- Cherrygrove City -

Cherrygrove was a fair sized city, with a small port that had been in operation since the Weather Trio disaster in Hoenn to help supply Johto. There were a good number of businesses, a smaller Pokemart on the north side of the city next to the Pokemon Center, and larger one along a large boardwalk that extended down the beach and out into the port. There were many greenhouses and flower shops, which Alexa's Grass type pokemon would probably enjoy to visit, that the guide book said were the heart of the well traveled city.

Alexa had Kingler out as she entered Cherrygrove, mostly because the temporary Fire/Dragon pokemon still needed to work on cooling down. Alexa had sort of anticipated that being an issue if a Fire typed variant worked out, but she had thought that would take longer to be a thing. "Charizard is going to want to use that at the Gym," she commented to her crab pokemon with a nod to the large wave shaped structure on a small sandy island at the very end of the pier that extended directly off the boardwalk.

"What does your unique... What kind of pokemon is that?" the trainer from Route 27, William she recalled, suddenly asked her and got out his Pokedex again. Now he was wearing what looked a lot like a Nightmare Fragment, but lacked something that Alexa could only identify because she had become so familiar with a real one.

"Hello again, William. That's my Kingler," she greeted the other trainer. "She's currently using a Frozen Flame and my Charizard's new method of making pokemon Fire typed."

"Your Charizard, who last I saw him had the Water type, can make other pokemon the Fire type?" William asked slowly and carefully. "Your Charizard might want to make a Water type Gym's pokemon into the Fire type while staying the Water type himself?"

"Yeah, but we haven't tested it enough for that yet," Alexa had to admit. "So you're naturally Dark typed?" she asked with a nod at the black cloak he had started to wear. "Typed humans aren't the most commonly known thing, and I've heard that Dark types in general like disguising themselves. It would help trick Psychic typed humans into thinking they just need to have their pokemon blow that off to read your mind, but that kind of thing is a bit of an edge case for League rules."

"Humans can have the Dark type?" William asked in a way that made Alexa's smile turn bit fake. As if he was not human, which in retrospect might have been what he had tried to tell her when they first met. "Humans can have types? Psychic humans genuinely have the type?" He honestly sounded a bit worried about the prospect. "I mean, they are like a pokemon having a type."

"Uh, actually it goes really complicated there. Humans with a really strong type, I mean to the point they can use moves, can actually be caught by the stronger kinds of pokeball," she admitted as she racked her brain to try and find a way to calm him down without lying to him. "I've read a few things that say if we get stronger systems than current Master Balls we might make some that work on most typed humans. Like how teleporters can work on typeless humans."

"Some pokeballs can catch some humans, humans can learn moves, and teleporters have something to do with pokeballs?" William asked in a way that said she failed to calm him down. "Are there pokemon who are just humans with types?" he quickly added with confusion.

Her smile had to be outright fragile right now. "Yes, all of those are things that can happen, although that last one is a bit tricky," she very reluctantly admitted, and felt Kingler stumble at that idea.

"This must be what it feels like to learn pokemon-trainers like myself exist," William seemed to realize, and Alexa could hear the hyphen in that term. "Suddenly a lot of those times are a lot less funny."

"Sorry," Alexa had to say. She knew that Charizard hated it when his jokes backfired like that. "Maybe a change in topic will help. How is the local Gym?"

"Not a great topic change to be honest. They ran into some kind of trouble and can't actually start until tomorrow," William replied with a flinch. "I think I might be the only foreign trainer so far who hasn't just written it off because of the 'closed' sign. I had to ask the Leader to find out it wasn't going to be that long."

"Well, I guess that does give me some time to get the extra paperwork I need done," Alexa unhappily admitted at that news, and then she joined William in glaring at Kingler as the crab pokemon clicked in laughter.

"Do you need a translator for a bit?" the other trainer offered. "I have the free time, and part of me wants to let you hit the Gym first just to see what that looks like."

"No, I've got that covered," Alexa said with a dark look at her pokemon. "My team knows how to get me to understand. For instance I'm quite sure that Kingler has been interested in what reading is like lately, so she probably would like to help." Kingler clicked in a clear negative, but made a good point by heating up a bit more. "Well, when she works out how to not ignite paper by being next to it."

"I definitely want to see what happens at this Gym battle now," William said with amusement.

"Your plan is fine," the League official who was dealing with the current Gym startup issues informed Alexa with a dull tone. "I'm going to set you up for the first slot tomorrow." It was the dangerous kind of dull, one where someone had angered you so badly you lost the ability to care. "I'm even going to tentatively approve this new Fire type conversion move for it as a test. You do not need to inform Leader Douglas." It was the kind of tone she only used when her team was particularly annoying.

Alexa was fairly sure that had not actually been directed at her, but she still got out of the Pokemon Center quickly to avoid being another target for that anger instead of a method to express it. The larger Pokemart would probably be far enough to avoid that, even if she kind of wanted to check the smaller one to avoid crowds. That led her to a path with a few flower shops along it, and after a moment of consideration she let out Bellossom and Rhydon to check them out.

Bellossom was vaguely interested for the first shop, but asked to be returned before they left it, while Rhydon on the other hand was not used to flowers as a Grass type, and a pokemon at the second shop ended up in a long conversation with him about how to handle them properly. Alexa's Grass type preferring pokemon probably would have stayed there all day, but the owner cut in to recommend the next store down the road for better help with the pokemon side of plant care.

"Oh my, is that a Rhydon that used Crystal Syrup?" one of the shopkeepers at the third store asked with concern as soon as they got in the door. "Did he get injured badly?" he quickly asked as he abandoned a planter.

"We just heard about a new method to make it, and are trying to get enough pokemon for our own," his coworker said thoughtfully and looked over Rhydon more carefully, but continued to work on a few potted plants. "That Rhydon has other changes too, so it might be something like that."

"I didn't think our experiments were that well known already," Alexa admitted and Rhydon nervously shuffled closer to her. "We figured that out when Rhydon decided he liked this way of having the Grass type the best. Sorry about using some without needing to."

"How many has he used so far?" the first shopkeeper questioned thoughtfully as he approached to inspect her topiary pokemon. "Lilly had to use one on her Bayleef during a bad snowstorm a few years back."

"We're on his second dose, he's spent over two weeks now with another layered on top," Alexa admitted as her pokemon shuffled closer to her side. "We hope that we can stretch that for a month at least, but he has been switching what his secondary type is so it isn't fully stopped."

"Rick, did the girl who just made it so we can actually stock the best Grass type healing item just try to apologize to us because she used the same number of those things that an emergency would use up?" the now named Lilly questioned a bit jokingly and stopped working. "Ms. Larch right? Trust me, you have made it so we can get a whole lot more than just two of those."

"Honestly you've made it so we can think about making our own here," Rick agreed with a nod towards the back of the store. "The big producers of it have already announced that they will be taking more orders and maybe even bigger ones."

Rhydon was now curled up against her, and Alexa had to agree that it was a bit awkward to hear this about how the two of them had basically been playing around with her father's work. "But there are other ways to get the Grass type for a longer time. Stuff like Treated Chlorophyll Jade," she attempted to argue.

"Most of those don't work as well, Chlorophyll Jade specifically takes twice the number of pokemon," Lilly explained, and Alexa did know that from her time helping her father, but that was her dad telling her about what she had found. The shopkeeper looked a bit embarrassed to be discussing the jade, and that somehow made the change a bit more real. "I also must admit I've used more Crystal Syrup than you have for reasons other than healing. The treatment process for Chlorophyll Jade to let it change the type of pokemon requires about a dose per piece, and we tried to make a few because we've wanted to try and make more of our own Crystal Syrup for a while now."

"We didn't know that there were two big problems with that until we had our few pieces," Rick added with amusement. "First is how you need twice as many pokemon, and we couldn't manage that as easily, but worse is the second issue. It turns out that Treated Chlorophyll Jade doesn't always turn pokemon into Grass types that have sap instead of blood, or whatever they normally use."

"But Crystal Syrup always does," Alexa said mostly to herself, and that seemed to snap Rhydon out of his unease too. "Because it makes the drinker into a plant pokemon, not just a Grass type."

"Yeah, not that the big places don't use those other things. I think they have more Treated Chlorophyll Jade than anyone else," Rick admitted with a laugh. "Which does mean the cost of it is probably going to drop in a few months when they can switch all of that to using the new method. I have no idea what they are going to do with all of that Chlorophyll Jade then."

"Yikes, that might be a hard thing to sell off," Alexa admitted, although Rhydon rustled thoughtfully. "Okay, I know that I'd probably get some, but I think we're outliers, Rhydon."

"So, since he's using Crystal Syrup to be like that, I guess your Rhydon likes being a topiary?" Lilly questioned with a great deal of interest. "What have you been using to keep him that way?"

It was considerably later in the day that Alexa actually made it to the Pokemart, but it was also with a much happier Rhydon back in his pokeball, and a piece of Treated Chlorophyll Jade the shopkeepers had given her in exchange for jar of Mercury Contagion. The Pokemart was one of the really big stores, the kind usually found in much larger cities, or big trade towns which the port might have made Cherrygrove. The sort of Pokemart big enough that they would let you have a pokemon out as long as the pokemon could be careful in the store.

"Are you up for helping me out in here, Charizard?" she questioned her Starter, who looked around the room cautiously. They had done this before in some of the larger stores in Kanto, but that was before she knew he might have ended up going into stores like this on his own as a trainer himself.

"Is there anything specific you wanted to look for?" he quickly scrawled on his notepad. "Because our current issue is that we have too many new things we still only might end up using."

"Those breakable containers that can be used to splash pokemon with stuff. I think we have enough kinds of that thing now to justify some," Alexa answered. The Viridian Pokemart had some varieties of the item, but none that weren't made out of something that would react to Toxin or Mercury Contagion. Not to mention the new Contagion that would require a bit more temperature tolerance. "Although I'd rather not have to get a different kind for each one."

Charizard nodded at that idea, and then they both made their way to the battle item section of the store. Almost every isle there had a little symbol to indicate how many Badges you needed to have been certified for before you could actually buy what was on the shelves. It was actually really hard to buy anything for actually fighting pokemon against pokemon without at least one Badge to your name, even if you weren't a trainer, and the really impressive stuff needed at least three. For a lot of things that was mostly just to make sure the trainer understood how to handle pokemon before they tried to use the more complex options, or hurt their pokemon in the long run with overexposure to battle potions and medicines.

No Badge trainers were honestly barely allowed to capture their own pokemon in some regions. A year before her own League, Kanto had come close to requiring a Badge before you could be sold pokeballs or otherwise register a second pokemon. That idea had fell through, mostly because the average Kanto Gym Leader at the time noted that they were more likely to pass a trainer that could show they could handle more than one pokemon than a trainer that was just extremely good with their Starter.

Alexa's musing on that was interrupted by a huff from Charizard at the limited selection of the product they were after. He was reading over a box of small greenish cubes, and as she moved closer to inspect them he instead pointed her at a set of funny looking triangular ones. "Really, they make this?" she had to ask about that option, and got the typical laugh out of her Starter when he found something unbelievable to prank her with in a store. At least the existence of a set of glass flasks that looked both hazardous to handle and dangerous to throw felt like it was somebody's prank to file in with the other options. "Maybe it is on the wrong shelf." She turned the box over and saw it was actually supposed to have the fragile looking corners break off when it hit the ground to make a terrain hazard of some kind.

Pretty much the entire shelf they were looking at wasn't actually legal to use in the League. Instead these were for use in other applications, although what kind of fight involved poisoned bits of broken glass was beyond her. More commonly they were used by trainers to quickly heal a pokemon with a liquid, or to drive off wild pokemon with scent or poison. Alexa mostly wanted this kind of thing in case they ran into danger on the road while in a long term transformation that wasn't as easy to fight in. A quick way to get one of their other options out right then seemed like a solution to that possible problem.

It was easy to work out which of the products simply would not work for that purpose, and hard to work out which of the fragile options that weren't dangerous to have break on your body would actually play nicely with their materials. The greenish cubes weren't a bad option, if not for the fact that they specifically cautioned against using anything toxic due to the material of them holding such substances after they broke. Another set of smokey grey oval shaped hard plastic ones looked promising, until it became clear they weren't meant to actually break on their own and instead had to be punctured by the pokemon using them as a way to help let pokemon use manufactured healing substances.

Luck was on their side in the end, as they found a set of clear not-quite-glass spheres that both matched the kind of tolerances as the jars Alexa was already storing the various materials inside, and also safely broke when they hit a target. They appeared a bit tricky to fill, but after an entire shelf of poor options in the second store she had checked Alexa was willing to take that downside.

William was at the Pokemon Center when they returned after a shopping trip where Charizard barely avoided just asking the shopkeepers about Alexa's various half thought out purchases. It was strange to pull his usual shopping stunts when she knew he could actually communicate with her, but a part of him had dreaded that since the day he met her.

"Trainer," he rumbled at William, and turned to look Alexa in the eye. "I have questions for you." His own trainer seemed to understand as she waved at him to go ahead as she moved towards the desk, and that more than anything should have told him that writing wasn't going to make her wary of him. Apparently it was hiding that skill that made her nervous about offending him instead.

"I don't typically advertise that I can understand pokemon," the pokemon-trainer noted quietly and nodded at the same meeting rooms in the hallway where Alexa had spoken with the League official. Charizard glanced at Alexa again, and his trainer nervously nodded in agreement so he followed the Dark typed trainer.

"Did you ever consider being a Starter instead of a trainer?" Charizard asked as soon as the door closed.

The human form of the trainer vanished in an instant to be replaced by a large black furred fox pokemon with a larger red ponytail than the human form had seemed to have, and the exact same outfit otherwise. "No," William admitted with honest confusion. "Why do you ask that of all questions? I would think you would be more interested in how a pokemon becomes a trainer."

"I am perfectly aware of how a pokemon can become a trainer," he replied and barely managed to keep calm as he explained. "In fact that is why I am asking that specific question. I want to know why another pokemon would make the other choice given the options."

The fox froze at his statement. "Your team is not doing good things to my world view, and that is supposed to be my job!" William complained with a huff. "For the record, Zoroark typically spend our lives pretending to be human. I have even heard rumors that it is rarer for a Zoura or Zoroark to join a trainer's team than it is for one to be a trainer themselves. My other option wasn't to be a Starter, it was a baker at my parents' shop."

Charizard looked at the fox monster seriously, and then laughed out loud. "Of course," he rumbled through the laughter. "Of course the first pokemon that is a trainer I meet is the kind of pokemon that normally become trainers. It matches with how my whole family becomes Starters."

"They actually do that with Chars in Kanto? I had thought farms to raise Starter pokemon were just a rumor," William replied a bit more calmly.

"It wasn't a farm, it was just a few families who made an agreement with the local trainer school," Charizard started to explain, and avoided the hard parts. "Professor Oak has been using my line as his Fire type Starter for long enough that most of us have parents that were Starters themselves. I think that old man has singlehandedly at least doubled the population of Char in the world given how many siblings I have."

There was a knock on the door, and William flickered back into a human form. "Come in," the trainer said, and Alexa opened the door to enter.

"Sorry to cut things short, but the League official just read Professor Elm's report and wants to see Charizard's other forms now," his own trainer explained with a bit of a smile.