Hello! If you're reading this, then that means you're reading this fanfiction, and I'm very happy you're doing so! I know there's a lot of Pokemon fanfics out there (most of which ship Absol/Blue/whoever X Everything that moves and has ever moved in the history of forever), so I'm glad you've selected mine as the one you're going to be reading today! The beginning where I describe the region is a little dull, so maybe you'd want to skip down to where I start actually writing about a plot instead of just throwing exposition at you like a douche if you don't feel like you need all of this. Don't worry; most of it doesn't take place in Literoa, anyway, so all you'd really need to skim from this is names and things like that. Other than that, I feel like everything else gets glossed over later. Enjoy, and please send comments this way so I can take your advice and praise (hopefully! I won't be very happy if I get flamed and stuff) as genially as possible!
The Literoa Region. It is considered by many Pokemon trainers to be the ultimate challenge, and it's generally agreed that if you manage to defeat the Champion of this region, Orlagh, then you're one of the strongest Pokemon Trainers around.
No, I'm not an inspired young trainer trying to conquer this small, new, and great region we have here. In fact, I'm a gym leader here, the seventh, to be exact. My name is Rei, and I specialize with Ghost-type Pokemon. I suppose I'll spare you from my full backstory now, since I have some other stuff to mention first.
If you're starting a journey for the first time, you don't start here; you'd be blown away in a second if you don't know what you're doing. Thus, the people who live here are mostly just families who don't plan on having their Pokemon fight. Usually, if you wanted to start in Literoa, you'd have to know a lot about Pokemon from books already before you'd want to try.
Then, there are the cities and towns and all that stuff. The place my gym's in, Poemira Town, is pretty small; in fact, out of all of the places with gyms in the entire region, it's the smallest, and the only town to have a gym. Thus, only a few people live here (Not even I have a house here, I pretty much live in my gym), and I know most of them pretty well. But if we want to go in the order newer trainers go in when they try to get through us, I suppose we should start with Novelatta Town.
It's a small, cozy place where docile families and the sorts live. Not really any of them try to travel around our region, but if they do want to start an adventure, regularly they travel to Kanto (My home region) or Johto first. You know, it's the trademark cozy first town; no gym, no Pokemon Center, none of the usual stuff. The only thing that's different about Novelatta is the fact that the Pokemon Day Care center is there, so most kids living there usually become Pokemon Breeders and never try to travel too much unless they want to see the other Day Cares around the world.
The farthest most of these Breeders go from home to probably to Lyrina Town. It's got the big department store like the one in Saffron back in Kanto, so they always go there to get stuff like Everstones and Incenses and all that semi-useful stuff.
Then, if you go south-west from Lyrina Town, you'll get to Poemira Town. Finally, right? But I guess you're wondering how this can be if I'm the seventh gym leader. Wouldn't the seventh gym be, like, farther in the region, you'd think? Well, no, but that's only because there's a certain something you have to do before you enter Poemira, but I'm not going to get into any more detail than that, because then I'll have some level five munchkins running around in my gym, and that's not how I roll.
Now, for the real gym, you want to go to Prosyn City, which is in the opposite direction of Poemira. There, you'll find Hisashi, the Psychic-type gym leader. This guy's really quiet, and won't really budge unless you mess with him long enough, but since he's a year or two younger than me and sixth leagues below me, he can't really do much. But if you really want to know how I can go over and messing with him while he meditates with his Pokemon without Orlagh or one of the other gym leaders scolding me or something, I usually don't go over there myself; I send a Gastly, because there are a ton of them floating around in my attic and I figured I might as well use them for something, since my team's been assembled for a few years now and I don't really want to use another Gengar. And it works out perfectly because on the route just north-east of Prosyn is a little place I love going to at night; the Cave of Souls.
It might sound threatening at first—if you're not into Ghost-types, that is—but really, it's just a cave full of Gastly, Misdreavus, Shuppet, and Duskull. But anyway, it's a really good place to go at night, because if the ghosts trust you, they can go out and find Dusk Stones for you. But if they don't like you, you can expect for all sorts of nasty things to happen to you. The only thing I don't like about all of this is that when some dumb snot-nosed brat runs in there and ends up getting jinxed by the ghosts in there, Orlagh and Yukio (I'll explain him later…) force me to go and help, since they think that all the Ghost-types in the region are all under my jurisdiction. Usually it's something really time-consuming and tedious, so you can imagine why I hate doing that so much. Either that, or the kid's already seriously messed up ('messed up' because any further detail might make the ghosts there seem evil, but they're actually really nice and I don't want to give them a bad rep just because some stupid kids were being, well, stupid) and I have to take him to the hospital in Dichen Town, which, even though it sounds relatively easy to get the kid there, I have to go through five different towns and cities and a forest. And I can't just Fly there, either, because my weight plus a kid is too heavy for the only Pokemon I have access to that can use Fly, which is Hisashi's Xatu. It's a long story explaining how to gain the ghosts' trust, so I'll cover that later.
So then, get through the Cave alright with the ghosts' blessing and you're in Mockino Town. Apparently this town is where the first people who ever lived in Literoa got their first Pokemon and lived for hundreds of years, but that's just a myth. In reality, this town is just a tourist trap, and is usually the most crowded place in Literoa, despite the actual town itself being much smaller than all the other ones. It's always a real pain in the butt getting through this town, because if the tourists see anyone even slightly important trying to get through, they'll jump them and try to get their autograph and put them on TV and all that. Since I'm the most, ahem, hospitable of the gym leaders (so long as you don't annoy me), they'll often chase me all around town and attack my team with some Pokemon before I have to send out my Mismagius to confound them so I can make my escape. And since this is one of the cities in Literoa I mentioned I'd have to go through to get kids to the hospital in Dichen, I usually end up with at least one fainted Pokemon when I get back to my gym—for more than one reason, which, again, I'll begrudgingly explain later.
If you finally manage to get out of Mockino, you'll end up in the location of the second gym in Verseti City. This is probably going to be the biggest city you'll see in Literoa in a while if you're starting in Novelatta like I said most people do. Here, the gym leader is Edric, the only person in Literoa who Yukio dislikes more than me—but only slightly. He's into Ground-types (mostly), and I guess he's a pretty cool guy, but sometimes he can get really stuck up, cocky, and generally annoying, so you might just want to say hi, maybe give him a high five and talk for a little bit, then get out of there as soon as you can, because while he may seem like a hyper eccentric guy for a while, eventually he'll challenge you to a battle and force you to fight him, and God help you if you win, because he'll never let it down. In fact, don't lose, either, because then he'll brag for the rest of his life about it.
Once you're out of Verseti, you'll be in Scriptana Forest. It's a pretty big place, and it's pretty and all, but I never, ever like going there, because if you go north, well… That's the thing I've been trying not to talk about yet, and since I still don't' have to yet, I'll procrastinate a little bit more and just explain where you'd end up if you took one of the two other paths.
If you keep going west, you'll probably get blocked off by boulders or a tree or something. If you were able to get over this annoying roadblock, you'd be in Autora City, where Maeveen the Poison-type gym leader is. It's mostly her fault that the stuff's in the way since she's usually too busy singing karaoke in her gym and shopping to care. The stupid thing about this is that Yukio doesn't get on her about it because she's his daughter, yet he'll scold me for days and days if a Haunter starts haunting a family in Lyrina. Really, the favoritism going on with the gym leaders (and in the Pokemon League, too) is really ridiculous sometimes. If I had a nugget for every time I get scolded for something that's hardly my fault, I'd be the richest Pokemon Trainer in the world…
So, since the path to Autora and the third gym is always blocked, then what do you do? Well, you can either try to knock the stuff out of the way with some really big Pokemon (which I lack), or go a little farther west and then go north, and end up in Comedero town. It's a small place which is renowned for its good food, entertainment, and gambling, so usually I'd prefer going there instead of dealing with Maeveen any day. In fact, sometimes I get Hisashi to lend me his Xatu so I can Fly over there and either perform at some of the comedy clubs or just to let my Pokemon play with the younger kids there while their parents are busy. Generally, this is the only thing Yukio likes about me (other than my abilities, because he knows I could defeat him in battle if I needed to), but now he's even starting to scold me for that because he doesn't want the kids to get scared, even though none of them do. Oh, wait, hold on a second…I still haven't explained who Yukio is, have I? Well, I'll get to him in due time, just like I'll get to…ugh… in due time.
Well, if you get through Comedero with everything you own intact (even I find myself with some lost money when I go there, so check your pockets) and beat Maeveen, you'll end up in Hemink. I guess you could call it the city of crossroads, because that's really all its there for. The only other notable thing about there is that Hemink is usually where retired old people go to live and it's really intertwined with nature. Personally, I think this place is pretty nice, although my Dusknoir sneaks out at night to go over there for some reason I can only guess at (even though my guess is a pretty good one that I'd rather not share—you can call it 'classified ghost-related business' if you want), thus why I only bring Sableye with me when I go there to visit, and even then I ask one of my friends to watch my other Pokemon and keep them from leaving. And in case you were wondering, I'll get to my friend in a second.
If you go north from Hemink, there'll be a lake. Since most trainers won't be able to use Surf at that time, they'll go south-east like they're supposed to, and come across a crossroad—the road on the right (though on a map it's left) leads to Dichen, but there's a scanner there to keep unauthorized trainers out until they have to go there, so newbies won't be able to go that way. So, you're supposed to go the other way to Magaziti City, where one of my friends (not the one I was talking about earlier), Aika, is the gym leader. She's a really nice girl, but she gets her feelings hurt really easily. Even though I like placing traps around for people to step on and get scared by, she's the only person I don't do it to, because honestly, she's jumpy enough as it is. Maybe it has something to do with her obsession with Flying-types, but I don't know.
By then, Aika's probably given you Fly, so you're supposed to Fly to Verseti so you can get to the town I was talking about earlier—the one on the northernmost path in the forest that I didn't want to talk about, and is the reason why I hate going through the Scriptana Forest; Tragetu City. Here, my worst enemy is the gym leader—Daven. As all the hints point to, he's a Dark-type user, but believe me, my hatred for him comes from more reasons than just that (because in case you didn't know, Ghosts don't like Dark-types).
Basically, Daven is a jerk. He's about five or six years older than me (considering I'm fourteen, that means he's, like, nineteen or something like that), so he calls me an immature little kid just because of that. Not only that, but whenever I go through the forest and go past the road leading to Tragetu, he'll always have that stupid Weavile of his waiting in ambush for me, and he'll try to sweep my entire team. In an ordinary situation, he'll only get Sableye KO'ed (Because Sableye is usually the only one outside of his Pokeball), but there have been times where I've been trying to take a kid to Dichen and his entire team have been lying in wait, and since I usually don't bring my all-star team of Pokemon on this kind of journey because they need breaks now and again, he'll knock all of them out, and then he'll go off to Yukio and tell him that I didn't get the kid there because I'm incompetent and didn't bother trying to take him there at all, which always gets me in trouble since Yukio for some reason trusts Daven wholeheartedly, even though he's a lying rat. Then, to make things even worse, he'll actually attack me with his Pokemon after I'm all out of usable Pokemon and take the kid to Dichen himself just to be a show-off! What a jerk, right?
Anyway, if you can manage to get that guy's goat without him trying to kill you, he'll give you the HM for Surf, so then you have to go back to Hemink so you can Surf over Lake Rowlilm and get to Dratiri City, where my other friend (and best friend, but don't tell Aika or she'll start to cry) Flicka is the gym leader. Even though she has a city by a big lake, she specializes in Fire-types, and she's really good with them, too. She has a bit of a temper (which makes all too much sense) and yells a lot, but that's all covering her secret hobby—roleplaying. I've only caught her once in the basement of her gym, but seeing is how whenever she's not upstairs taking challengers, you can hear noises downstairs. When trainers first started to hear these noises and got freaked out, word came to Yukio and—you'll never believe this one, this never happens!—he blamed me. Big surprise, am I right? He thought that there was a ghost haunting the basement, so he sent me to go sort it out. He actually threatened my job as a gym leader, too, so I flew over there with Hisashi's Xatu to go check it out; that's when I found her out. It was really funny, but she got really freaked out and started to get all frazzled, so I promised I wouldn't rat her out and told Yukio that there was a family of Dusclops living in her basement instead and that I took care of it.
So then, after you beat Flicka, you have to go to your favorite town in Literoa—Poemira! That's where you'll be fighting me. Like I've said many, many, times, I'm a Ghost-type specialist, and my favorite Pokemon on my team is my Sableye, so good luck, I guess.
If you beat me, you can get through the gate blocking you from Dichen with a special item I'll give you. If you just run through there (all that's special is the hospital), you'll be in Biblini City, the final city, where my 'boss' Yukio is the gym leader, and specializes in Ice-types. He's a jerk who blames me for every ghost-related problem in Literoa, but you already know that, so I'll just explain him in general. I've already said that Maeveen's his daughter, so you already know he's much older than me. In fact, he's about fifty-six or something like that, but I wouldn't know since I'm not invited to his birthday parties. He's in charge of all the other gyms leaders in the region, and works closely with Orlagh, meaning that if I did something to tick him off (or if he thinks I did something), he could go to Orlagh with it and have me shipped back to Kanto in a heartbeat. Fortunately though, Orlagh's not an old jerk like him, so I'm sure I have nothing to worry about.
Then, once you have all the badges, climb Mt. Satirso, and at the very summit will be the Pokemon League. I'd explain the members of the Elite Four, but I don't know anything about them since they never leave the Pokemon League. But I can tell you about the champion, Orlagh. She's a shining golden woman, and she's certainly no pushover. Believe me—even with my best Pokemon at hand, I still can't defeat her. She's genuinely nice, and actually comes to visit me in my gym and intentionally sets off traps to make me laugh, but after I found out she's doing it on purpose, it's not as funny, so I'm trying to think of better ways to hide them so she won't notice them.
Well, then, now that we've gotten out of the way, let's get to the real story I want to tell; the only real reason I just explained this region for you is because most people have never heard of it, and if I just start off using all the city names and the gym leaders' names without any sort of introduction, you're going to be scratching your head the entire time, so I figured I'd just introduce the region right off the bat so I can get to the point and stay on the point. You know what I'm saying?
But anyway, yes, this story is about something entirely different than the usual story from a trainer that went from small-town kid to big shot champion, but that should already seem really obvious, since I'm already a gym leader and that's all I really want to be for now, so yeah. As I explain all the details, you'll probably be able to piece everything together, and I'll try my hardest to keep my commentary out of it, but chances are it's going to happen at the parts I'm most fired up about (mostly the parts retaining to Daven and Yukio), so if you just wanted a good story with a reliable narrator, go somewhere else for the story. Maybe by now Hisashi has written something about it, so if you want that, go to him.
Anyway, all of this stuff pretty much started one day. It was a relatively nice day, though it was kind of chilly, and I was busy training my Sableye with some of the Gastly in my attic, when suddenly my Xtransceiver started to ring. I pressed a few buttons on it, and the screen depicted Yukio's old face. I tried to hide the annoyance from my tone as I asked, "What is it?"
"A child got lost in Scriptana Forest," Yukio answered sternly.
"So? I thought the woods were under Maeveen's jurisdiction." Although I knew Maeveen wouldn't care if the rest of the Literoa region was on fire so long as she could still go shopping with her friends, I figured letting Yukio remember that instead of doing whatever he says like a tool would be the better idea.
"They're under Edric's jurisdiction," Yukio lied, looking somewhat peeved, "but I'm sending you because Daven said he saw that a Mismagius was responsible for getting the child lost."
"Of course, I should have known he did this…" I thought irritably, before I said, "Yeah, whatever, I'll get there as fast as I can."
"You'd better. And next time, don't be snappy with me." In an instant, the screen of my Xtransceiver cut back to the current time, and I growled.
"Well, we won't let him get the better of us this time," I ensured to Sableye as he sent out the rest of my team; Gengar, Mismagius, Chandelure, and Dusknoir. Then, for good measure, I went into the basement of my gym, which was styled pink and puffy with all sorts of furniture just for the Pokemon I was going to bring with me. "Iggle!" I called, not seeing my Pokemon until she inflated herself from where she was deflated on the sofa in the far corner of the spacious room.
"Wigglytuff~!" Iggle exclaimed happily, jumping up into my arms as I embraced her tightly. I glanced behind me because I could feel one of my Pokemon standing right behind me, and saw that Sableye was sticking out his tongue. "Jealous, are we?" I joked in my mind.
Wait, wait, wait, you must be saying. Why do you have a Wigglytuff if you're a Ghost-type user? Well, Iggle is a special exception. I don't usually use her in battles, and let her live in the basement of the gym in a room all her own. She was the first Pokemon I ever got in Lavender Town, though she was an Igglybuff at the time, hence the somewhat stupid nickname. I can easily say that out of all the Pokemon I would consider making a team of if I didn't specialize in anything, she would be the lowest-leveled, although she has a lot of powerful attacks for me to use, making her a pretty good Pokemon. I wish I could use her in my gym, but usually she's sleeping whenever I go downstairs to check on her, and thus can't fight. Does she lure herself to sleep with her own singing? I have no idea, but it doesn't matter; Daven's going to be sorry that he ever tried to trip me up with his stupid Dark-type Pokemon.
I let her go from the hug, and said, "Iggle, we and everyone else are going to the forest to save some little kid and defeat Daven. Are you hungry? Do you want an Aspear Berry before we leave?"
Iggle nodded happily, muttering an agreeing 'Wig!', and I opened my bag and pulled out the Aspear Berry I had promised her. "Here you go," I said, handing it to her.
Behind me, I noticed Sableye was glaring at me a bit. "Hey, don't think I forgot you!" I said, reaching into my bag again and this time getting out a shiny gemstone and giving it to him.
"Anyone else?" I offered to the rest of my Pokemon, but none of them seemed to want one at the moment, so I just waited for Iggle and Sableye to finish up before I sent the rest of my team into their Pokeballs and left my gym, Sableye perching on my shoulder as usual. I had sent Iggle into her Pokeball, too, because if Daven's Pokemon saw her, they'd know what I was planning and flee before I can get back at them.
I left Poemira and got through Lyrina easily enough, and Prosyn went relatively well (Hisashi even nodded respectfully to me when I came in to say hi). As you can expect, the Cave of Souls was a very easy part, and the spirits in there searched around for a bit when I entered and gave me a few gemstones for Sableye to eat whenever he got hungry.
After getting out of the cave and reaching the route directly before Mockino Town, I took off my hat and stuffed in my bag, removed my jacket and tied it around my waist, and got a black jacket out from my bag to replace the old one, along with a pink baseball cap. After I hid all my hair with the cap and put on the jacket to hide the upper part of my clothes, I put on some sunglasses and looked into a reflective puddle nearby. "This should be a good enough disguise," I muttered to Sableye, but he was too distracted trying to unzip my bag and get the gems we had just gotten out so he could eat them. I sent Sableye into his Pokeball (he didn't like it too much) and went ahead to Mockino.
The tourists were all buying their cheap souvenirs from the street venders, and I walked by without attracting too much attention. Although the street vendors were yelling at me assuming I was a tourist (one from Unova in particular, I'm not sure why he wanted to be so specific), I ignored them and left Mockino. The instant I did, I hid in a bush and put on all my normal clothes again, before sending Sableye out again and running down the route as fast as I could.
This was as short as I could get it, so excuse the length. Chances are you heeded my warning at the beginning and decided to skip some of the exposition at the beginning, so you didn't have much to read. Otherwise, I can see why you'd be kind of bored and be asking where the action is. Don't worry, she's a-coming!
Keep in mind that this fanfiction is already pre-written (for the most part), so giving me OCs and plot ideas about the most currently uploaded chapter would be useless. At least updates will be soon, so that's a plus! I hope you enjoyed, and I implore you to join me next time, when Rei's constant snarky comments and all that won't be the only good thing about this fic! I mean, I hope that they come out snarky, I don't know if I'm really all that good at writing yet, so I'd need some opinions…
Anyway, goodbye, reader, may we meet again someday! Or today. Whenever, I suppose, would be great for me.