Joey idly stretched his arms to the left and to the right as he exited Saffron onto Route 7. He hadn't been here for a while, having spent a lot of time recently on Route 8.

It also helped that from there he could quickly reach Constance, where he often went to visit the pair of Golduck and Misdreavus. It was a safe walk that he was partially taking because he was starting to suspect that the ghost type might be a good new addition to the team. While ghosts were not in fact the remnants of dead people. They were the expression of the high-intensity emotion that had found a place there. In the case of Misdreavus, he assumed that she was the expression of the dogged determination and the sad ending of Ellie's mother. Determination was good in his book.

The other reason why he went there, was because while he couldn't yet catch the ghost type, there were a lot of other Pokemon in Constance and the route that he took there through the forest also made it possible to meet Pokemon that could fit in his team. It hadn't happened yet, but it would one day for sure. Now, however, it was too late, tomorrow was the gym battle.

There wasn't much point in training anymore, just as there wasn't much point in battling anymore. His Pokemon needed the rest before Surge. That's why he was here, on Route 7. He'd taken a mission, and not just any mission, but a mission for the Saffron gym. Even if they perhaps didn't know that he was the one who took it. After all, if they did they might not have been too happy with that.

His job was simple. He was to capture a Mankey or two. He was being paid depending on how many he caught and had gotten a specific extension at the league administration building to be able to capture more Pokemon than would usually be allowed for today.

He'd bought 10 Pokeballs, which would be reimbursed if they contained the Mankey, along with the price for the actual Pokemon. A satisfying 4,000 Pokedollars per Pokemon. Mankey weren't the easiest Pokemon to go after. They liked to gang up on trainers and were quite violent by nature, which was why he'd been able to snatch the job.

Joey released Rattata on the ground next to him and started making his way towards where he knew there was a large assortment of the Pokemon he was looking for.

"It's good that we woke up so early today, huh?" the youngster said idly as the rat walked with him and around him as if he were a bodyguard protecting his charge. He looked suspiciously at every swaying of the tall grass surrounding them.

The question startled his starter out of his concentration, and he flinched back from where he was sniffing at a particularly dense piece of grass from which a Pidgey escaped into the air with a click of its beak.

Rattata chittered.

"Yeah, I agree. They really made a mistake putting no limit on the amount of Mankey that they wanted. If I fill all of the ten Pokeballs I brought, I could be running away with 40,000 Pokedollars."

"Rattata," his starter said dubiously, causing Joey to roll his eyes.

"Of course, we're going to immediately put it to use at the betting house. It's not really gambling if you know who's going to win. Even without any knowledge of the matter, it's obvious that someone with six flying types is going to beat someone with four fighting types."

"Rattata."

"Yeah I know you managed to beat the fighting types despite being a normal type, okay, but you're special."

A proud chitter.

Joey had been working his ass off to get as much money as possible for the bet. He'd managed over the last few weeks and months to gain approximately 60,000 Pokedollars from his battling and his jobs.

At odds of one to seven, this meant that with today's hopeful addition of another 40,000. he would get away with almost a million. 700,000.

Now, if he got really lucky and won against Surge in time to run to the betting house in Vermillion and put in the winnings of the gym battle, it would make even more. Gym battles generally paid quite a lot.

The pair broke through some dense underbrush and arrived at the hillside area where they'd first found the Mankey all those months ago when they'd still been preparing for Kong.

Joey sighed. Again there hadn't been even a single candidate for his team on the whole way here. It just seemed like whoever his third team member was, they were avoiding him like the plague. He'd seen Bellsprout, Pidgey, a Vulpix who glared at him as if he'd shat in its morning cereal. All of these were Pokemon that he was quite frankly very willing to put into his team. But none of them had approached him, had had any spark in their eyes. They just looked at him dumbly and watched him pass, except for the Vulpix of course.

It seemed that for lack of a better option, he was simply cursed to face Surge with only two Pokemon. This was why he was starting to doubt the possibility of victory despite how good Metapod was at using her Toxic Thread and Rattata was at using Dig.

After a bit more walking they finally arrived at a spot where they could see the Mankey monkeying around. Joey stood on a large stone, looking at what was actually the same place where they'd found the Mankey last time. The tall grass covered them as they snuck up. It also helped that the Pokemon were busy beating each other up, screeching, and punching at stones and kicking at rocks.

The Pokemon truly were the scourge of any kind of peace to be found in nature. Was it a coincidence that none of the people who trained Mankey that he met up until now had been interesting or fun to hang out with either? Perhaps not. One needed to either have a horrible attitude, or the patience of a saint to deal with training a Mankey.

"Rattata?" his starter chittered questioningly.

"No. I don't think that the same trick as last time will work quite that well. I mean they have to learn somehow right? No, we'll go about it a bit more complexly." Joey hopped off the stone he'd been scouting from and started going towards the clearing that he'd seen.

He pointed at an empty spot in the middle and shooed away the native Pokemon present there. An Oddish gave him an ugly look as it waddled off, but it wasn't his job to please everyone.

"All right," Joey started. "I need you to soften up this ground with Dig, make a hole. I will lure the monkey in."

Ratata, having lost none of the hyperactivity that had made Joey pick him in the first place back then, crossed his arms doubtfully.

"I know you'll be tired afterwards, but you know I can fight quite well too and Metapod is also here this time."

Rattata nodded and got to work.

It was truly a joy to watch Rattata work the ground. Even if the efficiency was lower than that they'd seen in the videos of ground-type Pokemon, the level of mastery was starting to become impressive. Rattata truly was a Pokemon that exhibited the power of knowing a few moves well.

Well, as long as the enemy didn't have a Magnemite. Or a Steelix. Or, well, a lot of things.

Whatever.

The rat buzzed around the clearing, under the ground, over the ground, freeing up loose stones, spitting them out, turning them around. After five minutes of work, where before there had been a mostly undisturbed piece of ground there was now a large enough hole to contain at least a dozen Mankey.

Joey nodded and praised his starter, calling out Metapod and taking out a large bag of Oran berries.

"All right, as we discussed. Cover up this hole with Toxic Thread," he said to Metapod and turned to Rattata. "You can meanwhile gather up enough leaves to cover the Toxic Thread up so that the Mankey won't see that there's a hole there."

The two Pokemon nodded obligingly and got to work. Purple sticky thread escaped Metapod's mouth, slowly but surely covering up the entirety of the hole and creating one large chaotic spider web. Meanwhile, Rattata ran to and fro in different directions on his hind legs bringing leaves and handing them to Joey who laid them gently onto the Toxic Thread. The whole process lasted approximately half an hour, but what they were left with in the end was a gigantic bed of grass and leaves, of which one could not see that it was actually suspended in mid-air.

While they had worked, Joey had taken out a syringe from his backpack, a plastic one, not a real one, meant for injecting doughnuts with jam. He slowly attached the syringe to Metapod's mouth and made the girl give him a big dose of poison phlegm into it. From there he went to the oran berries and injected each and every one of them with a small dosage of poison.

There was no way that Joey could defeat a dozen Mankey in a fair battle. But if they were all poisoned beforehand, and then also got tangled up in a bunch of Toxic Thread, then maybe he had a chance.

He grinned at how both his Pokemon were looking at him as if he was committing a crime against the berries.

"Okay. The deal is simple. I'm going to go over and throw the berries at the Mankey, in the hopes that they'll eat them. Then I'll lead them to the clearing," he turned to his starter. "Your job will be to hit those in mid-air that jump after me over the trap."

"Metapod?" his bug type prompted. She looked exhausted. Creating so much poison had obviously taken a lot out of her.

"You already did a lot," Joey said. "But when they're here, just shoot them if you can."

Metapod puffed up her cheeks and opened her mouth. It was obvious that she was channelling String Shot, but the only thing that came out was the equivalent of a little worm. She would need food and rest to get her resources back to a level where she could make more again.

"Well, that's it for your contribution then", Joey said. "How about you start hardening?" he suggested instead. "Might use you as a shield."

The Metapod nodded seriously and started glistening a putrid white.

"All right, let's do this.

-/-POV: George the Mankey

It had been many moons since George had been led away from his group and beaten up by those cowardly bastard duo of a Rattata and the stupid boy in a yellow and blue. The Mankey was finally starting to let go of his distrust for berries, seeing as the last few hadn't led it into a trap.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Immediately after the event, after which his group had started laughing at him for losing a battle to a Rattata, just the sight of a berry, any berry would scare him. He survived entirely on nuts those weeks, until slowly the scars of the past had started to fade and he had been able to eat berries. Just not the Oran ones. Now, he had recently managed to surmount even that fear and had feasted on a bushel of Oran berries yesterday.

He felt light on his feet as he walked around the rocky outcropping that his squad called their home. His head/torso were high in the air and he finally felt like a Mankey again, instead of just a broken mess.

As he went about doing whatever Mankey did, screeching angrily, punching and kicking at rocks and trees, he suddenly experienced a sort of premonition. As if a storm was coming. He looked at the sky. The leaves had not yet started turning brown. It was not the time for storms. However, it was his looking up that made him see what unbeknownst to him would be the doom of his squad. A rain of Oran berries. Blue upon blue upon blue upon blue covered the sky and started falling towards the group of Mankeys who were one by one stopping their activities to look up.

Despite having recently overcome his fear, George instinctively threw himself on the ground whimpering, tears coming to his eyes. The berries landed in splats, half of them turning into juice upon impact.

They didn't seem to be attached to anything like they had been last time to trick him. George nevertheless refused to touch them, while his companions started to feast upon the unexpected bounty. He stood up to go curiously sniff at one. It smelled just a tad off. Like one of those leaf-head Pokemon from the forest. His tummy rumbled, and it wasn't often that one got such free gifts in the wild. He couldn't help being suspicious. But… if he hesitated there would be none left.

Just as he was about to eat a berry, it was snatched from his hands by Lunk. His stupider and less handsome cousin. The Mankey ate the whole berry in one big bite and danced a little jig rubbing his stomach to make fun of George.

George sighed defeatedly, not even feeling motivated enough to start a fight. It just wasn't his day. Or his month for that matter. Year, really…

Just as the Mankey finished eating the berries and started screeching at the sky for more of them, another suspicious thing happened. George furrowed his brows at the amount of coincidences occurring today.

A boy was standing at the edge of their territory, in front of the tall grass, looking at them with a smirk.

The blood froze in George's veins as he recognized the human. The distressing ghostly energies wafting off of him like a bad smell lofted off a piece of shit. The hat, the t-shirt, the shorts, the shoes, the same ungodly smile.

The Mankey stilled as they saw and smelled the brazen intruder.

George was the only one who remembered. To all the others it had simply been another day of monkeying around and beating each other up. He was the only one who'd truly suffered.

Just as he shouted for his mates to stop, they all sprung up like a great tidal wave of anger and brown limbs and screeching.

The boy turned around and ran. The group ran after him. Honour demanded that George do the same. His newly-born survival instincts told him the opposite. A moment of hesitation. A glance backwards from one of the group. Social pressure. George ran. He would learn to regret that decision.

-/- POV: Joey

There was something inherently ridiculous about reincarnation, Joey thought as he ran away from a group of Mankey. Not only the process itself, something that had been an absolute mystery for him ever since he'd woken up in this world, but it also led one into situations like this.

Had anyone told Joey in his past life that he would become a Pokemon trainer, with a team that consisted of a Rattata and a Metapod, running away from a group of Mankey to catch them for the Saffron gym… He would have called the police on the clearly deranged person bothering him. However, oh, how the tables had turned. Now he was indeed in this very hypothetical situation. Running away as fast as he could with a herd of screeching pig monkeys running after him, limbs glowing with unleashed fighting TE and voices so loud they disturbed the entirety of the local ecosystem.

Pidgeys flew, Sandshrew burrowed and all others hid themselves behind the tall grass hoping to not get noticed by the lynch mob running after the youngster.

Joey thanked again whatever deity had given him access to ghost TE, as he channelled a bit of it to increase his physical attributes. He trained, sure. Trainers had to walk a lot too. But, had he not in addition to being reborn at all, not also been reborn special, he never would have been able to run away from a group of Pokemon. They were just stronger than humans, and more physical, especially fighting types.

He likely had less stamina regardless of any energy mastery, so he breathed a sigh of relief as he arrived at the clearing where he had set the trap.

Metapod and Rattata were there waiting for him on the other side of the hole and all he needed to do now was jump. All those sessions back in high school where he had to do the running long jump finally came in handy as he had the perfect form for this activity. Swinging his arms, he laid his right foot right at the edge of where his weight would have caused everything to tumble and jumped high into the air.

A large burst of ghost TE took away from his weight and turned what would have been a jump of perhaps two metres, into one of six. He landed with a roll, some dust getting into his lungs making him cough. He turned around quickly and saw the Mankey come into the clearing and just like him prepare for a jump.

They weren't stupid, Pokemon. They were probably already feeling the effects of the poison which had been hidden inside of the Oran berries and if they saw what they considered an enemy go to such great lengths to avoid a particular stretch of land, then it didn't hurt them at all to just do the same right?

Well, Joey thought as the group of Mankey all sharing their movements jumped into the air and started flying towards them, just because they were smart didn't mean he wasn't smarter. They struck crane and horse poses in the air, straight out of a martial arts flick. It might have been cool had they not been doomed to fail.

"Rattata, Swift."

His starter immediately unleashed the weak attack, and while the Mankey had done well to jump to avoid the trap, they couldn't really dodge midair, could they?

The wide burst of yellow stars smashed into them in mid-air. The Swift wasn't overly powerful, but the stars were numerous and they did hold some kinetic force. Just enough to halt the momentum of the Mankey in mid-air and to make them fall right onto the trap and into the hole.

The screeching quickly turned into crying. Perhaps the fall hadn't hurt, but the additional poison from the poison threads certainly had. Joey turned intangible and walked up to the ledge of his trap, looking down. The monkeys were lying in a heap, tangled together more than anything that could be tangled together. A bunch of groaning.

One cry came not from the hole, but from the ground level. Joey looked up to see a Mankey standing right at the edge of the trap staring at him fearfully.

"Ma, ma, ma," it said lightly with a defeated tone of voice while glaring at him with what he was seeing in a monkey's eyes for the first time. Before this, he had just seen anger. This was true hate.

A few tears escaped the Mankey's eyes and disappeared into its fur, snot dribbled down its pig-like snout. It gave him one last look before turning around and running away.

Joey shrugged and turned to Rattata. "Give them a few more Swifts, until they're all knocked out," he said.

Bright yellow stars flew through the air and impacted with light thuds the poor fighting types until they were all gone, to la la land.

Joey started throwing Pokeballs with a smirk. He didn't feel bad about capturing the Mankey. They were usually the shitheads of any ecology they inhabited. And, as fighting types they'd appreciate the opportunity to get stronger at the gym. No matter what he thought of Kong, the man and his troop of idiots were likely the most effective in training Mankey in the region. The symbiosis of trainer and Pokemon existed for a reason.

-/-

The clerk responsible for handing out the rewards for jobs taken from the mission board looked down at the 10 Pokeballs that Joey had just handed him dubiously. All 10 of them were rolling around on the man's desk causing him to have to stretch out his arms to prevent them from falling down.

"They're all in critical condition. I had to poison them to catch so many," Joey explained with his hands in his pockets.

"And they're all Mankey?" the clerk asked.

"Yep." Joey popped the p.

The clerk quickly cycled the Mankey through a machine, his eyes glued to the screen it was connected to. Probably something that allowed him to ascertain what kind of Pokemon were inside a Pokeball. If they didn't do that then they would have likely gotten scammed at least once with someone bringing them a bunch of Rattata, or Pidgey, or something.

The clerk raised an eyebrow as the results came back positive.

"How the hell did you manage to capture a whole rampage of these?" he asked.

Joey shrugged. "I dug a hole and let them fall into it," he proposed, receiving a snort from the man.

"All right. Well, I'm pretty sure the gym doesn't need ten of these."

"Then they shouldn't have left the number of Mankey I could bring open," Joey replied. "They should be happy I didn't bring a thousand, with the way their request was phrased I would have been completely in the right to do so," he had thought about it for a moment, but he quite frankly couldn't even afford that many Pokeballs in the first place.

"They're not going to be happy about this," the clerk sighed.

"I already got my badge from there. I don't care. Just give me the money," Joey said.

The man looked at him with his dull brown eyes. "You do you, I guess," he said and pressed a few more buttons on his terminal. Joey took out his Pokenav to see that he had received a significant deposit in his account.

'Number go up,' he thought with a smirk.

"Nice doing business with you," he said and turned to leave.

"I'll blur out who actually completed the mission, they don't have to know that. And warn them to phrase their requests better," the man shouted after him as Joey exited the Pokecentre.

The youngster raised an arm in a goodbye wave as the automatic doors closed behind him.

He had a bunch of money again. He patted himself on the back for that.

It turned out that it was surprisingly easy to make money as a Pokemon trainer. Even if one eventually reached the level where one generally lost more than one won with battle bets unless one picked one's opponents very carefully, or used one's strongest Pokemon always. A trainer could sustain himself just by doing jobs probably.

Of course, the issue was that it was, whilst not illegal yet, quite frowned upon to take a lower-ranking person's job away. For example, the conference winner doing the job that Joey did. Younger trainers needed to eat too.

It almost seemed like the system incentivized getting a strong team of Pokemon while not getting any more badges. This way one could get stronger without the strength being reflected in one's conference rankings or badge numbers, which meant that one would get good betting rates in fighting lower-level and higher-level trainers while also being able to do the jobs that were quite easy to do.

Joey had seen some of the jobs that higher-level trainers were given, and they didn't really look very fun. One which had eight badges as a requirement had been up on the board for almost a week now. It consisted of going to an abandoned town haunted by ghosts and catching all of them to restore the ecosystem.

Fighting one ghost was already a bit of a challenge, fighting a whole town of them was probably a death sentence.

He considered why people artificially keeping their level low wasn't that much of a problem as he made his way to the betting house. The conclusion he came to was simply that the strategy wouldn't reflect the culture which was very low crime and very honest.

Criminals and crooks were out there somewhere, but there weren't enough of them for it to really become noticeable.

Joey stopped in front of a simple wooden door that belonged to a one-story house with the words "You can bet on it," on the front.

Had it not been confirmed to him by the League that this was an actual verified place to get one's gambling addiction a really good kick, he would have been mistrustful at placing his money here. But, they were legit. Also, they were the only ones in town. He'd looked.

"Joey, back again?" an older man with a gap-toothed smile asked the boy as he entered.

The man was sitting behind a glass window attached to a large wooden desk. It was like one of those old-timey Wild West bank counters. A Hypno stood next to the man polishing its pendant in its long white mane and looking at Joey suspiciously. Security, apparently.

Had Team Rocket been active at the time, of which he did not have much proof. He would have perhaps been more suspicious of the place, or even afraid that his money would be stolen from it by the criminal organisation.

However, League accreditation, as well as knowing several quite happy, or unhappy customers from the place made Joey trust it with at least his money, if not his life.

"Old man Harris, if it ain't you again. When will we get a pretty lady clerk to look at?"

"Likely when the cultural conception of betting on battles beats that of common gambling. Until then I doubt any pretty young lasses going to be willing to work in this hole." The old man coughed, before looking Joy up and down. "Are you here to drop your money on that dragon boy again? Don't know what you see in him. Bruno's going to twist his head off like a cork."

Joey shrugged as he walked up to the counter.

"Old man, you know just like me that money is the root of all evil. Whenever I get some more I try to let it go before it burns a hole into my pocket and more importantly, my soul," he said. "Anyway, 40k on Lance."

Harrison's eyes bugged out. Not because 40k was that much, but because it was a lot for a youngster. "Are you crazy?" he sputtered.

"No, just rich."

The old man sighed. "Transfer the funds, and I'll make you the betting slip. If Lance actually wins you're going to be sitting on a million at this point," he said as he quickly wrote on a piece of paper and also typed something into the computer terminal sitting at his desk.

Joey transferred the money, watching with some unease as the large number left his account, leaving him once again with a measly puddle of liquidity. No matter how many times he did it, spending so much money that he'd worked so hard for… It just hurt.

If Lance bungled the match for some reason. If Joey had butterflied away his victory, or if he'd maybe entered an alternative timeline in which Lance won on the second attempt, then he was screwed. But, it was unlikely that Lance would lose here and win a second time. No this was his run. This was his legend. From nobody to champion in less than three years probably. After all, Joey was barely five years older than Ash Ketchum and his lot, and Lance had been the champion for a while before Ash started his journey.

A betting slip was pushed into his hands. 40k on Lance, one to seven.

He already had a collection of these with differing numbers but with the same odds in each and every one of them.

"The match is tomorrow in the evening, for all that we know he'll lose they still gave the boy the prime slot," Harrison commented.

"I think that's mostly because people think that Bruno is going to challenge Blaine for his spot and that this is the perfect opportunity for him to do so. Also no matter the challenge, it's still an Elite Four battle. It's always something to see," Joey said, idling around.

"Well, I won't keep you for much longer then, go out and do whatever young people do these days. Get high off Oddish dust or whatever." Harrison snorted and waved him off.

"You know you're going to lose a bunch of money if my bet ends up being true. Don't be so laissez-faire about it," Joey said smartly as he left.

"Ain't my business, just work here," the old man grumbled. He was one of those old retirees who still wanted something to do after retiring from his actual job at Silph. The betting house was actually owned by the betting association of Kanto, the biggest provider of gambling opportunities for Pokemon battles and other things in the region. They should be able to pay out a few million.

-/-

Joey didn't do that much else that day. He'd only gone to the mission board in the morning out of habit. He'd actually been planning on a day off, after all, tomorrow was the gym battle. But, he hadn't been able to resist the Mankey job and the money it offered. It hadn't been too exhausting in the end and had been a fun challenge for him and his Pokemon.

Now it was time to rest though.

He went to the orphanage where he released his two Pokemon into the backyard for the other children to play with, before going into town and getting himself an ice cream. He licked at the vanilla supreme as he walked around and window-shopped on the main street. He couldn't afford any of the things at the moment, but he would soon.

Maybe it was time for an upgrade to his style. One of the reasons why he'd stuck with the blue shorts, the yellow t-shirt and the blue cap for so long was because high-quality clothing was expensive. Especially in the world where it had to be fireproof, waterproof, iceproof and whatever-else-proof against all of those magical monsters running around.

That's why most people were usually seen sporting one particular outfit. They'd heavily invested in that style and couldn't justify buying alternatives of the same quality. Joey's strategy was shared by most youngsters and young trainers, they simply bought one outfit out of shit material several times and replaced the single items it consisted of it as they broke.

But, as a future Champion, it was getting around the time to start looking good for the cameras. The latest he would have time to think of something would be for the youngster tournament coming after his next gym badge.

It would be televised in a much better position than his gym battles had been. Those just ran on their own channel the whole day.

Anyway, the walk was successful in taking his mind off things and he even went into a theatre to watch a play rather spontaneously. It was rare that he spent time away from his Pokemon, and he had to say that occasionally it was enjoyable. After all, no matter how much you loved someone, you didn't want to spend 24/7 with them. The quantity of time together had to be reduced for the quality to rise.

It was evening when he left the theatre to go home.

It was an important day tomorrow. His own match, Lance's match. He didn't know which one he needed to go his way more, really. Money, or personal success? He wished he could have both of course. But, in the end, personal success was more important than money. Personal success usually led to money after all.

"Money, money, money," he sang to himself as he walked back home and went straight to bed.