A Pokemon Go fic

by Rjalker

Pokemon have been appearing in our world for over a decade now, sometimes as ghosts, sometimes as real creatures. Until recently, when Prof. Willow founded his research teams, they were just something to hate. But now that has changed, and it's up to trainers everywhere to capture as many Pokemon as possible, so we can finally understand their mysteries, and maybe, learn from them.

October 30th, 2016.

Riding a bike with a charmander sitting in the basket on the back?

No biggie.

Trying to carry a bike with a charmander sitting in the basket on the back through a door that keeps trying to close on you?

Much more difficult, as it turns out.

Especially when said charmander refuses to sit still, and is, as a matter of fact, literally jumping up and down.

The handlebars swung wildly as I almost lost my grip on the bike entirely, and I only just managed to avoid getting hit in the face with the front tire as it spun around before I managed to grab it.

The screen door fell shut again, and hit my ankle. With a growl of frustration, I kicked it open for what was probably the third time, and tried to maneuver the recaptured handlebars so that the front wheel would bump the wooden inside door open again.

Right as the screen door started to fall shut again.

And still, Cheya was enthusiastically jumping up and down in the bike basket and making the entire endeavour much harder than it needed to be.

Mom always stuck umbrellas and other junk behind the wooden door, which meant that it couldn't open as far as it should have. And it also meant that when it hit those umbrellas and other assorted things, it liked to bounce back the way it had come.

So not only did I have two doors both trying to close on me from both the front and behind, but I also had a bike that was slightly awkward to carry on a normal day, and Cheya, still in the basket, still jumping up and down and chittering away like she was a bird instead of a lizard.

I still couldn't understand her yet-and Google told me that it would probably be a few months more before I even started to-but even without knowing what she was saying, she made it pretty clear that she wanted to go back out and find more candies, and didn't understand why we were going back inside.

I stuck one foot out to hold the wooden door open, and shoved my bike through the doorway just in time for the screen door to slam shut behind me. I set my bike on the floor with a sigh of relief, and immediately started wheeling it through the living room and into the dining room.

I propped it up against the wall, then moved towards the back of it and held my arms out for my charmander.

Cheya immediately stopped her jumping, and climbed up the side of the basket, then made a little leap into my arms, the flame on her tail swinging almost dangerously close to one of my plants.

She smiled up at me, and then reached up with one paw and poked my glasses. "Char char." She chirped with her bird-like voice, before pointing back at the basket, "Charmander cha!"

She'd started to figure out that I didn't speak Pokemon, and had started using different, distinct variations of "charmander" to indicate different things. Charmander cha meant my bike, and, char char meant "look".

I shook my head. "We'll go back out later, Cheya, I promise. But right now I need to take a break and rehydrate." I shrugged her to one arm, and pointed back into the living room, to where I had, unfortunately, left my bottle of water before going outside. "I need water. Wa-ter."

I'd taught her that word after the first time she tried getting in the shower with me. She hadn't realized what would happen once I turned it on, and I'd had to spend ten minutes just getting her to move to a spot where the water wouldn't hit her once I turned the shower head on. She got the point pretty soon after that.

She pouted, and climbed up onto my shoulders, draping herself around my neck with her claws secured in my shirt, and her tail resting on my collarbone.

I couldn't resist tensing, but the flame on her tail didn't so much as warm my skin. I shook my head in exasperation at myself, and patted her on the head. In theory, I knew her fire wouldn't hurt me as long as she didn't want it to, but it was easy to forget that when it came to actual practice. It was incredibly disconcerting to see flames actually touching my shirt, without doing any damage at all.

Trying to ignore the flickering sparks that were just under my peripheral vision, I walked into the living room and promptly-but carefully, so as not to knock Cheya down-fell onto the couch, and immediately reached for my water.

My mouth was so dry that I was honestly contemplating going out into the kitchen to get ice cream, but after gulping down some water, I felt better enough that I didn't want to bother with getting more dishes dirty.

Cheya shifted on my shoulders, and chirped with interest when I grabbed my laptop and pulled it onto my lap. She always liked watching me use it, even if I was doing nothing but typing.

I grabbed my phone from my pocket, and opened the Pokemon Go app. Prof. Willow had created it to let people use their phone as a sort of downgraded Pokedex, and you could enter in the locations of any Pokemon you'd seen or caught using Google Maps.

I'd seen more ghost-type Pokemon in just a few hours than I'd ever seen in the last few months, and that was definitely something the Professor would be interested in. And today I'd managed to catch almost every single one that I found.

I'd already used a Sharpie to write down the address where I caught the Pokemon on its Pokeball before transferring them, so the Professor would know where they'd spawned, but I needed to add my findings to the map online too, so other trainers would know where they could find them.

Meowth, Cubone, and Marowak had appeared almost without fail at the parking lot next to the fire hall, and one of the houses near the dollar store I worked at seemed to spawn as gastly whenever I went by it. And there was a house further down that street that usually had a pidgey appearing, or sometimes a weedle. But usually a pidgey.

...Probably because it ate whatever weedle spawned, but that was beside the point.

It only took a few minutes to add all of my new data to the map, and then I grabbed another drink of water, and settled back to relax and scroll through Tumblr before I wrote in my journal. I'd planned on only going out just to check the Pokestop behind my house, but then I'd gotten a little carried away and ended up going more than halfway across town, to Cheya's delight.

She loved riding in the back of my bike, and we'd even managed to find a few charmander candies for her along the way.

That put us at a total of twelve, and according to Google, I'd need 25 of them before she could evolve into a Charmeleon. Either that, or we used them to help her get stronger. We hadn't figured out yet what we wanted to do with them, so we were going to wait until we had more to decide.

Slight dehydration due to impulsiveness aside, today had been pretty fun.