"Clothes?"
"Got it." Arden replied.
"Food?"
"A week's worth." He insisted.
"Phone?"
"Charged, two chargers, and 2 extra batteries that have full charges. Can I go-"
"Where are you going?"
"Hearthome, then Pacific, then Sunyshore."
"Who are you going with?"
Arden sighed, grabbing his bag and walking out of his room. He had been expecting this, but the infamy of the term "First Flight" was well earned. The first step a budding trainer taken out into the world is often rife with worried parents and unsigned emancipation forms. Aside from a formality to fully allow a trainer their benefits as a trainer for the league, the emancipation forms that were often signed on the day of the First Flight were also seen as the ultimate sign that a young man or woman would no longer be under the wing of their guardians.
"I'm going with Cross and Gio, Ma. But we're not sticking together, we're just waiting at every city on the route until we all beat the gym and then move on." Arden explained.
"Yo no entiendo el lio con los muchachos de hoy, sin miedo de el mundo y sus peligros." His mother ranted. She began to pack more food onto his already heavy bag by tying bags of canned fruit to the loops on the side. Arden noticeably bent at the added weight, snapping at his mother's incessant worrying.
"Ma, ya! I'm gonna be fine. Look at it this way, now you can go back home and visit Abuela." He said.
"Hoenn is very dangerous right now, mijo. Besides, I want to be here if you change your mind about this." She explained, walking around his pack and taking his face into her hands and looking up at him. "Speaking of…"
"I'm not changing my mind." Arden said, taking a moment to unload the travel bag from his shoulders and untying a bag of canned fruit. He reached inside and took one of the cans, popped it open and tipped the pineapple contents into his mouth before moving to the living room where the emancipation papers lie on the coffee table. He sat down. Arden then grabbed a pen from nearby and handed it to his mother, who sat across from him with a concerned expression.
"Arden, are you sure?" She said gravely. Swigging another bit of pineapple chunks and juice, Arden hummed in assurance. His mother sighed and began to sign and initial in the lines provided on the papers. As she was turning a page, she devolved into tears and eventual sobbing. Arden rushed to her side.
"Mami, it's okay."
"Mi hijo es un hombre!" She sobbed, signing the papers all the same. She finished and breathed in hard through her nose, handing the papers to her son. Arden set them down and hugged her tight. Once the embrace passed, Arden made his way to his bag and out of his door. With one final wave, he left his old home behind and began the journey of a nomad.
The southern gate of Solaceon was a good starting point for any trainer's journey. The lush grasslands and streams that wind around copses were perfect for a more tame pokemon population to thrive in. Predators were few and far between, consisting of the sparsely feeding bibarel, the green-leaning omnivorous staravia that would often migrate west to find more plentiful prey and become a staraptor, and the relatively rare gyarados. Beyond that, most starter trainers would take this route because of how short it was, and how few in number the obstacles were. It was a route on training wheels, one would say.
Apart from the Lost Tower.
It was there and around it that many of Sinnoh's dead pokemon were put to rest, apart from the pokemon that belonged to trainers who lost their friends and family in battle. Those were often burials and memorials held on the spot with a shallow grave and tearful trainers and pokemon. The dead that inhabited the Lost Tower were mostly pets and work pokemon that had retired or lost their lives while doing their various jobs. Arden had done his studying, both anecdotal and on proper statistics and scientific methodology on the Tower.
All studies pointed one way: do not fuck with the Lost Tower.
"Why do I have to be the one to go left. You guys know that place isn't right." Arden complained while he fidgeted with his clothing. Apart from the spare clothes in his pack, Arden was clad in a black jacket that he would never close at the risk of looking like a bowling ball bag, a white t-shirt underneath, black jeans and a pair of boots that reached his ankles. His two friends stood beside him at the southern gate of Solaceon, where they argued which way they would split off in the three paths before them.
Cross was of Southern Hoennese origin as well, with a lighter skin tone, thin and lithe body, and a thinner face than Arden. His attire was a far cry from Arden's balance between practicality and fashion(at least as much as a fat man could afford, he thought). Cross wore a black pull-over sweater with checkered skinny-pants that ended in a pair of conkellverse with the same checker pattern. Holding down the mess of hair on his head was a purple starter cap with the words 'Zubat-Shit-Crazy' emblazoned on the front in shocking his back was a simple backpack that was far less-packed than Arden's and on his belt was a single pokeball containing his own starter, a zubat named Zo Zo.
Gio went for more practicality, ready to be a trainer since the day he left his house for his first day of trainer school. Camouflage cargo pants with many pockets, wide soled skater shoes and a black t-shirt and zip-up black sweater with a cartoon logo over the left breast. Being of Unovan descent leaves him with thick hair, both on his face and head despite his younger age as well as lighter skin and rosier cheeks. Gio's pokeball hung from the shoulder strap of his bag, the pokeball contained a zorua named Crona.
"Because you're the most prepared." Cross rationalized. Allen turned to them, unwilling to follow their logic.
"When a haunter sucks my soul out of the bottom of my asshole food and clothes will mean nothing to me, fuck that! One of you can go left." Arden argued.
"I mean… I can just go." Gio said, quieting the other two completely. Arden and Cross glanced each other for a moment before Arden sighed in defeat, releasing Bella and beginning his walk southeast. Gio looked between the pair and shrugged his shoulders walking forward while Cross began walking southwest.
These are the first steps and the prelude to an epic of massive proportions, where pieces as small as a speck of dust move across bottomless oceans will make ripples that affect the flow of time, space and destiny. The singular speck of dust we follow is named Arden Kent, a Hoennese boy born in Fortree and raised in Solaceon Town. This speck of dust will be the catalyst to many great and many terrible things in his adventure.
Pokemon: Drip Version
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