Hi, it's my first story and English isn't my language, I'm using an AI to translate this so I imagine there will be some mistakes, just tell me and I'll fix it! Thank you for understanding!
Before dealing with the two jerks, I had to first stop by the orphanage; it was the place I most wanted to revisit. As a reincarnated person, you might think that without parents, there wouldn't be many emotional ties, but that's a mistake. Arriving in this world with nothing and no one and still being treated well by the Mother and the caregivers made me reserve a special place in my heart for them; they were my family.
I arrived at the orphanage gate and couldn't help but let out an irritated sigh.
If this were in one of the wild regions, I'd have already canceled the CPF of those assholes...
I sighed again, realizing the influence of the Dark-type Aura on my mind. In my previous life, I never would have imagined that I'd be capable of killing people in cold or hot blood. I barely got into fights; I was just a game developer specialized in AI.
I pushed the iron gates with little effort. They were rusty, and the left side barely opened. The noise seemed to have attracted some movement at the windows, and I could see some small heads peeking at me. I remembered that feeling, the one where every time the doorbell rang, you'd hope it was someone coming to adopt you. In my case, I recall seeing the other kids excited about it. I never wished for such a thing, unless it was Professor Oak, of course.
I pressed the doorbell button only to find out it wasn't working. Just as I was about to knock on the door, it opened, and I saw a little girl with dark hair and black eyes looking at me. She was about five years old. Her clothes were quite worn out, but not dirty. I could see the faint shadow of a Vulpix drawing that had once been red on her shirt.
"You can come in, sir…" she said, trying to show good manners.
"…"
"Annie! How many times have I told you not to open the door?!" said a more mature voice approaching from behind.
The woman who came closer must have been around 50 years old. She was a bit stocky and short. Her clothes were hidden behind a somewhat dirty and worn apron, but I could still recognize that look behind her aged face.
"Mother Bethany?" I asked to make sure.
I saw her squint in confusion, and then her eyes widened in surprise.
"Lucius? Is that you?" she asked in shock.
"Yes, I'm back," I confirmed, surprised that she still recognized me.
She invited me in, and inside, I found myself surrounded by children who looked at me with curiosity. There were about ten children at the orphanage today, almost the same number as when I was here. After all, it was a small town.
"Tell me, Lucius, I followed news of you up until ten years ago, when you completed the Sinnoh circuit. The League said you left word that you were going to visit other unaffiliated regions, but ten years without a word… You've been considered missing for more than five years," Mother Bethany inquired.
"At first, I went to Alola; the variants in that region kept me distracted for a long time. One thing led to another, going to Unova, and before I knew it, between Galar and Kalos, ten years had passed…" I explained, scratching the back of my neck.
"You could've sent letters or something," she said, sounding irritated.
"Sorry, Mother," I apologized. I really could have sent a sign of life.
"Well, what's done is done. I'm just happy you're alright. Now tell me…" she was saying when we smelled something burning.
She jumped up in alarm and rushed to the kitchen, leaving me with several curious-eyed children.
"Were you from here too?" asked the little girl named Annie who had opened the door for me.
"Yes, almost twenty years ago," I replied.
"Were you adopted?" a boy asked.
"No."
Soon the other children felt more comfortable asking questions, and an interrogation followed.
They asked if I was a trainer, if I was rich, if I was going to adopt a child, which Pokémon I had, and if I was famous. I answered as much as I could, but when they started intensifying their questioning, I made my move and took out my Umbreon from its Pokéball.
"This is my starter. It's the Dark-type evolution of Eevee. I got Eevee in a competition in Saffron just before I started my journey," I explained, and I threw Umbreon to the wolves.
Umbreon gave me an accusatory look but couldn't resist the petting from the children, who began stroking its fur.
I left Umbreon and followed Mother Bethany to the kitchen.
"What happened to the town?" I started the conversation.
Mother Bethany told me everything. After Bran died, Yan and Kazi fought over who would inherit the gym. Those two idiots… When the Alliance Official came to conduct strength tests, neither of them was acceptable in strength levels to be Gym Leaders. It would have been different if they were Bran's sons. The Stromer family would have been considered the rightful owners of the gym. But in this case, they were employees and did not become eligible.
The Alliance closed the gym, and the two idiots created unofficial gyms. In their battles, they turned the once peaceful town, perfect for a retirement retreat, into a ghost town, dilapidated.
"Oh my dear, don't worry about that. The Alliance will soon send someone to deal with those two. These things don't last long. They've been like this for five years, but only in the last year has the situation worsened to the point where they openly fight in the streets. You don't need to worry," Mother said, noticing my somber expression.
"Mother, I need your help with a few things," I said.
I decided to share some of my plans with Mother, remembering that she had good influence in the town when I was a child.
When I passed through the hall on my way out, Umbreon jumped out of the horde of children and walked beside me. I could hear Mother making a phone call, probably to help me with what was coming next.
I walked to the mayor's house, and even from the street, I could hear him answering a call with my heightened senses. I heard the whole conversation. Mother, without being certain, vouched that I had the necessary strength to do what I was going to do. When the call ended, I knocked on the door.
The mayor was a gentleman about 60 years old with extremely thin and white hair. His clothes were nice, but his fashion sense was terrible. Even so, I could see a Persian lying in the living room, staring at the door as he answered.
"You must be Lucius? Come in, we have much to discuss."
My intention was to establish a gym here. From the beginning, that was my goal: a Dark-type Gym. The sale of all properties in the city is the responsibility of the mayor's office, so I came to speak with the mayor about the location. I explained to him that I wanted a large place that needed to be centrally located at the far end of town so that trainers would have to walk through the entire city to reach the gym.
My plans weren't just to found a gym; I wanted the whole town for myself. Honestly, with the amount of treasure and money I'd accumulated in my travels, I could easily buy all the properties in this small, ruined town. I sold valuable items, captured and sold the Crystal Onix, and even found Mega Stones: a Beedrillite and an Aerodactylite. I haven't sold them yet, as no one knows about Mega Evolutions. Their value was like jewels or research artifacts. I intended to sell them when their value became priceless.
Soon, the mayor and I settled everything. I bought the mansion that belonged to the first mayor of Dark City. It was on the beach and covered almost the entire shoreline. It had been turned into a museum at some point and was later abandoned. It would need extensive repairs. I also bought the two properties to the left and right. The Pokémon Center in Dark City was shut down at the same time as the gym. They kept a retired Nurse Joy in the city for emergencies, but there are no Pokémon Centers in cities without gyms. Of course, if the town's residents sponsored the Pokémon Center themselves, the Alliance would take care of the rest.
That was what I intended: a Pokémon Center next to the gym and a PokéMart on the other side. According to the law, if someone sponsored a Pokémon Center, they had the right to a share of the income that place generated. Every certified trainer by the Alliance received a kind of stipend, based on the number of badges the person had. So I was already securing some income, though not the main one in my mind, but it was something.
I asked the mayor to help me get in touch with a contractor, and he recommended one from Saffron known for its speed and quality. They were expensive, but they were excellent. We settled the details, and they promised to arrive in the morning, ensuring they'd only take two days. I couldn't help but marvel at the magic of free and super-powered Machamp labor.
Almost every profession in the Pokémon world used Pokémon to perform their tasks; they evolved in that direction.
I contacted the Joy Family, the clan responsible for the Pokémon Centers. When sponsorships were made, there was no need to contact the Alliance; everything was handled directly with the Joy Family. I was planning to sponsor a police station in the city as well. Dark City had always been a small town, and we even had a police officer, but he was old and incapable of dealing with the chaos that was happening. However, if I brought in the Jenny Family now, I wouldn't be able to deal with those two fools the way I wanted.
After that, I talked to the mayor about some of my plans and was disappointed to learn that I couldn't buy the forests and caves around the city without first making a request to the Alliance. Anything involving Kanto's fauna had to be handled by the Alliance. The mayor offered to help with this matter; he seemed to have political connections that could speed things up for me.
With everything scheduled to happen, I returned to the orphanage and asked the Mother for one of the caretakers' rooms. I took my laptop out of my bag, an extremely advanced model. It was unique, custom-ordered by me from Silph Co. It had a Porygon as its internal AI. I didn't capture it, so it stayed inside the PC, counted more as a program or something like that.
I opened the program I'd been working on throughout my years of travel—a kind of virtual battle simulator. In the end, it was just a game, but it had all the Pokémon I registered during my travels, from all the regions: Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Alola, Hisui, Galar, and Kalos. I caught hundreds of Pokémon. My Dark-type restriction didn't stop me from capturing Pokémon of other types; it only prevented me from training them and giving commands. But I could sell them.
It was quite lucrative to sell Pokémon from one region in another, but I kept several for myself. Poké Balls had a hibernation function where the Pokémon could stay inside for years with time frozen. Silph Co. also had a kind of digital database where unused Pokémon could be stored. At the beginning of my journey, this didn't exist, so I had to pay for a breeding ranch to store my Pokémon there. It was very expensive and burdensome for me for a long time, but technology has taken a huge leap in the last ten years.
The battle simulator I'd been working on was almost ready. All the problems were solved, and all the bugs were fixed. The only issue was how to handle the digitalization. I knew that Porygons were capable of digitizing a person and making my game VR, but I lacked the ability to command the Porygon to do what I wanted. When setting up the program, the Porygon in my PC helped with everything, but if I asked it to do something, it wouldn't obey because of my curse. I spent a long time thinking about this and decided to 'outsource' this phase of my project.
Tomorrow, I would stop by Silph Co. headquarters in Saffron and negotiate this. They would handle the servers anyway, so making VR possible wouldn't cost them much.
I thought about taking out my Pokémon but decided to keep only Umbreon out. Dark-type Pokémon have peculiar temperaments; they are basically extremes—extremely loving, hateful, cruel. I raised my Pokémon to be obedient, treated my main team as family, even threw parties occasionally. But I got them used to staying inside Luxury Balls—it was much more practical during travels. Umbreon and Sableye were the only ones who always stayed outside. Sableye had been in my shadow since I captured him. It got to the point where I left his Poké Ball in my bag and carried six more on my belt, illegally keeping seven Pokémon at my disposal.
I only started doing this after Sableye's shadow-hiding ability reached its maximum, becoming completely undetectable. Umbreon always stayed outside—it became a habit. But if my plans went right, soon all my Pokémon wouldn't need to stay in their Poké Balls all the time.
I made some adjustments to the program and then opened a folder with over a thousand videos, each more than an hour long. The older ones were shorter, as cameras back then were quite large, and the films were short. But ten years ago, those Rotoms appeared, and everything became easier. I bought a camera embedded in my cap, and everything went smoothly. I had videos of everything—venturing into wild areas, making Pokéblocks, setting up camps, exploring caves, fighting battles, observing battles. I even had a set of videos of Legendary Pokémon battles among themselves.
I had done this from the beginning to fully capitalize on my journey. I just needed to edit and post when the platforms for that came up, and in the last two years, PokéTube had been created. It works exactly like YouTube, but with a feed and a user profile. My mission was to prove to the world that the Dark-type was the most powerful. To be taken seriously, I'd need to build a certain amount of fame. I'm relatively famous under the pseudonym Mr. D, an unofficial Pokémon Professor who occasionally releases a new evolution or the utility of some items.
I know that many professors tried to find me after I sold Giovanni the evolution method for his Nidorino to evolve into Nidoking, or when I sold the League a book with an Ursaluna on the cover and the exact method of its evolution, all under the pseudonym Mr. D. I planned to reveal my identity right after opening my gym, to generate more movement in Dark City, along with some research on Eeveelutions.
I edited a video of a battle between a pseudo-champion level Pangoro and a Chesnaught of the same level. The fight was intense, and both fought to exhaustion, only to be interrupted by a Pyroar that appeared and unbalanced the duel. The fight itself was normal for the kind of battles I witnessed or fought, but the type of Pokémon was almost unheard of in Kanto. I'm sure people like Professor Oak must have traveled everywhere, but information from regions outside the Alliance wasn't easy to obtain.
I had already created and set up my profile on the site. I just needed to finish editing, and then I posted the video and went to sleep. Tomorrow would be a busy day.
Thank you for reading this far! Leave a comment with what you think!