Sunday, November 12th, 2017
Suddenly paranoid that I'd forgotten something, I looked up from my book to recheck the lab but once again I didn't spot anything that I'd missed. I resumed reading with a sigh, knowing full well that I would likely repeat the exact same thing in a few minutes. I always hated the feeling of finality and lack of stability that came with moving and this time was no different.
My discomfort was only enhanced when I considered that Cait would be the one picking me up for the move. I'd received a text from her the previous night asking if getting picked up at ten sounded good, to which I had agreed. At ten after, there still hadn't been any signs of her, but I didn't really mind. It had snowed again a few days ago and while the roads should be fully cleared by now, it wasn't a certain thing in this part of the state. Even if she was simply running late, I had no complaints since the delay meant that I got to postpone the car ride back a little bit longer.
It was almost ten-thirty by the time there was a loud knock on the lab's front door, making me jump slightly at the noise. I dropped my book into my backpack and zipped it before scrambling to my feet to open the door. To my complete surprise, I discovered that it was John standing on the other side.
Before I could say anything, John grinned and craned his neck to look behind him at the car waiting in front of the lab. "Told you this was the place!" Cait was sitting in the driver's seat of the car and gave me a weak wave, which I returned with equal enthusiasm. Satisfied, John turned back around to face me and asked, "Hey, how's it going man? You need any help with your stuff?"
I returned John's infectious smile, "Doing well. And nope, I got everything in here." As I spoke, I shrugged my shoulders, jostling my backpack.
"Did something happen to your camping stuff?" John asked with concern as his smile faded slightly.
"Nope, it's in there too."
John took a closer look at my backpack and then laughed, "Wait, it's a Devon Cram-Pack. Was it out of power before? You could have charged it back at my parent's place."
I didn't want to say that I hadn't known at the time that it was an extra-dimensional bag, so I just shrugged for an answer. Instead of letting the conversation dwell there, I grabbed the hatcher off of the table next to the door and amended, "Well, not everything is in my backpack."
John's eyes went wide at the sight of the egg, "Woah, where did you get that?"
"I'll tell you on the way," I said as I shepherded him back outside. After verifying that the door to the lab was locked, I closed the door and heavily exhaled when I heard it click shut. While I'd been taking care of that, John walked back to Cait's car and sat in the passenger seat. For once I was glad to sit in the back of the car and took the seat behind Cait.
"Hi," Cait quietly said when I opened the car door and I responded likewise as I slid onto the seat, placing my backpack and the hatcher on the seat next to me. Once I'd gotten myself buckled, I positioned the hatcher on my lap, not wanting to risk the egg getting jostled during the ride. As I finished situating myself, Cait asked, "Everyone good to go?"
After John and I both confirmed that we were, Cait started the car back up and started heading for the road that would take us south out of town. "So, uh, how are you guys doing?" I asked as we turned onto the main road.
"Nevermind that," John quickly replied and turned around in his seat to look at me, "What's up with the egg?"
"Al gave it to me yesterday. I guess it was for doing a good job," I answered with another shrug.
"That's who you were helping with research?" Cait slowly asked, "Prof said that's what you were doing, but didn't give any details."
"Yeah. But before you ask, I don't actually know what's inside."
John stared thoughtfully at the egg for a few seconds before admitting, "Huh, I'm not sure either. I can't think of a Pokemon that looks like that."
Cait spoke up and her voice had a touch of the intensity she'd had when I'd first met her. "What does it look like? I didn't get a good look at it and can't look now."
"It's blue and pink," John said helpfully.
"I could see that," Cait said, "I mean patterns, size, and the hatcher type."
"The blue and pink blobs kinda look like clouds and it's," I paused so I could take a moment to estimate the egg's size and see if I could find a label on the hatcher itself. Once I'd found what I guessed was the model number, I continued, "A bit less than a foot tall and maybe half that across. And the hatcher has F7 on the side."
The inside of the car was momentarily quiet while Cait considered that information, then she slowly spoke back up, "I can't think of what could be either. I don't even recognize that hatcher model. The F-series is normally for fairies, psychics, and ghosts, but that's as much as I know." She fell silent for a moment and sounded a bit frustrated when she added, "One of you two should look it up on your Poryphone."
Before John could do so, I interjected, "Al said it was supposed to be a surprise so I'd like to leave it that way. I don't mind guesses, but I don't want to just look it up."
John had been reaching for his pocket but stopped, "That's fair. I guess we can just wait then."
"It'll be a bit still. He also said that it would take a while before it hatches."
"Ah well," John said with a shrug before switching topics. "So, what was your job like?"
"We checked the populations of the nearby Pokemon and the health of the lakes, stuff like that." I paused as I realized that my statement wasn't entirely accurate, "Well, I mostly helped with data collection. Most of the actual analysis will happen over the next few months."
"Isn't that ranger work?" John asked.
Given that my only knowledge about Pokemon rangers in this world was limited to the fact that John's sister wanted to be one, I had no idea if that was correct or not. Thankfully, Cait ended up answering for me, "Not really. Rangers primarily deal with protecting the environment and people from dangerous wild Pokemon. Or protecting Pokemon from people sometimes," she added as an afterthought.
"Shouldn't you know that?" I asked John pointedly, "Didn't Erin say she wanted to be a ranger?"
I couldn't see, but I guessed that Cait gave John a sidelong look because he explained, "My sister. And honestly, I never really paid much attention when she talked about it."
I gave him an incredulous look, "You just stopped listening whenever your sister talked about her dream job?" I didn't have any brothers or sisters, but I was close enough to a few of my many cousins that I'd achieved something close to what I figured was a sibling bond with them. I couldn't even imagine completely tuning them out like that.
"It's boring," John insisted, seemingly unphased by my criticism. "Why would you want to spend all day in the woods when you don't even have a full team of Pokemon to train? And then do that again the next day. And the next."
Cait nodded slightly as John spoke, so I decided not to press the issue since I was clearly outnumbered. That wasn't to say that I completely disagreed with his opinion, but the dismissiveness rubbed me the wrong way.
After a moment of quiet, John added, "On that note, why'd you take the job? I mean, no offense, but it doesn't sound super interesting or like it would be good training."
He had softened his tone slightly so I decided to take the question at face value instead of a continuation of his previous point. I didn't really want to admit the real reason why I'd started working with Al, but I couldn't quickly think up a passable lie and I couldn't be sure that Cait hadn't been told more than she had let on. After that moment of hesitation, I answered truthfully, "Tammy set it up for me after she figured out that I was low on cash."
The reaction in the front of the car was immediate as both of my rivals winced. "Ah, sorry," John said, "I completely forgot-"
"We don't need to talk about that!" Cait hurriedly cut John off.
I quietly nodded my thanks and the car once again fell silent for almost a minute. Finally unable to put up with the uncomfortable silence anymore, I repeated my original question, "So what have you guys been up to?"
John's grin reappeared instantly, "Well, miss overachiever here already earned four badges. I'm at three." Cait stayed silent but I got the distinct impression that she was rolling her eyes.
"I've only got two. Guess I have some catching up to do," I said, though I didn't fully mean it. Now that I'd earned some money from working with Al and had more coming from the Brawl, I didn't care nearly as much about badges. They would still be nice to get, both for the money and maybe for getting into the next league tier, but ultimately it wasn't a big priority. Still, I had a part to play so I asked, "Which ones did you guys get?"
"Moorhead, Hinkley, Minneapolis, and Duluth," Cait rattled off.
"St Cloud, obviously, and then Hinkley and St Paul," John answered. "I actually met Cait in Hinkley and she trounced me in our practice match before the gym."
"I didn't trounce you," Cait insisted with a bit of heat.
John glanced back and gave me a wry smile, "She totally did. It's fine though because it was good motivation to do some extra training before the gym."
I nodded absently as I tried to remember which gyms had which types to try to gauge their strengths but quickly gave up. Instead, I asked, "So what are your guys' teams now?"
John chuckled at my question, "That's actually the other way that she's an overachiever, Cait's already got a full roster." Cait momentarily took her eyes off of the road, but John completely ignored the glare that I was certain he was receiving, "Only new Pokemon that I've caught since I saw you are Nidorino and Drillbur."
"Houndy is the only one of my Pokemon that you would have seen. Since then I've caught Poli the Poliwag, Flit the Cutiefly, Keter the Tynamo, Cham the Machop, and Pep the Shuppet." Cait trailed off like she expected some sort of comment, though I didn't know what it could be.
Unsure what she expected me to say, I just said, "Sounds like you both have great teams."
If she thought I would say something different, Cait quickly recovered and asked, "What other Pokemon have you caught?"
"Blitz the Fletchinder, Scout the Pachirisu, and Nin the Ekans," I replied and then as an afterthought looked down at the hatcher and added, "And whatever hatches from here I guess."
Cait and John both began talking at the same time, but Cait cut herself off and told John to go first. He nodded his thanks and said, "I just wanted to say congrats on Blitz evolving."
"Oh, thanks. What were you going to say Cait?"
"I was going to ask about your Pachirisu, Scout, I think you said? Prof told me that she got hurt but then I never heard anything after that. Is everything alright now?"
I nodded, then realized that she couldn't see me, "Yeah, Scout. And everything is fine with her. I actually caught her after driving off some Sneasel that were attacking her. We had to backtrack to get back to the St Cloud Pokemon Center to get her checked out, but she was better after a few days there."
"Weird that Sneasel would be that close to St Cloud, but I guess it's not unheard of," John commented then looked over at Cait curiously, "Actually, I've been meaning to ask. Why do you call Tammy Prof?"
"I did a little work with her while I was at the U," Cait explained with a shrug.
"Wait, you went to college?"
"Only for a year," she replied with a hint of exasperation. "Even though I've wanted to be a trainer my entire life, my parents insisted that I go to college for a year first. At least I was able to take some Pokemon Education classes so it wasn't a complete waste."
"Yeah, I get that. I had to fight with my parents tooth and nail before they'd agreed to let me be a trainer. It was especially a pain because they supported Erin wanting to be a ranger, even though that's arguably more dangerous," John shook his head slightly in frustration before looking back at me again. "What about yo-"
The car swerved slightly as Cait's elbow dug into John's side and he grunted at the hit. He started to turn towards her to protest but halted with a frown. "Sorry," he finished with another wince.
"It's fine," I said, ignoring his unfinished question. Instead, I asked, "So Cait, what sort of work did you do with Tammy?"
Once again, neither of them commented on the change of topics as Cait answered, "I mostly learned basic Pokemon care in that class, so I helped Prof out with taking care of the starters." She paused before clarifying, "Not ours. It was sort of interesting, but not something that I'd want to do full time."
The conversation died again for a few minutes before I tentatively asked, "So other than catches and badges, anything particularly interesting happen since I saw you guys?"
Both of my rivals took a while to consider my question, then John eventually shrugged, "Not really. After I beat Hinkley, I just took my time getting down to St Paul." After a moment he sat up straighter and added, "Oh yeah, Nidorino evolved during the gym battle which was pretty awesome. He swept through the rest of Oliver's Pokemon after that."
"That's cool. Blitz actually did sort of the same thing; he evolved after picking a fight with a wild Vikavolt."
It was Cait's turn to sit up in her seat and incredulously ask, "Wait, did you say your Fletchling fought a Vikavolt and won?"
I laughed ruefully, "I didn't say he beat the Vikavolt." One of my Pokeballs shook slightly from where it was attached to my shirt, but I didn't pay it any mind.
"Sounds like you're the one who's had the most interesting journey so far," Cait said.
I barely held back another laugh at that, given that I hadn't even told them the most 'interesting' thing that had happened to me on my journey. And that wasn't even counting what had kicked it off in the first place. I stayed silent though, given that I wasn't particularly interested in telling either story.
While I'd been considering my situation, Cait continued, "So far all I've done is drive around to gyms and develop my team. It's been great to be able to use my own Pokemon instead of just spectating or using rentals, but otherwise nothing too special has happened. For me, the special part is going to be the next few months!" As she finished, I could clearly hear the same excitement that she'd had more than two months ago when she'd challenged me to a battle immediately after we met.
The rest of the car ride mostly consisted of random chatter and swapping training anecdotes. At several points, I was tempted to bring up Halloween or the other-dimensional things that I'd read about, but couldn't think of a way to mention either in a way that was even close to natural. We briefly stopped at a fast-food drive-through for lunch a little before noon, which meant that it was almost one when Cait finally pulled into a parking ramp in downtown Minneapolis.
Somewhat reluctantly, the three of us left the warmth of the car and stepped out into the open-air parking garage. As soon as she had a clear view of me, Cait's eyes darted down to the egg that I was holding. She stared at it for several long seconds before announcing with a bit of frustration, "Yeah, I've no idea what that is." With that, she spun on her heels and started moving just short of a jog towards the connected building while John and I scrambled to keep up.
"Not that I want to spend too long outside either, but what's the rush?" John asked as we reached Cait's side. "I don't think they're going to close off registrations."
"That's not it," Cait said as we went inside and began following the arrows for the skyway. "I still need to drive back home and then have my dad drop me off back here."
"So you're going to stay here for the Brawl instead of living at home?"
Cait at John and nodded, "Yeah, this way I'll be able to catch as many battles as possible. Plus, it'll make scheduling my own that much easier."
While we walked, John and Cait discussed living away from home for the first time while I mostly ignored them given it wouldn't be a new experience for me. Instead, I focused my attention on downtown Minneapolis as we made our way through the skyway. I think I'd been in shock when I had seen the city for the first time in this world, but it was more or less how I'd remembered it. The one thing that I hadn't noticed last time was that the buildings sprawled out farther to the west than what I was used to, making it a shorter but wider city.
We had been walking for a few minutes when it finally occurred to me what direction we were moving, and my suspicions were confirmed when I peered out the window. Standing in the same spot as where the Metrodome used to be was a stadium that looked almost identical to the one where I had gone to watch plenty of baseball games as a kid. The only difference that I could see from the outside was that the building was slightly smaller than the Metrodome had been, which made me feel beyond bizarre to think that I would be competing in the same stadium.
The other slight difference from the Metrodome that I remembered was that we were able to take the skyway all the way into the stadium instead of having to walk the last couple blocks outside. We passed through the doors of the stadium and my feelings of nostalgia only grew when I was blasted in the face by air as we entered the pressurized building. Cait didn't even hesitate at the sensation and started following the arrow that was accompanied by a banner with 'Blizzard Brawl Registration' in large red and blue letters.
The stadium's halls were unnervingly quiet and I felt self-conscious for breaking the silence as I commented, "I would have expected there to be more people here."
"Registration starts a week before the Brawl starts so we're some of the last to do it," Cait said without breaking her stride. "A lot of trainers register right away so that they can move into their provided rooms as soon as possible."
"I would've gone that route, but I had a pretty sweet setup where I was staying, so I wasn't in a big rush," John commented.
Before I could ask John what that had been, we reached a large folding table that had the same registration banner we had passed earlier draped across the front. The woman sitting behind the table looked up from her laptop at our approach with a friendly smile, "Hello there! You three here to register for the Brawl?"
"Yes," Cait succinctly confirmed and immediately handed the woman her ID, leaving John and me to scramble for ours. Once John had pulled his out of his wallet and handed it over, he took the hatcher off of my hands so that I could more easily get at my own ID. While we were doing that, Cait added, "And we're all looking to stay in the provided rooms."
The woman accepted my ID with a nod and started typing into her laptop while I took the hatcher back from John and took a moment to look around. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the halls of the Metrodome were very similar to what I remembered, with them being lined with trophies, pictures, and banners. The only difference was that instead of Twins and Vikings memorabilia, all of the pictures showed trainers with their teams and the posters were old advertisements for featured matches.
The whirr of a printer brought my attention back to the registration table and the woman handed each of us our IDs, a sheet of paper, and a key. "Your registration is all set! Novice trainers John and Thomas's rooms are in the Roggenrolla building while amateur trainer Catherine is in the Mightyena building. Your keys have your room numbers on them. The only thing that you need to do to keep your room is to participate in at least one match a week, though you are allowed to miss two weeks over the course of the Brawl. The paper that I handed you contains your login information for the Brawl's website, where you can register for matches, update your rosters, and see the full listing for upcoming matches. Do you have any questions?"
I had set the hatcher down on the table to put away the things she had given me and paused to consider if there was something I wanted to ask about. Before anything could come to mind, Cait answered, "We're good, thank you," and started walking back towards the skyway entrance. I picked the hatcher back up and after thanking the registration woman, I turned to follow Cait. There were probably a few things that I could have thought to ask, but I had the feeling that Cait would be able to answer any questions just as readily if any did come to mind.
John was just a second behind me and as he jogged to catch up, he asked, "So are we going to go check out our new digs?"
"You two can, but I'm going to call my dad and get the car taken care of," Cait answered, slightly apologetic.
John chuckled, "Darn, I wanted to see your fancy amateur room. See what we're missing out on."
Cait's single-mindedness broke for a second and she glanced back at us with a brief smile, "Sure. You guys can stop by tomorrow after the opening ceremony."
With those plans in mind, John and I split off from Cait after a few minutes as we made our way to where we would be staying. The Roggenrolla building was just about on the other side of downtown and due to the winding nature of the skyway, I estimated we'd walked about a mile before we finally arrived. I started to think that I wasn't looking forward to doing this frequently before remembering that the first month or so of my journey had consisted of much longer walks than that. I eventually decided that there was a big difference between walking for long distances outside and going from building to building inside a big city, thereby justifying my reluctance.
As we entered the Roggenrolla building, we walked past a few other trainers that looked like they were about John and Cait's ages, though there were a few that were a bit older. Each of them nodded or said hello as we passed and I returned the courtesy, wondering which of them I would have to battle against in the upcoming months.
"So what room do you have?" John asked as we reached the elevators.
I retrieved the key from my right pocket to check. "439," I said as I went to push the button for the fourth floor, only to belatedly discover that John had already done so.
"Nice, looks like we're neighbors then. I'm in 438," John said with a grin, which I returned after a second. It would be a bit weird to go back to living in what was effectively a large apartment building after living by myself for so long, but I didn't have any complaints about having John for a neighbor.
It only took us another couple of minutes to find our rooms after exiting the elevator and I opened mine to reveal a studio apartment. While it was a little on the small size, I had absolutely no complaints about something that I was essentially getting for free. Plus, I didn't exactly need a lot of room and it looked like there would be plenty of space for my Pokemon and me. Remembering the rules of Al's lab, I made a mental note to check with Cait to see if Pokemon were allowed to be sent out in the rooms.
My thoughts were interrupted when John poked his head through my door, "No need for a tour, looks like yours is pretty much the same as mine. Dunno about you, but I'm planning on relaxing for a few hours, and then maybe we can check in with Cait and get some dinner?"
"Sounds like a plan," I answered, earning a thumbs up from John before he went back to his own room. I closed the door behind him, then set the hatcher down on the small desk that was one of the few pieces of provided furniture. My backpack was placed on the ground next to it, but I didn't bother unzipping it, not yet feeling up for the small amount of unpacking that I had to do.
After living in the woods and then a small town for more than two months, being back in Minneapolis would be a large change of pace. Even hanging out with John and Cait for a few hours had been a big departure from my normal routine, especially given how laid-back Al was in comparison to them. I was already beginning to feel drained and that feeling was compounded by the knowledge that it would be more of the same going forward. With a large sigh, I flopped back on the bed and spent the next half hour just staring up at the ceiling of what would be my home for the next four months.
A/N: As I said at the end of the last chapter, this one was more of a transitional chapter so I apologize if it seemed a little lackluster. Part of that is probably because I've never written nearly this much dialog in one go before, so hopefully it turned out alright.
Thanks to krazykz and Star for their usual beta help, and next up is Chapter 17: The Blizzard Brawl
