Chapter Eleven - Early Mornings

Jazz woke up with a start, then rolled onto her side. She was in one of the trainer rooms in the pokemon centre. It wasn't... much. The room was small, with a single bed and a wall across from it that she could probably reach by stretching her leg out of the bed. There was a second bed above hers, and she could hear very faint breathing from above.

A thin slit of a window let in some pale-blue light, letting it splash across the tiny desk squeezed into the corner of the room.

These rooms really weren't much, but there were about three dozen of them in the centre and they were free to use. There was a pair of communal washrooms with showers as well, and a small cafeteria on the main floor.

Everything a trainer needed to get by. Not in luxury, but free was free.

She pulled out her poketch phone from where she had wedged it between the mattress and the bedframe. The time was five fifty. She had another half-hour or so to sleep.

Not that she could.

Every time she closed her eyes, her mind raced through a ton of possibilities. Falkner's gym beckoned, just a few blocks away. She had to be ready for it this time. There was no more room for failure.

She had taken big steps towards ensuring that she'd win this time. Gastly was going to be her ace in this upcoming fight... if she could train him a little.

She opened the pokedex app on her phone. It wasn't an actual pokedex, able to identify pokemon, but the app had lots of publicly available data. Movesets, known locations, a few care guides written by users. It wasn't the treasure that was a professor-issued pokedex, but it was pretty darned good anyway.

Gastly

The Gas Pokemon

Born from gases pouring from gravesites, anyone would faint if engulfed by its gaseous body, which contains poison. Despite lacking substance, it can envelop an opponent of any size and cause suffocation. With its gas-like body, it can sneak into any place it desires. However, it can be blown away by wind.

She scrolled down to the Guides and Encounters section and started reading. Sometimes it wasn't fair to judge a pokemon by its species, but sometimes there were similarities in behaviour that were worth taking note of.

In this case, it looked like there were a lot of warnings. One was pinned at the very top of the page.

Agatha (Verified Trainer) (Verified Elite Four)

I am having one of my gym trainers post this warning on all of these electronic guides for Ghost-type pokemon.

While every pokemon deserves love and friendship, Ghost-types take a particular amount of care to raise. They slip between the cracks of this reality and the world of the dead. They do not understand or sympathise with a human's will to live. Their morality is not black and white, but blue and orange.

Do not underestimate the effort it will take to teach and train a Ghost-type, or the danger to yourself and others were your pokemon to grow too powerful.

Jazz gulped. Agatha was probably the second-highest ranked member of the Elite Four, and of the Indigo League, that Jazz looked up to. She used plenty of Poison-type moves and pokemon in her team, even her personal team.

Was it telling that the Ghost-type expert didn't have a team of six Ghost-types?

Well, she wasn't planning on having more than one, and so far Gastly had seemed kind and respectable enough.

At the moment, she had surrendered him to the Nurse Joy at the entrance. She'd pick him up later. Ghost-types technically couldn't die, but that didn't mean that they couldn't be hurt or injured.

She pulled out of the site after mindlessly scrolling through the Encounters tab. It was mostly young trainers complaining about wild gastly showing up and pulling pranks, sometimes scaring them witless.

Jazz felt her cheeks warming up, so she found another app to scroll through, this one a media feed about trainers in the Johto region. She sighed. Some first years already had their fourth badge, and three returning trainers, on their second run through the circuit, had already beaten all eight gyms and secured their place in the Silver Conference.

She hoped to make it, but... well, she'd give it her all. Step one was beating Falkner at long last.

"Are you up?"

Jazz gasped and looked up from her bed to find Broccoli and Buneary sticking their heads out from the top bunk. She should have noticed them earlier. Sure, they only had their eyes and foreheads showing, but also their ears, which stuck way out.

She... had noticed, after a late shower the night before, that Broccoli's ears weren't a hat, or an accessory, but really were stuck to her head. Jazz hadn't decided on what to do about that just yet.

"Morning," she said before glancing at her phone again. Half an hour had slipped by while she was looking at stuff online... how? It felt like she'd only looked for a minute. "Ah, are you awake? My alarm won't go off for another ten minutes."

"We're up," Broccoli said.

Buneary yawned big, then nodded with a sleepy, "Bun."

"Well, there's breakfast in the cafeteria. It's usually kind of whatever, but the miltank milk's pretty good. Pokemon centres usually have deals with local ranches."

"That sounds nice!" Broccoli said before she easily jumped down from the top bunk. "What are we doing today?"

"Practice!" Jazz said with determination. "Actually, I was thinking of doing introductions with gastly this morning, then maybe we can go see a gym battle in the afternoon?"

"You can see those?" Broccoli asked. "I thought they were like a test?"

"I mean, they are but they're also recorded. You can actually watch most gym battles off the League website, if you want. Some people follow certain trainers as they go through the league. Battling is like... the biggest sport. Contests are second for viewership, and it's not even close."

"Huh, so all the fights are on the site?" Broccoli asked. "That must be nerve-wracking if you don't like being on camera."

"Not all," Jazz said. "They delete last-years fight every Spring. Uh, but some fansites keep copies of big intense fights! Anyway, I was thinking we could watch one live? There's a stadium, and it's free for trainers."

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"Do they serve stadium food?" Broccoli asked.

"Uh, depends on the gym, I guess." Jazz thought back. She wasn't sure if Falkner's gym did food like that. "Are you afraid of heights?" she asked.

"You know, my job before coming here was airship captain," Broccoli said. "So if I was afraid of heights, then that would probably be a bit tricky."

Jazz couldn't tell if the girl was serious or not, so she decided to just not think about it too hard. She did that pretty often when it came to Broccoli. She shook her head, then looked in her backpack for a change of clothes. "I'm gonna jump in the shower real quick. See you in the cafeteria? Oh, and your trainer stuff should be ready."

"See you there," Broccoli agreed as she did a final stretch on the bed. "I'm gonna clean myself off on my own."

"Uh, sure," Jazz said.

Weirdo.

But... she was nice. Not that most trainers weren't, but there was a lot of competitiveness in the early parts of the league. When you only had one or two pokemon, and no gym badges, there was a sense that everyone you met was a threat.

She suspected that it got both better and worse as a trainer grew stronger and got more badges.

Jazz took a quick shower, which helped her wake up, changed, then dumped her clothes in one of the washer/dryers in the shared living space. She made a mental note to pick it all up later, though there was an unspoken rule between trainers sharing a Pokemon Centre. If the machine was done and you needed it, just dump the other person's crap in one of the baskets and use the machine yourself.

Theft was... not much of an issue, at least not that she'd noticed.

Coming downstairs, she found Broccoli all suited up and sitting across from Buneary at a table. The buneary was eating a breakfast salad and Broccoli was doing the same, with a large cup of milk and some toast.

"Okay," Jazz said after picking up some breakfast for herself. "First thing, your trainer stuff, then gastly and bellsprout need a bit of training."

"Okay!" Broccoli agreed. "Uh... what's the trainer stuff?"

"When the league circuit starts, they have these little boxes of supplies that they give trainers. But since you're starting late... well, they probably had to pull one out of storage. It's a cheap smartphone, a pokegear watch, maybe a few free pokeballs? Oh, and each trainer starts with a thousand pokedollars."

Broccoli stopped mid-munch. "Is... that a lot?"

"I mean, it's not nothing," Jazz said. "But it's not a ton either."

"How much is a loaf of bread?"

Jazz frowned. She had no idea. "Uh, I guess, like, fifty pokedollars? Less than a hundred?"

Broccoli sighed, relaxing a lot. "Okay, so a thousand really isn't much."

"It's enough to get by for a week," Jazz said. "When you beat a trainer in a battle, it's customary to get a small prize. It can be as little as a hundred and it goes up from there. Gym Leaders also pay you for beating them."

"Weird," Broccoli said. "But okay! I see that people here take this battling and training stuff a lot more seriously than I thought."

"I guess," Jazz said. To her this was all just business as usual, but she supposed that it would be a bit weird to an outsider.

She finished breakfast before Broccoli, who was a slow eater and who was distracted by Buneary. His head kept slumping into his bowl, though he did keep chewing even as he slept. The little pokemon woke up fully as they headed outside and gathered at the back of the gym.

Jazz let out Bellsprout first. "Hey!" she said.

"Bell!" Bellsprout said with a happy wiggle. He fanned out his two leaves, catching the sun. "Sprout!"

"Uh-huh," Jazz agreed, even if she didn't quite understand. "So, I caught a gastly last night, just as planned. Want to meet your new teammate?"

With Bellsprout's immediate encouragement, she unclipped Gastly's ball from her waist and summoned the pokemon ahead of her.

"Gassstly," the gastly said as it... he—she was pretty sure it was a he, insofar as ghosts even had genders—spread himself out in the little park-like courtyard at the back of the pokemon centre. It was a fenced in little area with a few trees, a sandpit, and a small pond for Water-types.

"Hey there, gastly," Jazz said. She found herself grinning. "How are you doing?"

The Ghost-type stared at her for a moment, then grinned. He rushed forwards, cackling like mad, mouth slobbering with poisonous ooze and eyes wild.

Jazz felt a tang of adrenaline in her mouth and she went stiff, but she didn't run or scream or--

"You didn't wet yourself this time!" Broccoli said.

"I didn't wet myself!" Jazz snapped at the girl.

Gastly chuckled darkly and slipped back a little, reforming into a more normal-sized ball of purplish gas. In the full light of the early morning he was way, way less scary than he had been in the attic of Sprout Tower.

Yes, he had scared her... a lot before she caught him. Actually, the 'catching' had mostly been a reflexive fling of her pokeball at his head while she stumbled back. No, she had not peed herself.

That had been sweat.

"A-anyway," she said as she screwed on her courage. "Welcome to the team, Gastly. This is your partner and my other pokemon, Bellsprout."

"Bellsprout, sprout!" Bellsprout cheered with a little dance.

Gastly eyed the bellsprout, then looked back to her. He didn't seem displeased by her little plant-companion. "Gas, gastly. Gassss."

"Uh, I don't understand you, but as we work together we'll figure it out!" Jazz said.

"Oh, he said that he used to be a sage," Broccoli said. "So he knows all about bellsprouts."

Jazz turned and eyed the girl. Could she actually understand pokemon? Or was she just guessing? Actually, if Gastly was a ghost haunting the Sprout Tower, that wouldn't be a hard guess to make.

"Well then, uh, should we name you Sage?"

"Gas!" the gastly said. He swirled around, and she decided that it meant he was pretty happy.

"Cool, Sage the gastly it is," she said. "So! Wanna have a quick fight while I figure out Sage's moves?"

***