Chapter 8 - Hilarious Shopping Montage
The Pokémon Center had been quite helpful, not only in patching up Slub's Pokémon, but also in retrieving Magmar's lost Poké Ball, by way of teleporting it back to the Poké Center Computer Terminal. There wasn't much else for him to do and it had been a rather eventful afternoon, so Slub headed home. He sat on the bus and went through the conversation he was going to have with Thaddeus, several times, in his head. The one regarding himself confronting Uncle Thaddeus with his newly acquired knowledge about him probably being quite familiar with the Taylor family and the now conspicuously absent Shiny Milotic. As he Slammed open the door to the shop he locked eyes with Thaddeus, who looked up with his regular, usually safe, relaxed expression.
"I'm going to bed," Slub said.
"OK," said Thaddeus. "Good night."
He wasn't very good at confrontations. Maybe some other day. There had been enough excitement in this one already.
A few days later…
With a new sense of confidence and money in his pocket for the first time in a long while, Slub strode into Sunnyville, ready to get things done.
The first point of order was to replace the ever-shortening pair of trousers-turned-shorts-turned-cutoffs that he'd been slowly wearing down since his arrival. He went straight to a clothing store, where the attendant immediately struck him as somewhat high-strung.
"Uh, 'scuse me, ma'am," Slub said after she rang up the trousers and the price of 2780 LP appeared in the cash register display.
"Yes, sir?"
"If I buy these pants, I'll have no money."
"Indeed, that's how many transactions work," she said, with that certain kind of tone in her voice that could cause a major stomach upset for someone with a low tolerance for artificial sweetener.
"Do you have any cheaper ones I can buy instead?"
"I'm sorry, sir, you have a very peculiar body shape, so that's literally the only pair that'll make it look like you're not a Pinap berry trying to press itself into a sock."
"That's… uh…huh…"
Before he could fully process the image, the attendant lifted the contactless card scanner up to Slub's trainer card on the lanyard around his neck, confirming the transaction, seemingly without requiring any kind of verification or signature. Hoenn was for all intents and purposes cashless… and now, so was Slub.
By purchasing the, admittedly snazzy, trousers, he didn't have any LP left for other plans and purchases which was a bit of a snag. Standing in the street, repantificated, he briefly contemplated locating a payphone and ringing up Finley Taylor to ask if he'd care to repeat the previous afternoon's embarrassing trainwreck of a 'battle' by way of a rematch. After going through the events in his head, he concluded that he shouldn't. Finley probably wouldn't be all that happy to hear from him, and also, a potential rematch wasn't likely to end in the exact same way as the last one, namely Slub winning by default due to his opponent leaving mid-battle.
Slub began thinking about other options, a bit deflated he walked along the streets of Sunnyville before turning a random corner and slamming into a sign advertising an adjacent web cafe.
"Ow!" he said, cradling his hurty knee.
While he was annoyed at the placement of the sign he had wanted to check the news.
"Well now that it's here…" he mumbled to himself and entered the cafe.
After parting with the last pittance in his account for an hour's computer access and a lawsuit-promptingly scalding cup of coffee-branded, albeit not -flavored seepage, the first thing he did was search for LP-earning strategies. He discovered that the main way trainers acquired LP was by challenging gyms, an idea that didn't exactly have him leaping out of his chair.
The major league gym leaders, the ones who were always on TV or magazine covers like Norman or Juan, were not only prohibitively far away but had a reputation to protect, making their challenges extremely tough. Web forums were full of trainers complaining about being stonewalled by expert level competitive strategies from veteran gym leaders who didn't want to lose face, by losing to what might be a newbie for whom they'd scaled down their efforts a little. The league couldn't, apparently, just tell the gym leaders to take a chill-pill, so the next best idea anyone could come up with was a campaign to canonize a bunch of smaller local gyms with a bit more of a focus on fun, and a bit less celebrity ego. The jury was still out on whether this was a success or not, but Slub figured it was better than nothing.
For a few moments he considered challenging Isla. The idea roiled around his head a bit before he realized how incredibly stupid it was. He'd seen her choice of water Pokémon and had even overheard some random passersby talk about her, in town. The Sunnyville Gym, which he'd been by several times, but never actually looked inside, appeared to have a theme of aquatic archery going on, which seemed like an odd mix. According to the internet, her main 'thing' appeared to be a strategy of using speedy Pokémon to sweep her opponents with critical hits. Taking her on at this point, even if she went easy on him, was utterly out of the question. Especially since his best Pokémon was firmly in the Fire Type department. He needed a different strategy.
He then went on to look at some local news. Indeed, like Finley Taylor had said a few days ago, he was trending. Although the popularity had dropped off in the last day, due to the fast-paced world of modern memes. Someone had filmed his battle against Pumbloom or whatever that school kid's name was and… It had spread like wildfire.
On that note, he couldn't find any news about the coastal wildfire, which was probably for the better, albeit somewhat surprising. Maybe the tourist board had a thing for suppressing bad news like that.
Regardless, people had copied, clipped, edited, remixed, and otherwise spread the battle footage all over the place, mostly focused on the specific moments of Slub completely locking up and Magmar being knocked into the air by a very fast Sandshrew, only to be withdrawn mid-air. Back then, it had been pure reflex, and he was fortunate it had gone as well as it had, but it did admittedly look somewhat funny. He could laugh at it now that he knew that Magmar had barely gotten a scratch from it as well. He wondered why it didn't bother him. This was the sort of thing that ought to absolutely destroy him, but he didn't actually feel anything at all.
As he scrolled down the various sites, he found remixes set to audio clips from cartoons, movies, TV, and all sorts of music in various languages. The comments were… somewhat less kind, disparaging him for being a terrible trainer and a waste of a shiny Pokémon. Some even accused him of being part of an ad campaign, or an ARG. This too ought to bother him a lot, but at this point, he didn't really care. The stress of, and relief after, the big battle the day before yesterday clearly had a detoxifying effect. Whatever happened now could just happen. It wasn't like things could get worse. Also, he thought, he had also learned his lesson not to accept just any challenge he was presented with. He wasn't falling for that again.
"I suppose I can hardly call it cyberbullying," Slub mumbled to himself, closing out the tabs to focus on his next task. Before he could start, though, he was interrupted.
"Oh!" The girl sitting nearby suddenly exclaimed. "Ohh, Rika-Chan, look! We're in the same Café as Slub!"
Slub blinked in confusion.
"You are?"
The girl hesitated, momentarily baffled.
"I... I think we are? You are THE Slub, right?"
Slub's entire essence suddenly felt drained as the reality of the situation hit him like a ton of bricks. His eyes widened, and he slouched further in his chair. "Aeeeeghh…" he eked out, as could be expected of the wordsmith that he was.
Completely unfazed, the girls continued without missing a beat. "So, um, I'm Miyu-Chan and this is Rika-Chan, can we get a selfie with you and Magmar?"
"Uhh… I… guess…?" Slub managed to stammer, his brain still booting up. Magmar, grinning from side of beak, to the other side of the beak, popped out all on its own and did a huge 'opposable claw up'. Before Slub could react further, the two girls flanked him, crouching down to his sitting-level as one of their fuzzy pink Rotom phones floated up in front of them. With a flash, the selfie was taken, the girls making an awkward pair of heart signs by contorting their fingers in a manner that seemed unnecessarily complicated compared to just making a heart with one's thumbs and index fingers. All the while Slub awkwardly kept his mouth slightly open, unsure of how to pose.
"What's going on?" he asked, somewhat astounded.
"Cheese!" The two girls unhelpfully answered.
"Boo!" Magmar said with a blush, which was impressive given its pink complexion.
The girls quickly rushed out of the café just as quickly as they had arrived. The entire encounter had probably taken less than 20 seconds total.
Slub blinked.
"Yeah, that sounds about right…" He said to himself and spun back around to face his computer.
Magmar was still standing beside him, waving.
Next was the topic of his previous battle. The seaside battle against Finley Taylor hadn't quite reached the same memetic state. However, the reason that he won, had. There were a bunch of vertical videos of the shiny Milotic leaping off the aquatic stadium and disappearing. The comments were a mix of "Oh hey, it's that shiny Magmar guy again" and shots of a disheartened, to say the least, Finley with his hands grasping his forehead and bold lower text in an impactful font reading "WHEN THE SHINY ESCAPES."
Slub nearly choked on his drink at that one, then he felt bad. Then he felt good again. Schadenfreude was a heck of a feeling.
"Well, fun is fun, but I better figure this out."
Slub closed out all the tabs related to himself and pulled up a website with a list of gyms and a map. He zoomed out and panned across trying to find the closest one. He enabled his location in the browser and instantly the map panned over to a the Sunnyville Gym. He deselected it from the filter menu and it once again panned over, this time to a little gym icon out in the countryside.
"Mangrove Hills Pokémon Gym…" He read out loud. There were no pictures, names or even a description. Just an address.
He cross referenced the address with the bus schedule. It wasn't even 20 minutes away. He then marked the word 'mangrove' and pasted it into a fresh web search page, getting a general description of the concept, then he did the same with the word 'hills' and looked at some pictures.
"Uhuh…" He thought to himself. "And this is supposed to be 20 minutes by bus away from… here?" He looked out the window to the rainy coastal town he'd found himself in, and around, for the past week or so.
"Alrighty…" he said and turned back to the computer. Magmar hadn't actually returned to its Poké Ball and was tentatively sipping Slub's coffee which he'd ignored after the first abysmal sip. Magmar dipped his tongue into it and let the taste sink in, before its face contorted and it began coughing up smoke, struggling to breathe. It went in for a big chug, emptying the whole thing in a fell swoop, before burping up a black foot long flame.
"Buuh!" it quacked and patted its stomach.
"I don't know if you should have caffeine…" Slub said, said. Magmar patted him on the shoulder and pointed straight up. Slub looked at the small black charred ring that had appeared in the ceiling.
"Hmm, we should probably leave before anyone notices that."
"Buh-huh…" Magmar said.
Slub quickly closed the tabs related to his low-level landscape research and had a final peek at the bus schedule. One with the 'Mangrove Hills' stop was leaving in less than five minutes.
"That'll do," he thought. "Quick in, quick out, win LP. I can literally not see any issues with this plan."
Slub closed the browser and threw away the cup in a nearby bin, missing it, causing some specks of coffee along the, not exactly clean, floor. In a rousing act of roguish confidence he ignored the derelict refuse and ran off to catch the bus. As he ran, he talked out loud, because of course he did.
"What is it Isla always says again… " He pondered. "Time to go to work? Something like that. Come on, Magmar, we're going on a bus ride!"
Magmar quickly lifted the abandoned cup and threw it in the garbage can, and then came waddling after.