Chapter 6: The big city
Darla awoke from her small nook under the tree. It was daytime, but it seemed different from yesterday, it wasn't bright and sunny. Instead the sky was as grey as the dream she had at the barn. Darla also felt drops of water fall on her face.
She needed to know where the lights she saw last night were coming from. She peeked out from over a tree root. In the distance she saw was nothing like she's ever seen before now. Instead of trees or fields on the ground, there were plenty of grey slabs of rock, all of them seemed to be cubed shaped, but they were very big. Each of these grey complexes also had hundreds, and on the bigger ones, thousands, of shiny panels on each of them. All of them in perfect rows and columns all along the sides of the structures. Whatever they were, the didn't seem to be made by pokemon. They looked similar to the barn she was born, only much bigger. "People must live there" Darla thought to herself, maybe she could live there and be a human as well. So she ran of towards the city.
The city Darla had decided to go was a city called Mauville. It was a crossroad city, meaning that people came from all around to either get to the city or simply pass through. As she was heading towards Mauville, she noticed the landscape changing. The trees were slowly being replaced by tall buildings, and the ground beneath her feet was changing from soft grass, to hard ground, which finally gave way to solid concrete. The air in the city wasn't as clean as the air outside of it. The rain was also getting harder, the tiny drops were replace by big fat wet ones. In some places, puddles formed. Darla saw some water pokemon playing in these puddles. Darla tried her best to avoid them though, she didn't want to get more wet then she already was. When she got into the city, Darla was amazed at the size of the buildings, they were much bigger then the trees she had seen yesterday they towered over her. They were also not as alive as the trees were. The torchic felt quite small and insignificant compared to the skyscrapers.
Darla was getting more wet by the rain. She needed to find a place to keep dry. There were so many things that she's never seen in her three days of life. There were huge metal box shaped things that rolled on four wheels through the streets. Darla avoided them because they didn't seem too friendly, plus they seemed to make big splashes when they went through puddles in the street. There were also people, people seemed to come in all shapes, sizes and colours. Unlike pokemon, who mostly looked just like another of their own kind, no to people looked the same. However no one seemed to notice the young torchic. Darla had a hard time trying to avoid being stepped by someone's shoe. She needed to find a place to rest for a bit
She ran into a dark alley way, in there she found a empty cardboard box which would make a great shelter from the rain. Darla huddled up inside the box and sat down. She was beginning to regret coming to the city. Would she be able to make it in Mauville? She may be a tiny torchic in a big city, but she vowed she would make a name for herself. She also vowed that she would find someone to love and take care of her, she didn't like living alone by herself. The torchic needed to know where to start to reach her goal.
Darla noticed a newspaper just outside the box. It was a copy of "The Mauville Gazette", it little wet from the rain, but it was still in good condition. She was intrigued by it, she's never seen the markings on the page before, but she could understand what it meant perfectly. Not only can she talk human, but she can read human as well.
Darla skimmed through each page of the newspaper, turning each page with her foot. Finding out what humans did and what they thought was important. Most of the stuff she found uninteresting. Though some things did spark her interest, such as stories about pokemon. She read and learned a great deal from the newspaper. What interested her the most was the job listing page, she figured that humans had jobs to do in their society. Why they did their jobs was mysterious to her however, but if she wanted to make a name for herself, she had to start somewhere. She saw an add for a job:
Wanted: someone who is dependable, honest and a hard worker
Pay: $7 an hour
Where: Bun-Bun Bakery
She didn't know what a bakery was, or what "$7 and hour" meant, but she thought she was dependable, honest and a hard worker. Darla decided then and there that she would get a job at the bakery. She would have to wait for the rain to let up first. As she waited, she had started to think about what sort of family she would like to be in. She slowly drifted of to sleep once more, listening to the patter of the rain as it fell on the box.