starting to creep into my arm. Hopefully, the toxic sludge was in a small enough dose that I wasn’t poisoned by it. I didn’t relish the idea of having to try and find a Pokemon center or a helpful human on my first real day in a city.

Continuing to cross the rail yard, my mouth was parched. I hadn’t had water since I got to this dump of a city. With all these poison- and garbage-types around, I’d probably do well to stay away from trying to drink any public waterways.

I approached the edge of the railyard, and crossed into the first line of trees. There really wasn’t much shrubbery, just weeds and grass. Nothing which instincts said was a good leaf for replacing my shorn arm-blade. I’d have to do without. There would be a park with a water fountain or sprinklers that I could drink.

What I thought had been an extension of forest was only just a thicket of trees. A large line of trees, a few trees thick, mind, but nothing of use. The area on the other side was practically covered in warehouses, it seemed. Not enough access to sun or water for my needs, though.

It was another couple of hours of semi-uneventful walking. The vibrations of what I think was a car horn closer to the main fareway of the city roads entered my senses. For a whole lot of no one out here, the place sure had a lot of buildings and asphalt. And probably about as many potholes. The city had clearly seen better days.

I reached a sidewalk. It was just the end or beginning of a sidewalk, sure, but it was still a sidewalk, and it led to a bunch of apartment buildings mixed with some houses and townhomes, all their own drab browns and grays, with what passed-for-yards fenced in by chain links. Scanning for pokemon, I saw a purple cat with pink eyelids, what I recognized as a purrloin resting on a sill off one of the buildings. At the very least, it was a cute purple, and content to lay in the sun, though its face adjusted slightly as I moved, as if it was tracking me.

Despite the lack of human activity, like cars, people seemed to be living in the buildings, at least. Though looking at the Purrloin, eyeing me as I pass by. Memories of my cat in my human life came to mind. Shuddering, I pressed on. If it decided to follow… I readied up a couple of leaves in preparation for a warning shot, just in case.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I was taller than the purrloin, and probably more than twice its mass, sure, but here in the Pokemon world, mass probably wasn’t everything. And even then, when I was human, I’d seen my cat go after raccoons that were more than twice its mass, just because it was fun. Rest in peace, Racky the dead raccoon.

Do you know how many razor leaves a bug-type like me can hold on their person at once? Not a lot. I can only hold six or so, embedded between the leaves on my abdomen. Also, fun fact about bug-types: the thorax is that thin chest area. For me, my thorax is where my arms connect to, and my abdomen extends out back behind my legs.

As I walked down the lane, past the dilapidated apartment buildings, I noticed—not a single car. Only bikes. And we had to be at least a few miles away from the city center. Humans. Small humans, at least. Shorter than me, seemed to be playing on a little patch of grass, with a rockruff, who hadn’t seen or smelled me yet.

Standing at my full natural height, like I would while walking, my eye level was about a foot higher than a fire hydrant. What? It’s not as if I had a meterstick anywhere. Or knowledge of the pokemon universe’s number systems! I was pretty clearly going to have to re-learn how to read, and it wasn’t as if I had a meterstick anywhere. Though I’m pretty sure I’m more than a meter tall, from antennae to the bottom of my feet.

Please don’t follow me please don’t follow me, I said to myself as I crossed to the other side of the street and passed the kids, giving them and their rockruff a wide berth. The kids noticed me, and I tried to ignore them as the sounds of their talking stopped. I wasn’t worried until I heard the rockruff growling.

It yipped at me, jumping into the air, and… just as it was about to clear the yard, was yanked back. Tied to a post in the ground. I didn’t need another invitation, and booked it down the street, hopefully before the kids could call out to any parents or older kids. They were shorter than me by quite a bit though, so they had to have been pretty young. Something about the faces on humans just wasn’t registering.

I was more than double the stupid pup’s height, but I’d rather not have figured out that being double their height didn’t also mean double in mass. One kid grabbed the dog’s leash and said something in their higher-pitched tones as I walked off, their door slamming behind me. Hoping that I hadn’t attracted too much attention, I continued my pace forward, looking for a park with some healthy trees where I could have a chance of some potable drinking water.

What do you think an outer city row of dilapidated houses and apartments mixed together looks like? These weren’t high rises, by any means, but they all had the same style. Brick, brown, and drab. Through my compound eyes, shades of green poked behind the grey and brown. The city desperately needed some greenery. What passed for lawns over here were closer to little strips of green.

A very light, greasy or fatty smell entered my consciousness as I approached the trees from the sidewalk. Exactly what I was looking for. A crappy neighborhood park, complete with a metal slide and one of those things you can run around and jump on and get spun in circles. A couple of trees on the edge away from the playground and a water fountain by the sidewalk. I was set!

I heard a whimper behind one of the trees, a lanky kid, just below eye level with me, but with brown hair, surrounded by a couple of bulkier kids. Lanky clutched a bag close to their chest, what could only have been their lunch. Little shits were trying to steal the kid’s meal, and I felt the anger come in. "Hey!" I yelled. Well, actually only a "Sqleee!" came out. But it did the job. It got the kids’ attention.

Whipping out my non-gimped blade-arm, and slid a razor’d leaf onto it. As I approached, I noted the bullies' smells and observed. They were pretty tall, actually. Several heads taller than me. And significantly beefier. Well, most humans are beefier than you if you're able to make a pretty good impression of a dancing stick bug, only bipedal. Pokemon are supposed to be stronger than humans on average, right? The two’s heads turned to each other and they seemed to have decided to back off of lanky. One had brown hair and the other was blonde. Bully Brown-hair said something to Bully Blonde-hair, and apparently they, uh, they decided I wasn’t that scary?

Lanky took that opportunity to run, which was good. Facing two humans, I didn’t really want to hurt them. Not taking their eyes off me, B. Blonde picked up a rock. Hm. And took a step closer to me. Not knowing what to do, "eeeE!" I chirped at them, flinging a razor leaf at B. Brown’s shoulder, then stepped back and to the side, giving them room to run.

Not letting them get close, just playing the threatening-game. They were probably each more than double my mass. Nope. Fffffuck that. I heard one say something, a bit of a yelp, really. But after their stagger from the blade hitting Bully Brown in the upper right, and stepping more to the side to give them a clearer way back to the road, the kids took the opportunity to run off, Bully Brown-hair clutching his right shoulder. No blood was visible, but if I actually got him, he’d be needing a visit to the doctor, the artificially-strong leaves weren’t a joke.

This is my park now, bitches, I thought as I cooed to myself as the two bullies ran off. Taking better stock of my surroundings, I noted a small group of three or four trees, a playground covered in some kind of wood chips, and a decent grass area that probably hosted soccer matches. There was a little concrete outcropping and then I found what I was looking for: a water fountain.

Water. I was finally able to drink some. Or, I would have, if I could have figured out how the mechanism worked. There weren’t any buttons that I could see, no levers or knobs. With a slight movement and sound just to my side, I jumped away and flung out my one good blade-arm in posturing. It was Lanky… And he was holding a berry out. He was looking at my right arm, missing the leaf-blade.

He had a similar synthetic smell to the guy I’d passed the other day. Lanky was taller than me, by about a couple of inches, and had a kind of light brown hair. Everyone in the area had forgettable faces though. Committing faces to memory just seemed a lot harder than their smell and body shape.

Gosh, the berry smelled good. I dropped the threatening posture as he extended his arm out further to me and I approached, reaching out my arm with the leaf-blade, and using it to spear the berry a bit before I popped it in my mouth, mashing it and eating it as the sweet fruit sugar-juice spread.

Then, he approached the fountain and showed me where the button was to get the water out. It was nestled under the sides of the fountain, inlaid to the thing just a bit. What cruel design! He then held it there and my brain froze. Was the kid expecting me to drink with him holding it?

I got closer and shooed his hand away and tried to press the button… But I couldn’t! Well, I could press the button, and I could get my mouth to where the water was coming out, but I couldn’t both press the button and drink at the same time! Arceus above, this design was horrible! Defeated, I let him hold the button down for me. This was the only time I’d let a human do it for me though, I decided. I’d get a cup or something and drink from that if I had to.

I wasn’t a pet, and I wasn’t going to let myself get treated like one. At any rate, being refreshed from both the berry and the drink, the numbness in my right arm rapidly fading under the healing rays of the early afternoon sun, I looked at Lanky. He vocalized, their words incomprehensible to me, then motioned towards the tree, holding another berry.

I did need to graft a new leaf for my right arm-blade. Probably wouldn’t hurt to stick around for a bit longer before diving deeper into the town.