Chapter Fourteen - Bad News Tune

It was the day after they'd visited the gym, and Jazz had some bad news to deliver.

Honestly, bad news was... well, she was used to it. It followed her wherever she went for the past few years, and she knew how to live with it. What worried her more was delivering it to her new... friend.

"Broccoli," she said as they were having the free breakfast at the Pokemon Centre.

Broccoli looked up, fork caught between her lips and eyes wide. Jazz didn't know how Broccoli did it. The moment they were up, Broccoli was awake. And then she'd fall asleep at the drop of a hat without a moment's hesitation. It was kind of disgusting.

"We need to talk," Jazz said.

"Oh?" Broccoli asked.

"Outside?" Jazz suggested. "After breakfast. We can set our pokemon to training while we discuss things."

"Alright," Broccoli said. "This sounds like something that's important to you. Is everything alright?"

Jazz worked her jaw, then looked back to her plate. "It's nothing too serious," she said. She noticed Broccoli and Buneary giving each other a little from the corner of her eye. Technically the little bunny pokemon wasn't supposed to be able to eat the human food provided by the centre, but... well, who was going to stop him? Buneary held half a piece of toast in both little paws and was sitting with his legs splayed out on the table, taking big munches of the bread while idly looking at the other trainers and pokemon in the cafeteria. Sometimes he'd wave an ear at one of them in hello.

The Nurse Joys in charge of this centre were usually pretty strict--nice, but strict--but even they had a weakness to pokemon that were cute enough.

Jazz wrapped up her breakfast, then they gathered in the yard out back. There was a trainer there already, a boy a few years younger than them who was having a spearow fly through some hoops that he was tossing up as some sort of mobility practice, but otherwise the yard was pretty quiet.

They gathered at the back and Jazz released Bellsprout and Sage. "Okay," she said to her pokemon. "Bellsprout, I think we should continue practising with Poison Powder, but that might be a little irresponsible out here. How about you work with Sleep Powder instead? Try to see how far you can fling it?"

"Bell!" Bellsprout said with a happy wiggle.

"Uh-huh, and get your fill of sunlight too!" Jazz said before she turned to her gastly. "I know that gastly are supposed to know a move called Confuse Ray. It's not a Poison-type move, but it's pretty strong anyway. Do you know it?"

Gastly writhed in the air, a gesture she wasn't sure she was reading correctly, but it looked like a maybe.

"Well, give it some practice? Uh, aim for that tree over there. Once you have it down, we'll work on seeing if you can't get it faster and more accurate. I feel like it's going to be one of our staple moves!"

"Gassss," Sage agreed before floating off.

Jazz let out a sigh and turned towards Broccoli who was waiting for her with Buneary riding on her head. "Okay," she said. "Uh, did you want to give Buneary something to work on?"

"Yeah! I was going to show him how to use Cleaning magic some more," Broccoli said. "But.. if you just want to talk with the two of us, then... Buneary, want to do a bit of fitness training? I've seen you hop around in a hurry, how about you hop laps around the yard? It'll build up your endurance, and if you try to push yourself, you'll be the fastest bun on... whatever the name of this planet is!"

"Bun!" Buneary agreed. He leapt off her head, then landed with a thump before he started to hop around.

Jazz watched him go, then turned to Broccoli again. "Are you sure about that whole Cleaning magic thing?" she asked.

"It'll take a long time to master, but I'm sure I can teach him the basics in a week or two," Broccoli said.

Jazz winced.

"What's wrong?" Broccoli asked.

"Right, the bad news. Look, we... are kind of broke."

"We are?" Broccoli asked. "Wait, yeah, of course we are. I don't have any money."

"Yeah," Jazz said. She pulled out her phone and opened it to a spreadsheet. It was tracking all of her income and expenses. "So we... have a total of just shy of two thousand pokedollars between us. Which wouldn't be that bad, but... well, it's barely enough to get us what we'd need to leave Violet City. We're basically too poor to leave."

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"Is that so bad?" Broccoli asked. "This city's kinda nice. It's sleepy."

"It's bad because all of our goals rely on us moving forwards," Jazz said with determination. She hadn't forgotten Broccoli's goal either. "That means at least moving to Azalea Town, which is almost a week's long journey. For that, we'll need food for a week, more if we want to be safe. A few pokeballs, just in case. Potions, medicine... spare clothes and camping gear? There's a Pokemon centre on the route, near the middle mark, so we'll have that, at least, but... I predict that the trip will cost something like another two thousand pokedollars."

"That's... a lot, no?" Broccoli asked. "Wait, no, that's like... two hundred dollars where I'm from. I keep forgetting you don't have pennies."

"Huh?"

Broccoli shook her head. "No, nevermind. Do we have a solution?"

"We do," Jazz said. "But it's rough. Look, I... might have jumped the Water Gun here and got us both an arranged fight at the local gym."

"Against that bird guy?"

"Not with the gym leader," Jazz said. "But with his trainers. You can request one, and if you win, you get a heap of pokedollars for it. Each fight would pay us something like two hundred and fifty pokedollars!"

"That's nice. They pay people for beating them?"

Jazz shrugged. That was normal, no? "It's an incentive to keep trainers going. Some... like us, are too poor to work the circuit without earning a few dollars as we go. Gym badges are important Broccoli. If you don't have at least three, then... well, what good are you? This gives poor kids enough to keep moving. The gym leader's fight has a payout of a thousand five hundred, just for the first-badge team! Together, that'll be more than enough to get what we need to reach Azalea Town and challenge the gym there."

"Okay," Broccoli said. "So, this doesn't sound like lots of bad news?"

"The bad news is that the fight is in two days," Jazz said. "I think I can maybe get Bellsprout to the level where he'll be able to fight the gym trainer, and Sage is pretty strong already, he just needs to be trained to understand orders."

"Oh," Broccoli said as understanding dawned. "You're worried about Buneary and I?"

Jazz winced. "You don't have the, uh, cultural background to know how to train a pokemon, and Buneary is at a disadvantage against Flying-types."

Broccoli hummed, then shrugged. "Then I'll make sure to teach him extra well, then," she said. She smiled, gave Jazz an unsolicited—but very warm and kind of nice—hug, then bounced over to where Buneary was coming around.

Jazz watched her talk to the little bunny pokemon with a big grin on and lots of wide gestures. Buneary seemed enthused, and soon they were both racing around the edge of the yard. She couldn't even disagree with the idea of physical fitness training, it was always good.

Glancing down, she eyed her spreadsheet again. So far, their expenses were very low. Bellsprout literally ate dirt and sunshine. An hour or two of sunlight around noontime and he'd be good to go. Gastly ate... anything she gave him, but ghosts usually didn't need to eat.

Buneary was their only pokemon that needed to eat, and he was so small that it really wasn't much of an imposition. His current diet of human food was probably not ideal. She'd get Broccoli to buy him some kibble, but it wasn't too harmful for this level of fighting and such.

Jazz checked up on Bellsprout and helped him let out bursts of powder--neither poison nor sleep, just pollen that made her sneeze--with the goal of hitting her hand as she moved it around. Soon she'd get him to practice letting out a puff of powder anytime he was hit as a reflex.

Gastly got bored with Confuse Ray and wandered over to that trainer with the spearow. Jazz chatted with the kid--who was on his second badge already and looked proud of it--and arranged a bit of hypnosis-resistance training for his spearow. It was also accuracy and speed training for gastly, which was nice.

She found herself glancing over to Broccoli all day, however. The girl was jumping on the spot while Buneary looked at her, confused.

Jazz wasn't sure what Broccoli was doing, but she caught snatches of her instructions about energy and her legs.

Then Broccoli jumped again... this time jumping almost high enough to touch the lip of the Pokemon Centre's roof. It was a two-storey building.

"Right," Jazz muttered to herself. Broccoli was... weird. Maybe Buneary would stand a chance after all?

***