There are a lot of things you don't really think about when you think of 'JumpChain'. Normally, any given Jumper inevitably tends towards varying degrees of omnipotence, even without trying, simply because any given build will eventually run into exceptionally-powerful Perks or Items that completely overshadow even the strongest of characters in most settings. But the journey to reach that point, in addition to never really ending, isn't quite as glamorous.
I mean, you can start in Dragon Ball Super, get the Freebie that puts you on parity with Super Saiyan God Goku (who possesses enough striking power to threaten the destruction of the local universe, which is itself estimated to be nine times as large as ours), spend ten years screwing around in any universe that isn't Universe Seven (while keeping your Benefactor entertained, of course), and return home with both immortality and the power to literally take over Earth, or even create your own planet to rule. One decade, it's that easy. But when you're talking about a 'normal' Chain, when you start from the ground up…
Well, for my story, I don't think starting it in a black void is the right place. Best to say that I spent way too long looking for hidden cameras while a holographic monolith followed my relative position, geeked out at a Supplement I created being present, and questioned every decision I made filling out the document. Also, being mildly worried I didn't have an obvious R.O.B. looking over my work or telling me that my job was to entertain them, but once I'd accepted my new reality as fact, I wasn't going to half-ass it. I spent well over an hour (by my estimate, anyway) making sure my Supplement worked the way it should, and checking all the other options I had available, but once I knew everything I could learn…
Well. I couldn't choose anything else, could I?
Pokemon: Hoenn; City Life-50 (Fortree City); Actual Starter (Eevee; Shiny-50); Freerunning; Swarmed+100 (100)
Priority: Physical Fitness-100
-Day 1-
Falling asleep once I filled out everything and confirmed my choices felt a bit cliché… until the lucid 'dream' started.
About fifteen years compressed into roughly seven and a half hours, though mercifully the first five or so took long enough to 'focus into frame' that I barely remembered anything from them. Also, about half an hour's worth of time slowing down enough for me to make a few choices along the way, though nothing really big enough to have a major impact. All it really did was give me the time I needed for my new life, and it's most crucial details, to sink in:
In the world of Pokemon (or at least the somewhat-generic world of Pokemon Games I'd been dropped in), no human was ever not an owner of at least one Pokemon. People often had so much to gain from friendly monsters who could, say, power a house, grow food, fill a pool-hell, the number of uses around the house for Fighting- and Psychic-type Pokemon were absurd. I mean, most Normal-types were usually just house pets, while their larger brethren often served as cattle, but human Psychics had long since confirmed that Pokemon were basically animals unless you went out of your way to catch and train them to live like, well, like humans. Otherwise they were… not necessarily violent, but still barbaric and potentially dangerous. There's a reason the Player almost always gets stopped before they enter an area filled with Wild Pokemon, without one of their own.
On the other hand, if you had at least one Pokemon, then the responsibility typically fell to you. If you were entrusted with a Pokemon, not only were they usually strong and/or smart enough to protect you, they were also capable of growing stronger with no known limits as long as you kept training them. So if you had one and were given a task, failing to complete it was often hard to justify, unless there were unreasonable demands like taking a Bug/Grass through a meadow inhabited by Fire/Flying-types, or an attack by another trainer (typically highwaymen, or gangsters. Forcing someone to fight you actually was legal, with the understanding that the most you could each legally wager in a fight was ten percent of your money, but there were villainous Teams popping up every now and then to steal pre-trained Pokemon and cause problems for everyone else).
So basically, the Pokemon games but meant for an audience at least a few years older, and with all the acknowledgement of actual violence and crime that implies. The world was deceptively safe despite initially sounding terrifying, but if you had a caught Pokemon (as in, one registered to a given Pokeball), you were immediately caught in the most bizarre race known to humankind: the race to uplift not yourself, but your Pokemon into the most powerful being/s they could be. Not to say that there wasn't a police force, by no means was the country some Xianxia hellhole where simply having caught a Pokemon made you fair game to be robbed. Starting something in someone else's private domicile wasn't very legally-presentable (unless they accepted, like those rich partygoers on the S.S. Anne), and if you could beat someone in a fight, odds are their Pokemon weren't worth stealing in the first place. And with the Elite Four and the Gym Leaders acting as crisis volunteers, nobody got away with organised crime for very long… unless they were triple agents, like Giovanni.
Or they had difficult-to-reach hideouts, or they were reasonably subtle and avoided overt crimes, or they straight-up didn't actually do all that many bad things. The rise of technology had a lot to do with that last one. Get a chunk of Old Amber and clone it back into an Aerodactyl, then start breeding it to write your own 'exotic pet' checks and damn whichever Route you released them on, or set up a black market pawning off stolen goods before anyone knew they were robbed. But overt crimes? With Pokegear being able to report robberies on-the-spot (difficult to tell if a given person had one, and time taken to check invited more risk on highway robbers), and roadblocks being bad ideas now that cars were… not quite as prevalent as back home, since most of them were electrical and powered by Electric-types (or charge stations staffed by Electric-type Trainers), but common enough that escalating tensions by stopping one would only invite a more comprehensive response from the local authorities… overt crimes just weren't worth the trouble anymore.
What a strange world. Well, coming from mine, that's not saying much, is it? When you really think about it…
I'd like to make up some nonsense about waking up to a brand new world, but honestly? I was ten years younger (and thank the Benefactor I was barely past puberty), born to a life that I could totally see myself living (mistakes and all), and to parents who weren't my 'first' or 'real' progenitors but whom I still recognised as 'mother and father' regardless. I wasn't exceptionally rich, or possessed of world-breaking power. All I had to my name was a physically-fit body, three thousand Yen (or 'PokeDollars'), and a Shiny Eevee. A Shiny Eevee that had been 'donated' (read: dumped) by an Ace Trainer who wouldn't accept anything but the absolute best of genetics, and the number of people I'd seen reject it solely because it 'looked wrong' had sickened me into picking up the slack, but really, that's two things I never had and only one I couldn't have had. What mattered wasn't the fact that I was in a new setting based on fiction, it was what I chose to do next. In this case, double-checking my bag for a Pokegear, a filled-out Pokedex, an iconic red cap, clothes, toiletries, maybe two days worth of supplies, three Potions, and a pack of five Pokeballs (while I'd made it clear that I wasn't interested in more Pokemon for a long time, finding one injured on the road was always a possibility. And while I wasn't heartless enough to leave one, Pokecenters had paperwork if you brought in a Pokemon that wasn't already registered).
Then getting dressed, having breakfast with my new parents, and hugging them goodbye while promising to check back in every month and call at least once a week. Gotta say, having 'new' parents was already weird enough. Having parents with half the age gap I was used to… it wasn't necessarily bad, just awkward. I still instinctively recognised them as 'mom and dad', but good bloody lord this was going to take some time to get used to. Just being reminded how far away I was from my 'real' home… yeah, I needed to get out now.
Still, I wasn't starting on the wrong foot by any means. I'd scored a fancy-looking Eevee with great offensive stats right out the gate, not a bad way to start my Pokemon journey (which I was just now realising was basically a worldwide-cultural coming-of-age ceremony in this world. Not that I objected, I'd seen too many people back home being completely ignorant of the world around them, and this was relatively harmless even for ten-year-old children, if all the statistics I'd studied were at least roughly correct). But the thing is, this world wasn't just the Games, it was a mix of all Pokemon media. Multiple manga, at least two different Anime, however many novels and comics Gamefreak's published… the world was much bigger than just fighting your way to the top. You could get a decently-paying job in just about anything: breeding Pokemon to have certain Moves, Contests to show artistic merit, farming with a decent selection of Grass- and/or Water-Types… I had so many options in front of me, and no way to ask Evan what she wanted to try first.
Hell, I didn't even have a way to ask Evan why she preferred a masculine name after I'd found out that she was female and consistently rejected the name Eve. Probably would have been worth it to purchase Psionics when I had the chance, but that's the nature of the Life Experience Supplement. Work hard now, reap the benefits later.
And speaking of which, there appears to be a swarm of Zubat under the eaves of the house I'd just passed by, Evan pausing in her prancing as both groups noticed each other.
The thing about Fortree, is that most of the houses were built at tree level and had huge under-hangs. And while I loved both neighbouring Routes being full of near-constant rain and freshwater lakes to swim in, the relative dimness meant that Zubat were at least slightly active during the day. And the average Zubat, is two feet tall. Luckily, while Golbat and Crobat were bloodsuckers, Zubat were more traditional microbats who rarely bit people and mostly ate nectar and fruit. "Guess we're kicking off our adventure with a bang, Evan?"
Her nod and distinctly-excited expression as the Zubat started swooping out at us two-at-a-time was all I needed to see. "Tackle that one first!"
Five minutes of slapping Zubat out of the air while Evan saw them off with shoulder-charges later, I realised just how fast this was going to become old. I mean, I had to pick one of the Drawbacks no matter what, and not only were the more expensive ones exponentially worse, even the cheapest three boiled down to 'constantly attacked by the same swarm of Zubat', 'missing a leg below the knee and your prosthetic sucks', and 'can make noises but can't talk (unless you have Psionics)'. Not much choice there. Even the last one wasn't workable without already having Psionics, and I sure as hell wasn't going months on end at the earliest without being able to communicate with even my Starter. I can live with the Zubat swarm, thank you very much… though I am starting to wonder if being a Drop-In would've been so bad. No family and no 'fallback point', but none of this crap either…
Whatever, I'm not here to ask 'what-ifs', I'm here to get shit done. "Evan, any injuries?" Headshake. "Good, let's go. I want to ask the Gym guide how the challenge works for later, then we can head east to Route One-Twenty, have a look around while we train, maybe have a look at Lilycove if we get that far." I could try the Route 118 bridge to Mauville, but I'd rather check somewhere a little more local first. Of course, there was no Wild Pokemon Level Scaling in this world, so training anywhere was free game… in theory. Regardless, I needed to get my poncho out. I might like rain, but I also like not getting pneumonia less than an hour into my journey, and the rain never stopped on these Routes. Never really got a satisfactory answer why, local myths said something about 'suppressing the Scorching Slab', but while that tiny cave was home to Heatran (a Legendary who represented the molten core of the Earth itself) in Generation Six, I felt it more likely that there was a hidden population of Politoed or Pelipper with the Drizzle Ability. Something for another time…
By the next day, we'd fought through a mix of Oddish, Marill, Poochyena and Zigzagoon, and after two half-hour breaks, we'd reached Lilycove. Much like Fortree, it was a proper City and not just a collection of four or five houses like in the Games. Not that I'd taken much notice, opting to stop off at the PokeCenter and relax briefly before I went out to tour the city with Evan on my head. And isn't that a strange sensation, for me especially.
In my 'old' life, I'd suffered Brittle Asthma since I was born, so being not just fit but able to breathe deeply so casually was already quite the out-of-body experience. In contrast, the fights had been relatively mundane, my 'muscle memory' from my fifteen local years not finding anything absurd about a fox fighting a walking weed. But seeing how long and wide the Lilycove Department Store was compared to the Fortree's generic two-story PokeMart never ceased to amaze me. In the here and now, it also bewildered me how different the communal buildings were, compared to the tiny ones in the Games. Don't get me wrong, I'd seen enough episodes to know that PokeCenters, shortened to PMC's, were designed as crosses between Veterinary Clinics and Inns, hosting free Bed, Breakfast and Dinner as long as you got in before the shutters rolled down around ten o'clock. Inside, you had the lobby where you signed in, an all-purpose waiting area to meet and greet other trainers, a cafeteria, basic bunk bed lodgings, a row of phone booths and PC's opposite each other, hell, they even served as Post Offices. And of course, there was a sparring field sectioned off outside that locals and travellers could duel in. Of course there was.
Just another distraction to help me avoid the rapidly-growing, uncomfortable idea that for the first time in my life, I was almost completely free.
I had minimal obligations, a safety net, and no real expectations or guidance. Sure, I knew about the Gyms even before I stopped in at Fortree's to ask about any gimmicks it might have. I really couldn't have not known about them and their badge system, since most trainers considered them mandatory milestones on the road to becoming a 'proper' trainer. It was pretty much all that anyone at my schools had talked about (as if a Badge meant anything by itself, each one is supposed to be a symbol of the challenges you had to overcome to obtain it, not just the one fight you had with the Gym Leader to prove you were arbitrarily worthy of being given one), but it wasn't even a goal I was being encouraged to achieve. My real goal was to survive for a decade, to prove I was worthy of the Choice Points I'd forgone at the beginning of the Jump. That was, technically, all I had to do.
Technically, because I still didn't know if I had an active Benefactor, or if I'd just been randomly shoved into the position of Jumper by some cosmic accident. And as a result, all I could do was assume I did have one and try and guess what 'entertainment' counted as for them. Probably me getting swarmed by more Zubat any moment, but at least I would be getting some-no, a lot of supernatural abilities over the next ten years, so living an exciting life was hardly the most difficult or contentious thing I could do. …maybe once I'd seen the world, I could settle down and open a sanctuary for training injured wild Pokemon to the point of self-reliance? Become 'The Great Releaser' but in a good context…?
The rest of the evening was mostly spent just running around and seeing the sights… again I suppose, since I'd been here plenty of times growing up, but the Department Store and the local Contest Hall were much bigger and more interesting than the Games showed off. Then I returned to the PMC, shoved my belongings in a locker, picked out a bottom bunk, curled up on my side with Evan between me and the wall, and spent some more time thinking.
Despite what most might think of in my position, I wasn't thinking about all the Pokemon I wanted to catch. I could only take Evan and five others out of the Jump when I left, and while I'm sure I'd release any excess Pokemon rather than risk dying in a future Jump and trapping them in a PC (thankfully, only for a few weeks until someone realised I'd disappeared off the face of the world. Then the authorities would release any Pokemon I hadn't already taken with me under the grounds that I clearly didn't want them anymore, so better they either get donated for up-and-coming trainers or get sent back to the wild, right?), but making that choice wouldn't be all that fun. Besides, there are plenty of other Pokemon Jumps, I was probably going to end up swarmed with Starters at one point or another. And once I took them into the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Jump, not only would they gain guaranteed human-equivalent intelligence, they'd also gain human forms once the Jump concluded.
That meant treating them as equals, which meant housing and actual cooperation rather than using them as pit-fighters, but it also meant… for starters (no pun intended), I would be possessed of vast and unquantifiable power by then, but there would still be an element of active responsibility, seeing as I would be taking care of multiple 'people' who had just been introduced to human society with minimal context or previous experience. And don't get me wrong, that's fine, but I'm not looking forward to doing this with one Pokemon, let alone ten plus. Also, kinda awkward to have a friendly relationship when the previous one the two of you had was, at best, king and knight, or master and serf (not slaves, they could always randomly flee their trainers and quite a few had been crafty enough to do just that, but being paid for their work in room and board with questionable intelligence is 'ugh').
Just… something I'd always have to keep in mind, I guess.
-Day 101-
My first hundred days was mostly menial stuff: training Evan (we had passed Baby-Doll Eyes, presumably not too far from Swift now), exploring the wilderness, fighting (and taking prize money from) a decent number of travellers who always underestimated the solo-Eevee "because it's unev-oh wait, I just lost. Well, shit". Of course, I still lost on two occasions. Once because a smartass pulled out a Sableye (and while Double Kick surprised it, it's Ghost/Dark-typing made it immune to all of my attacking moves and I had neither Bite nor Mud Slap, or any TM Moves yet) and forced me to forfeit (though at least I didn't get asked for any money), and once because he had a random fucking Skarmory! Like "what the fuck-I told you I had a single Eevee, why the fuck would you do this to a literal child", but I can't say I wasn't expecting the ball to drop sooner or later. At least the chick with the mostly-immune Sableye treated it as a joke, but forcing me to put Evan on the spot as to whether or not she was willing to fight a Skarmory and still pay him out when she inevitably lost was infuriating more than discouraging (god, I'm so close to just, buying a Thunderstone already and being done with it).
Oh, and being swarmed by an unending cloud of Zubats, but given that I'd gone into it accepting that, it actually wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Sure, I had to be cautious unless I'd run into them within the last twenty-four hours or so, and my current record wasn't even three days without being swooped by the exact same colony of Zubat while out and about (typically at a time when Zubat wouldn't even be active, but sometimes later at night, seemingly just to throw me off), but I hadn't come even close to a loss to them yet.
Still, my record was pretty decent. I'd beaten two of Roxanne's Gym Trainers (who are basically apprentices here) one and two days ago respectively, and I had been planning on fighting her today for the Stone Badge, until I realised that she had three Trainers in the Gym like in Pokemon Emerald. I mean, I wasn't even sure I wanted to fight her yet. I knew she had a Nosepass, and I was confident Evan could cheese out a win through Double Kick, but she also had at least one Geodude just like all her underlings, so…
Eh, something to inquire about when we actually approached her for the battle tomorrow. For now, a hundred days had passed and my Choice Point Counter (kept in a convenient holographic pop-up display that apparently only I could see) had ticked up to One Hundred last night, and I was finally ready for a taste of superpowers. In this case, the Physical Fitness100 Perk. So I willed the Interface 'open', 'flipped through' to the right page, and a few seconds after I'd made my decision and the changes had been wrought on me…
You know exactly how strong Captain America is? Me neither. You know what 'Not Captain America strong, but close' is? I did now. In a moment of physical strangeness, I'd gone from 'reasonably-fit teenager' to 'built like a brick shithouse'. Well, more of a classical Adonis build, like an Olympic athlete, but I could tell from Evan's eyes bugging out that the change must have been very visually apparent. It wasn't just raw strength, either: the exact wording of the perk was '…healthy and strong', and the comparison to Captain America seemed to have carried over to my organs and senses too: I could feel my heart thumping away in my chest, my breathing naturally steadying, my sight picking out objects with greater clarity at farther distances than ever before, my ears picking up the wind rustling through Route One-Sixteen's shrubbery… I could even smell flashes of food cooking in the relatively-distant Rustboro City, and find the weak points in the scaly bark on this fallen tree- …and speaking of which, I wonder…
I promptly stretched for half a minute, bent down to grip the fallen tree's exposed root base, and proceeded to deadlift what had to be at least two hundred kilograms of weight with only slight difficulty. I recall from his appearance on Death Battle that the good Captain can lift eleven hundred pounds (five hundred and fifty kilograms), run a mile in seventy-three seconds (which came out to about eighty kilometres an hour), and jump twenty-to-thirty feet into the air. Even if I was only 'close' to that, I'd still just taken a huge leap in power… which is why I promptly came up with the idea of spinning the log by its trunk above my head at a decent speed, laughing like a loon the whole time, then tossing it with all my might at the nearest tree (which I'd previously established was not home to any Wild Pokemon) and promptly felled it in the same blow that broke the rotted log in half.
Then the exertion of what I'd done actually caught up with me, and I took the opportunity to sprawl on the ground, barely feeling the impact as I exulted in my newfound power and ability to breathe deeper than ever. Evan, being a sorta-fox, took the opportunity to pounce on my downed form and sniff all over me, clearly having trouble believing that-well, to her it probably looked like I'd just Evolved like a Pokemon would. I chose to interrupt her study of my suddenly-different body with a boop to the snout. "Hey, I'm still me, girl. Just a bit different." The incredulity written all over her face made me chuckle, though. "Yes, just 'a bit'. All you can see from the outside is that I gained some muscle mass-and I think my lower jaw shifted a little? Makes sense, I always had an overbite, that's probably not a sign of ideal genetic health. The important changes are all on the inside, and trust me, they're a lot more obvious to me than being so much stronger all of a sudden." I took the opportunity to scoop her up and nose-nuzzle her, getting a nip from the little minx in return. "You're lucky I can barely feel that now, you little shit." I huffed fondly, to which she gave me an insufferable 'whuff' and wag of the tail.
Then I tried asking her something a little more serious. "Evan. We've still got one more trainer to go before Roxanne. Are you still up to challenging her?" Pause, then solemn nod. "Is that a nod for 'yes, I'm very confident and want to do this of my own accord', or is that actually a shake for 'I don't know, I'm just doing what you tell me to'?" The capital-L look she gave me spoke volumes. "Yes, I know you were fine on it two days ago, and no, I'm not having cold feet myself all of a sudden. I just can't really communicate with you yet, so I'm trying to make sure I'm not pressuring you too hard, okay?" The very-determined nod she responded with sealed the deal. "Good. If you're up for it, then I'm ready too. Just have to beat that last trainer first," Scrunched-up muzzle. "and yes, we have to beat them all first. You need experience fighting Rock-types and her Nosepass is going to be a lot tougher, especially if it comes with another Geodude." Eye roll. "Now, I need a shower after that, let me get my bag… and you know what? I want to try running. How about we have a little race, first to get back to the Center wins?" Surprise. "Nothing too serious, I just want to see what I can do now. Alright?" Determined nod. "Alright, on three. One, two…"
Despite my expectations, I won. Didn't do my shoes all that much good, but while her burst speed was close to mine, my relative leap in raw power included my stamina (after all, humans evolved to be endurance runners, at least back home, and they weren't all that much different here) so our little race got cut off only a few minutes in as the city boundaries came into view much quicker than expected and Evan, despite her adorable bewilderment, was clearly pushing herself too hard if she still wanted to fight the last of Roxanne's Gym Trainers later today (apparently, she limited her opening times to the afternoon partly because she was doing a long-distance studying course under the sponsorship of Steven Stone, the current Hoenn Champion from Pokemon Emerald, and partly because she had a load of bureaucratic matters related to being a Gym Leader to keep track of. Makes sense, the Gym Leaders are basically roadblocks for prospective Ever Grande Conference entrants, of course they're going to have official oversight. Wasn't there even an inspector with a Latias in the anime just, flying around on a Legendary to keep the Kanto Gyms monitored for effectiveness and minimum opening hours?), so I called it off and brought us both to a gradual halt.
"Well, that was fun and all, but maybe a little bit too much, uh?" The belligerent pout was honestly even cuter than the astonishment from before. "Hey, it's fine, Evan. You'll still outpace me again one day, I won't get any faster than I am now. Maybe one day you'll want to Evolve into something fast? Jolteon's the quickest, then Espeon… Well, we can leave that for another time. I need a shower, and you can take a quick rest while I'm cleaning myself up, 'kay?" Perk up. "Thought so."
I couldn't rightly say I knew what I was getting myself into, but I now had solid proof that I could gain noticeable superhuman abilities as long as I at least lived a rich, full life. And once I had some of the crazier stuff, whelp, I didn't think it would be all that difficult to entertain whoever was watching over me (if anyone) after that. I felt like…
Like I'd reached a point of closure. I sure as hell wasn't satisfied with the tiny taste of power I'd earned so far, but if something happened to me any day now, at least I could die knowing that for a few brief days, I was someone of at least slight importance in the grand cosmic scheme of things. And boy, did that make life that little bit cheerier. Of course, so did Evan bounding on top of a fence off to my right, then using her new height to leap onto my bag and clamber up to my hair, where she yawned and slumped her legs down either side of my face like the tuckered-out little fox-thing I'd already known she would be, and I privately decided not to wake her even if that meant an extra day of waiting. Not the most glamorous of journeys so far, but in my old life, I'd have greeted every new day with ambivalence.
Now, I looked forward to every new chance to move forward, and I already couldn't wait for tomorrow.