Chapter 2 - Oh, They Have Battles with Pokémon now?
The attic apartment was actually not that bad. Sure it was dusty, smelly; clearly a hoarder's pet project, full of Thaddeus' old garbage and generally unpleasant atmosphere-wise, but Slub got to be alone in it. So that was a start. He shoved all the crates into one corner and uncovered an old CRT TV set with a built-in VCR and disc-player.
"Alrighty," he thought to himself "this, I can probably get some use out of." He'd liked to stream movies and series online, and using analog media was probably not too dissimilar in lieu of having a computer anymore. To test if it worked he shoved a random black spined tape from a nearby box into the cassette receptacle and hit the power button and then the play button.
"Please be cartoons or something…" Slub mumbled to himself.
A whirring noise sounded and the screen lit up in black and white with Pokémon on screen and a highly enthused commentator doing a play by play.
"... deus sends out… Oh, it's also a Salamence! Amazing! Drake is gonna have his work cut out for him now. Oh look at that, two Dragonbreaths searing against one another but who will give in first! I've never seen such a show of, shall we say, dragon force! Or what say you, Kato-San?"
"This, Yamamoto-san, is truly the most incredible batt.. Oh! Thaddeus has done it! Drake's Salamence has fainted! But wait! Something's… "
Slub turned off the TV and the whirring from the VCR stopped.
"Ugh, sports..." Slub said, and got to cleaning up the hole he would be stuck in for the foreseeable future.
The next day, and still no less bitter from the various incidents over the past 24 hours, Slub got off the bus in the closest town. A small coastal hamlet groan-inducingly called 'Sunnyville'.
Sunnyville was just a fifteen minute bus ride from the roadside strip mall where Thaddeus, his shop and, more recently, Slub, were residing. Thaddeus wasn't very popular in Sunnyville, as proven by the staggering number of lawsuits he had endured over the past decades, so he usually sent his assistant to do his shopping for him. His last assistant had recently saved up enough cash to go to some offshore academy and now that the position had opened up, Slub was gently shoved into that position. This also explained why Thaddeus was so keen to let Slub live in the attic for free. Slub wasn't very enthusiastic, but had accepted his situation for now since there wasn't anything he could do. For now, at least. Incidentally, Slub had learned on the bus that the bus stop he had left from, namely 'North Sunnyville Mall' was unofficially named 'Stabbyville' by locals, as a hilarious equivalent to the vastly more pleasant sounding Sunnyville. Slub wasn't very amused by that either.
On the topic of Sunnyville:
It's a small prefecture on the north-western coast of Hoenn. The layout is essentially like a wedge shape, with a main street near the top, a number of smaller streets down the hill, and an impressive, if rickety, outdoors Pokémon Battle Stadium down on the waterfront. The largest building on the waterfront, however, is the Pokémon Gym. A large domed building with a big monolith out front, onto which the names of the trainers who have defeated the gym challenge are permanently etched. It, like most buildings in the town hasn't been renovated in decades and if one were to use one word to describe the general look and feel of the whole area it would be: Old.
Slub strained his eyes as he scanned the extremely poorly written shopping list. "Go to the florist and as if they have 'the stuff'. Don't look in the bag. Also, do not eat 'the stuff', seriously, just don't."
Slub looked around.
"What's 'the stuff' from a florist? Flower seeds? Why would I eat those?"
Slub stuffed away the list and took stock of his location, by spinning in place.
"Uhh, florist. Right… uhh…"
"Hey, Mr. Trainer!" Slub heard a young whiny voice. He looked back for a moment to see a boy who looked to be about a quarter his age.
"Huh?"
"I just got my Pokémon license from the professor and she said I should seek out trainers in town. Our eyes have locked, we have to battle."
"I'm not a trainer, leave me alone," Slub dismissed and was about to turn around to walk away.
"You got a trainer's belt, a really old one too, and Poké Balls, so of course you're a trainer. Stop messing around. This is for my education!" The boy said, stomped the ground and took out a Poké Ball and embiggened it with a click of the button.
Slub sighed.
"Fine! If I," he groaned, "If I 'battle' you, will you show me where 'the florist' is? You're probably familiar around here," Slub asked, realizing that he could at least try and feed two Meowths with one bowl. His inner voice just sounded like his own father there for a moment. Slub shuddered.
"You got it, Mr. Trainer! I grew up here, I know every shop!"
"I'll be the umpire!" A nearby guy with a white shirt, suddenly yelled out, probably trying to sound important.
"Commence the one-on-one exhibition match between, uh, this kid and that guy!"
"I don't care," Slub said before suddenly being startled by the kid throwing a Poké Ball.
"Sandshrew, I choose you!" A small greenish brown rodent with big beady eyes and little claws appeared, peeping out a quiet "Sa-san".
Slub had a thought for a moment.
His Father, Harold, had caught Magmar as a Magby over 15 years ago when it got into their garage during a nasty rain storm. One doesn't usually see Magby in Hoenn, and certainly not around Mauville, so they figured someone had abandoned it. The family took it in and it just became part of everyday life. It just took a few weeks for it to evolve and since then it was always around. Lighting the fireplace, drying clothes, lighting Linda's cigarettes and generally being a very warm presence that somehow, thankfully, didn't set the house on fire. Surely, having kept it around for that long and taking reasonably good care of it must have given it enough experience to at least be passable in battling. Slub thought to himself, forgetting the outside world as wasn't wholly uncommon. Yesterday it made short work of the Bramblin in a single move after all. Slub thought for a moment longer. Uncle Thaddeus had mentioned something about Bramblin having an advantage against Sandshrew… No. He was most definitely not about to send that thing out. Surely nothing could go wrong with... Slub took the top Poké Ball. "Good old Magmar. Nothing beats that!"
"Magmar, go!" Slub yelled and threw the Poké Ball into the arena of combat, which more accurately was a slightly shabby, trash laden parking lot by the drug store. Magmar appeared in a flash of red light crying "Boooo!" as its pink flames shot up and around it in an impressive display. Having unleashed Magmar, the Poké Ball returned as if it had bounced off a wall and hit Slub square in the face.
"Ow, for…" Slub swore and picked up the ball with one hand while rubbing his face with the other.
A short gasp came from the assembled crowd of about 12 people. Slub actually felt a shot anxiety running up his spine, and not the usual all-the-time kind. This little kid probably thought Slub was some experienced trainer due to his age, he thought to himself. What was expected of him, exactly? He tried to remember all the Pokémon battles the people around him had been watching on their phones and on TV, talking about them incessantly. It couldn't be that difficult… Right? Pokémon battles are a part of everyday life, everyone knows how to do it, like reading and cycling. You don't learn it, everyone just knows it. Yeah, definitely. This was gonna go great.
He pondered this as he found himself in what was literally his first Pokémon Battle. Sure, he had commanded Magmar before to scorch some Nincada that were eating the berries out of Linda's garden, or that time he screamed for it to help when a Shedinja appeared and hovered ominously above his bed in the middle of the night. Magmar sent it flying out the window, on fire, with a Fire Punch. It was obvious the main theme was punching… And fire. Incidentally, that had happened just the day after they had scorched all the Nincada.
"Weird." Slub accidentally said out loud. He shook his head, back in reality. "Never mind that now".
As Magmar had made its entrance and struck a battle pose someone in the crowd yelled something.
"Whoa! He has a shiny Magmar!"
"I have the what now?" Slub asked, stupidly turning his head away from the action.
"Sandshrew!" The kid yelled, "use Mud Slap". The little critter spun into an orb as was seemingly the style around here. Like a yo-yo at the end of a string ripping through a muddy puddle, it caused brown ick to spread all around and most notably on to Magmar who let out a wicked cry.
"Bo-boo-baa!" Slub heard it quack as he quickly turned back.
"No, shoot, I wasn't ready, uhh, Magmar shake it off! Use Fire Punch!"
To a slight surprise, Magmar did exactly as told, hopping on its left leg whilst charging its right hand and swinging it forward in a mighty blast. The boy responded in turn.
"Sandshrew! Defense Curl!" Magmar's ferocious Fire Punch did seemingly nothing as the rotund opponent shrugged it off and its body shone with metallic armor.
"Oh, for crying out loud." Slub yelled. "Why is this so hard?"
"It used Defense Curl!" yelled the boy in response. "It increases its defense against physical attacks."
"It's heat!" Slub yelled back. "I would hardly call fire physical?"
"Do you know anything about Pokémon moves at all!" The kid yelled, looking perturbed.
"No! I mean yes! Of course I do! I'm a trainer! Well I'm not but! Aaaah!"
Magmar turned back to Slub and shrugged. "Bo?"
"I don't know! Uh… I can't think, just do a thing!"
Unsurprisingly and again, before Slub could think, the boy yelled yet another command.
"Let's finish this, Sandshrew, use Rollout!"
"Uh oh." Slub said.
"Buh-boh" Magmar said.
"Saaaa!" Sandshrew said and faster than anyone could possibly react, it spun into some kind of 'Brown Blur' and sent Magmar flying by crashing into its legs.
"Booooooo!" it cried as it did a full 360 in the air. It would have been impressive if it were on purpose.
"Figy Berries!" Slub blurted out and just barely prevented Magmar from smashing into the asphalt as he activated the quick retreat with the Poké Ball. Magmar was withdrawn, just in time.
The embarrassingly large crowd went absolutely wild. Several people were filming with their phones.
"Magmar is unable to battle. Point and Match goes to the Schoolkid!"
"Wow, Snorbo you won! Against an old guy! Your first battle too! Wow!" The friends of the kid assembled around him, heaving a cacophony of praise upon their schoolmate.
"Wait, your name is Snorbo? That's the worst name I've ever heard." Slub impulsively blurted out.
Another, seemingly unrelated, grown man in the crowd began crying and ran away as a woman ran after him, shouting "Oh no, Snorbo! Come back!"
An awkward moment went by before Slub and the child returned their attention to one another, the latter seemingly unaffected by the former's insult.
"Oh yeah, what's your name then?" the kid asked.
"Slub!" Slub said, truthfully.
"Ha!" That's a silly name.
Slub groaned.
"Whatever, I didn't have to win. I battled you, and you beat me fair and square, where's the florist?"
The boy pointed straight at Slub.
"Huh," he said before realizing that he was supposed to turn around. He did. Not fifteen meters behind him was a small strip of shops and squeezed between the Poké Center and Bike shop was a sign with a big Sunflora logo called "Sakura's Flowers".
Slub sighed.
"Number 59, Number 59!"
"That's me", Slub said, tensing every muscle in his body before striding up to the counter, waving his little note from the machine. Slub placed his balls in the tray before the smiling lady. She welcomed him to the Poké Center, did some light tapping on her computer and then turned to him.
"All right Mr. Bee..." Slub quickly interrupted her.
"Just Slub will do fine."
He already felt old enough as it was. Also, he wasn't enormously fond of his surname.
"Ok, Just Slub, Your Magmar and Bramblin are just fine." Neither of them had anything more than a scratch. I do question why you felt the need to bring them to a Poké Center though. You don't seem to have overexerted them in any way and their PP values are fine so a simple over the counter potion would have been more than enough…"
"Uh," Slub said. Unsure what the correct response to this was.
"And you wouldn't have had to wait in line for..". She looked at his ticket and then the clock on the wall. "Three quarters of an hour."
"Yeah, I didn't really… have any of those… or know that."
"But you are a trainer?"
"Nnnyeahmm…" Slub competently expressed, scratching the back of his head confidently whilst bravely looking at the floor.
"Uhh… OK. Well they're both fine and they are registered to your trainer ID so just…" She reached for something in a shelf behind her and handed him a little paper bag with a Poké Ball logo. "Be careful… and have a nice day. Oh and next time, there's an unattended Poké Healing Machine in the corner of every center… You might want to use that. It could save you some, ehm, time..."
"Huh," Slub said.
"Sorry?" She said quizzically.
"It's just… I always heard everyone joking that you always said 'we hope to see you again' which implied that you wanted to see Pokémon get hurt again. It was a whole thing back home…"
She looked at him blankly.
"I'm from Mauville," Slub said.
"Uhuh," she said, rolling her eyes.
Slub let out a long breath.
"Right…" she said. "I guess, we don't really say that anymore."
The silence was painful. Slub wanted a Fissure to swallow him up.
"Bye, I guess." Slub said with a completely straight face before he shrank his balls and blindly put them on his bandolier whilst taking increasingly faster steps out of the situation, hoping never to have set foot within a mile of this place ever again.
"I think that went pretty well," he said to himself, exiting the automatic doors. He walked off and started looking for a hole he could go die in.