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-/-
Joey contemplatively looked at himself in the mirror of the burger joint bathroom.
Oddly enough, the outfit Jessie had picked for him fit perfectly. The shoes were real leather and still needed to be walked in, but he knew that after that, they would be more comfortable than his current sneakers.
Black leather boots, black pants, a purple T-shirt mostly covered by a black hoodie, a white cap with a purple flower.
He looked, for lack of a better term, dripped out. Joey would freely admit he didn't know much about fashion. But the sleek colour coordination and the way the black looked on his pale skin were obviously superior to what he'd been wearing earlier. It would look a bit hard if it weren't for the bottom and top of the purple peeking out from underneath the hoodie. It just became effortlessly cool. Although to be fair, he had a pretty healthy amount of self-esteem, he usually thought he looked decent in anything. He just wasn't a fan of this whole being a teenage boy again. He wanted his chiselled jawline back, and he wanted it now.
Hadn't Jessie been a rather successful coordinator in several anime episodes? He thought he remembered something along those lines. Something about Jessebelle, Jesselinda…
Regardless, he'd donated to the needy, gotten a new outfit, and walked the traditional Route 1. He already felt like he'd done a lot on this trip, yet he hadn't even started on the tasks he was supposed to do.
It was time to go shopping.
Again…
-/-
The professor had told Joey that he could give him some of his old camping gear if he ran the package job for him, but both the package and the camping gear were to be found in the Pokemart, so the youngster decided to check out the prices.
Standing in front of the outdoor section, he couldn't help but wince as he calculated everything together. For the normal youngster, these prices were nothing but disastrous.
Even if you went with the lowest grade everything, smallest and least durable tent, shittiest portable cooker, the rankest sleeping bag, the lowest rated water filtration device, etc, it still came to around 50.000 Pokedollars.
Considering that the monthly stipend of a four-badge youngster was only 3000. If he was relying only on that, then even saving for the whole year of the license validity wouldn't allow him to afford the actual equipment. Thinking then that from the 3000, most had to be used for actual Pokemon upkeep…
The only way he could see a youngster swinging this was if they had two badges, saved the winnings from both those gyms, saved half of the stipend they got from the beginning, and earned more than they lost battling. The only real saviour in this regard were the jobs. At some period, Joey had been grinding those out for his bet on Lance and had earned a solid 40k in the span of three months.
However, for some reason, Joey didn't think that most youngsters would have this foresight.
In all likelihood, the youngsters would have to start their journey with a tent, a sleeping bag, and a storage container full of take-out food and bottled water. In the short term, this was cheaper, but in the long term, it was more expensive.
"Can I help you with something?" a store attendant asked helpfully, noticing that Joey had been standing with his arms crossed in front of the outdoor section for a while now. I know it's a bit expensive, but having camping gear for the journey isn't something you can get around, unfortunately," the man stated with a sigh.
Joey shook his head. "Professor Oak will actually give me some of his old stuff in return for picking up a package. I was just looking at how much money I'm saving," he said.
The brown-haired attendant flashed a small smile. "Ah, so you must be Jonathan. Professor Oak called ahead and told me you'd be picking something up. Usually, his Alakazam comes, but I guess this time he wanted to let the old girl rest a bit."
Joey followed the clerk back to the counter.
"But are you sure that the professor's camping equipment will still be up to par? After all, the technology improves very quickly," the man warned as he pulled out a large brown box from beneath the check-out desk.
Joey shrugged. "He survived using it, didn't he? Old stuff might even be more durable, and people have been camping for centuries. God knows companies have started including planned obsolescence in their products to force you to buy them more often."
"I guess the professor's stuff should be better than the cheapest stuff, at least," the attendant admitted with a nod. "I've barely seen a first-year trainer ever take anything but the cheapest, only some of those Poketch kids. Most trainers upgrade after their first year."
"First year, with eight badges, you can get some pretty well-paying jobs," Joey said as he received the package and disposed of it into his backpack.
The attendant pulled a face. He looked to be somewhere in his mid-twenties. "I wouldn't recommend it. I got up to seven badges on my journey, and the jobs it qualified me for were all extremely dangerous. Jobs that require that amount basically all consist of dealing with swarms, Gyrados, Snorlax or ghosts, and stuff like that. It's what turned me off being a trainer, actually."
"How's working at Pokemart treating you?" Joey asked.
"Pretty good!" the man beamed. "It's a decent salary, medical insurance; you can even draft a salary upfront depending on how long you've worked to afford the down payment on your first property. I'll be the manager of this location when my boss retires, and that's going to be pretty soon. It's not even that I'm not helping the community; I can always give the beginners coming out of Route 1 some advice about the Viridian Forest. Can't have too many antidotes is what I say, haha." He scratched the back of his head. "By the way, we have a sale on vitamins and minerals. Buy one, get one free," he said, pointing to a shelf behind the counter that held all the expensive approved Iron, Calcium and so on.
Joey considered for a moment. Bruno was going to fight Blaine at the Indigo Conference soon. The odds were quite even, but Bruno would most likely win. Blaine must have left the Elite Four somewhere around here for him to appear in Cinnabar and be sick of the gym by the time Ash came around.
Well, Joey didn't see an issue of yoloing a solid 350k on Bruno to double the amount. That would turn into 700k, which in addition to the 350k that he wouldn't gamble, would mean he'd have just a tad over a million in assets.
In other words, just enough to afford a bike, or, if you were willing to walk, to buy the best camping gear, trainer gear, nutrients, Pokeballs, and Technical machines, and then still have 400k left and finance a whole year of your journey without winning a single battle.
It really was a hard decision.
He could still splurge up to 50k and be a millionaire after the bet cleared, though. Buy one, get one free… He looked at the selection. He had been running low on the additives that he put into his Pokemon's food. "Give me the whole shelf," he thus said to the clerk, who froze in his tracks.
"Are you sure?" the man asked sceptically.
"Shut up and take my money," Joey cited.
The attendant shrugged helplessly and packed up the goods. "Your total comes up to 48.650," he said, at which Joey simply held up his Pokenav and swiped it onto the card reading machine.
The transaction went through, and Joey exited the store, leaving behind a clerk who was muttering about Poketch kids.
"Soon, buddy, soon," Joey muttered. He wasn't officially a Poketch affiliate yet, but after he negotiated his sponsorship contract, he would really be raking it in. He was assuming he could get away with asking for around 10k… a week, with a scaling pay dependent on performance and amount of badges.
Now, if only he could win a tournament.
-/-
It was after he'd gotten the package, done the requisite shopping, did some charity work, and upgraded his wardrobe that there was one last thing to do before he headed back to Pallet Town just in time for dinner.
"You want to bet how much on Bruno?" The betting store notary asked confusedly from behind the barred-off counter while exchanging a baffled look with the Kadabra sitting next to her.
"350k," Joey said again. "At the odds running right now," he said, pointing at a large screen on top of the employee's enclosed desk displaying the hottest up-and-coming battles.
Right at the top was Bruno vs. Blaine. Beneath that were the names of a bunch of participants in the Indigo Conference alongside the odds of them winning it, getting to the top 16, or even passing the qualifying rounds. He couldn't help but notice that David, the trainer who Oak had sponsored this year, was also there. People were apparently betting on him to get through the qualifiers. Quite good odds as well; from what Joey had heard, David had been tearing his way through the gyms by always having the correct Pokemon available. He just didn't know if his attempted and failed type-check against Surge back then with his Marowak had made him change his approach at least a bit or if he'd just power-levelled the team a bit before trying again.
"Aren't you a bit young?" the notary asked doubtfully, putting a hand on her hip. Her long brown hair swayed in a ponytail behind her.
"What are you, the moral police?" Joey snarked back. "I'm a licensed trainer. I can do what I want." He'd wanted to get the bet done fast, and since he wasn't planning on going back to Saffron, he couldn't do it with the old man he knew there. Therefore, Viridian was the only option.
There would probably also be a possibility once he arrived at the plateau, but considering Blaine vs. Bruno was the opening fight, that was cutting it a bit close.
"Let me see that license then," the notary said challengingly, seeming a tad offended now.
Joey pulled out his ID and showed it to the girl.
She crowed triumphantly. "Ha, this says you're a youngster," she said.
"Yeah, but I have four badges," Joey said with a roll of her eyes. "Already after one, it's the same legal status as trainers get in most things."
"Four badges," the girl muttered confusedly before snapping her fingers. "Wait, you're that kid!" she exclaimed. "J-J-" she started to stutter out a name, which was a bit weird considering she was literally holding his ID in her hand.
"Jin!" she happily exclaimed.
"Lady, this isn't a crossover episode," Joey said. "Now about that bet…"
The girl shrugged. "Your money kid. Odds are a bit on Bruno's side right now, so if you win, you'll almost double the catch," she informed him.
Joey did a quick calculation in his head. "Make that 400k, then," he said. He wanted to get to that million but just leave a cushion in case fate was playing a trick on him. Keeping 300k was still a good worst-case scenario. He would need it for Lance vs. Agatha; those odds would probably be abysmal for the flying-type specialist.
"Fine," the girl said, typing a few things into her computer before showing him a ticket and pushing the payment terminal towards him. "Just remember, if it's gone, it's gone," she said as Joey swiped his Pokenav again.
"I thought the ticket was also logged in the system?" Joey asked confusedly.
The girl shook her head as she handed the paper slip to him. "No, I meant the money," she clarified.
"Oh," Joey muttered as he started to leave.
For some reason, he wasn't that worried about the money.
"Barely recognised him…" Joey heard the girl mutter behind him. "When did he get so dripped out?"
He exited the store with his ego inflated a bit.
Of course, he missed the last comment the girl made.
"Still, the clothes can't help you if you're that short, guess he hasn't hit his growth spurt yet," the girl said to herself with a sigh, getting a deadpan look from the Kadabra next to her.
-/-
Joey's trip to Viridian had turned out to be blissfully short, fully putting into question why exactly the trainer journey took a whole year to complete. Surely more because one needed to gather strength for the badges rather than the actual travel path.
Generally speaking the maximum path consisted of walking from Pallet to Viridian in one day, Viridian to Pewter in a week, Pewter to Cerulean in three days, and Cerulean to Saffron, Celadon, and Vermillion in a week. Then, from Saffron to Fuschia was two weeks (they were still building the bike Route), the ferry to Cinnabar was two days, the ferry to Pallet was one day and then another day to Viridian again for the eighth badge.
All in all, one could traverse the entire region in about 36 days, take or give a week, even if one took one's sweet time. Stopping at the less relevant cities on the way and visiting the cultural landmarks extended the trip to maybe 70 days. A season was 10 months, therefore 300 days.
In terms of how long it would take to walk the whole thing, Kanto was very much like a small European country, such as Slovenia or Kosovo.
"Actually," Joey muttered to himself. "It is kind of nice that everyone hikes through the entirety of their whole country at least once during their life."
In a way, in a world where everybody travelled at least somewhat, people were going to be more open-minded.
He left Viridian behind, walking out of the gates with his hands in the pockets of his new hoodie.
Then, he suddenly heard a police siren sound from behind him. He turned around curiously and saw an officer Jenny cruising towards him on her bike with a scowl on her face.
He stepped to the side, assuming that the woman was going to be driving into Route 1.
Instead, the blue-haired woman did a half-turn drift to stop right in front of him.
Joey, for his part, almost crapped his pants, realising that he was probably wearing a stolen high-quality trainer-level outfit in broad daylight in the city it had been stolen in.
"Uh, hello, officer?" he asked hesitantly.
The woman scowled at him. "Did you, by any chance, see two individuals in black outfits with a large red R on the front?" she asked.
Joey breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the lord that his stupidity of immediately putting on the stolen outfit hadn't resulted in him getting slammed by life.
"I didn't see anything," he answered the officer, whose gaze lingered for a few seconds before she nodded, turned her bike around and sped off, leaving Joey standing there like a muppet.
"Wait," the boy muttered to himself, "should I go to Pallet Town now if there are Rockets running around?" he asked himself, then he shrugged.
"I'll just hide and Shadow Sneak away if something happens," he muttered to himself before starting his journey back to Pallet Town.
"Those guys are kinda weak anyway…"
-/-
The journey back to Pallet Town was just as short as it had been in the morning. The only unfortunate thing about it was that because it was now approaching winter, the sun had already started setting 17 hours before Joey had actually managed to get back.
Not that he cared too much.
A question you could probably ask yourself at night was, if a shadow was simply an object blocking sunlight from reaching the ground, then what was the night other than the Earth itself blocking the sunlight from reaching that particular side of the planet?
Wasn't the night just one big shadow?
At night, Joey, as a ghost-typed human, became, if anything, even safer than he had been during the day. A Shadow Sneak was now simply a teleport, and his biology was perfectly suited to seeing the murky shapes in the night as objects that were as clear as if it had been a day.
Sure, there were usually more predators underway at this hour, but it wasn't like there was anything really threatening on Route 1.
It was towards the end of the journey, when the lights of Pallet Town were already in sight, that Joey found himself staring at all the hallmarks of an amateurish ambush.
However, to his surprise, it wasn't two rockets who had tied up a rope between two trees to see if anyone would trip walking on the road, but two otherwise relatively unremarkable teenagers hiding in the bushes and keeping an eye out on the road.
Joey stopped in his tracks and stared at the two, who obviously were waiting for someone and hadn't seen him yet. Another advantage of night vision is that you saw other people before they saw you.
He opened the shadows to himself and fell down into the ground, only to appear on a tree branch above the two miscreants.
"Are you sure they're still following us?" the skinnier of the boys asked.
"Did they look like they were going to give up anytime soon?" the bulkier one replied.
"I guess not…"
"Fuck, how were we supposed to know that the egg was being delivered to Team Rocket? They should put a nametag on these deliveries," the bulkier guy muttered angrily.
"Wouldn't that just lead them to being caught?"
"Shut up!"
Joey sweatdropped from his position above the two clowns and wondered what to do. Looking closer, both the guys had two Pokeballs on their belts, and in between the two was an egg inside an incubator. He could technically ignore the situation, avoid it, and just go to Pallet. But…
Well, calling the police would probably be a smarter choice.
That's when the two said something that made his ears perk all the way up.
"A Chansey egg is worth a lot, but I don't know if it's worth this much trouble. Maybe we should just give it back?"
"You think they have a lost and found box in the middle of Vidian, idiot? No, I say we wait here for the night, and if nobody comes up, we consider ourselves done with the bullshit."
Joey paused as he heard what exactly the two thieves had stolen from Team Rocket.
A Chansey egg…
Joey's philosophy from beginning to end had always been to pick team members whose personalities fit the team rather than choosing a species based on strategic values.
The only thing he didn't want to do was catch two Pokemon of the same type.
But there had always been one.
One or two Pokemon that shattered those two rules he'd set for himself early on.
In Kanto, those two were Chansey and Cleraify.
Clefairy, suffice to say, were rare as fuck. For Chansey, bothering Nurse Joy for literally years had never resulted in receiving even a whiff of the kind-hearted, normal-type Pokemon he knew the Pokecentres of Kanto were breeding somewhere.
The reasons why he wanted these two in particular were two-fold.
Firstly, he didn't know if it was the influence of the video games he'd played in his last life or some actual deep-seated anxiety about everything that could go wrong, but he really, really wanted a healer on his team.
Traversing the wilds was dangerous but something that he wanted to do one day. Exploration of natural spaces had always been a part of who he was, and he wasn't willing to change that just because it had become vastly more dangerous in this world. Additionally, it was in the wilds that one could find the rarest Pokemon and the most abundant natural resources. After all, in places that were easy to reach, everything had already been plucked clean.
Going in the wilds, it was safer to have either one of the two, a healer, or a teleporter.
Suffice it to say, when Metapod finally evolved, Joey was confident he could teach her to teleport well enough to escape some tricky situations.
Additionally, his own Shadow Sneak was improving in distance and speed with every month that he trained his innate abilities.
A healer, however, he wasn't, and neither was any of his current Pokemon.
That's where Chansey came in.
In addition, Chansey and Clefairy could learn a quality-of-life skill that none of his current teammates could: Gravity.
Perhaps it sounded a bit weird when you thought about it at first, considering Gravity was only an auxiliary move that prevented flying opponents from taking off. But, there was a certain advantage of having a Pokemon that could use Gravity. Namely, one didn't have to bother carrying around and buying that many of the very expensive and heavy weights necessary to truly give a high-level Pokemon a workout.
Gravity, in fact, according to Joey's research, was actually more effective than weights because it trained overall strength, speed, and stamina by simply increasing the overall weight that the body experienced. It was essentially uncapping callisthenics, and for Joey, callisthenics was more important than weight lifting. He wanted his Pokemon to have bodies better suited for fighting than for lifting heavy shit. Sure, it wasn't advisable for Pokemon to experience high Gravity when they were still growing, but afterwards, it would become an indispensable tool in his arsenal.
In other words.
Joey really, really wanted that egg.
Maybe even the personality thing would become a non-issue if he raised a Chansey from the ground up?
It wasn't like he was going to get a similar chance anytime soon, either. After all, with his money, he would have long bought an egg if they were available. Unfortunately, all the Chansey breeding in the region was for one purpose only. To supply the medical industry. This meant that you could either catch one in the wild or you were shit out of luck.
Joey, for his part, had been shit out of luck in that regard for a year. He'd try in Fuschia in the Safari zone for as long as he could next year, but right now, having such an opportunity fall into his lap.
He paused with a sigh.
But, if the thieves had stolen the egg from team Rocket, then team Rocket had probably stolen it from someone else. And that someone else didn't deserve to have what was theirs taken away just because Joey wanted to be selfish.
He was sure he could catch a Chansey or a Clefairy if he tried. A healer with Gravity was literally the only thing he was unwilling to compromise on not having.
Before he could change his mind, he initiated a Shadow Sneak away to make a call. Then he froze.
The only issue was that he was 100% sure that Team Rocket had moles in the police. After all, they would have needed them to get away with more than half the shit they got away with in the anime and in the games.
His involvement in Cerulean had already been sketchy enough, and the organisation likely knew him by name now.
If he got involved again, then he might get flagged as appearing in too many reports.
Calling the police in this situation might very well represent a danger to himself.
Could he do an anonymous report? He was pretty sure that was impossible unless he went to Pallet and Viridian to use a payphone. By then, the two thieves would be gone.
He could steal the Chansey egg from the two and drop it off at a police station.
No, his involvement might get flagged by a fingerprint, and then he would look like a thief who had suffered because of a guilty conscience. He dragged a hand down his thought.
'It's really unfortunate,' he thought to himself. 'I guess I just have to take the egg for myself and never, ever tell anyone about it.'
'Very sad.'
He considered for a few more moments while the two thieves underneath argued with each other.
Not calling the police was a legitimate concern, and he wasn't just imagining that. Team Rocket probably had their fingers in there somewhere.
Similarly, he didn't have the time to run to a city and make an anonymous phone call.
He couldn't really steal the Chansey egg to deliver it to a police station since advanced crime forensic techniques might flag him, at which point it would either be him drawing the ire of the police or potentially of Team Rocket.
In essence, he wanted to do the right thing, which would be to call this in and help send the egg back to wherever it had been stolen.
Unfortunately, circumstances did not conspire in a way so as to make this a viable option for him considering the safety risks he was privileged enough to see in the currently still mostly peaceful Kanto.
"Too bad, so sad," Joey muttered to himself. He gently pried off a branch from the tree that he'd been crouching on and pulled back his arm to throw it in the direction opposite his.
He hurled the stick, creating a noise on the other side of the road and causing the two thieves to look there, alerted by the sound.
While this happened, Joey slipped down into the shadows, reappeared next to the two as silently as… well… a ghost, and took the incubator only to disappear again. This time, further away.
"What the hell? What did you do!" the fat one screamed.
"It was just here a moment ago!" the skinnier one shouted.
Joey, for his part, already far away, looked at the cream-coloured egg resting behind a protective glass case in his hands.
Unfortunately, now that he'd become part of the mess he couldn't really call the two in, as it could be traced back to him. The first suspect in most crimes was the person who called the police to report it. He wouldn't make the same mistake again.
"It really is unfortunate that it couldn't be any other way, but I'll take care of you, I promise," Joey muttered reassuringly. The egg shook slightly.
-/-
"It took you quite a while. Did you have fun?" Professor Oak asked as the garage door of his house squeaked and rattled as it rolled upwards.
"Got delayed on the way," Joey said mysteriously, trying not to think about the possibly mysterious bulge of the egg incubator in his backpack.
"Shopping?" the professor asked, looking at Joey's new clothes.
"I met a friend as well; it was mostly her doing the shopping. I don't know why it takes women so long to pick out clothes," Joey muttered.
"It's often like that with lady friends," Oak replied with a laugh before entering the garage and feeling around for the light switch. Eventually, he found it, causing a bright light to the incredibly messy space full of camping equipment, Pokemon equipment, Christmas lights, randomly assorted tools and an old red convertible Aston Martin-looking car.
"Nice whip," Joey said.
"The follies of youth," Oak replied while awkwardly scratching the back of his head. "I bought it with one of my first big paychecks as a professor a few decades ago. That was before I realised I was getting old, and living in Pallet Town really didn't necessitate a car as much as I thought. It's a shame to give it away or throw it; it's my favourite model, after all. Maybe my grandson will be interested in fixing it up and giving it a ride when he's older."
Joey thought back to the cheerleading squad that Gary motherfucking Oak had chauffeured through Kanto back in his first year as a trainer.
Driving through the region with a car instead of walking or cycling.
It sounded a bit… heretical.
"I'm sure you'll find a use for it. And if not, a collector might appreciate it sometime in the future. Proceeds could go to charity," Joey muttered absent-mindedly as Oak fumbled around in a large pile of who knew what.
Eventually, he emerged, holding a medium-sized light brown camping bag in his hands. Joey couldn't help but note the stylised blue and yellow sigil of the Pokemon Rangers association brazenly displayed in the middle.
Oak plopped the thing unceremoniously into Joey's hands.
"Is this maybe… Ranger gear?" the youngster asked in a confused tone of voice.
The professor shrugged. "Officially, yes, but it's also severely out of date, so right now, it probably just reaches the standards of a high-end model available in stores. There's a tent, a sleeping bag, a gas cooker, a water filter, a hanging mat, all those things. Of course, it's too late to go camping now, so feel free to sleep on the couch one more night."
"Thanks, Professor, this is pretty cool," Joey said sincerely.
"I'm glad you like it," Oak said with a smile. "Let's get to bed then, it's getting late."
-/-
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