Chapter Sixty-Four - Okie-Dokie

"The exit!" Broccoli shouted.

"Yup," Jazz agreed. The exit was just out ahead of them, just around a bend in the road, where the forest came to a rather sudden end at an old fence that split the forest off from a bit of cleared land beyond that. There was a ranger station there, of course. A decently large building with the ranger's information on the side.

Now, because of reasons entirely outside of her control, and entirely because of Broccoli and her propensity to get distracted, they were only reaching the gate now, in the very early morning. Very early Friday morning.

Her plans had them leaving the forest late the previous evening, but they were still an hour's walk away from the exit when the sun was starting to set, and it had come down to a choice between camping in a predetermined camping spot right next to the forest's northern entrance or leaving late and ending up on route 34 with no clue where to stop.

She'd been around Goldenrod before. It was the biggest city in Johto and its metropolitan hub, but Route 34? She never had a reason to hang around there.

She knew that it and Route 35 were both trainer hangouts, but otherwise, she couldn't really say much about it.

"Let's get going, then," Jazz said.

"Mhm! You know, I think I might miss this forest. It reminds me of a much nicer Darkwoods, but with slightly friendlier people in it."

Broccoli earned herself a look from her two pokemon. Neither seemed to have enjoyed their trek all that much. Poor Broccoli was cultivating a team of pokemon used to being pampered and taken care of. City pokemon, even.

"Come on! Next up is that big city, right?" Broccoli asked as she rushed ahead.

"We still need to check in at the Ranger station," Jazz said. "But yes, next up is Goldenrod. The biggest city, actually."

"Isn't Saffron larger?" Tabitha asked.

Jazz snorted. "It's taller, more dense maybe, but there's no way it's larger than Goldenrod. We have a much bigger population."

"Only if you consider the suburbs to be part of the city," Tabitha pointed out.

Jazz wasn't going to let her Johto pride lie so easily, but it was an argument that could wait. First she had to register that they'd survived the trip through the forest at the Ranger station, which ended up taking a while as there were two groups heading the other way in line.

Jazz crossed her arms and tapped her feet, but it didn't make anything move any faster. She did overhear the two trainers ahead of her chatting. They were complaining about falling behind on the circuit and were on their way to Azalea town to grab their Hive badges. Their fourth badge.

She left the station grumpier than she'd gone in. A whole evening and morning wasted because they had to stop and save an overfed pidgey!

"What's wrong?" Broccoli asked as she rejoined the group.

"Nothing," Jazz snapped. "Let's... let's just go?"

At the current rate, assuming no major roadblocks, they'd be getting their third badge within a week or two, then moving on to the fourth soon after. It was the badges after that that would be tricky.

The fifth and onwards were not only going to be harder battles... the sixth usually had the gym leader fielding nearly full teams. But the real problem was going to be travel. After Goldenrod they had an easy route north to the fourth gym, but then they had to go both east and west. Either route would cost money, and a fair bit. Backtracking to get to the other route would cost even more.

By now, some trainers on their fifth badges and up were getting sponsorships. There were usually something like a few thousand 'minor' sponsorships for young trainers. Little more than discounts for certain items and what amounted to a stipend for permission to use their and their pokemon's likeness in ads.

The problem there, of course, was that the companies looking out for fresh talent usually did so via metrics, and the simplest was number of badges gained in the shortest period from the start of the circuit. They were so far behind that they wouldn't show up on any potential list, not until they made it to the seventh and eighth badge where the competition grew a little thinner.

But getting there would require pokedollars, which they wouldn't get until they got there...

"Jazz?" Broccoli asked.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Jazz blinked and refocused on the moment. "Huh?"

"Are you okay? Really? You seemed a little lost in thought," Broccoli said.

"Right, sorry, I was worrying about what to do after our fourth badges," she admitted.

"But we haven't gotten our third yet," Broccoli said. And wasn't that an entirely valid point to make? "But it's okay to be worried about things that are far away. Sometimes they're scarier than the things right in front of us. I have a friend who's like that a lot." Broccoli smiled big and wide, and if she was sad that her friend wasn't here with her, it didn't show. "She'd love to worry about stuff with you, you know?"

"I guess," Jazz said. "Anyway, should we head out?"

"Okie-dokie!" Broccoli said. She paused right after. "I've never really okie-dokied before, but I thought I'd try it. What do you think? Does it fit?"

"Why would it not?" Tabitha asked as they started to walk. "It's a somewhat infantile and juvenile way of saying you agree with something, but it's also mostly friendly."

"Mostly?" Broccoli asked.

"I think it might be so friendly that some might perceive it as sarcastically kind," Tabitha said. "People can be strange about perceiving things based on small nuances, oftentimes based on their own past experiences rather than on any factual, provable thing. It's far more obvious when you're observing both an ongoing conversation and the minds of the people conversing. A lot of talking is done past the person you're talking to. But it can also be overwhelming to fully understand what someone means, precisely, when they speak."

"That does sound complicated," Broccoli said. "But I don't know if it's a yay or nay on the okie-dokies."

"I abstain," Tabitha said simply.

Broccoli turned her attention towards Jazz who raised her hands in negation. "Nuh-uh, I'm not joining in on deciding your weird quirks," she said.

"Oh! You're 'nuh-uh'ing!'" Broccoli said. "Is that like a dark counter to okie-dokie?"

"No," Jazz said, which of course sparked a debate over what counted as a 'thing' that a person could have. Choco eventually chimed in—with Broccoli translating—asking if a pokemon speaking their name in a way that boring humans interpreted as just their name counted as a thing.

It shouldn't have been such a strong argument to make.

Route 34 was relatively quiet so close to Ilex forest, but as they continued the road started to cut around some areas with tall grass and there was a rocky beach to their left. Not the nice kind of beach that invited people to come and sit on warm sand, but the sort filled with uneven rocks that only a few brave fishermen were using.

It blew some humid ocean air over their group, which was a nice change of pace after a couple of days of humid forest air.

By the time they were approaching lunch, they had reached the centre of the route, which had a large plain of tall grass, only broken up by a few natural ponds between the hills. A few picnickers had set up with blankets and baskets full of snacks.

They decided to go off-route a little for lunch, and Jazz didn't mind that at all here. Route 34 didn't have any of the dangers of the Ilex forest, and some of the picnickers looked like trainers as well. It might be possible to get a few quick battles in after lunch.

Of course, Broccoli was instantly distracted. "What is she doing?" she asked as she pointed to a trainer a little ways away.

It was a tall blonde girl in a sporty outfit waving a baton with some streamers on the end. Before her were three pokemon, a vulpix, a pikachu and a squirtle, and all three were firing off moves in tandem.

It was a little chaotic, but there was some semblance of choreography there, the pokemon using their moves in a strict order and having them interact in the air above. "She's a coordinator," Jazz said. "I think. Pokemon contests are getting kinda popular. You see ads all over for them."

"What's a contest?" Broccoli asked.

"It's a weird sort of non-battle. Never saw much appeal to it," Jazz admitted.

The girl saw them looking, and she quickly scanned over the lot of them. Most of their pokemon were out of their balls for lunchtime, so she had a good opportunity to see their entire team. Jazz wasn't sure why that had her glaring though, or why she started stomping over their way.

In any case, she had a bad feeling that this was going to be another weird confrontation.

***