Yeah, I don't write often. Next chapter will probably take forever too, because I'll be too busy playing animal crossing when I have free time instead of drinking alcohol and shitposting on fanfiction websites. Sorry, fam.

Not that I ever needed an excuse before now.

CH04 – Titling chapters in the story itself looks kinda weird

Aero walked down a dirt road, past a shoddy wooden sign with ROUTE 1 painted on it in messy, red strokes. Every now and then, they had to weave through large patches of obnoxiously unkempt field grass that decided to grow right over the path, because nature doesn't give a shit like that. Their eevee companion, currently riding along on their head, bounced up and down with every step. "So I guess I should probably give you a name or something, huh?"

"Evoiivoi!" The eevee seemed to find the notion of being given an actual name a good idea, though Aero didn't particularly if it did or not, and just didn't want to refer to the thing riding around on his head as 'the thing' for however long it took for them to achieve legal adulthood again.

"How about Eevee? Then I can't be criticized by people with too much free time for capitalizing it."

"Voi." Rejected.

"What if I named you Pikachu instead?" The eevee smacked Aero over the head (which is pretty easy to do when your entire body is already over it) with a foreleg in response. "Ow! I was just kidding, don't get upset...how about Amy?"

"Voi."

" Mary?"

"Voi."

"Linda." A wild rattata leapt out of a patch of tall grass, but Aero just kicked it out of the way without thinking about it. It rebounded off of a pidgey, laying them both out on the side of the road. Unfortunately for Aero, this isn't an RPG where human beings are allowed to accumulate experience points, so the exp just vanished into the ether like it never existed.

"Voi."

"You're pretty picky, y'know that? How about Rebecca?"

"Voiii."

"Um...Ronald?" The eevee just smacked Aero again, causing them to wince. "Well, I don't know. You're turning down all the female names, I figured it was worth a shot."

Just then, the world's most generic cell phone ringtone sounded off loudly, albeit somewhat muffled. "Hold on, that's my phone." Aero instinctively reached for the phone wedged in their pocket. It was an old-fashioned flip phone that was completely devoid of any modern features. It sent and received calls, and kept the time, and that was pretty much it. "This better not be Mom, I only just left..." Aero flipped the phone open and held it to their ear without even checking the number. "Hello?"

"...Hello..." The idiosyncratic, feminine voice made Aero recoil instinctively.

"Oh what the hell. The fuck do you want?!"

"Ahaha Your father wanted to...know how you were doing~"

"Tell him to ask me himself."

"He's...tied up right now..."

"Yeah? Doing what? Something stupid, I'm guessing."

"Hm...Hahaha...we'll change the world, you'll see. We're gonna revive Groudon~"

"Wow. Great. Okay. Cool. Tell my dad he's a fuckin' idiot for me, thanks."

"Ahahahaha~"

"You're a fuckin' idiot too. I hope you guys get your asses handed to you by a twelve year old."

"..." The person on the other end went silent.

"...What? Did I strike a nerve?"

"..."

"Did you actually get your ass handed to you by a twelve year old?"

"..."

"Is that why dad is busy right now?"

"..."

Aero busted up laughing into the phone. A moment later there was a click as the call disconnected. "Hahaha...oh she hung up on me." Aero blocked her number, before jamming the phone back into their pocket. "Crazy bitch...like we need any more people spamming Precipice Blades on showdown."

After stuffing the phone away, Aero began to feel their eevee companion prodding the top of their head in a vie for attention. "Evvoiii." Aero glanced upward to see it pointing down the road with it's foreleg. Following the paw, Aero refocused their sight to the path in front of them and spotted a young man in some kind of stupid demeaning uniform commonplace in the service industry as a method of depersoning employees by making them all look exactly the same, and helping them to come to terms with their place as a cog in the machine that shouldn't be allowed to posses any sort of individuality whatsoever, since that scares middle management, since they're all very insecure about their own inability to have any sort of backbone when it comes to dealing with their own bosses. He was hanging out by the side of the road, waving some kind of stupid, eye-catching sign like a political activist pretending to peacefully protest while simultaneously looking for a non-reason to beat you over the head with a brick. A nondescript wooden crate was next to him on the ground. That doesn't give me anything to rag over though, so it's barely worth mentioning outside of the fact that it's probably a vaguely relevant object involved in whatever is going to happen next.

"Hm? What's this guy doin'? Doesn't seem like a protest. There's only one person, and he doesn't look nearly insincere enough." Aero decided to approach the man, and upon getting closer realized that the sign was for some kind of pokémart advertisement. They waved halfheartedly at the guy. "Yo."

"Hello!" The young man gave Aero a forced service industry smile. You know the one. "I'm an employee of the pokémart in Viridian City. You're a new, aspiring pokémon trainer, right?"

"Close enough."

The man looked at the pokémon riding on Aero's head. "That's a cute eevee; Don't see those around too often. What's it's name?"

"Dunno," Aero shrugged.

"Huh?"

"We didn't get that far yet. Still spitballing."

"Hmm..."The pokémart employee thought to himself for a moment. "What about Ronald?" Aero's eevee jumped into the air like rocket into a parabolic trajectory and headbutted the employee. Well, I mean technically it was just a Tackle, because it doesn't know Headbutt, but without gameplay elements backing it, the moves are basically the same thing at the end of the day. "Oof!" He clutched his head in pain, as the eevee climbed back up to it's perch.

"It's a female," Aero stated plainly.

"So?"

"...I tried Ronald already."

"Oh. Well, I got nothin' then, sorry..." The pokémart employee bent down slightly and reached for a small bottle from inside the crate by his feet, which was apparently full . "Well, I got nothin' other than this, anyway. Here you go." He handed the bottle over to Aero. Aero examined the bottle closely. It had a spray nozzle and was full of some sort of bright red liquid sloshing around inside. The man noticed Aero's apparent confusion and followed up with an explanation. "It's medicine for pokémon. A free sampling for new trainers of the potions we stock at the mart in Viridian."

Aero eyed the bottle suspiciously. "...Potion? That's a pretty shady name for something that's supposed to be modern medicine, isn't it?"

"It can heal your pokémon's wounds if there's no pokémon center nearby to use. A very useful asset for a trainer like yourself."

Aero wasn't buying it. "...Why does it look like antifreeze?" Aero unscrewed the nozzle and brought the bottle up to their nose.

"I don't know, that's just the color it is, but it's—

"Smells dangerous." Aero screwed the nozzle back on.

"—Look, it works just fine, otherwise we wouldn't sell it," The employee was starting to get exasperated, "you can try it out right now if you don't believe it. Just spray it on your pokémon's wounds and they'll heal up in an instant."

"...Does it work on humans?"

"Um...well, no. You should definitely not use it on humans, and if you get any on your skin while appying it, you should wash it off right away."

"Okay, guess I'll give it a go, then." Aero pointed the bottle at the pokémart employee and sprayed a healthy dose of the stuff directly into his face.

"AUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHUAAAAHHHHHH!" The man immediately collapsed to the ground covering his face, screaming in agony. "WHHHHHAAAAAATTHEFUCKKKKISWRONGWITHYOUUUUUUUU?! AHHHHHHHHH!"

"Hey, you're right, doesn't work on humans at all. Go figure." Aero dropped the bottle on the ground before continuing down the road nonchalantly, as the man continued to scream while shriveled up on the side of the road.

Aero's eevee watched the suffering man attempt to crawl to his knees. The flesh on his face was already starting to bubble and dissolve away, but it didn't make him any less quiet. "Evoiivoivoi..."

"Eh, don't worry about it, I'm sure he'll be fine. They apparently sell it in stores publicly, so it can't be that dangerous, right?"

Eventually the man's screams began to die out, as Aero put distance between them, and his face had completely burned down to the skull.

"He sure was loud though. Man, what a baby."

"Evoii..."

"Anyway, did you think of a good name yet?"

"Voi."

"How about Violet?"

"Voi."

"How about Violett?"

"Voivoi!"

"No, it's not the same. There's an extra T."

"Voiii."

"Yeah, well I don't see you coming up with anything. If you can't figure out what you want to be called, how the hell am I supposed to do it?" Aero spied another sign coming up along the road that said WELCOME TO VIRIDIAN CITY. "Oh, we're here already. Not sure why the old geezer was so worried about wild pokémon...I didn't even see any...Guess we'll put the name thing on hold for a little longer then..."

"Evoiivoivoivoi!"

"Okay, well Ronald is still on the table if you change your mind."

The eevee reached down and bopped Aero's nose. "Ow."