Day 28 of the journey. Cloudy.
The river kept roaring outside—one endless rush after another.
Reiji woke up to the sound of running water. In hindsight, he should've camped farther away. Falling asleep to it had been fine—almost soothing—but waking up to the same noise was another story.
By morning it was grating. The constant hiss and churn pressed on his ears without a break, and his mood went sour the second he opened his eyes.
Moving camp would mean packing the tent all over again, and he couldn't be bothered. He got up, made breakfast for the Pokémon, and let them start their usual morning training.
After everyone ate, they slipped into their routines. Reiji headed to the grassy bank and started an easy jog along the river.
A few minutes in, something felt off. He spotted Magikarp in the water—rare as they were, there was no mistaking them—and they were all pushing upstream.
He didn't know if it was spawning season and they were returning to Rind Island, but either way, he wasn't about to let this pass. If this really was the run, he had a shot at catching a high-potential "dummy," and once he did, he'd head for a Gym and pick one to join.
He hurried back to camp, pulled out a few hundred empty Poké Balls from his bag, lined them up on the grass, and started throwing them into the river at the Magikarp.
Magikarp weren't the kind you needed to "beat into submission." You just threw the Ball. The success rate was easily ninety percent, so there was no point making it complicated.
The problem was the Poké Balls stayed in the water after a catch. He'd need to fish them out, but he had plenty of Water-types, and he didn't want to interrupt the Poliwhirl bunch while they trained.
"Butterfree, Slowpoke, Staryu—use your psychic power and pull the Poké Balls out of the river," Reiji said. It was perfect practice for the three of them, too.
"Breee," Butterfree chirped as it fluttered over and rubbed its cheek against his, like this was the easiest thing in the world.
"Alright. Help me get the Poké Balls first, or the current's going to carry them off," Reiji said, giving Butterfree's head a light pat. This little troublemaker had it way too good lately.
Butterfree leaned on its "big sister" status and ordered other Pokémon around like it owned the place. Nobody could rein it in. If the Poliwhirl bunch dared complain, Butterfree would immediately come clinging to Reiji, acting sweet and refusing to let go.
"Breee," it whined once more for good measure, then got to work. Blue light flared in its eyes as it tried to seize the Poké Balls in the water.
A small surge rolled through, and a few Balls sank straight to the riverbed. Butterfree's grip snapped, and the Balls slipped free again.
"Staryu, get in the water and bump them back up," Reiji said, switching to a proper division of labor.
"Butterfree, you hold the Balls with psychic power and place them on the grass in front of me. Slowpoke, you take this pile of empty Poké Balls and launch them at the Magikarp—catch as many as you can."
"Hyah!" Staryu darted downstream, intercepted the drifting Balls, and smacked them up toward the surface one after another.
"Breee!" Butterfree's eyes shone bright blue as it caught each Ball and floated them onto the grass beside Reiji.
"Yaaawn," Slowpoke's eyes took on the same blue glow. It guided the empty Poké Balls into the arcs of leaping Magikarp and snapped them shut mid-splash.
With the three of them working together, Reiji barely had to move. He just stood on the grass and checked each Magikarp's potential as the Balls piled up at his feet.
He also noticed something else: almost every Magikarp had a marker on its tail—little plastic rings in red, blue, or yellow. That had to be the old observer's work.
It didn't matter. Reiji only cared about potential. Every Magikarp that passed through this stretch went across his panel. If one didn't meet his standard, he let it back into the river without hesitation.
Then the empty Poké Balls went straight back to Slowpoke. Staryu slapped the caught ones up from the water, Butterfree placed them at Reiji's side, and Reiji kept scanning panel after panel without stopping.
He did it all morning. He didn't even get the chance to cook lunch, but Farfetch'd took over and managed most of the meal prep on its own.
Around noon, the river was still full of Magikarp pushing toward the waterfall, and Reiji refused to miss them. He had the Pokémon rotate shifts to relieve Butterfree, Slowpoke, and Staryu while he kept working.
He didn't rest. He only ate a quick self-heating cup of instant noodles, then went right back to checking panels. Even so, there was still a heap of uncaught, unchecked Magikarp sitting by his boots.
By then he'd already read over a thousand panels and still hadn't seen a single top-tier talent. He knew how it was—finding a truly exceptional "dummy" wasn't supposed to be easy.
He kept at it until someone showed up and cut into his frenzy.
"Hey, kid over there! How can you be catching Magikarp like this?"
The newcomer wore round glasses and had a graying handlebar mustache. He looked almost exactly like the Magikarp observer from the anime, and Reiji didn't doubt for a second who he was.
"Old man," Reiji said without looking up, "are these Magikarp yours?"
"Uh… no," he said, caught completely off guard. He'd expected a shouting match, but that question cornered him immediately.
"Then why can't I catch them?" Reiji shot back. The League didn't police the wilderness that tightly—this old guy was acting like he owned the river.
"Even if they aren't mine, you still can't catch Magikarp like this," he insisted. "Every autumn around this time, it's an important season for them. They return here, struggle up the waterfall, spawn in the lake above, then leave again—"
"Okay… and what does that have to do with me catching one Magikarp?" Reiji scratched his head. The old man was making this weird. Reiji wasn't an observer—he was a Trainer. Magikarp habits weren't his problem.
"Bottom line, you can't catch Magikarp," he said stubbornly. "This run is fascinating, and I can't let you ruin it."
"So you're just going to be unreasonable," Reiji said, his gaze sharpening. He signaled for the Poliwhirl bunch to close in.
This was the wilderness. No one was around, and bad things happened out here all the time. If you disappeared in the brush, nobody would care what the river witnessed.
"What are you doing?" the old man's voice tightened as the Pokémon moved closer. He wasn't one of those ten-year-olds who wandered out on day one—he was old enough that his legs complained on flat ground.
He'd lived through the chaotic years. He knew how lawless the wilds used to be, how poachers ran rampant, how bold they were—bold enough to kill League rangers.
And even now, poaching groups still showed up on this island from time to time. He had to stay cautious whenever he worked outdoors.
He'd taken one look at Reiji's gear and assumed he was a League-certified rookie Trainer. He had only come over to talk. He hadn't expected this kind of Trainer.
The kind who hunted Pokémon for profit.
He'd nearly died to people like that more than once.
"What do you think I'm doing?" Reiji said coldly. "I'm trying to catch one Magikarp. You're the one who won't stop yapping."
He kept staring, letting the pressure build. Old men like this were famously stubborn. If you didn't scare them once, they never learned.
"You can catch a Magikarp," he said quickly, seeing there was room to negotiate. "But you don't have to catch every single one!"
Reiji finally waved the Poliwhirl bunch away and sent them back to training. He kept talking, but he didn't stop the operation—Butterfree and the others continued catching Magikarp, and Reiji kept checking potential.
As the count climbed, he started seeing more Magikarp with potential over forty, even some over fifty. Still, not a single one hit fifty-nine. A Magikarp like that was rarer than a needle in a mountain.
"Potential…? You can read Pokémon potential?" the old man asked, genuinely surprised. If this kid was a breeder-type, maybe he was judging development and only planning to take a strong, well-grown one—
"Enough," Reiji said, waving him off. "If you haven't eaten, go grab something yourself. Don't distract me while I'm catching Magikarp."
He gestured toward the self-heating meals by the camp. He needed to keep moving; he didn't know how long the run would last, and missing it would be a waste.
The old Quincy didn't argue again. Mostly because he couldn't win a fight, and also because his stomach had started growling loud enough to embarrass him.
He'd rushed out today and hadn't packed lunch. He headed toward Reiji's camp and reached for a self-heating meal—only for Farfetch'd to block him with a wing.
"Far!" Farfetch'd didn't stop him from eating, but it didn't let him just take it either.
Under Quincy's puzzled stare, Farfetch'd boiled water first. Only then did it bring over the meal and hot water, leaving Quincy to assemble the noodles himself.
Quincy watched it work, then glanced back at Reiji on the riverbank. The kid didn't seem as bad as he'd thought. If anything, Quincy had been the one who came in too hot.
Reiji was releasing the Magikarp he didn't want. That wasn't what a Pokémon hunter would do. This was just a traveling Trainer passing through—and a strong one at that.
You could tell just from his team. Raising more than ten Pokémon at once wasn't something an average Trainer could afford, not with how many resources it burned through just to feed them.
Noodles in hand, Quincy returned to the riverbank and sat cross-legged at a distance. He didn't interrupt. He just slurped his meal and watched Reiji's every move.
Even after he finished eating, he stayed. The light faded. A fine drizzle started to fall.
Only then did Reiji stop. He ran the last batch of Magikarp through his panel one more time—still nothing worth keeping. He gathered the Pokémon and returned to the tent under the tree, and the old man followed to shelter from the rain.
Reiji could try again tomorrow. But to avoid exposing Darkrai, he waited until it slipped back to his side, then told Darkrai and Gengar to stay hidden. The rest of his Pokémon didn't need to.
As his team filtered back in, he set up a fire beneath the tent awning and pulled out a grill. Meat, vegetables, and a few bottles of booze followed. Tonight, he felt like having a drink with the old man.
"Well now," Quincy said, eyeing the spread, "you've got yourself a nice life out here, kid."
"If you'd talked properly from the start," Reiji said, "you might've been drinking at noon."
He fed the Pokémon first. After dinner, they could rest—though the Poliwag bunch chose to add extra training, running in the rain with weights strapped on.
Some Pokémon curled up inside the tent to sleep. Some perched in the tree to keep watch. Others just stared out at the steady drizzle, quiet and blank.
Reiji and the old man drank through the rainy night and talked.
"This is good liquor," Quincy admitted after a few sips, cheeks warming. "About earlier… sorry. I got carried away."
To be fair, Quincy hadn't been completely wrong. Reiji wasn't exactly a good person.
Reiji laughed. "If you'd kept being unreasonable, I was this close to punching you."
"My bones wouldn't survive that," Quincy said with an awkward chuckle. "Lucky you were willing to talk."
"If I run into some hothead when I was younger…" He shook his head. "We'd have already been fighting."
"I saw a wooden cabin by the lake," Reiji said, glancing at the rain outside. "How are you getting back later?"
"Depends on whether the rain stops," Quincy said, looking out into the dark. He had an umbrella, but he'd still end up soaked. If he caught a cold and got sick, he'd miss the Magikarp run entirely.
"Come on, drink up and warm yourself," Reiji said, flipping meat slices on the grill with his chopsticks. "When we're done, I'll have Pelipper fly you back."
"If you had Pelipper, you should've said so earlier," Quincy grumbled, then laughed. "I worried for nothing."
"I'll be staying here for a long time," Reiji said, clinking his cup against Quincy's. "Until I catch a Magikarp I'm happy with. Looks like we're neighbors now."
And that mattered. If a raging Gyarados showed up—especially one even he couldn't handle—this old man could probably calm it down.
After all, he was a Magikarp observer. Nobody would understand Magikarp and Gyarados behavior better.
"Hah. It's been a long time since I had a neighbor," Quincy said, taking another sip. "Name's Quincy. What's yours, kid?"
"Just call me Rai," Reiji said. He'd been right—this really was Quincy, the Magikarp observer.
"If you want to catch Magikarp, you don't need to rush like that," Quincy said. "The run lasts more than a month. You've got time."
"More than a month?" Reiji mulled it over. A month meant he could screen tens of thousands a day. Over thirty days, that was hundreds of thousands. Plenty of chances to find one high-potential "dummy."
"I've been observing here for three years," Quincy said, pleased to finally talk. "Magikarp run twice a year—spring and autumn—and the timing is about the same each time."
Reiji ate, drank, and listened. The old man's notes would be genuinely useful for planning the catch.
He was also a little amused by the attitude shift. Earlier, Quincy had looked ready to start a war. Now he was offering advice like a helpful uncle.
So this was what people meant by drinking culture—get a few cups in, and suddenly everything gets easier.
No wonder that old drunk back home always tried to drag him to the table. It really was a trick.
They drank until late at night. Quincy ended up dizzy and loose-limbed. When the rain eased, Reiji had Pelipper carry him back to his cabin.
Reiji collapsed into bed the moment he lay down. He'd had plenty to drink too, but now there was no need to rush. With a run that lasted more than a month, he had all the time he needed to catch a "dummy" worth keeping.
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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