- Goldenrod Outskirts -
Goldenrod City had grown even larger over the years. A fairly famous pokemon day care turned ranch had gone from being just outside the city to a good way into the outskirts of the massive human habitat. The buildings at the edge were still fairly spaced apart, with quite a few open areas that still held wild pokemon.
"Ah, back in the city," William said happily as they entered the outskirts of the city. "I've missed civilization."
Alexa looked over at the illusioned trainer, shifted her body slightly to make sure the berry bushes growing on her back weren't tipped over, and sighed at the idea of being in a large city again. The sound was fairly quiet in this modified form, but she wanted to have more berries for later. A good distraction from once again having to deal with crowds of humans, who this time were not 'other humans'. "Yeah, the city," she grumbled. "It's bigger than I expected."
William paused at her statement, stopped right in the middle of the road. "Please tell me you aren't also more uncomfortable with cities than I am," he said more than asked. "Please, let me have this as something I'm not more human than you with."
"Not all humans like cities," Alexa complained. "I grew up in the country, and I'm just not used to all the people who are around in these places." She paused to consider the small crowd of trainers on their way out of town just ahead. "Ok, I might not want to get used to it either, but I don't usually have to be in the really big ones that long."
"Is that Alexa Larch?" one of the small crowd questioned and pointed at her. It was a young man who looked to have been walking towards the city before he ran into people he recognized, which now somehow included her in a form that was only vaguely known as far as Alexa had been aware. "Look, I think that's Alexa Larch!" the trainer pointed out, and suddenly there was a small crowd of trainers moving towards them.
"Do we need to vanish?" William asked in a quick and quiet growl.
"No, I can handle whatever this is without that option," Alexa rumbled back happy to have a non-human communication option for an encounter with some trainers that somehow could tell who she was. "Hello, can I help you?"
"Hello Assistant Larch," the one who pointed her out said. "I just had a few questions."
'A few questions' turns out to be a couple of dozen, some of them technical, some for simple advice that William pitched in on, and some clearly meant to hint at the idea of giving them some of her stuff. Alexa, unfortunately for them, was waiting for questions that had not yet arrived about what her own alternate forms were like before she would even consider that last one.
"Alright, break it up, the rare pokemon clearly is getting stressed," a young Officer Jenny called out to the group around the point that Alexa started to regret staying an extra growth cycle for more berries. "Who is the large Ground type's trainer?"
"I'm my own trainer," Alexa rumbled dangerously, not at all in the mood for more issues, and got out the appropriate Trainer Card.
"Of course," the Officer replied a bit sarcastically. "So you would have no problems going to the station to make sure, right?"
"I am so sorry about my niece, Assistant Larch," an older Officer Jenny told Alexa about half an hour later in a wild pokemon holding cell. "She just joined the force, and has not quite worked out that you sometimes need to wait to check things out before you inconvenience people."
"I have been 'inconvenienced' quite a bit lately," Alexa had to point out darkly as she was allowed to leave.
"And I'm very sorry to have added to that list," the older Jenny replied with a flinch as they made their way to the entryway of the station. "Although I did want to get in contact with you before you went into the main areas of the city. We had thought it would take you longer to get here."
"Oh good, I don't need to call the League," William said darkly as he spotted them.
"My niece is going to be back on probation again after this one," Jenny said clearly to him. "We're just lucky that she didn't pull this on a Legendary," the Officer added in a grumble that Alexa probably wasn't supposed to hear. "I like the city intact." Alexa was vaguely insulted at the idea she would destroy part of the city over this sort of thing, even if she didn't want to point out that they did do this to a Legendary.
"So, what did you want to talk with me about?" Alexa asked instead as she moved to stand next to the illusioned Zoroark.
"Could you also bring out Charles Larch? This concerns him too," the Jenny said with another flinch.
"He prefers 'Charizard', the name thing is a bit of a problem," Alexa said still unimpressed with this whole event, even if that was a more understandable thing to not know. She let her Starter out, who was currently in his natural form.
"That is going to be a complicated thing to fix anytime during this League," the Officer replied to that with a deep cringe. "I'll make a note on your trainer information then, Charizard," the Jenny then surprisingly said directly to Charizard. "The Pokemon League wants you both to be a bit more openly non-human as trainers if you are willing. There are a few others they will be asking as well, for instance I'm supposed to find someone named 'William' who uses illusions to ask to not use them as much as well." William responded to that by breaking his illusion. "Good," the Jenny said uncomfortably. "I don't need to find you."
"I kind of don't want to be a trainer at all," Charizard said to interrupt, and Alexa paused to see if William would translate, only instead a mechanical voice repeated her Starter's words quietly.
"The Pokemon League has decided to provide all trainers who cannot speak a human language a translation device," Officer Jenny clarified, and held out a small device. "You have been entered into the system, I have your League Badge here as well. I have to give them to you, and ask you to be openly a trainer, but you don't need to use them or agree to that request."
Charizard took the small device, while Alexa looked at it critically. Translator devices were still very rare, and the good ones were too big to just carry around. This looked like a simple one, that meant it probably only barely caught what Charizard had said. Good for a single pokemon, very expensive, and generally annoying to use according to her father.
"How desperate is this request?" Charizard asked the Officer. "Because I don't think this is the sort of thing you want to just hand out to pokemon because they learned to read and write."
"Read, write, complete trainer training, and not learn to speak a human language while doing all of that," Jenny specified. "The League is taking these developments very seriously, but there hasn't been much visual knowledge that it is happening. Your trainer's match against Falkner is being publicized quite a bit more than normal because of it, and I think from how quickly they got this translator to me that they really wanted you to have it to join in that."
"Who has a pokemon they really need to be a trainer?" Alexa asked, because this was too much too fast to just be because of them.
"It is less that, and more a large number of current rules being called into question," Jenny answered. "There were some concerns recently in Sinnoh about a Lucario, who can make himself understood by humans on his own but can't disguise himself, about how things went for him last League. Since you were a trainer of a pokemon that nearly caused the same concerns for Kanto last year you have had an eye kept on you for similar issues, and then you started turning into rare and new kinds of pokemon." The Officer shrugged. "The League basically wants to see what the fallout is for you to be openly a pokemon."
"And how does that tie into Alexa getting put in your holding cell?" William questioned bluntly.
"It tells us that we need to update police training for pokemon who are people better," the Jenny replied with a grumble. "It isn't a minor thing to request. This is basically 'go out and find all the problems you can have'. That is part of why I have been told to ask you to help, to make sure we fix those things just like that as quickly as we can."
"I'm going to spend most of this trip growing berries then," Alexa decided. "Do you have something that can hold that for Charizard, or do we need to get our own?"
"We have a voucher for a local leather specialty shop," Jenny sighed and began to walk over to the desk. "Again, I had thought we would have more time before you arrived, so I didn't get around to having it made yet. Barely got the translator here at all."
"I'd bet it just happens to be the place we're going for gloves," Charizard sighed and looked over at Alexa, then flinched as the device dutifully translated it. "That's going to take getting used to. Does this thing have a manual?"
There was in fact a manual for the device, a small list of places where they were to show a small letter saying they were allowed to enter, and a surprisingly smaller list of places they would need to be human to visit. "I have to admit I want to try to go into that last group anyway," Charizard said as they left the station with a wave of his copy of that last list.
"Most don't sound like places I would go into willingly," William countered firmly. "Perfume stores for one are bad enough just to pass by on the street."
"I'm literally an open flame, there was no way I meant a perfume shop," Charizard shot back, and paused as the humans around them turned to look at him with a new expression. The translator was currently on a makeshift necklace that would need a better replacement to handle his transformations properly, but it also was still working to let those humans understand him as he spoke. "But I would have thought a pokemon day care would be on the first list."
"The one on second street?" one confused looking local questioned. "Because they only work with former criminal pokemon. I don't think most trainers are let in normally."
"Okay, that is a good reason," Charizard admitted as if talking with some random human was just normal, even if that interruption of the conversation was unexpected and unfamiliar. "Maybe you can help explain the rest of this list of places that a fully grown Char shouldn't just visit without asking ahead of time?"
Alexa laughed at him as the human did in fact go over most of that small list with some well justified reasoning, while William seemed just as interested in the answers. Charizard eventually had an additional set of handwritten notes on the page, and as the small crowd that had gathered broke up he quickly switched off the translator. "I don't know if I liked that or not," he said more safely without any chance of humans understanding.
"Turning it on and off is something we might need to work on, it looks a bit obvious right now," Alexa pointed out with an inhuman rumble. "I'm probably not going to really spend the entire time growing berries, but mostly because I want to know the gloves will change with me like Maizie thought they would."
"We still need to call her," William pointed out. "I'm not happy about how getting into town went, and she is likely going to be even less happy."
"I think we need another few days before it is time to call Alexa's parents too," Charizard had to add. "We planned on taking longer to get through the forest. At least as far as the rest of the world goes, we did spend longer there but it didn't take as long."
Everyone sighed about that complication. "Is the voucher for the same place as the gloves?" William asked instead of keeping with that topic.
"No, but it is at the same address," Charizard replied. "Might still be the same people, hard to tell with cities." He heard Alexa sigh. "Alexa, please do not make me take over just because you don't like cities much."
"You have a translator now," Alexa suggested.
"Wait, this is something that Charizard is more human than you about?" William asked, and earned a glare from both of them with the wording of the question.
"It is a city kid thing," Charizard clarified with a dark look towards his trainer. "I grew up in a town right next to Celadon. I've been in places like this ever since I learned to read. Meanwhile my trainer here practically routed us around anywhere with a skyscraper, let alone a normal city."
"You can't avoid skyscrapers in a Kanto Gym challenge," Alexa complained without meeting his eyes with the earthen pits that worked like eyes for her. "There just aren't enough Gyms outside the bigger cities."
"Okay, now I feel a bit better about that at least," William sighed and looked at the sky. "That took most of the day, do we have a plan for where we are staying here, or is it just hoping there is enough room at the Pokemon Center?"
Charizard clicked the translator back on. "I was thinking we could book a trainer hotel near the shopping center for the big resupply," he said in response. "I was looking through a few options, and I liked the sound of one of them." He smiled at both of the other pokemon without humans next to him, William still without an illusion and Alexa still with a bunch of Oran berry bushes on her back. "And we can see how well they can handle unusual trainers for the League at the same time."
James went by 'Jim' deliberately to avoid the common comparison to the famous cartoon criminal. It was basically needed to work at the front desk of a trainer hotel without either dealing with constant jokes, or worse with the local police having a reduced response time due to how many false calls were sent. From a personal viewpoint, the arrival of three trainers who were also a variety of pokemon was something he could fully sympathize with.
From a professional standpoint he was stuck between a request from the Pokemon League, and the management dictated rules on who and how they could rent rooms. "I'm sorry, I really am, but my manager went home for the day, and even if you do bring the League into things I would need confirmation from her to sign off on this," Jim was forced to tell the group.
They consisted of a Zoroark, who would be fine if they maintained the polite fiction that they were also human but were an edge case out in the open like this, a Charizard with a translator, which messed with the typical Fire pokemon rules unpleasantly, and a giant rock and dirt lobster with Oran berries growing out of their back, which was a big enough complication that he could not even work out what paperwork to start with. If it was just one of them it would have been easier to bend the rules using their documentation saying they were to be allowed access, but all three at once would get him fired if he didn't speak with management first.
"Well, can you call her to come back?" the Charizard questioned, although their tone was completely missing with the mechanical translation of the small device around their neck. "Or if not then maybe suggest somewhere else in the area?"
Jim simply looked off into space for a long moment as he tried to work out which option would cause him to get fired, decided that both were equally likely but only one would get the League after him, and picked up the desk phone to make the call. "Miss Glamur, we have some Pokemon League certified guests here I need some help properly signing in," he hedged, and tried to ignore the looks that earned him from the potential customers. The fact that he couldn't actually tell what those looks were both helped ignore them and did not reassure him.
"Very well, James," his manager said in a tone that unfortunately sounded more like a crime boss than a hotel owner, and made him want to properly change his name every time he heard it just so he had paperwork to avoid hearing her say 'James' like that. "I shall interrupt my night to fix whatever minor problem you can't handle." Yes, this definitely sounded like it would end with him being miserable if not fired.
"I will let them know you are on your way," he replied with false cheer and kept the fake smile on his face as she hung up on him without another word. "I don't suppose you know of an easy way to change your name, do you?" he asked, because at this point he almost wanted to get fired.
"I'm looking for one too, so if I find one I'll let you know," the Charizard replied, and once again Jim could not tell what tone they wanted to use. "Actually serious there, I'm even going to ask for contact information. Besides, I'm probably going to have to use 'Charles Larch' here anyway."
"A Charizard named Charles does sound bad," Jim had to agree. "But my parents named me 'James'." He pointed to his dark blue hair, kept deliberately short to help differentiate him.
"And you don't dye your hair?" the Zoroark questioned critically. "Because the guy named 'James' that I knew made sure to have blond hair to avoid that problem."
"This is Johto," Jim dryly replied. "We know the show enough to not dismiss hair dye, and people look closely enough, trust me."
The Zoroark paused, and seemingly deliberately did not look towards the doors, so Jim schooled his expression into polite interest. Miss Glamur entered the lobby, took one look at the trio of pokemon present, and then strangely enough seemed to genuinely smile at them. "Greetings," his boss chirped in the strange way she sometimes spoke. "How may we help you?"
The Zoroark was now staring at Jim's boss with complete confusion. "Psychic illusion?" the fox monster asked for some reason.
"Yes, Dark typed humans are rare," Miss Glamur replied with a laugh, and then she outright chirpped, like a bird, at the pokemon and they mostly responded with non-human sounds, the only exception quickly cut off as the Charizard turned off his translator.
"I have no idea what is going on," Jim mumbled in confusion.