I arrived in Pallet town around lunch time and immediately headed for the laboratory. I had a full PokéDex, and from checking it the thing wasn't just limited to Kanto's pokémon. One of Ash's goals had been to fill the PokéDex for Professor Oak, so I was going to finish that right away and hopefully get some form of compensation for it. At the very least I hoped he'd heal my new (unconscious) Spearow. Apparently it was exceptionally easy to catch a knocked-out pokémon in a PokéBall, which didn't really fit the games but wasn't a stretch for the show.
Not knowing whether or not anyone would be home, and not wanting to be rude, I knocked on the door. It was opened by Professor Oak himself, who for some reason reminded me of a gym teacher in a lab coat.
"Professor Oak? I'm Wren Black," I sent when he looked down at me. It only took him a moment to process the fact that I was using telepathy, which kind of surprised me. I didn't think human telepaths were all that common here.
"Yes, what can I do for you?"
"I have some PokéDex information for you, and I was hoping you could heal my new Spearow. I should also report that a young boy was chased northward along route one by a flock of them, but I didn't get the whole story. Officer Jenny from Viridian has the details."
"Oh my! I hope young Ash is alright. Please, come inside. I'm actually looking for as much PokéDex information as I can find after a particularly stubborn Pikachu caused a system crash this morning. As for your pokémon, I can transfer them to a PokéCenter electronically if you have them in PokéBalls. They'll heal them for free," he said as he guided me inside with a gentle hand on my back. I was shown to a seat near a computer terminal, where I handed over my PokéDex and addressed him.
"Thank you, Professor. I'm not sure if the Spearow will actually want to stay with me since I caught him while he was unconscious, but at least he'll be healed enough for me to ask."
"That's an unconventional way to make a capture, certainly. I'll warn Nurse Joy that it might not react well just in case. Now, let's see what you've got on your PokéDex."
I watched with baited breath as he pulled up another chair, connected the device, and started to scroll through the data. His eyes got wider and wider the more he read. By the time he reached my latest entries regarding the Spearow attack and the Zapdos I'd observed on the way here, I thought they might be about to pop out of their sockets. He began frantically typing and clicking away at the device, probably checking for inconsistencies and copying files. When he finally turned back to me he looked thrilled.
"Well my boy, I'm not sure how you managed to gather so much data even with a second-hand National PokéDex. I'm grateful, but it's like a gift from above to recover all the basic data I had and more less than a day after I lost it. I'll still need to restart a lot of my studies of course, but your help has been invaluable. If there's anything I can do to help while we wait for your spearow to come back, please let me know!"
I handed him my spearow's PokéBall, and he slotted it into a machine beside the computer. He spent a few minutes of typing and the ball disappeared in a red light. When he turned back to me and offered refreshments, I eagerly accepted and he left up the stairs into another part of the building after warning me not to touch any of the equipment. Considering the fact that my body was thirteen years old I didn't blame him for the warning, and I just grabbed a book from the shelf and started reading. A few minutes later he came back with a plate of sandwiches and some bottled water, which he set on the desk and indicated I could have.
"The bathroom is up the stairs, through the door, and on the left. I need to check in with Officer Jenny and go through the data you brought in. Garbage and recycling are under the desk," he said distractedly as he sat back at the computer he'd used to download the information from my PokéDex. He idly disconnected it and set it off to the side, then started doing what I could only assume was work. It might have been Tetris, for all I know. I was too busy with food and trying to figure out how not to screw up the plot of a game/anime I remembered almost nothing about. Then I remembered Washu telling me it didn't matter, and I nearly groaned out loud. Thinking back over my conversation with her I remembered that she'd said I was an experiment, but I also had to be entertaining. I didn't know how much mileage she'd get out of my screwing with Ash earlier (he didn't even seem to notice I'd been the one to suggest law enforcement after I gave him the potion!) or if anything would even happen with Zapdos and Mew. Come to think of it, I should have sent him a bill or something for the potion.
What I really wanted to do was get to Saffron as soon as possible and get my psionic ability trained up as far as I could with Sabrina, but I had no idea how long that would take. Washu was a multi-dimensional creator deity, so her patience was probably considerable...but she was also Washu. For all I knew she could be watching the fallout of my dropping tons of data on Professor Oak and laughing her head off, or she could be getting impatient enough to start collecting- oh dear. A zubat just hit the window. In broad daylight. I started to panic, thinking this was the vengeance of Washu for even contemplating the possibility of spending the majority of my jump indoors learning things.
A curse from the professor reminded me of his presence, and he called one of his lab techs to go clean the damn thing off the window. Maybe that meant this wasn't terribly uncommon here? Bats in my home world ate mosquitos and other insects after all. Then again, they also had a form of sonar which would have easily detected a window. I prayed both that this universe didn't run on the "rule of funny" and that Washu wasn't mad at or bored with me, then decided it would probably be a good idea to leave.
"Professor? When my Spearow is healed and we've decided whether it will come with me or not, can you show me how to permanently release a pokémon from its ball? I also need to find transport to Saffron city. I was hoping I could get to the Safari Zone by boat from here."
"What? Oh! Yes, that won't be a problem. Most people don't need to know how to reset a PokéBall, but it's not difficult. With the amount of time you've saved me gathering data I can have a helicopter pick you up and take you to Saffron. I get a discount as a Professor."
Well that was ridiculous, but I wasn't going to complain. I asked him if I could train Ember out front and he agreed without even looking at me, so I headed out with her and started running laps around the yard with her. She seemed to enjoy it, and we were only attacked by zubats twice! When Ember's little growls, barks, and yips turned into a full-blown roar and scared the rest of the second batch away I gave her so many treats her stomach looked all bloated! She seemed quite pleased with herself, and the hour-long grooming session after the treats made her even happier. Not only was my little girl growing up, she'd learned how to counter one of my drawbacks!
We worked on her ability to produce fire after that, with me coaching her to try and alternately produce sustained gouts of flame instead of single bursts and larger bursts when she did it the normal way. Since she could understand me but I couldn't really understand her, we didn't get very far. She kept getting frustrated and eventually tired out, while I started working on my telekinesis.
By the time Professor Oak joined us outside Ember was napping in the sun and I had twenty blades of grass swirling in complicated patterns around and in front of me. I'd also launched several rocks, clods of dirt, clumps of grass, and quite a few individual blades of grass into the air before I got to the point where I could keep them where I wanted them. Most of the heavier stuff had come back down within visual range, so I'd kept using it until it got lost or I accidentally crushed it. Sweat was pouring down my face and back and my head was getting kind of foggy but I'd made a lot of progress. It seemed like the perfect memory aspect of Savant was playing heavily in my favor for learning, but that also meant I'd probably reach a limit to what I could learn with Sabrina pretty quickly. And that meant more time I'd have to interact with the world. Joy.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. At the gym I'd have plenty of help removing annoying zubats, and I could go to college or something in Saffron when I was done. Maybe Sabrina would even let me live and work at the gym when she finished tutoring me, so I could keep up with the bills too? Washu was the scientist after all, so she'd probably support continued education. I'd been a programmer in my previous life, so I could study biology and languages in this new one. That'd help with shape-shifting and communication in future jumps. If I still had time after that I could pursue computer science again to learn the native languages and reinforce my own knowledge thanks to Savant. Maybe there were computational solutions here that didn't exist yet in my old world? They had matter to energy conversion and teleportation after all! Come to think of it, electrical engineering would probably be just as important.
"You're seriously going to spend this entire jump either being a student or messing with people?" Washu's voice echoed in my head. She didn't seem to be annoyed, but I didn't hear any amusement either.
"I'd like to," I replied. "I can also practice martial arts, applied survival skills, and parkour. You said I had to be entertaining, but I got the feeling your main goal for me was to gain power. Knowledge is power."
"Yes, it is. And you are technically going along with the experiment, even if it's not a very fun way to do it. I can watch some of your alternates more closely for a while, and maybe check in on your wife. I hope you know you're going to need to be at least a little more exciting next Jump, though. And I expect you to put in a lot of effort to be entertaining in any jumps after that where it's not really life-threatening! Especially if you know a lot about the setting!"
That sounded like permission to grind the rest of this Jump. I liked grinding. I was GOOD at grinding. And I had a lot of patience, even if it was going to be irritating being a student again. Given that I still might not be busy the whole decade given Savant's boost to learning via perfect memory and calculation...I finally knew what I was doing. Hopefully Washu could montage away a crap-ton of education and private tuition, because after that I was going to start trolling some legendary pokémon! And if I could pick up a friend or two along the way, well that would be just grand.
Wait.
"Checking in on my wife? How is she? What's she up to? Can I talk to her? Washu? Washuuuuu?"