Chapter 3: Falling Fog and Rising Stars

The journey to Virbank was painful. Gut-wrenchingly, horribly, painful.

Everything had been going great. All of the wild Pok mon here were insanely low-level cannon fodder, and the Trainers were just high enough to provide good XP, and low enough that they provided no challenge to my team. We were doing excellent.

And then the Nursery Aide.

Just some random NPC, challenging me to a fight. It was supposed to be no big deal. Just some more XP to help grow my team.
She had a Dunsparce, and only a Dunsparce. No problems there; high defense, sure, but nothing we couldn't handle, right? It was way lower level than us.
And then it used Rollout.

For the few of you who don't know, Rollout is what I like to call a commitment move. When you use it, you can only use it, and it's automatically picked for you, until it misses or goes for 5 turns. With each of those turns, it does double the damage of the previous turn, requiring you to be ready to take it out ASAP, or face damage output that could kill Arceus and erase the universe.

Catkyoin was the first one out, and shredded the thing with her Fury Swipes, but the Rollouts had started, and were starting to take their toll, and after three turns, the Dunsparce hadn't missed yet. I had to calculate. If I kept Catkyoin in the fight, that Rollout would kill her; she didn't have the Defense or the Health to withstand another, even if I healed her.

Nibbles was a Bug type. If I sent him out, he d be crushed.

But Wotter. He had a solid Defense stat, good attack, was still at full health, and was a Water type, meaning Rollout, a Rock-type move, wouldn't be very effective.

It should've been easy.
I called out Wotter to tank the blow like the badass he was...

And it killed him.
Instantly.

I can equate the emotion I felt to being stabbed by an invisible enemy. I never saw it coming, it should never have come in the first place, and it it hurt. No, hurt doesn't begin to describe it. It was a pain unlike any I d felt in a while. Wotter, the one who started it all was gone. Just like that.
I felt the tears well up, and I saw the other two in the same state but Nibbles got angry. One of the two Pokemon who had welcomed him with open arms, dead to an enemy that looked like a Persian cat had a baby with a brain-dead worm. Nibbles was faster than the Dunsparce, and it tore the thing to shreds like its Defense stat hadn't even been there. I think he even took one of the Trainer s fingers, but we got out of there too fast to tell.

Wotter. My first Pokemon, who helped us get to the first Gym, who got us started on our journey, dead to a Dunsparce. I could still barely comprehend it. I had to walk away from the game, get dinner, try to keep myself calm. My first loss, and it had been Wotter. So early on.

I buried him nearby.

Goodbye, Wotter you gave us a chance. We ll win this for you. We ll beat them all for you.

And so, with a grieving Catkyoin and Nibbles under my arms, we continued on the way to Virbank.
It was literally ten feet away.

Virbank City was so insultingly close. Wotter could've made it, if I hadn't been so stupid... I reached the tunnel, got a call from Mom, and saw a girl named Roxie have a fight with her dad, which was just a really awkward moment for me. It felt like watching two relatives argue at Christmas dinner, which was fitting, since it was winter in the game.

After taking some advice from the locals I spoke to, I went down to the Virbank Complex to train up my two Pokemon, and in the process, got a third member; A Pidove that was eating scraps out of trash bins. Considering the locals recommended I go and get a Magnemite from the Complex, this did not raise my spirits very much, but hey! A new friend was always welcome, especially in these trying times. I named him Borb, because he was a bird that was just so adorably round like an orb, and made sure we got him introduced to the others. It was all very tense, but Catkyoin was willing to give him a shot.
It took longer than I would've liked to get the team leveled up. The only things in the Complex were Pidoves and Magnemites, and we didn't have the move advantages to take care of those safely. Thankfully, there was patch of tall grass in Route 20 that, rather than level 2's or 3's, had Pokemon properly leveled to help me grind the team up.

There was one instance of note, during training, when I realized that every Venipede we ran into here knew Rollout, and that was not good for my anxiety.
But during our grinding, Borb evolved into Tranquil, so we had that going for us!

Things were starting to turn around. We had a speedbump, sure, but soon, we d be able to take on Roxie and her Gym.
Nothing could stop us now.