For the record, I love the Sims. I hop this chapter fixes any plot holes you might have observed.
Chapter Ten: Kind Of Like Cheating On The Sims.
Mr. Pokémon was stroking Oak's hair, Oak had our reassurances that Professor Elm was too busy discussing cosmetics with Flavius the Pervy Intern to make any grand discoveries that would dethrone Oak as the Wizard Of Jhoto, and Flave and I each had a shiny new Pokédex to keep us quiet about the whole "pokéchicken" thing. I also figured it was so we didn't go skipping around town informing everyone that there was more than just science going down in Mr. Pokémon's place, but that was neither here nor there. They were actually pretty cute together, in a creepy old dude kind of way. To put the icing on the bribery cake, Mr. Pokémon even gave Flavius the offending magmar, who I immediately dubbed Daffy. Flavius never forgave me for that. He wanted to call him The Disco Duck. This argument continued in a semi-joking fashion on our way out of Mr. Pokémon's.
"Daffy is a classic cartoon character! I don't see how Disco Duck can be considered more socially relevant-"
"He's not! That-That's the joke, get it?"
"So some random music reference is funnier than Daffy fucking duck because of its obscurity? You're craz-umph!"
Craz-umph is not an adjective. It is the sound one makes when one is walking directly into a tree mid-mock argument. I stumbled backwards and then dropped into a fighting stance, ready for a battle. I had Edward The Righter Of Wrongs with me- the odds were in my favor.
"Mercedes, you shouldn't kill the tree like I know you're planning." Flavius suggested, putting a very calming hand on my shoulder.
I turned around, nearly knocking his nose off with Edward The Retaliator. "Aww. Why not?" I whined.
"Because that tree has berries. See?" He removed a bunch of indigo-blue grape-looking things. "They help pokémon in and out of battles. Like the potions and antidotes I was telling you about before, remember?"
"Lunch!" I exclaimed, removing another bunch from the tree as Flavius put his in his coat pocket.
Stop.
Oh, shit. Tommy Lee Jones. "Uh, Flavius? Yeah, my help-help- button is talking to me, so I'm gonna sound a little crazy for a minute, okay?"
"Sure thing." he shrugged. "You always kinda sound crazy, anyway."
"Nice." I directed towards him. "So TLJ, what's new?"
Don't eat those berries.
"Why, are they CrackApples or something? Ecstasy in a grape?"
You're not far off base, actually.
"You assume I'm going to be wrong a lot."
Be that as it may-
"So you admit it!"
I must say Flavius was doing a good job not looking to weirded out by the conversation until that point. Then he just looked perplexed.
Berries aren't good for you. If you were an NPC, consuming just one would have the effect of several kilos of cocaine on your system.
"But I'm not an NPC."
Correct. Therefore, consuming anything in this game would have exceptionally negative effects on your system. Eating a berry would be similar to replacing all of your blood with heroin and then consuming New York City's entire supply of controlled substances.
"Oh damn," I breathed, impressed by the danger. I dropped the berries on the ground immediately, afraid they might give me an instant acid trip or something. I remembered the only word of advice my grandma ever gave me: "Don't take the brown acid." Grandma was hella cool. "Why is that, though? Why would it mess me up so badly?"
Because your body is in a suspended state. You are exactly the way you were the instant you were sucked into this reality, and you will not change until you are back in yours. You will not grow, fatigue, thirst or hunger. No depleting changes in your system will occur due to time. However, the game programmers did allow for changes due to the game environment. For example, if you cut yourself here, you'll bleed. Hormones, tears, injuries, memories, essentially any interactions with this game reality not caused by time in your Reality, are all in effect.
I was glad Flavius couldn't hear the hormones bit, and therefore didn't understand why I momentarily glanced at him.
"Okay. Well, that explains a bit. So, no purple berries?"
I don't recommend it. They'll fuck you up.
I almost laughed at the bluntness (no pun intended) of his line.
"Thanks a ton-or a kilo- Agent K. Help," I finished, ending our conversation.
"What was that about?" Asked Flavius, looking up at the sky like I tended to do whilst interacting with my start menu.
"I don't age or get hungry here. Sick, right? I guess I have to move my birthday back a few days when I get home."
Flavius stared at his shoes and clenched his fists. "Yeah, ill," he halfheartedly agreed.
Slightly confused, I continued. "Oh, yeah. The berries would mess up my system, massively. Jim Morrison-style trips. Not something I want to try."
"Yeah. We should get going, you know. Get to the next town. There's a gym there."
"Uh, yeah. We should." Why was he being so cold all of the sudden? I replayed our recent interactions in my head. No berries, birthday, when I get ho-oh. I got it, sort of. He didn't want be using him just to beat the game. I didn't let myself consider the other, more personal implications I wished I didn't wish (DAMN THIS EVEN MESSING UP MY GRAMMAR AAARAGH) he felt. Fugging emotion, touchy-feely, hormone things. Why couldn't this game stopper those, too? I figured I'd pretend I hadn't noticed his mood swing.
"We should." I repeated. "You wanna call Elm and tell him we're not going back, and Mr. Pokémon was just ranting about some new…radio show? Or something like that. Whatever. He'll probably barely listen. And if that other Flavius asks, I was killed by a rabid polywhirl wearing toxic mascara." Flavius giggled a little. There we go, back to normal. Right?
"Gotcha." He began dialing his cell, and he talked to the professor as we looped around the thickest part of the tree line back around to the path that lead to the first town with a gym in it. Our pace was casual, and I intentionally didn't hurry anywhere. No need making Flave all insecure about our friendship, again. We were friends for all of three hours and already I felt I wronged him a half a dozen times. Still, he seemed so cool about it. The weird sci-fi stuff didn't seem to bother him much at all. I was grateful for that, and made a note to make it up to him at some point on our journey.
Just as Flavius hung up on Elm, a short boy in his early teens came charging at us. I almost smacked him with Edward The Fierce, but some instinct born from playing weeks' worth of red version reminded me accosting strangers was trainer etiquette, and this kid probably wanted to beat the shit out of my pokémon, not Flavius or myself.
"Let's battle!" was all the kid said. He looked even younger face to face, and wore shorts above the knee and a backwards baseball cap the same shade of orange as his shorts. He summoned a purple rat. Oh. Those friggin' things.
Flavius looked like he was about to speak and reach for his belt, but I cut him off.
"I got this one," I insisted, and summoned Chicky. Looking at the stats, the battle hardly seemed fair. Chicky was more than twice the level of the nine year old's ratta-thing, and the first thing the kid demanded it do was wag it's tail. Oh. Outstanding battle strategy. There's a winner if I ever saw one.
The author would like to apologize for the extreme use of sarcasm throughout this entire story, especially in the last few lines. We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you. Carry on.
In a matter of three tackles, Chicky stomped my pubescent foe's vermin and won the battle. I didn't see where all of the excitement came from- yeah, the battle was pretty fun, but it hardly seemed fair, let alone challenging- so where was the sport? Then the kid broke out his wallet, and I remembered a crucial detail from red version. Monetary winnings from each battle.
"Sweet," I mumbled, stuffing the foreign bank notes into my backpack. At first I almost told the kid to keep his money. Instinct from Reality, when my math tutoring gig kept me more affluent than most of my friends. I wasn't used to accepting money from people, but then I remembered I was broke here, and I was probably going to need a hefty bank account to make my way through my pixilated predicament. Flavius saw the incredulous but excited look that must've been on my face and beamed back at me. He actually looked sort of proud. Of me? Weird.
Chapter Ten Point Five: Charlie Watts Could Kick Ringo Starr's Ass Any Day.
The following is the perspective of a small, altogether attractive-looking bush on a conversation between two trainers late one Tuesday morning. One was in too-short-to-be-manly maroon shorts, the other was in a teal t-shirt and appeared to have an Emo Pirate as her sidekick. This is what the shrubbery, whose name is Hank, observed:
Short Shorts begins the conversation. "Hey! I wanna battle you!"
The redhead girl says "Okay," and continues walking down the pathway, away from short shorts. The rocker pirate follows her, looking sort of wistful. The bird on his shoulder looks pissed, and very scary, like it might make a nest at any given point and weigh down a perfectly placed and manicured branch oh God-
Short shorts starts up again. "I said let's battle!"
"No," corrects the redhead, "Actually you said you wanted to battle, which I took to be an arbitrary fact you were throwing at me."
"The common connotation of that phrase indicates my intentions to commence battling you, typically."
"Clearly this isn't typical. Also, if I may quote the Rolling Stones, "You can't always get what you want/ but if you try sometimes you'll get what you need."".
Short Shorts begins to appear flustered. "Yes, but this is a metaphorical need, on a more cerebral and indeed emotional level. As in the Beatles' 'All you need is love'."
"That's a completely different matter," argues the redhead, "Plus, one could potentially take that phrase literally and back it up with-"
"Oh, so I can't argue with Mick and the boys, but you're gonna dispute the fucking Beatles? Fuck that. Go, pidgey!"