Often times, nothing is as easy as it should be.
I say this because as it would turn out, Kira's bike was not charged.
"Are you actually serious right now?" she yelled. The bike was assumedly as she had left it, leaning against a sturdy fruit tree. However, a very hungry group of Magnemite had latched onto the bike and sucked it dry. They were still feasting on its power reserves when we arrived. Kira threw her helmet at the group and spooked them off, sending them diving into the safety of the forest, chattering angrily. She lobbed a few curses at them, then at the bike, then at no one in particular for a considerable amount of time. She probably could've kept going for a while longer, but stopped after I loudly cleared my throat. I suppose that the quick reminder of my presence tethered her back to reality and forced her to start acting more professional again.
"How bad is it? Maybe the Magnemite weren't there for very long," I suggested, but the words felt hollow even before they left my mouth. Any loss of energy out here could be critical. Kira looked at me, partly in disbelief of the situation, partly in disbelief of my naivety, and walked over to the bike. She keyed the ignition (she had left her keys with the bike while she chased me, likely because she didn't expect to be gone for very long) and thumped on the fuel gauge. "Well?" I asked after a short pause, "how much fuel is left?" She locked the accelerator in place and let go, much to my surprise. The bike travelled roughly 7 feet before falling over and shutting down completely. The battery had died right then and there.
"We're walking," she said matter-of-factly. She didn't even bother to pick up her helmet this time. Instead, she bent down to retrieve her key. After doing such, she seemed to unlatch the trunk on her bike(?) Honestly, I didn't really see much after she went behind her fallen ride. I just stood patiently by the woods we had just left.
She stood back up, holding onto the trunk by a strap (it would now be more apt to refer to it as a bag, seeing as it was made mostly of a canvas-like substance), and tossed it at me. I tried my best to catch it, but the damn thing weighed more than I expected, so I about got crushed underneath it. "There's enough gear to last in this to last me an entire week," she told me, ignoring my plight. "However, since there's two of us, it'll only last us half of that. There's only enough shelter for one of us, as well, so unless you want to snuggle," she continued, smirking coyly, "our best bet is to find a Pokémon Center out here somewhere, even if it's just an abandoned one." By this point, I had regained my footing and shouldered the bag, with difficulty. "See?" she said in a sort of mock-parental tone, "That wasn't so hard." She patted my shoulder as she passed by, again, as an indication to follow her.
And so I did.
About an hour later, I threw in the towel. "I need a break," I proclaimed, half collapsing onto the ground near a medium-sized boulder. "Your bag is too heavy." Kira smoothly crossed in front of me and sat down on the boulder. Damn. I was going to sit there.
"Giving up already? But I thought you were oh-so strong," she taunted as I dropped the bag on the ground. Evidently, the boulder wasn't as comfortable as she anticipated. She shifted her weight a bit to find a better spot.
"Okay, for starters," I objected, "I never volunteered for mule-duty. Carrying 50 pounds of gear on your back is even harder than one would normally think. Second, I don't see you doing any of the heavy lifting either, so you're not one to talk!"
"Alright, alright, sorry," she said, rising her hands in mock surrender. "I didn't realize you were so touchy." Ignoring my objections, she continued. "Anyway, I couldn't carry that if I wanted to. You about shattered my knee last night, so I'm sorry to not carry more than my own weight."
"Ah, now that's some Tauros shit." I argued. "I might not have been in complete control of my faculties after wandering around a dark forest for hours straight, but even I could tell that I barely even grazed your leg. You're fine."
"As a matter of fact," she replied, "I'm not fine. It was wet out last night. I wiped out on my bike during a hard turn back in Cerulean. You happened to kick that exact spot, which already hurt quite a bit, and my leg just…gave out, I suppose." She looked away from me, gazing into the middle distance between her and the line of trees in front of her. Her avoidant gaze made me think she was lying at first, but then I noticed that she had tied a band of thick fabric around her upper calf on her left leg. Ouch.
We were silent for a while, merely resting in the morning sun. It was already a fair bit warm, but as a desert native that part didn't affect me too much. It would definitely get hotter later, and Kira was already beginning to feel the heat. Perhaps wearing almost all black wasn't the smartest of ideas, though I suppose the coloration would absorb most of the heat. As she continued gazing blankly into the forest, it dawned on me that I hadn't yet asked her if she even knew where we were going. As such, I asked her, "Hey, are you sure you know where we're going?" She nodded, though didn't really elaborate. More uncomfortable silence. "So…how do you know where we're going?" I probed again. This time, Kira seemed to perk up a bit.
"I have a map on this here device," she explained, showing off a contraption on her wrist. "Know what it is?" she asked. I leaned in slightly to get a closer look. I hadn't seen this tech before, at least not in person. However, it did seem familiar. I shook my head. For once, she didn't seem disappointed in me for not knowing. "This is an old piece of technology called a 'Pokétch,' and it comes equipped with a GPS, among other systems."
"Yeah, it looks really impressive. Fresh out of Twenty Aught Six," I teased. Internally, I facepalmed. I should have known this. After all, Pokétches were practically the only portable devices left on the market, save for a few surviving stragglers of mobile phones. They weren't common out in Orre, but they sure as hell weren't nonexistant. Kira couldn't throw a kick at me from where she sat, so she shot me a dirty look instead. After a moment, I said, "But please, continue."
"Hmph," she grunted. "Anyway, Nova managed to secure a stake in the Pokétch company shortly after the Software Wars. Their ideology of keeping their tech Rotom-free seemed antiquated before then, but it proved to be a worthwhile investment after the company became the leader of post-war technology."
Though most people know this by now, there are still quite a few who don't, so I'll explain a bit. The Software Wars were started after the public had become almost entirely dependent on Rotom-based technology, such as Rotom-phones, Rotom-fans, Rotom-drones, Rotom-lawnmowers…the list continued on and on. If it ran on electricity, it had a Rotom to power it. They were mass-bred to keep up with demand, and often spent their entire lives confined to one single device. So-called "smart devices" were only smart because they ran on brainpower. It was, frankly, slave labor. It got so bad that real computers began to be phased out entirely. One of the only systems to be left entirely untouched was the Pokémon PC system, but only because Rotoms didn't possess any storage capabilities.
Now, Rotoms are intelligent creatures, like most Pokémon. They originally were fine with possessing appliances. After all, it provided them new modes of attack during battles as well as electricity to feed off of. In the years directly preceding the wars, these advantages were stripped away. As such, beginning in 2051, the Rotoms began to revolt in what was known as the Appliance Uprising. This event only lasted about an hour, but the death count numbered in the tens of thousands worldwide. It didn't stop there, though. The Rotoms seized the advantage and began to gain access to formerly off-limits equipment, such as military drones and missile defense systems. The next 7 years was humanity's attempt at staying at the top of the food chain. Deadly skirmishes were commonplace, global infrastructure was almost nonexistent, and former landmarks and tourist attractions became some of humanity's last strongholds for survival. Well, maybe I'm being a little overdramatic, but locations such as the Lumiose Tower in Kalos and the Space Center at Mossdeep in Hoenn did become temporary military bases.
To end the war for good, a team of scientists in Alola's Aether Paradise created a virus that would legitimately kill any Rotom still attached to a device and released it worldwide. This would have been all well and good, but it would turn out that the Rotoms had devised their own plan to eliminate humanity once and for all. They gained access to every missile silo in the world, nuclear and otherwise, and planned to detonate them right then and there. This ended up being referred to as the Final Gambit after the war, named for the Pokémon move of the same name. Luckily, the virus was released before too much damage could be done, and all of the opposing Rotoms were eliminated in one fell swoop. Except for in one region. Take a wild guess as to which barren region was further blown to pieces by 43 simultaneous detonations.
…
Did you guess Orre? Very good…for you, at least. There's a reason no one trusts technology out there anymore. We were exceedingly lucky that none of the warheads were nuclear, but most of our limited infrastructure was completely destroyed. Other regions offered financial aid, but when the time came, they were unable to lend even a single Pokén. I don't completely hold it against them, though. They were all affected by the war just as bad as Orre was. They just had the luxury of not being bombed to shit.
Kira seemed to realize that I had had a particularly bad experience with the war. "Wait…you're from Orre, right?" I nodded. Her overall demeanor softened a bit. "Wow. I'm sorry for what you've been through. No one in Orre deserved to be hit by the Final Gambit." I expected her to follow up with something akin to "not even a (insert insult here) like you," but she said nothing else. Sincerity? The agent really did have a heart after all.
"It's fine," I said. I didn't want to regale her with any sob stories, after all. That's never what I wanted. What I did want was more of an explanation about her Pokétch. "What other systems do you have on that thing?" I asked.
"Well," she said, returning to a more businesslike demeanor, "due to our heavy stake in the company, Nova gets access to many things no longer available to the public, such as a long-distance communicator, a tracker, the aforementioned GPS, a Pokémon health tracker-"
"Oh yeah!" I interrupted. "What Pokémon do you have?" I was starting to feel like an overeager toddler, but I did really want to know this. I had wanted to know for a little while now but, once again, never thought to ask until now.
Kira was visibly annoyed, as usual. But, to her credit, she indulged my curiosity. "I have only one Pokémon as my partner. Had him since I was a kid."
"You're still a kid."
"Shut up," she bit back at me, though not out of anger. "I've had him since I was young. How about that? Anyway, I could tell you what it is, but being from Orre I don't know if you'd recognize the name." She fumbled for a moment, grabbing the lone Pokéball on her belt. She held it up for me to see, the shiny red and dull white glinting in the sun. Then she chucked it into the woods.
The ball popped open with its signature woosh, flying back towards Kira with the recoil, and out popped a canid Pokémon with black and white fur, big ears, and reddish eyes. I recognized it from a book I read long ago, but Kira was right in me not remembering the name. The Pokémon sniffed around on the ground for a few seconds and then looked up, locking eyes with me. It growled, a low, threatening sound, and charged me. I yelped and got up to run. Kira ran between us, blocking the dog's progress.
"Hey, down boy! DOWN!" she yelled at it. After a bit of whining, the Pokémon calmed down and sat next to Kira's boulder, shooting daggers at me with its eyes. Kira started laughing, hard. "Oh, he does not like you!"
"Very funny," I grunted, trying to steady my heartrate as Kira braced herself against the boulder, though in her case it was to prevent her from passing out from laughter.
"No, it kind of is," she wheezed at me. She took a deep breath to calm down. "Usually, I have to convince him to attack targehehets," she said, breaking down into laughter again. I had to wait for her to stop, which took an unreasonable amount of time. I can understand a good case of the giggles, even if the source of the laughter isn't even that funny (which it wasn't, even without my bias), but this was just sad.
"Which Pokémon is this, anyway?" I asked, partly to retrain her focus. She took another few seconds to sober up while the Pokémon in question began to growl softly at me.
"This is my one and only partner, Mightyena," she said. The Mightyena barked at her, recognizing his name. "He's been by best friend for years, ever since he was just a wild Poochyena I met in the woods. It turns out that he knew Thunder Fang, which came in handy during our first encounter. He saved me from a group of Spearow, and we've been inseparable ever since. That makes his reaction to you even stranger. He's never been very aggressive towards people. Really, he's unnaturally friendly."
Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. "You wouldn't have happened to have kicked his ball, would you?" she asked. Oops. It seems that my frantic kicking pissed off more than just one creature. In my defense, though, I had no idea if Pokémon could still detect outside forces from within their ball, nor did I know at the time that I was kicking a Pokéball. I nodded my head sheepishly. "Yep," she affirmed, "that'll do it. He may have also figured out that you tried to hurt me…" Mightyena growled at me again, angrily. "…and sees you as a considerable threat. You know, I've always admired his loyalty. He's a great partner."
"That's a touching story," I said, actually meaning it a bit, "but your Pokémon becoming a being of pure hate every time he sees me might become a bit of an obstacle in our journey. How can I, uh, regain his trust to ensure this doesn't happen again?"
Kira pondered this for a while. "I've known Mightyena for most of his life, but I've never had to deal with this situation before. Maybe just…apologize?"
"Alright," I said cautiously. I slowly walked over to Mightyena, listening to his growling grow louder as I grew closer. "Mightyena, I deeply apologize from the bottom of my heart for injuring both you and your wonderful trainer. I hope that we can work together in the future to overcome this-" Mightyena leapt up at me, barking angrily. I collapsed onto my back, scrambling away from him in a panic.
"Wow," Kira said, shaking her head. "I don't blame him for reacting like that. I didn't need his superior nose to tell that you were completely full of shit."
"Gee, thanks," I said, picking myself up in shame. "I'm just glad that he didn't manage to bite me. They say the pain of it never goes away."
"That's Houndoom fire, dumbass," she said. She threw her hands up. "Fine, I'll go see if I can reason with him. Your people skills are so bad you managed to insult a Pokémon's intelligence." She walked over to Mightyena and talked to him in a soothing tone. I couldn't really make out any of the words, mainly because I didn't want to get any closer to them. I tidied up Kira's gear while I waited. Eventually, Kira stood up and faced me. "I've tried my best with him, but I won't truly know how he feels until you get closer. Try to pet him or something."
"No thanks," I said. "I prefer my hands on the ends of my arms."
"Well," she said mischievously, "it's that or I can sic him on you, and we can see how that statement applies to your feet."
"Okay, I'll go do it," I said, "but if he mauls me, I'm going to bleed all over you and you'll be traumatized for life." I walked over to Mightyena, more slowly than before. He still growled at me, but less threateningly this time. I stretched out my hand for him to sniff. He sniffed at it for what felt like hours, then barked loudly and began licking it. How is it that a tongue can feel both rougher than sandpaper and sloppier than a bowl of cold soup at the same time?
Kira began clapping, though whether it was sarcastic or not I couldn't tell. "He finally likes you! That's very sweet. Now, I'm sorry to break up this little party, but we need to get going if we want to hit any shelter by nightfall." She retrieved Mightyena and put his Pokéball back on her belt. She fiddled around on her Pokétch while I went through the process of strapping her heavy bag onto my back. "It seems that there's an abandoned Woodland Shrine nearby," she proclaimed at last. "More of a small temple, really. We can hole up there for the night."
"For the night? But it's barely even noon," I said, squinting up at the sun. What I wouldn't give for a watch right about now.
"Well, when I say 'nearby,' I really mean about 50 kilometers to the southeast," Kira said. I groaned, already feeling sore from the trek I had yet to make. "Look at it this way," she said. "This trek will prove great practice for the rest of your Trainer's Journey." She patted me on the shoulder once more and wandered back into the trees. She made it about 10 feet before stopping and turning around. "That's northeast," she said, passing me by as she walked in the opposite direction. I just shook my head.
When we finally reached the shrine, I practically had to crawl up the front steps. Luckily, the main floor wasn't too high off the ground. I collapsed onto the moldy wooden floor and Kira followed soon after. She looked just as tired as I was. I guess her leg really did hurt after all. That and our combined lack of sleep took a severe toll on us after the sun set, but in the end we both made it without any real trouble.
My brain was on complete autopilot at this point. I didn't even realize this fact until I had already unpacked the sleeping bag from Kira's pack and laid it out. "Your bed," I declared, trying to play off my tiredness as me being smooth, or a related word. Don't blame me for not having quite an extensive vocabulary as I'm on the verge of passing out. Kira wordlessly moved over and laid on top of it, falling asleep almost instantly. I decided that once morning came and we were both awake, we would discuss the sharing of the bag. For now, however, I figured she deserved it. After all, it's not every day that you end up having your ribs half caved in. I was just glad that it wasn't me. I found a soft patch of damp leaves that had blown in last night and laid down on that. As I fell asleep, my head was full of thoughts about the day, and what we may encounter tomorrow.
Such is the life of a Trainer.
