Chapter One
The Gamer's Vigil
Midnight was a distant memory. The brightly lit screen, headache inducing in its intensity, was a beacon in the grimy, cluttered room as line after line of text flashed up. Its user, a dishevelled young man with dirty blonde hair glanced at it, occasionally inputting a command. Simultaneously, he played a copy of the latest Pokemon game on a slightly battered Nintendo 3DS adorned with various stickers and refreshed the latest page on an internet forum using a state-of-the-art smartphone.
The tiny room was like a shrine to a lost boyhood. Game cases, toys and memorabilia from popular franchises littered shelves bolted to the plain walls. Old consoles from years ago were tucked, uniform straight like Tetris blocks, in the space underneath a gaming stand. Heavy textbooks, never read, lay in the dusty shadows of albums documenting twenty years' worth of precisely ordered trading cards. Old wrappers and empty cans made an adventurous escape from an overflowing waste bin in the corner, leaking week old soda and sauce over a once moss green carpet. A pile of abandoned clothes sat perilously near to a maze of jumbled wires, chargers and adaptors, once fondly christened by an optimistic visitor as "Spaghetti Junction". The only personal items easily perceived were newspaper clippings, pinned haphazardly to the wall, depicting a local winner of a nationwide Pokemon Online Championship, and a shabby name badge stamped with the name "Paul".
A series of bleeps coming from the laptop caught the gamer's attention and he lazily lifted his head. His opponent had finally made his move, agonisingly and frustratingly close to the imposed five minute time limit.
BayleefInForever's Blastoise used Dragon Pulse. It's not very effective…
"Predictable. What a shame." The gamer chuckled, deftly inputting a command.
Your Magnezone used Volt Switch. It's super effective!
BayleefInForever's Blastoise fainted!
BayleefInForever has forfeited the match!
As the screen darkened and returned to the home screen, the disappointed gamer relaxed into the stiff backed chair. "A forfeit? What a wuss."
Looking through the stats board to the left of the screen, he took note of his achievements. Twenty six wins to just three losses, and those losses could easily be attributed to hax. One stray critical hit and a Focus Blast defying a 30% chance that it would miss. Battles swayed unfairly by the roll of a dice, not the skill of the battlers.
"Might as well make it one more battle to make it the even thirty." He mumbled to himself, readjusting himself in the chair and stretching. His feet kicked several empty cans of Feraligatr energy drink and his joints cracked painfully, yet satisfyingly, with the movement.
Before he could scour his friend list for someone to battle, a message blipped on-screen. A user named Penny-From-Heaven21, a relative newcomer to PokeMMO who had challenged him some weeks ago, lost pitifully and then appeared on his forum, IvyTrail, the following day. She was effervescent to an extreme - like an explosion of fizzy juice after someone had shaken the can - and seriously lacking any of the skills or knowledge desired for long-time membership. Irritatingly enough, the majority of the primarily male audience of IvyTrail didn't object to her presence and he had not yet been able to get her to leave.
"Heyy! How did your Championship thing go the other day?"
- Penny-From-Heaven21, 03:19am.
"You mean the trading card championships? I won, of course."
- MasterAndCommander89, 03:20am.
"Wow, congratulations! I'm really happy for you."
- Penny-From-Heaven21, 03:20am.
"No need to congratulate me. All I had to do was turn up and defend my title. Besides, it wasn't like any of those creeps gave me any trouble anyway. Piece of cake."
- MasterAndCommander89, 03:21am.
"Have you let Dest know yet? I'm sure he'll love hearing about it."
- Penny-From-Heaven21, 03:22am.
"He's not been online since I got home this afternoon. Thought I'd send him a PM tomorrow and find out what he's been doing. At any rate, I gotta go. Work tomorrow. See ya."
- MasterAndCommander89, 03:23am.
No sooner was he sure the message had sent, he switched his status to Offline. That last battle would have to wait after all.
With a low groan, he heaved himself out of his chair. He didn't bother turning his laptop off, instead just closing the lid and letting it rest. The tiny single bed in the corner was piled with dirty clothes and he swept them aside nonchalantly, along with most of the bedsheets, as he looked for his work uniform. He grimaced. The sheets smelled pretty ripe. They'd probably need to be changed soon; assuming he could ever coax the washing machine into working again. Eventually, he found his uniform, balled up, unwashed, with a pair of last week's underwear clinging to them. He scooped up a bottle of air freshener, kept handy on his bedside table, and promptly emptied half the can along the folds of his uniform.
"There. Clean." He decided, plopping the crumpled clothes along the back of the chair.
He settled into bed, trying to fill his mind with memories of the day's victory at the annual Pokemon Trading Card Championship. Instead, it was rudely punctuated with thoughts of his eight hour shift tomorrow; best known as 'work brain'. Eight hours of spitting out the same tired words at rude, pushy customers over and over again: "Is that everything for you?" "Would you like a bag?" "Could I interest you in our rewards card?" At least the pay was decent and the managers didn't hate him yet. Plus, the girls weren't too bad to look at, either. Sadly though, a lot of them did hate him.
His sleep was fitful, waking up every hour or so, until he gave up trying around 8am. With four hours until his shift started, he didn't bother showering or making breakfast. Gaming didn't make you dirty and there was very little in the flat that qualified as edible. Instead, he pulled his Nintendo 3DS out from under his pillow, booted up his copy of Pokemon X and continued where he left off. Eyes heavy and thick-headed, it was lucky all he had to do was occasionally change the direction of the analogue stick as his character sped back and forth through Camphrier Town. Egg after egg hatched, each spitting out an Eevee. After every batch of four eggs hatched, it was a quick trek to the Judge in Kiloude City for his evaluation. And more often than not, it was a groan of annoyance and a soft reset, before the whole lot started again.
Then, just as his mind was starting to wander to the thought that he'd really have to get up for work soon, something the judge said caught his attention.
"Outstanding potential…" he muttered, furiously hammering the A button. "Best stat, HP… Attack, Defence… Special Attack, Special Defence… Speed… Can't be better…" He paused for a second, before realising. "Holy shit!" He cried, thrusting his 3DS into the air. "Flawless Eevee! Finally!"
He dragged his laptop over to the bed and quickly cycled through his contact list.
Dude. Just hatched a Flawless Eevee. That shit is awesome, man. Sassy nature too. Gonna get me a bitchin' Umbreon with this. Also, where the balls have you been? Just came back from the Trading Card Championships. I beat all those bitches AGAIN, yo. Anyway, hit me up later, I gotta go to work."
He fought the urge to slip his 3DS into the pocket of his work trousers before leaving. He had already faced a warning from the store manager when they caught him with it one particularly quiet evening. His uniform was creased and crinkled and still smelled pretty awful, but it was a nice day outside, he reasoned. The fresh air would blow the smell away.
He made it into work with barely a minute to spare. His supervising manager, a camp little guy with thinning black hair, trilled "Good afternoon" to him and told him to go to tills straight away. He shrugged and did what he was told. Being on tills meant you got to sit down and you didn't have to work the endless cages of stock wedged into that tiny warehouse.
There was only one other person manning the tills when he slumped his way onto the shop floor. A petite little blonde girl, about five foot nothing and with glasses too big for her face. She waved him down as he approached, signalling a bottle of wine sitting in a customer's basket.
"Could you authorise me, please, Paul?" she asked sweetly.
"Sure." He shrugged, leaning over and punching in his access code. "Surely it must be about time to take that off, though?"
"I'm not eighteen until January…" she sighed, turning back towards her customer. "Sorry for your wait there, until I'm eighteen I need to be authorised to sell age-restricted products."
The customer grunted in reply at her standard company apology and Paul slouched back to his own till just as a woman with a trolley full of items and four kids pulled up next to it. As he started scanning their shopping through, the woman leant over, brandishing a packet of their own brand Truly Tempting Poketreats.
"You don't have any of the Moore and More Poketreats, do you?"
"Any of the what, sorry?"
"The Moore and More Poketreats. There didn't seem to be any on the shelves."
"Oh." Paul struggled to conceal a sigh. This was going to be one of those people. "Do you want me to have a quick look down the back for you, see if there's any there?"
"That would be lovely, if you don't mind? My Meowth just will not eat anything else."
"Sure thing," Paul said, heaving himself out of the chair and ambling back towards the warehouse. However, filled to the brim and with the several cases of Pokemon goods trapped behind cages of biscuits and juices, he didn't even bother looking. Instead, he hovered around the warehouse, counting seconds in his head until he reached a reasonable amount of time to be away.
By the time he returned to his customer, the place was in an uproar. A line of people had formed behind the smaller kiosk till, despite there being no-one serving, a self-check-out machine was malfunctioning again and repeating the words "Please scan your rewards card!" in a demonic voice and the children of Paul's customer had opened bottles of juice he hadn't scanned through and no amount of their mother's shouting could convince them to part with them.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't see any down the back." Paul said, collapsing back into his chair.
The woman groaned. "Oh, really? None at all."
"None at all, I'm sorry."
The woman's eldest child piped up. "Won't Sheba eat them, mum? Does she have to have those fancy ones? They smell really funny." He added, wrinkling his nose.
"She won't eat any others." The woman fretted, looking at Paul. "Have your Pokemon had these before? Do they like them?"
"I don't keep any Pokemon," Paul resumed scanning.
"You don't?" the woman repeated, incredulously.
"You don't have a Pokemon?" the eldest child cried. "But why not?"
"I just never got a Pokemon when everyone else did, I guess." He shrugged. "My family is the same. Nobody really keeps Pokemon."
"What a shame…" the woman sighed. "I wouldn't know what to do without my Sheba. She's such a little darling."
Paul nodded politely as the woman continued gushing about her beloved Meowth, all the way up to getting her shopping packed, back into the trolley and getting her brood of kids out the door. He let a sigh escape him. Today was definitely going to be one of those days.
Fifteen minutes is just not long enough for a break, Paul cursed as he eventually escaped the hell on the shop floor after a seemingly endless two hours. Slamming a quick-heat burger into the staff microwave, he collapsed into a chair and snapped open another can of Feraligatr energy drink. Another of his co-workers, Darren, barged into the staffroom after him. Infamous among the managers for his slow, drawling voice and his unmanageable curly hair, Darren seemed to take pushing the boundaries of 'professional' as a personal challenge.
"Dude. How you been? Or where you been, even?"
"I was up in Violet City for a few days." Paul replied, taking a savage bite out of his burger. "Went up to the Pokemon Trading Card Championships."
"Oh yeah, I remember Mike saying something about that now. How did it go?"
"Pretty good. I won."
"Dude, congrats." Darren clapped him on the shoulder. "But man, I don't get you. All these Pokemon championships and online games… But you don't even own a Pokemon! I own a Pokemon and I can barely look after myself!"
"You've got a Sunflora. They're hardly high maintenance. Leave it out in the sun for 16 hours of the day and it'll still be fine."
"True enough, true enough." Darren chuckled. "But dude, why would you spend so much time on games and online stuff when you could have the real thing?"
"Well, let me ask you this, Darren." Paul drained the last of his can of Feraligatr and opened another one. "You play Guitar Hero, right?"
"Dude, of course. Expert on everything!"
"And do you play actual guitar?"
"Well… no."
"And your brother plays all those dumb sports games, right? But he doesn't play actual sports. Same logic."
"Dude, if you say so." Darren shrugged. "Anyway, I better get a shift on. I'm heading home."
"Dammit, man. Take me with you." Paul called after him.
"No chance, dude!" he shouted back before the door slammed and all was quiet once more.
That is, until the cheery echo of the bell from the shop floor rang throughout the break room and warehouse, closely followed by the snuffling voice of the under-manager on the announcement speaker.
"All till-trained staff to checkout, please! Repeat, all till-trained staff to checkout!"
Paul growled, mourning the loss of his half-eaten burger and half-finished juice. He hesitated a moment before forcing himself to his feet and returning to the shop floor.
There was one advantage to living in a place as small as Cherrygrove City – he didn't have to walk too far in the dark and the cold to get home. He was lucky he lived close, in a small apartment complex right in the middle of the city and no more than ten minutes away from any necessities. Well, whatever limited necessities you could boast about in Cherrygrove. There was the beach, of course, and something of a thriving tourist trade, but that was all you could really say for it.
He debated about calling his parents as he mooched along the empty roads under the dim lights of the streetlamps. Then again, they were holidaying in a villa in Slateport City, and probably didn't want to be disturbed at ten o'clock at night.
Luckily for him, there were a couple of slices of bread and some only slightly hardened cheese in the fridge, which he demolished before heading to his room. There was an argument waiting for him on one of the threads on IvyTrail, which he took great delight in scanning.
"What's wrong with training Pokemon as they are? I've never paid attention to natures or anything and my Pokemon turned out just fine. I mean, I've got a Lv100 Charizard that owns everything with Blast Burn, so I must be doing something right!"
Paul chuckled as he read the replies, almost pitying the poor, naïve noob player that had posted the comment.
"If you don't pay attention to IVs and EVs, you're basically resigning yourself to ignorance. If you battled someone who actually knew what they were doing, you'd end up getting creamed."
In the middle of the comments, Penny-From-Heaven21 had posted a reply that had gone largely ignored. "What's wrong with just… training Pokemon? It doesn't matter how. We're all playing the game, so you know, let's just play the game!"
Rolling his eyes at seeing the hundreds of comments and no moderator management, he decided to finish the argument once and for all.
"Guys, really, this again? This conversation has been banned by the other moderators countless times. All the same, I'll give my two cents since all of you have as well. The sooner you guys learn that EV training is the best way, the better. What's the point in just crippling their potential just because you wanna be all high and mighty and "I'm raising Pokemon as they are!" like you're better than us? These game mechanics exist for a reason. This isn't real life. You wanna raise a Pokemon like they are? Go out and catch a real one. Love won't win you a battle here."
He'd probably get a discipline order from the head moderator for that comment and judging from the several angry comments that popped up only a few seconds later, there'd be a lot of members gunning for it as well. He just didn't get those idiots.
I wonder if Dest is online yet, he wondered, copying a link to the argument and sending it to his email account, under the subject "ROFL". There was no immediate reply, so he booted up PokeMMO and started battling, once again in search of that elusive chain of thirty wins, up until the sky was lightened with tangerine and pinks and it was time to get ready for work again.