"Puck! Retreat!"
For the second time, Puck performed a one-eighty turn and scurried towards Jericho, leaping towards his outstretched arms.
This time, the Rattata didn't intercept it in time, and Jericho managed to back safely away from the tiny purple creature. The Rattata scrabbled after the two of them, razor sharp teeth snapping air as it "drove" them away before backing into the matted vegetation of its home, still hissing.
Jericho snorted. It was a fraction the size of Lyra's Marill, he could probably have punted it all the way to New Bark, if there weren't strict laws against humans attacking pokémon.
"You okay, little guy?" Jericho looked down at the Cyndaquil in his arms.
Puck turned its nose away from him and wriggled free, licking at the bite wound on its flank before falling in behind him once more, its flames dim.
"Don't be like that. You know Lyra said we're not allowed to fight anything. Do you need a potion?" Jericho glanced at his wrist, flicking from screen to screen with his fingers. "Hm… Nah, you should be fine, we're almost to Cherrygrove."
Puck turned its head away once more, refusing to look at its temporary trainer even as it plodded sullenly after him. Elm really was a genius, it took most of a companion pokémon's processing power to achieve this degree of sentience, it really was more like communicating with a living, intelligent creature than the purely functional fighting machines everyone else used. Even if that did have the downside of dealing with his headstrong travelling companion's sulking.
Not that it had made the trip any less thrilling. The noon sun was warm, and the air thick with pollen and humidity. Patrolling trainers from Cherrygrove had bidden him hello and shared pointless and repetitive information about things he already knew, probably as much to break the tedium of culling pokémon all day as to educate someone who wasn't even a real trainer.
At least they hadn't been interested in battling. Lyra still told stories about the time she'd gone to Goldenrod and been challenged by a passing six-badge trainer who'd been feeling bored. They'd had to reconstruct her Marill from scratch after the trainer had pulled out a high level Electivire. He wasn't sure what Elm would say if he got the man's research pokémon flattened under some League challenger's steelix.
"See, what did I tell you?" Carefully maintained flower gardens, reeking of repel, nestled either side of the grassy path. Puck blanched and pawed at its snout at the acrid stench.
"Oh stop fussing, we'll be past them in a second." Jericho held a sleeve to his own nose as he hurried past the acrid fields.
"You've finally come to town?" A gravelly voice croaked in Jericho's ear. He started back with a yell.
A crinkled old man stooped near him, hands trembling with age as he spread his arms wide in enthusiastic glee.
"Well let me show you around, Billy!"
Jericho slowly edged away from the elderly gentleman, who matched him step for step, not breaking eye contact until he felt the handle of the pokémon centre behind him and slipped inside.
As soon as the automatic door slid shut before him, the heat and humidity vanished, replaced by cool conditioned air and the soft jingle of restoration machines working.
Jericho turned around, forcing his mouth closed as he looked around the clinic. He'd never actually been inside a pokécentre before, even when he'd managed to talk his way into accompanying Lyra on her shopping runs he'd had to wait outside. Centres were for run by the League for trainers to rest and recover while keeping the routes clear, non-trainers had no business inside, as the dark blue uniformed security guards lounging on the upper balcony looked all too happy to enforce, staring down at him dithering on the crimson welcome mat.
Jericho touched his license for reassurance. He was allowed here. He might not be a full trainer, but this, and the cyndaquil pressing against his leg for space, entitled him to be here.
Jericho edged forward, shoes tapping softly against the pale orange tiles as he crossed a carpet emblazoned with the League symbol to stand before the counter. A middle aged woman with pink hair sat before him, looking down at some papers on her desk.
"License, please." The woman didn't look up, just inclined her pen towards the slot on the desk.
Jericho nodded and complied, pulling the card free of his gear and pushing it into the slot. A chime sounded from below the woman's desk and Jericho heard fingers clattering of a keyboard.
"Alright, are you a boy or a girl?"
Jericho raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
The woman looked up. "You're here for your starter, right? I just need to fill in some information before you can choose which one you'd like."
"What?" Jericho shook his head. "N-no, I have a pokémon, he just needs treatment is all."
He wasn't sure how official his new provisional status was, or what it allowed him, but
getting a starter pokémon when he was barely entitled to use the one he had was the quickest way to lose that, if not get straight out arrested.
The woman's brow furrowed. "Young man, I trust you know it's illegal to capture pokémon without a full license!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Jericho spotted one of the security guards above getting to their feet. "I know! I know!" Jericho raised his hands defensively before stooping to grab Puck from where the Cyndaquil had been snuffling at a potted plant, holding the creature at arm's length above the counter.
"Oh!" The woman's face transformed into a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "What a cute companion you have! And what a nasty bite! I understand. But remember that you shouldn't try to use a companion mon to fight wilds, that's a job for real trainers."
Jericho glanced nervously up at the security guard, who still stood, hand resting on his truncheon as he glared suspiciously down at Jericho.
"I'm sorry, we were trying to run past as quickly as we could. The professor sent me over to Mister Pokémon's, so if you could just-"
"Ah! Professor Elm? Why didn't you say so! You must be one of his little assistants." The woman finally stood, the tag on her uniform reading "Nurse Amy". "Well why don't you pop the little lady inside her ball and I'll get her patched up for you right away."
"Her?" Jericho raised an eyebrow, smarting a bit at the 'little' comment. "Return." The weight vanished from Jericho's arms as Puck disappeared from his hands. He winced at his singed fingertips as he pulled the ball free of his pokégear, extending it towards the Nurse.
"Your pokémon." The nurse nodded as she took the ball from Jericho. He had to fight himself not to snatch it back. "Didn't you know she was a girl?"
"It's my first day."
"It gets easier, dear." The nurse smiled again. This time it reached far enough to crinkle her eyes.
She must have been in her twenties during the war, the fact she could even bare to be around pokémon… Jericho pushed the thought away, watching as she placed the now fist-sized ball into a rejuvenation machine just like the one in Elm's lab.
Dee dee deedle dee!
"Thank you for waiting, we hope to see you again."
"That's it?" Jericho took the ball from the nurse and slipped it back into his pokégear. Puck buzzed into existence once more, and wandered towards the plants once more, nose trembling.
"Of course, it's just a few bytes after all."
"Bites?" Jericho tilted his head.
The nurse sighed, and Jericho felt just a little stupider.
"Doesn't Professor Elm teach you little ones anything? Pokémon in their balls are stored as data, right?"
Jericho nodded cautiously. Alternity physics was about as far above his head as could be.
"Just like the ball handles their mental functions, it records and maintains their physical data as well. What the machine does is rewrite their current health back to its maximum figure. You could use the PC over there to do it yourself if your pokémon haven't fainted."
Jericho nodded. Pokémon "fainting" crashed the ball software. "Couldn't they just program the balls to restore them every time you recalled them?"
"If you don't care about your pokémon not getting stronger you could get a League technician to lock their physical state. Some route trainers do just that."
"I thought level was mental?" Jericho frowned. How did ten year olds head out knowing all the stuff they needed to?
The nurse shook her head, from the sound of it still typing while she looked at him. "Pokémon take up experientia from their ki- wins and store it in the same alternity pocket as they use to fuel their attacks."
Jericho nodded. "So locking their physical state would lock their alternity state as well? Thanks for explaining it."
The door slid open, and one of the trainers from route 30 stepped inside, Rattata dangling limply from his hand by its tail. Jericho took that as his cue to get out of the way, snapping his fingers for Puck to fall in behind as they made for the door. It slid open, a wall of oppressive summer hit him in the face once more.
"-and this is the pokécentre." A familiar voice rasped.
"Ah!" Jericho stumbled back from the old man, stood lurking beside the door.
"This is where you bring sick and and injured pokémon." The man leaned closer, staring at him with a crooked smile, leaning on a gnarled wooden stick that bent under his weight.
"Tha- thank you… for telling me?" Jericho forced a smile of his own.
"And that concludes our tour. Thanks again for visiting, Billy. Why don't you take this old rod? You'll need it for your journey."
Before Jericho could react, the old man thrust his knobbled walking stick into Jericho's hands and hobbled away with surprising agility, rounding one of the buildings in town and vanishing from sight.
Jericho raised his eyebrows as he stared down at the stick in his hands. A piece of string had been crudely fastened to it, with a tiny pokélure at the end.
A makeshift fishing rod.
"Do you want it?" Jericho looked down at Puck, who regarded him gravely, her back flame flickering low. "... Figures."
Jericho checked the clock on his pokégear. He had to be back at Elm's by six and he didn't even know the way to Mister Pokémon's. He didn't have time for this.
Shrugging his backpack off his shoulder, Jericho shoved the rod into its compression port, ready to be retrieved when he saw the mad old codger again. The bag's power supply hummed and a small screen on the side updated its inventory readout with an image of the item.
Hefting his bag once more, Jericho headed for the exit to route 30. Puck whined and pawed at her long snout at they approached.
"Oh just hold your breath this time."