Visiting Mum again had taken an hour. She had broken down crying several times – when it started, tears had started from the corners of my eyes, too, but after the umpteenth time it ended up as a bit tiresome.

She had also given me another meal, which she had described as 'proper food'. This meant it included hot cocoa, a boiled egg, a toaster, burnt bacon, and parsley on absolutely every surface it could conceivably lie down on. I had never figured out why it was so that people put parsley on food to decorate it, when it could not possibly be for the terrible taste; it was like putting small bits of rubber on sausages, or salting jelly.

Regardless, I had left after an hour, with the promise that I would visit again soon. It wasn't that I didn't want to. It would just be a bit odd to go out, be told about the adventures I was going to have, get a Pokémon for protection and then end up sleeping in my own bed.

So I headed up, towards the spot just north of town. It seemed like a nice day was in the works, and Jolene walked along beside me with a pleasant look on its face. That was reassuring; I had feared it would be angry with me somehow.

We walked through a few patches of grass. Gentle wind caressed my face, and there was a mild sun peeking down on us between a few wispy white clouds. The grass waved and tickled, and in the distance a pack of Pidgey rustled out of a bush, ascending upwards.

A second of thought deemed this as odd. That was the only sign of life I could see, save the humming of a nearby fly or two. Normally, the route was swarming with Rattata and there were always bird Pokémon nearby. Now, however, there was not a single one, save those who had just escaped whatever was lurking in that shrubbery.

There were also no people there. Then again, I remarked to myself, that was only a question of time. It was unthinkable that he'd gone anywhere.

About fifty feet ahead, I caught sight of him. He was mutely inspecting a fallen birch branch with an expression that told me he had no idea what he was looking at, or even if he was actually looking at anything.

Slowly approaching, I drew up courteously a short way away and greeted him with an "Um, hello, mist'r Mad Roger.*" He turned slowly to look at me, and his face split to reveal a gradually gaping mouth near the bottom.

Consider a scarecrow, one that has been standing out in a field for at least a lifetime and been attacked by a frightened badger, or twenty. Remove the straw hat, so that the head is showing beneath, only it has been ripped open at the top and the stuffing, yellowed dry hay, is poking out and covering it like a crown of unruly hair.

That was exactly what Mad Roger looked like, except he did not have a stick up his bottom - much as he might have needed one, as well as a bath. Make that seven baths. He lived out here, but nobody had ever figured out where he slept, if he slept at all, or where he went to have a wee, if he ever did.

He dropped the branch, scratched his cheek in a flurry of grey flakes, and spoke a few choice words.** "Duck's jelly? Urrh..."

Roger swayed a little, but reached out and grabbed a handful of air to steady himself. Miraculously, it seemed to work.

"It's no'... Burrh... Hill?"

"'t's Kim, mist'r," I responded, mellow. This was what he did every time he met people, and I had managed to map out what to do with him most of the time. You simply don't live next to a prime source of childish entertainment as him for ten years without getting to know his habits.

"Oh," was all he said.

Then, a few seconds later, he lifted his hands, and pointed to a very minute elevation in the terrain; there were several of them around the place, I knew, and not a single one of them was taller than a few centimetres.

"See, gurrh, dem fings?" he burst out, suddenly, after a short while longer.

I nodded calmly. "Known 'em all m'life, mist'r."

"'s a bit, grr, scrary, Kiln, but... Y'can hop orf'em. Oven." He drifted off, and swayed a bit. "Durrh..."

"'ll keep that in mind, mist'r," I intoned, bobbing my head at him again.

He broke into what might have been a smile, groaned, and then fell backwards onto a tuft of green, where he lay still for the moment it took for him to start snoring.

Mum had said something about avoiding him once. I had, as a matter of course, followed her warning by not avoiding him. It was like being told not to put peas up your nose – once you knew about it, you just couldn't help trying it at least once.

Second thought, though, did kind of hint that Roger was not the kind of man you would take home for dinner. Nonetheless, he was a fun person to come across, especially when he started frothing at the mouth and tried to scratch his ear with his foot. Or, I recalled as I headed on again, when he started howling at passing Rattata.

After a few seconds, a quiet yet hissing voice mumbled: "He'sss sssscary..."

I stopped in my tracks. It had come from right behind me, and that was where I turned to look. There was not a person in sight, disregarding the oozing pile that was Mad Roger. And he was never that coherent.

Throwing a quick look at Jolene, I shrugged and walked on. A light and slightly off-beat rustling behind me told me that it was following me; I smiled again.

It was a matter of minutes before Viridian City came into view.

That, too, was a name that spoke too highly. To have a city, my uncle had said, you had to have more than a thousand people living there. Viridian had twenty, thirty, perhaps forty inhabitants at most. Unless there was a secret underground lair underneath where the poor lived. My mother had always said that poor people lived out of sight, so why not?

It had a gym, though. Gyms, according to the films on TV, were buildings where strong trainers went in and met menacing henchmen amidst stacks of boxes with bad lighting on them, and then proceeded to have well-choreographed martial arts battles with them, at the same time as Pokémon battles. The battles would always end almost in the bad guys' favour, but then the good ones would start shouting loudly and then they'd win.

This, I had often suspected, was a load of rubbish.

There was also a Pokémon centre, and a shop. I'd been inside that shop quite often when Mum was busy, but never visited any others. I had, however, visited several Pokémon centres. They were like Pokémon hospitals, but doubled as motels for travelling trainers, and also as gossip houses. You could barely look at one without somebody telling you something slanderous.

Still, that was the very first spot I aimed at. Jolene had got into a few sudden struggles after stepping on two Rattata's tails, and after almost being hit by a Pidgey's dropping, and was looking quite beat. It should get some rest, and in the meantime, perhaps I could pop by the shop, just to check up on things…

* He had never minded the nickname. Possibly he and his mind were too far apart to take notice, or had fallen out and never spoke to each other anymore.
** They were far from good choices, mind.