I knew this will be not easy. And not easy it was, oh no.
Nearly an hour I was walking the bridge thinking of what I did. I finally got the last addition to my team. I finally got the water-type pokemon. And I also got a real pain in my ass to train.
Maybe, I should contact Misty and ask for her advice in raising a Magikarp. Who knows – maybe I`m wrong and he is not hopeless? Ah, I will forget this anyway.
But I`m sure in one thing – I will not give up. I have created a new battle style that makes even gym leaders open their mouths in shock. I have collected the most atrocious and unpredictable beasts from all over Kanto. I have defeated the ghost of Lavender and defeated the boss of Team Rocket himself! In one way or another…
I am Vengeance, goddamn it! My pokemon can tackle things without actually knowing the move Tackle! Isn`t this an achievement?
I can make a soldier out of this guy. And I WILL do it! I just need to think how…
So I stopped for a while to actually greet my new partner. The new greatball of blue color fits his water-type pretty good. But that`s all, nothing special about it anymore. I think that`s how I will differentiate this from the other greatball of Loser`s.
The light blue energy released from the pokeball and formed a figure on ground before me. Magikarp again began to flounder on the wooden floor.
"Oh, sorry…" I gently pushed him into the water again and crouched on the very edge. Pokemon recovered right when he got into the water.
"Karp…" He growled and stared at me with his strange opened eyes.
So, it`s just another pokemon that will creep me out each time I send him somewhere. No wonder I saw so little of Magikarp trainers. Or heard of them…
"You… Can you understand me?" I carefully asked him. Or her… I don`t know what`s the difference between them. But he didn't react in any way. Magikarp stayed on place where he was. Maybe just stream moved him aside a bit.
I thought how stupid must I look now, talking to a Magikarp. All pokemon are considered clever, but this guy here proves the contrary…
"Okay, whether you understand me or not, I must instruct you." Damn, this will look even more stupid… I bet Douchebag is sitting somewhere near me in the bushes and laughs now. But I have to continue. "Our fight is hard and dangerous. But YOU were chosen to join our brave team! To fight evil… to save people and pokemon… to investigate mysteries!"
Magikarp had no reaction. It`s whether he is completely deaf or something else is wrong. I began to worry a lot.
"Yeah… Maybe I should give you some more time to adapt to me." I concluded and took greatball to return him back as the voice from behind distracted me.
"Hey, you! Trainer!"
The voice didn`t sound familiar and I couldn`t understand whether I like it or not.
"Let me guess… A battle?" I asked the source of voice boringly and turned to it. It was a guy nearly of my age in orange coat and dark jeans. I noticed a strange device on his back with two cables poking up. With all this he looked like a… punk, maybe? Or a rocker. A very strange one.
"Oh yeah, battle!" He gladly replied and suddenly began to dance. He grabbed the cables behind his back and swung them in the air. Electricity sparked shiny over him when he turned around and struck a pose, and that looked actually pretty cool. Extremely dangerous, but cool. "I bet a thousand that I will defeat all of your Magikarps!"
"Magikarps?" I surprisingly asked.
"Yeah! I`m gonna beat all your six Magikarps with just one pokemon!" He replied with determination.
"Why the heck did you decide that I have six Magikarps?" I began to anger a little.
"Because just idiots will train Magikarps!" He arrogantly said. "Those who catch six of them and hope someday them to become something good. A 'six-Magikarp' trainer class, yeah!"
"Well then, I guess, you`re wrong." I closed my eyes and grabbed the top pokeball from my shoulder belt. "Because I`m not of a six-Magikarp trainer class. I`m a Vengeance trainer class! And I use this guy to destroy!" And my first pokeball released good burning Dumpling on the field.
This shocked the guy before me. I don`t know what he was thinking when considered me an idiot with six Magikarps, but now I`m going to show him my wrath.
"We`ll deal with you anyway." The guy grabbed his own pokeball and sent out his partner outside. And his partner looked exactly like the pokeball he was released from.
It was Voltorb, the ball pokemon.
"Okay now, I get it. Electric-type maniac, all that…" I crossed my hands on chest.
"I`m not a maniac! I`m rocker! Rocker Luca! You will remember this name for long! Voltorb, use Sonic Boom!"
"Watch and learn." I addressed to Magikarp. "Dumpling, Iron Rogue maneuver!"
My opponent was stunned, to say the least. Voltorb was faster, of course, and easily struck my Charmeleon with a weak sound wave, but after that we counterattacked with our powerful Smokescreen and even more powerful Metal Claw.
"Damn you…" The rocker guy was caught by surprise. "Voltorb, use Spark"
"No sparks for you, pal! Dumpling, Ember!"
The smoke veil blocked Voltorb`s sight and the electric spark flew far away, completely missing my pokemon. But our attack was successful – and it was good too. Our hard practice made my partner`s embers much stronger. And as a result, the unconscious body of Voltorb just rolled out of the Smokescreen.
"Next, please!" I shouted playfully.
"Grrr… I`ll show you!" The opposing trainer returned his big pokeball into the small pokeball and then grabbed another one. His second pokemon was suddenly the Voltorb too… But twice bigger… And his colors were switched… And he had small angry eyes… Looks like a wacky evolution of Voltorb.
"Great, I`ll stay with my pokemon." I replied and prepared to attack. I bet he will tell the name of this evolution now.
"Let`s go, Electrode. Light Screen!"
So this is Electrode… Today I actually got some knowledge. Gotta learn them all! This will be helpful, maybe. But the move was new to me too. And I will learn it too.
"Okay… Let`s proceed with Embers, Dumpling." I carefully commanded.
My opponent smiled cunningly. I immediately understood that I made a mistake, but I don`t know which one.
Electrode was even faster than Voltorb – the large ball quickly hopped back and activated some sort of pink shield around himself that became almost invisible. My Dumpling shot the embers from his mouth, and the small burning particles just exploded on contact with this shield. Electrode got almost no damage.
Well, looks like this… Light Screen… protected him from the attacks. But what was so special in it? I need to check it out.
"Dumpling, let`s hit it with Metal Claw!" We resumed the battle.
"Electrode, use Swift!"
This time there were no tricks. Of course, our opponent has already shown us his speed, and managed to land the first hit. The large ball pokemon created a set of energy bundles that look like stars and sent it at us. Dumpling had no command to dodge, but for some reason he tried to do that. Charmeleon jumped aside, but the stars immediately changed direction and hit him anyway. That made me think…
But our answer to that was promising too. This time our attack hit the opponent pretty good, without being absorbed by some barriers. Can this mean that Light Screen weakens just special attacks? That`s what is special about it, ha!
"Electrode, use Spark again!" Our opponent angrily commanded. But I knew how to answer that.
"Dumpling, let`s repeat our nice Metal Claw." I gave the command being full of determination. This made our foe worry even more. If he thought that we will just attack with special moves that he can counter – then he is just an idiot!
We were ready to get a spark in the face, but that didn`t seem to bother my Charmeleon very much. He still remembers how hard it was to battle lieutenant Surge`s Raicher. THAT was real pain. Instead of giving up we approached the opponent again and landed another successful and powerful hit throwing the ball pokemon away from us.
Maybe this was too powerful as Electrode uncontrollably flew away from my Dumpling and away from us. Down the bridge.
"No, Electrode!" The trainer shouted worried.
But very suddenly it was my Magikarp who came to rescue. The brave fish swam right into the position where Electrode would fall into the water and… splashed. He just jumped out of water and collided with the electric pokemon sending him back on the battlefield.
"Yes!" I immediately invented the way to turn this into our favor. "Dumpling, throw him up into the air and then use Ember!"
Charmeleon ran to the approaching Electrode and jumped high to hit him right in the air. Confused ball pokemon was thrown away like a regular ball and could do nothing more than just enjoy the flight.
But what happened next, impressed ALL of us. My Dumpling suddenly burned brightly and made a deep breath to launch a pack of embers at our round opponent, but instead of small hot embers his mouth erupted… a strong stream of fire.
The pink barrier protecting the ball pokemon faded to this moment, and our awesome attack hit him hard. The ball pokemon fell on ground and slowly rolled to his master… Fainted.
"Was that… the Flamethrower?" I just couldn`t believe in this. Finally my boy Dumpling learned a powerful fire-type move!
"You were lucky…" Our opponent angrily commented this while returning his poor Electrode back into his pokeball. "But win is a win… Take your money." And he handed me over a nice green paper with a '1000 pd' on it. Yeah, it`s been while a since I was battling just random trainers for money. I had to remember about that when I was batting fishermen on my way with Susan.
"To bad luck can`t be bought." I shook the newly acquired bill before him and smiled.
"Hmph!" He snorted and walked away.
As for me, I turned back to my partner that… tried to burp?
"What are you doing, Dumpling? That`s not nice…"
He was breathing heavily and pointing at his mouth. The expression on his face looked exactly like mine when I burn my mouth with too hot coffee.
"Wait a second…" I crouched before my Charmeleon and carefully looked in his mouth. Well, I not a doctor, but I can tell this is not right. "Do you want to tell me that you – a fire-type, fire-breathing pokemon – have just burnt your mouth?"
He made a step back and looked at me like a ten-year-old hooligan.
"Oh, don`t worry, you will get used to it. We just need more practice. You did great there, high-five!"
He was glad to hear praise from me and awkwardly gave me a high-five in return. I took his pokeball to return back, but then stopped for a second.
"But maybe I really should take some care of you… Open your mouth." I said and pulled a bottle of potion from my greatcoat. "I just need to read whether I can spray it inside…"
I quickly looked through all complicated chemical words that were written in this medicine`s composition. To be honest, the only familiar word to me there was 'salt'.
"Well, looks like this will not be as tasty as curtain… But it doesn`t look poisonous."
And so I carefully sprayed the stuff of potion right into my Dumpling`s mouth. He chewed this for a couple of seconds and then made such expression like it was something extremely sour and began to cough.
"At least, now we know what a potion`s taste like." I smiled and hid the half-empty bottle in my greatcoat.
Dumpling made a couple more coughs and then suddenly launched another uncontrollable stream of flame right into the floor. I barely jumped away to avoid burning.
"Stop. Vomiting. Fire. Please!"
He again looked at me very guiltily. I just couldn`t scold him anymore, and returned back into the pokeball. After that I stood up and turned around to the Magikarp patiently waiting for me in the water.
"I didn`t forget you… Looks like you`re not as hopeless as I thought. Not as hopeless as everyone think." I smiled joyfully. I like to be wrong when think worse than it is. "I`ll make a warrior of you. Do you wish to become the strongest Magikarp in the world?"
The fish pokemon didn`t reply to me. He just blinked his empty eyes and that`s all.
"Well… This will take some time." I concluded and returned him back into the greatball.
Okay now, continue following the road to Fuchsia City. Hope this will happen soon…
That were the hardest days of all my journey. The hiking path appeared to be MUCH longer than I expected.
The Silence Bridge made a turn around the corner of South-East wood and headed West slowly moving into Route 13. Finally I got back to the mainland location. There I got into the ruins of boring ancient maze that is considered a real sight in this place.
I met quite a lot of tourists there, and even battled some of them. Each time I released my Magikarp into the small lake or pond nearby to look after the battle of others. I`m not sure if I can send him into battles right now, but watching will give him some more experience too. Although I could not tell by his blank eyes whether he gets that experience of not…
We trained on our way too, we trained a lot. We have finally fixed the Flamethrower of my Dumpling with the use of TM Case in replacement for Ember. I trained my pokemon a couple of new maneuvers and got some ideas for more. Unfortunately, training Magikarp appeared to be real pain in the ass. I tried to take his only move Splash under control, but this didn`t work as I wanted it to. But someday I will succeed. I have an idea.
After crossing the long and tough maze of Route 13 I got into another countryside terrain – Route 14. I met quite a lot of trainers with bird pokemon and trained my Harry to poison them. For now I don`t have anything super effective against this type, but maybe we will find something useful later.
And finally I got to the Route 15 – I could already see the city after all that. The only thing that divides me from it – the long straight road that is literally swarmed with trainers and pokemon. Looks like a popular place for training.
Until now, my pokemon weren`t completely healed in Pokemon Center for days, during the road I used almost all of my regular and super potions. If each of them is going to challenge me, this just could end badly…
So I battled a couple of them and went into the forest for training and waiting for the night. When the darkness fell, almost all trainers finished training and left the place. But instead of them some local biker gang came out on the night hunt…
That doesn`t even worth mentioning. I literally DESTROYED all their Koffings and Grimers with my own gang. The hooligans that are used to robbing people at night were just humiliated with such defeat. I wish I could do this with my Magikarp… What would double the effect…
I felt some enjoy looking at them escaping on their bikes. The punk girlfriend of one of bikers gave me the last look and sent an air kiss while her boyfriend was riding bike with them the hell away from me. I`m not actually into such type of girls, so I caught her imaginary kiss in the air and ate it.
Finally! The Fuchsia City. Actually it`s a very old and big village and a really popular place for tourists. Really nice place, I have to say. The mix of old but renovated and modern buildings looks really cool. But this reminds me of the old quarter of Cerulean City where the old buildings still exist among the new ones, but no one gives a shit about taking care of them. That`s too pity.
So the first thing to do was finding a Pokemon Center and booking a room in it. I called a cab that carried me right to it. This city is really big, not as big as Celadon but it still took much time for me to get to PC.
Great, finally I`m here. As always, the PokeCenter is a big and clean place that really inspires for feats. I left whole my team for treatment there, paid for the room and turned around to suddenly see a familiar figure near the trading machine. The long-haired brunette in red skirt, blue shirt and low cylinder hat. Yep, that`s Leaf all right.
She was busy talking so someone near that machine, but very soon her interlocutor left her alone and sad. I had to interfere and approached the girl.
"Hey there, Leaf! Did he just miff you?" I asked her.
When she raised her sight on me, Leaf`s expression suddenly changed to really happy.
"No, no, it`s just… I glad to see you!" She changed the topic.
"I`m glad to see you too. You ran away so quickly after… you know…" I began to whisper. "Our operation…"
"I know, I had to. I see, Erika took care of you. Did she gave you my little present?"
"Yes, she did, but I haven`t used it yet. I want to do it in a right time." I gave a quick look at nurse loading my pokeballs into her machine. "But nevermind. I`m thankful for the stone and for saving my ass. Someday I will return the debt."
"Oh, you can do it right now!" The girl happily said and ran to the trading machine.
"What`s on your mind?"
"You see, I trained a Graveler. I want to evolve it into Golem, but I don`t have anyone to trade with…" Leaf quickly explained.
"Oh… That`s what you were talking with that guy about?"
"Yes. I just want to evolve him, that`s all! We will exchange them back right now!"
That sounded extremely suspicious, considering the recent events. At least, I trust this girl – that I barely know for some weeks, that acts extremely suspiciously and definitely has the connection to headhunters - no less that Douchebag – a guy that I know for almost all my life. It`s an old sad joke – there are two reasons not to trust a person: because you don`t know him or because you do.
At least she didn`t ever try pranking me like Douchebag did.
"You know, a couple of days ago I traded my Haunter with Douchebag… You remember him… And now I have HIS evolved Haunter called Loser… Now I treat such offers VERY carefully." I told her my story.
"Oh… So you won`t help me?" Leaf asked me with those big sad eyes of hers.
"I will help you, my dear. I will help…"
I made a step aside and looked at the trading machine. I had a really crazy idea in my mind for some time… That will give profit to ALL of us if succeeds. But this is extremely risky and dangerous.
"But I will help you in some other way." I mysteriously told her.
"You`re scaring me. What`s on your mind again?" Leaf asked with worry.
I quickly looked around to make sure no one will listen to us and approached girl`s ear.
"I`m going to rob the Pokemon Center!"