“Alright! Here’s the plan!”
Lexi smacks the end of a collapsible pointer to the corkboard she’d hung up in her team’s room, snapping Morticia and Elton out of their idle talk. The board is covered in a variety of cutout pictures and sections that Lexi has written or drawn out herself, the only thing keeping it from being a conspiracy board is the absence of red string. Along the top where she’s pointing is a line of all the Legendaries currently documented online, as well as several that either aren’t known or the League doesn’t want people knowing about, which she had to draw from memory.
“This is where we want to get, capturing the Legendaries. But, we can’t just go rushing for them now, can we? ”
Morticia and Elton look at each other uncertainly, before her Wobbuffet raises her arm.
“Wah…Ffet?”
“Correct! We cannot, that would be suicide.”
Dragging the pointer slightly down, she indicates another line of pictures of pokemon, everything from Garchomp to Metagross to Hydreigon.
“These are so-called ‘Pseudo-Legendaries’, and thankfully it seems that they are just as powerful in this universe as they were back in my own, if not more so. Although there are a handful of Legendary pokemon weaker than these overall, I still won’t consider us able to try with even the least of the Legendaries until we can go multiple rounds consecutively with pokemon like these, as well as live for a month in Ace-Trainer restricted areas like the Coronet mountain range.”
Morticia sweat-drops, which, yeah that’s an actual real thing that can happen in this world but Lexi’s learned to ignore it. Elton seems plenty enthused though, which Lexi isn’t all that surprised by. In the little time she’s known her, the Wobbuffet seems like a surprisingly enthusiastic training nut, considering her generally passive species.
“I know, even that seems impossible right now, because it is. But there’s more!”
The pointer is moved again, this time circling around a drawing of Elton with a sweatband on a treadmill, then a cash symbol, then a couple pokeballs with question marks over them, and finally a drawing of a brain with glasses.
“In order to get where we need to, we need four things! First is to train like hell, second is material supplies like money and rare items, third is more teammates, and we also need to study and strategize.”
With a clack, Lexi collapses the pointer down and sits down across from her team at the dinky kitchenette table.
“Now, we’ve been making a decent amount of money doing trainer requests in the city so we’re ok for cash right now. I did remember that there was sometimes a Draco Plate behind the Statue of Almighty Sinnoh in the games, but I don’t have the scanner needed to find it, heck I don’t know if it even exists here. Either way, Section 2 is good for now. Thank you both for your work, by the way.”
She nods to her pokemon, Morticia looking away bashfully while Elton just salutes Lexi with a smile.
“Section 1 we’ve done a little with, exercising your moves doing those jobs, but that’s light work. What I really want is to push you guys to the limits, and I’ll expand on that later. Section 4 is what I’ve been spending most of my own time doing in between jobs, mostly learning about the world, history and laws and stuff like that. Going forward we’ll be focusing more on actual strategies we can pull off, which will obviously change as we train and find-or break-your limits.”
“Waaah-buffet!”
Lexi snorts at her ‘mon’s excitement. Elton seems to have a markiplier-level passion for finding her limits, though Morticia seems more ambivalent to the idea.
“That leaves Section 3, as well as what I want us to do for the next month, hopefully. We definitely can’t just waltz up the Coronet range and expect to survive, but Eterna Forest is a much more attainable goal. For the next month I plan for us to slowly progress further and further into the forest, pushing ourselves as deep as we can go. First week we’ll start on the route itself to acclimate, and each week we’ll go a few miles deeper until we reach the old growth that isn’t nearly as maintained. And along the way, we train, figure out what works and what doesn’t, and try our best to find some friends. So!”
Lexi claps her hands together.
“Thoughts? Opinions?”
Elton shakes their…well, their whole false-body, seeming ready to rush for the wilderness right then, but Morticia takes the time to think everything over. After a minute, she speaks up, the fizz of alien flavors projecting into Lexi’s mind’s eye helping to provide context to Morticia’s words.
“Smoo, chu smoochum-a? Smoochum?”
“Nah, bringing our stuff won’t be an issue. It was a bit pricey, but I invested in a Silph Co. spatially compressed backpack.”
“Choo?”
“Haven’t bought any supplies for the month yet, I wanted to get you guys on board first. Plus, I figured 3 heads would be better than one in making sure we don’t miss anything we need while shopping.”
“Cha!”
“Great, then we head to the store, and off we go to the woods!”
----------------------------------------
Lexi looks over the medicinal section of the local pokemart, comparing prices for a few different brands of vitamins. Elton was wandering around somewhere else in the store, trying to make friends with anyone and everyone she came across, while Morticia sat in the grocery cart, looking around the shelves curiously.
“Smoo?”
“Hmm? Oh, these are pokemon vitamins. The science behind them is actually really interesting, they stimulate specific bio-aural processes in pokemon to increase certain qualities, like their energy stores or how well they can manipulate their energy.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Chu-cha? Smoochum?”
“Yeah, only problem is that they can only do so much over a certain period of time. Dosage makes the poison, you know? Also they’re pricey, and with everything else we’re getting I’m only comfortable buying a few. What do you think? Any preferences? ”
Her ‘mon rubs her chin, talking a long moment to think it over before nodding.
“Smoochum, chu!”
“Ah, good choice! I’ll go with this Healthy Hearts one for Elton, work with her strengths rather than trying to shore up weaknesses.”
Other than the vitamins, Lexi mostly goes with basic necessities. A sturdy tent, easily preserved food ingredients, a water purifier, even a cool little gadget that’s a combination solar battery/miniature cell tower, to make sure she doesn’t get stranded without a connection in case of emergencies. All that and more can fit in her backpack, at a fraction of the weight, which is frankly insane and messes with Lexi’s understanding of physics. Well, it’s not like anything else that’s happened to her in the last two months hasn’t done the same, but the sheer mundanity of it really brings that fact home.
Either way, as soon as she’s done shopping-and draining her bank account to almost nothing-she sets off to the western city exit, a short section of Route 205, comprised mostly of a long, winding wooden bridge crossing over a wide and shallow pond, more like a particularly wet marshland than anything. It’s pretty peaceful, the only people really around are the occasional group of fishermen. Lexi Fell right at the end of the League season, so things will be quiet for the next 2 months or so until the next season starts up.
Although in the games this bridge is just a short segue between the forest and the city, in the real world it’s a good 5 hour trek just to get to the forest entrance itself, which just goes to show how big the world really is. There’s a small pitstop camping area to the right of the forest entrance, and it kind of reminds Lexi of a drive-in theater, but with tents and campfires instead of cars, and no big movie screen. Instead, the spaces to camp are arranged around a tall Ranger’s tower with a building at its base, reaching up above the tree line, and right at the top she can see what might be a Xatu, based on the lime green color.
Setting up her tent is easy, thankfully her dad insisted on yearly camping trips to ‘stay connected to the great outdoors’. It’s a melancholic, bittersweet feeling to go through the familiar motions now, but Elton and Morticia’s antics around their little campsite plot help to drag her out of her funk. Once their shelter for the night is set up, and her pokemon are occupied playing with some other younger ‘mons of the other campers, she heads over to the Ranger tower to get some information.
The building at the base of the tower is basic, essentially just a roof over the Ranger’s heads while there and a place to put communications equipment. The Ranger in question is an older woman, leaning back in her chair, feet on the desk and with some kind of magazine covering her face as she snores. Lexi waits a minute, but when it becomes clear it isn’t a gag, she rings the counter bell a few times, which almost causes the Ranger to fall back as she jerks back to the waking world. She blinks away the light in her eyes before turning to Lexi, entirely shameless about being caught sleeping on the job.
“Sorry ‘bout that, did you need something?”
“Uh, yeah,” Lexi raises a brow, “Is it safe to be chilling like that? Not that I’m going to complain to your manager or something, but…”
“Nah, it’s fine! We’ve been implementing Xatu for their natural future sight, so if anything serious comes up outside of the regular patrols, they let us know.”
“Huh. Neat! Anyways, I was planning on doing a bit of an extended training trip through the forest, and I read that I’d need to check in at one of these outposts for that?”
“Oh, sure thing, let me just…”
The Ranger wiggles the mouse for her computer and spends a while typing away, eventually asking for Lexi’s trainer ID. Just a minute later she hands it back, and starts to rummage around in a drawer as she speaks.
“Alright! Standard procedure, I’ll hand you some Conservation Balls. They have an extremely high catch rate, but once they do, they lock down into stasis, even if you have less pokemon on you than your registered maximum.” She leans back up and pushes a small pile of camouflage-patterned pokeballs across the table, which Lexi happily starts to shove into her backpack-
“Hey, look at me, I want to make this clear because people always ‘forget’ or just try to get away with it.” The Ranger points to her eyes in the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture. “These are not free pokeballs to you to catch new team members with. These are to do your best to catch any rampaging pokemon that you can’t take down, life or death stuff, ok? Instead of having to kill them, you can catch them, and then you bring all of the Conservation Balls to the nearest ranger outpost you can once you’re done in the forest, ok?”
“I’m assuming that kids trying to make off with makeshift Ultra Balls is common then?”
Lexi smirks, and the Ranger lets out a long, tired groan.
“All. The. Fuckin. Time. It is so goddamn annoying.”
Lexi chuckles. “Well, no worries about that from me. I’ve got my own pokeballs so I won’t be trying anything illegal.” A bit of a lie, but she doesn’t need to know that. Changing the subject, she holds out her hand. “Lexi Mendas, by the way.”
“Christine Orabloom, nice to meet you.” They shake, and wow she has a strong grip. Must be the Ranger training or something. “No go on, git! I’ve got more napping to get to.”
Lexi snorts and walks back to her tent, finding her pokemon sprawled out in front of the firepit. Apparently they wanted to try their hands at making a fire, but… well, there’s a reason humans were the first to independently create fire. She laughs under her breath at the sight, Morticia trying to rub some sticks together with Confusion while Elton holds a bunch of kindling under them, hands shimmering with Safeguard to prevent any singing burns.
Eventually she takes mercy on them, taking them through the steps of how to set up a proper fire, though she takes a shortcut at the end and just lights it with her trusty Bic.Once the firepit is set and they’ve got some sausages cooking on the provided grill, they all sit down to talk training.
“Alright, let’s talk shop. Morticia, since you’re a ‘baby pokemon’, you have a soft ceiling on the amount of power you can output, and a pretty low one at that.” The ice type pouts, but doesn’t protest the fact. “So instead of trying to focus on power, we’ll be focusing on skill instead. Our main focus will be Powder Snow and Confusion for now, to get you more in-tune with your dual typings, as well as Lick and Pound, to make sure you’ve got close-range options. Building up your foundations, basically. Sound good?”
Morticia nods solemnly, and Lexi gets the phantom-flavor of cinnamon and peppers, her way of communicating anticipation and determination. Turning to Elton, she’s practically vibrating with anticipation, so Lexi pats her on the head with a chuckle.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got ideas for you too. As a Wobbuffet, you won’t be able to learn many moves, but that just means that you can take the few you do learn to heights other pokemon couldn’t imagine! Counter, Mirror Coat and Safeguard are going to be your bread and butter, and not only will you be training how to deflect more damage and increase general endurance, we’ll also be experimenting with what rules we can bend or break when it comes to those moves.”
“Woba! Wobu-wobbuffet!” Elton shimmies around in excitement, doing a little dance, and Lexi can’t help but laugh again. Her companions are definitely one of the best parts of her new situation, and as she sits by the fire, eating slightly-charred hot dogs and talking shop with them into the night, she can’t help but feel a bit more at peace over everything that’s happened to her. Not a lot, granted, but it’s a start.