Chapter 5: First Impressions of the Road
Right, so just follow the road until she got to Viridian. That would be a solid bit of advice if there was an actual paved road. Unfortunately Pallet town was an out of the way location. Not so much traffic from the nearby city to the town.
At least there was a beaten path with the occasional sign to help reassure her that she was going the right way. It was actually rather comforting that they wrote in the same language as Remnant. Yang would take every little bit of comfort she could.
Speaking of comfort, her hand went to her pocket, rolling the little ball between her index finger and thumb. Then she glanced at Phyllis just behind her, not quite running to keep up but still moving her little legs at a faster than a casual pace. That prompted Yang to slow down.
It was hard to imagine how this Pokéball thing even worked. The technical explanation Victor gave just flew over her head, something about energy storage and mass reduction. Not that she doubted it could hold a Pokémon inside considering a single button push made it expand to several times its size, just that part of her felt that wouldn't feel all too pleasant for Phyllis to get stuffed in a little ball.
Sure, she could understand the idea that not everywhere was appropriate for Pokémon to just roam free. She'd dealt with more than her share of stores that said "no pets allowed" where she had to leash Zwei to something random, and she didn't even want to know what would happen if a charmander's tail flame got too close to a container of Dust. It just felt like a mixed message. So these Pokémon things were friendly companions with minds of their own but they needed some kind of holster like they were a gun?
It was hard to say just how long they'd been walking. Three? Maybe four hours? It's not like she thought to grab a watch before leaving, and she left her scroll behind because most of its functionality was gone anyway. Whatever the case, this felt like a good time to take a break and have lunch, not to mention let Phyllis have a meal as well.
As places to camp out went, this wasn't too bad. Not particularly defensible, no possible choke points or remarkable amounts of visibility or concealment, but nothing that would make defending it a pain in the ass. Just a lone tree in a clearing, nothing but tall grass to obscure her view in any way. Not that anything small enough to hide in grass like that could be all that threatening anyway. So she didn't see a problem with setting down her bag and saying, "Well I don't know about you but I'm feeling a little hungry. How about some lunch, Phyllis?"
Based on the look on the bulbasaur's face, it was 'definitely' appreciated. A grateful smile with a touch of embarrassment in her eyes. Yang could practically hear a cute little voice saying she was sorry for slowing Yang down. Little girl probably had lived most if not all her life in labs like Professor Oak's. Cross country of any kind was going to be a new experience for her. Well, at least Yang wasn't the only one going through unfamiliar territory in a few different ways. Shame she couldn't ask why the grass in a circular area around the tree was shorter than the stuff around it. Not that she was a botanist or something, just that anything a little out of the ordinary was rarely completely random.
Setting herself down cross legged, the blond chuckled a moment. "Hey, it's not like we're in a hurry. If I'm walking too fast for you, or you're just feeling tired or hungry, let me know. I'd like to think I'm good at noticing that sort of thing but I won't be offended if I'm wrong about how you're doing."
Keeping her eyes on Phyllis as she unzipped the bag, she couldn't help wondering about that plant on her back again. It didn't 'look' like it hurt, it had vines that could be used like arms, but why would any creature need something like that? She could understand wings on a bird or a large number of legs on a centipede, but a plant on a lizard's back? Come to think of it, just what did a bulbasaur eat in the wild? Were there any wild ones? Were they as domesticated as dogs and just didn't 'do' wild as well as their wolf cousins? Not that Zwei wasn't a smart little guy but..
..great, her brain started wandering back to Remnant. It's not like she had much to distract herself from aimlessly thinking about home, especially when she was just digging through a borrowed bag for a can of that dog food styled slop.
Though the expression on Phyllis' face when she saw the can managed to get those thoughts out of the front of her mind. That was quite definitely resigned disgust. "Hey, don't worry. I brought a few of those berries you like too. When we get to the city, the first thing I'm going to do is ask if there's anything else you can eat. Who knows, we might even find something you enjoy enough that you don't have to throw something to improve the flavor."
Pulling out the plastic bag with berries, Yang only just realized a minor flaw in her packing. The berries themselves were fine, she'd packed them in a way to avoid crushing them. But a zip lock bag..well, it was easier to shut than open one handed. Great, so she could do push-ups and use toilet paper one handed, even figure out how to get dressed, but a frail plastic bag was too much for her.
While the one armed huntress tried and failed to open the package with just her fingers, Phyllis used her vines to open the can. Sure, no fingers but having a pair of limbs allowed one to be used to hold the can in place and the other to pull the top off. "Hey, I don't suppose you could open this thing in a way that doesn't break it, right?"
Handing it over to the vines once they were free, she chuckled a little as Phyllis stared at the see-through green bag like it was a puzzle, moving it around so she could see all the angles. After about ten seconds of thinking and looking, she took one of her vines and pointed at where it was zipped up. "Yeah, that's the part it opens. Just don't pull 'too' hard. We'll want to seal it again so we'll have more for later."
It was inevitable that they'd run into actual trouble later on. If anything Yang was surprised they got as far as they did considering her poor luck recently. Sure, technically she hadn't gotten killed but getting her ass kicked on a train that crashed less than two minutes later and released a small horde of monsters into a crowded city wasn't even the worst thing to happen that month.
The first sign of trouble was when the beaten path was cut off. It didn't really end, it clearly continued beyond a stretch of long grass, but the grass looked completely untouched between bits of dirt where people clearly tended to walk. As if everyone who walked through here made an absurd twenty yard leap for no apparent reason at all. Though how that worked was more than a little baffling.
Still, baffling didn't mean dangerous, just so unexpected she didn't know what to make of it, and it was very clearly still the road onwards. Well, if plants growing on lizards was normal around here, she could ignore an odd section of road, assuming anyone could call an unpaved path like this a road. Phyllis didn't seem to have a problem with walking through the grass either, though of 'course' Phyllis wouldn't know any potential danger any better than Yang. Not if this was her first experience with the wild.
About halfway through the grass, she saw movement. A quick wave in the green, like something was dashing in its cover. Yang's danger sense didn't even itch, anything that small couldn't possibly be a threat to her. Then, faster than she could react, claws dug into her pants, and something started climbing all the way up to her shoulders. Something that started messing around with the zipper of her bag, not giving a damn about any of her hair in its way.
It was the threat to her hair that got Yang to stop standing there in surprise and try to do something about whatever had climbed her. With a single shift of her hip the bag slid from her shoulder to her palm, jarring the ambitious critter enough that its claws had to dig into skin in order to avoid getting thrown off. Then she threw the bag to the beaten path ahead of her, hair blazing gold and eyes crimson in indignation.
Eyes that drunk in the image of the creature that had climbed her, feeling no sympathy as its equally red eyes widened in horror. In the back of her mind, she wondered how her sister and Blake would have reacted to seeing a purple rat about the size of a poodle. Of course Weiss would have screamed. Probably the same kind of scream she had the time she saw some roaches. And maybe if it hadn't both tried to steal from her and messed with the hair, she might have thought it cute. Since it had, it was firmly in pest territory.
She couldn't get a grip on its neck or body given its position and her single arm. She could, however, grab it by the tail, tear it off her shoulder, spin it around like a bola and sling the little bastard behind her. Not the most satisfying way to deal with it, but the way it bounced off the ground like a rock in a pond, moved around dazed for a second, and then took off running the moment it regained its bearings would have to do. Apparently it took a piece of her jacket with her, some small section of the outer layer at the shoulder. Great, less than a day on the road and her clothes were starting to get tattered.
Apparently another opportunistic rat tried to go for the bag while Yang was distracted, again trying to work the zipper and not quite figuring out just what direction it needed to be pulled to open. If anything it seemed confused when it managed to close the bag a little, undoing the minimal progress its friend had made. The rat didn't have much time to understand where it went wrong before Phyllis tackled the little bastard off the bag. They almost started rolling but the plant on her back stopped their momentum and the bulbasaur used all four legs to push her opponent away, getting some distance for another tackle, forehead slamming into nose.
Yang was already halfway to the tumbling, frantically fighting Pokemon when a third rat came out of the grass. It was hard to tell if it was also going for the bag or wanted to double team the bulbasaur. Either way Yang caught up with it before it could get to either and punted the rodent right into a tree. It bounced against the trunk, landed on its feet, dizzily glared in the general direction it was kicked from, and the moment it realized the angry girl with glowing hair was charging right at it the little bastard squeaked and ran off. Good, these things were smart enough to be afraid. Maybe they'd spread word that Yang and Phyllis weren't to be messed with.
She took a moment to look at the fight, wondering how she could help only to pause and blink a bit in surprise. Granted, Phyllis had the advantage in body size and very likely weight but still. She didn't expect the little girl to be quite so dominant over the more agile rat. A dodged bite followed by an overhead stomp to the nose, followed then by another tackle. Definitely felt like Yang wasn't needed in that furball..though was that the right word for it when only one of the two even had hair?
Besides, it was kind of interesting how the little girl fought. Not just the four stubby legs, no arms, and bizarre body structure distributing weight in odd ways. The way she approached combat reminded the blond of Jaune. Defensive until the next assault came to mind, making sure every strike counted, then back to defensive. Sometimes it was one big hit, other times it was a short combo, but her one big move was the tackle. Everything else was just there to follow up that full body charge.
Part of her found it just as iffy with Phyllis as it was with Jaune. In breaking off the attack like that you completely sacrifice momentum and give up part of the initiative. Preferably in a fight you flowed from one move to the next fluidly, keeping the pressure on as well as you could while blocking or dodging whatever your opponent, human or otherwise, threw at you. Not start, back off to reevaluate and give your enemy time to recover, then essentially start from scratch again. It was also a little odd that she didn't use her vines in any way against her opponent, either to grab or strike. Maybe they were articulate but not that strong? Or was there some other reason not to use them? Speaking of strong, just how much aura was she losing with each scratch? It's not like Yang could tell at a glance. And even if she had her scroll it wouldn't have told her. Phyllis wasn't synced up with the thing anyway.
Still, there was no denying that for every lucky claw the rat landed, from grazing to something genuinely painful, it took a full body tackle with the occasional other blow mixed in. Mildly irritating strikes versus reeling blows, at an exchange rate that favored the heavy blows. Definitely looked like the battle for the bag was in the bag.
Eventually the rat decided Phyllis was just too much trouble, scampering away. Yang chuckled at the smug look on the little girl's face, similar to something Nora would have on her face before doing her "I'm queen of the castle" thing.
Taking a quick look around to make sure there was no more trouble, Yang knelt down and gave Phyllis some petting to the top of her head. "That was some pretty solid work, partner. There's room for improvement, sure, but you can definitely hold your own against some random rats."
There was a bark of glee at the compliment, head raised up to get some more pressure from the petting. Laughing a bit more, Yang got up to grab the bag, making a mental note to be a bit more cautious around tall grass. Sure, even a very basic beowolf could feel more threatening than what they just faced, but it's not like she was actively trying to clear the area of monsters, or that those rats could even be called monsters despite their size and signs of intelligence. Monsters would fight to the death with no care of if they were overmatched, would be aggressive for the sheer sake of causing pain. Still, no need to go looking for trouble out here. This was as good a time as any to get moving again.
Trouble found them a few more times over the course of the day. Twice when they were forced to go through more tall grass and once out in the open. So technically speaking everywhere was a little dangerous, it's just that the tall grass gave the little crooks more courage. While she wasn't caught completely off her guard again, Yang was still a little annoyed.
Hell, she wasn't even sure why specifically she was annoyed. Was it the way the road periodically cut off as if someone wanted to make 'sure' those rats could ambush random travelers? The fact that she also had to worry about super-sized birds? Maybe the way one of those birds outright pulled on her hair in a blatant but effective distraction?
Of course it could also have been the constant reminders, both in and out of combat, that she only had one arm and it wasn't even her dominant one. Or the fact that she didn't even have the option to use her shotgun gauntlets, to feel that satisfying recoil whenever she wanted a little extra mobility or to add some more umph to her strikes. Not that she was throwing many punches when dealing with a lot of quick critters that looked smaller than Phyllis, she was mostly grabbing or kicking. So many things to annoy her, but none of them felt like the heart of the matter.
Speaking of, the little girl pulled off a nice trick against one of the birds earlier. When it managed to grab the bag while its buddy pulled on Yang's hair, Phyllis shot something from her bulb that embedded into those feathers. That created some kind of faint, green light which seemed to flow from the bird to the bulbasaur. Not like a string, more like a very thin river that wasn't made of water and didn't follow the laws of gravity, pretty to look at but a little confusing. Was it actually draining something? Or was it just some kind of tracking..device didn't feel like the right word there.
Whatever it was, the bird couldn't fly far dealing with both that and the weight of the bag. It maybe got three yards up before it was gasping for air, flapping more weakly but frantically as it lost the battle against gravity. Once Yang had grabbed a strap, it had given up holding on and just tried to escape. That was when the things Phyllis had shot flew back to her bulb. They looked kind of like seeds, at least when they were airborne. When they got back to the bulb they just seemed to disappear into the plant, not even a faint outline of them visible.
Of course Yang wanted to know more about that awesome trick. Even if it wasn't what brought the bird down it looked cool and probably could make it easier to keep track of something they wanted to chase if need be. She couldn't even think of anything remotely similar she had ever seen. But it's not like she could just ask Phyllis what she just did.
Ah, now she knew what was so annoying. There was nobody to talk to. She couldn't ask what she was attacked by, or what Phyllis did. There was no person to explain why there were sections of long grass that interrupted the beaten path, or why random animals would think it's a good idea to attack a random traveler. Most non-Grimm animals she'd seen in the wild either kept their distance or ignored humans. Hell, she couldn't even talk about how awesome some of those moments of defending themselves felt, like landing the first punch she'd thrown in over a week on a bird that grabbed her hair, or how hilarious it was to see a feathered pinball smack from one tree to another. Couldn't tell anyone that she could learn to enjoy a world without Grimm. Not that she missed the Grimm or..and now she was defending herself from accusations nobody was throwing at her.
It's not that Phyllis was a bad companion to travel with, far from it. It was just that there were some kinds of conversation she'd like to go through with people who could speak back to her. It wouldn't matter if it was a member of team RWBY, some random person from Beacon or even Remnant in general, or just someone who actually lived in this world. She'd just appreciate having someone to talk to who could talk back. A full on conversation, not a one sided talk with just unintelligible noises and facial expressions to consider responses. It's the sort of thing you don't think about unless it's not there for you. Was it bad she felt like she needed human on human interaction, or was that normal even here? Why did she suddenly give a damn about normal? Hell, how many times had she told Ruby it was better to be yourself than twist around to fit in?
Of course the one thing she fully appreciated in her unplanned day of traveling was it showed her that she wasn't completely helpless with just one arm. It would probably take some more getting used to for her to feel confident enough to, say, go up against three ursa on her own, but rats and larger than average birds? She could feel confident she could defend herself and others.
And what she couldn't pull off on her own, Phyllis could make the difference. Like when she decided to call it a night and set up the tent. Yang had the raw power and knowledge of what the end result should be, and Phyllis had two good vines with enough fine control to do anything delicate. Things like she'd set the support on the ground and her partner would put the screws in. Sure, setting it up was more work than she'd like but the end result felt more awesome as a result of the struggle.
So here she was, trying to fall asleep in a relatively wild area while cuddling with a lizard-dog thing with a plant growing on its back. Or at least doing the one-armed equivalent of cuddling, holding the little girl's face against her cheek. No idea if she could ever get home and heading to a city where she'd still feel pretty out of place. Still..it didn't look as daunting as it probably should have. Was that a good or bad thing? It could just be that she was setting herself up for a fall down the line. Of course it was also possible she was being too pessimistic. Hard to tell when you're thrown in the deep end and trying to adjust.
The first sight of buildings in the distance made Yang smile. Yeah. As trips through the wilderness went, that wasn't so bad. At least compared to the time she nearly got her little sister killed walking to a random cabin, or any of the camping/training trips she and Ruby went through with Uncle Qrow. Short, and nothing really dangerous popped up along the way. Just some little thieves trying to make things more annoying. While it didn't feel like those rats and birds were spreading word to the rest of their kind about the tough travelers, they at least spread the attacks out in a way that it didn't feel like
It was early morning so there weren't that many people on the street. But every person who wasn't consumed by some early morning task like taking a compost bin back inside or grabbing some bundle of papers from the ground, unwrapping them and starting to read paused what they were doing to..stare at her.
It wasn't the kind of stare she was used to. Normally it was a general "wow that girl is hot" or something more specific in their gaze. Tits, ass, her long and lovingly cared for hair, her muscles, she was generally proud of her appearance and typically wore things to show off just how worthy of attention she was.
But she wasn't at her best in terms of appearance. Her jacket and random t-shirt could hide a lot of things, did nothing to hug her build like most of the clothes she left back in Beacon, but it couldn't hide her lack of an arm. While it was probably a mystery to the onlookers just where her right ended, there was at least a shoulder, there was a section of sleeve that was noticeably looser than the left, and the left was the only side with an actual five fingered hand at the end? Hard to miss. Add in the claw marks on the left shoulder of the jacket and she was 'definitely' rougher looking than anyone else out here.
Then there was her hair. While she'd been 'trying' to keep it looking about as nice as it was back home, having just one hand and not even her dominant one made it 'very' troublesome to deal with to the point she'd get frustrated and stop trying to tame it after a while. And that was when she had a mirror to work with back in the lab. It probably looked even worse after her little camping trip.
All in all, she wouldn't be surprised if she looked like either a bum or a thug. Steeling herself a little, she pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. 'Kai's Den', odd name for a general store. But then who was she to say any name felt odd? She was the odd one here.
The odd one who had to ask for directions. Walking up to the nearest gawker, she kept it short. "Hey, you happen to know where this place is? I'm picking up some things for Professor Oak."
The guy she approached didn't show any real signs of fear when she talked to him, and he didn't seem nervous when he responded. That was a good sign, right? "It's about five blocks that way. Take a left and then your first right. You can't miss it."
"Thanks."
Hopefully the friend of Oak's running the store wouldn't make her feel like an ugly duckling like the staring people in the street were doing. If Phyllis caught on to Yang's discomfort she didn't show it. She was too busy trying to stay close while at the same time just scanning their surroundings. If Yang was in a better frame of mind, she might have been equally interested to see Viridian just waking up, getting a sense of what the locals were actually doing first thing in the morning.
Author's Note: Sorry this took longer than a week. Been pretty busy, and now I'm feeling guilty that I updated this before RWBY Plays Modern Warfare.
It is just a good deal easier for me to get over any kind of writer's block, or just write for it while on a train or just walking down the street for this story than the girls playing through Modern Warfare. Here I'm just taking some broad ideas like "Yang needs to travel to Viridian, and there needs to be an action sequence showing both Yang's current combat style and Phyllis' opening style."
Whereas my other big fic at this point, I need to be in the mood to watch footage of Modern Warfare (usually from my old LP of it), come up with ways to describe what I'm seeing in a way that would work for the characters, and then come up with Mystery Science Theater style commentary for four different characters. Hard to do while in a subway where you don't have internet access on your phone and even if you did you can't have a video open while working on a text document. It's an either or thing.
But enough of feeling guilty about not updating my other story yet. I've been thinking of adding in some characters to this one, and it's the main reason why I didn't put this fic in the Pokemon crossover section of Fanfiction net. Pokemon itself, while it has quite the expansive world, doesn't really do much for the characters in it. The gym leaders are mostly names, a few lines of dialogue, appearances, and team line-ups. That's something to build a personality around but not a full on character to work with. You have the professors, the villain team leaders, the rivals, but again that doesn't really feel like a large enough cast of characters if our hero is going to be exploring a decent section of an entirely new world.
I don't know precisely who will be important characters as a whole for the story just yet, but I've got an idea of who the store owner Yang will meet in the next chapter should be. Shingen Takeda, borrowing traits from Sengoku Basara, Pokemon Conquest, and the Samurai Warriors series. He seems like he'd be the sort of person Oak would have been friends with in their youth at the very least.
Nothing is set in stone just yet, though. Just giving a warning of what I'm thinking at the moment. That said, hope you all enjoyed the chapter. We'll see when the next one comes out.