Aaron’s Pokemon
- Artoria (Kirlia)- Jeanne (Flaaffy)- Durvasa (Primeape)- Magellan (Chikorita)- Slightly Bigger Baby Mothra (Larvesta)
Entree 5.18
Aaron FulanMount Chimney
“So, fourth badge, eh? What’s that like?” George, the driver of the fourth truck in our little convoy, asked. He wasn’t terribly interested, just making conversation as he chewed at a bit of beef jerky.
I sat next to him in the passenger seat. I’d left Artoria and Jeanne outside so they could use their empathic and olfactory senses to keep watch. “Flannery was pretty tough. Lavaridge Gym is in good hands.”
“Eh? Not ol’ Marcus? I didn’t know he retired already.”
“He’s not. He just figured that since I’m about his granddaughter’s age, I’d make for a good rival for her.”
“Makes sense. She’s gotta get eased into the role somehow. Was she harder or easier than Marcus?”
“I have no idea because I’ve never battled him. On one hand, it’s not like Marcus would use his main team for a fourth badge battle. I’m not worth that kind of hassle,” I said with a self-depricating chuckle. “On the other hand, even if they use the exact same pokemon, Flannery doesn’t have her grandfather’s experience.”
“True, true. I remember when I thought about going around gathering badges,” he said, not quite wistfully. “Had a camerupt, nice and strong. I figure I probably could have gotten five or six and done decently well for myself.”
“What kept you?”
“I hate camping.”
“Hah, fair enough.”
“So does ol’ Smokey. Lazy lug spends most of his days with the missus. He’s good with the kids so I can’t complain, I suppose.”
“Numel and camerupt seem pretty friendly, as far as fire types go,” I agreed. They were quite mellow; you had to seriously try to piss one off, especially a tame one.
We drove along in a slow-moving line. Despite having been settled since the pre-Fragmentation Era, Mount Chimney was not a developed place. It was craggy, the roads were barely there, and there were no fuel stations or rest stops from Lavaridge to the summit out of consideration for pokemon.
This was true of much of Hoenn: The entire region had a deep-seated culture of respect for nature. Usually, I considered it a good thing, but that also meant that there was no such thing as the modern highway system as it existed in the United States. Civilization coexisted with pokemon, and that meant building only the minimum amount of infrastructure to keep society running.
Mount Chimney did have several well-trodden paths, but those shortcuts were goat trails that trainers had adopted for their use. Trucks like these couldn’t exactly climb ledges or get shipped up via the cable car, so we were left plodding along at fifteen miles an hour, if that.
“Say, George,” I called, as much to fill the air as anything else.
“What’s up, kid?”
“How does this all work? This whole delivery business.”
“What do you mean? We take things from one place and move them to another place. Nothing complicated about it.”
“Stupid question, sorry. I meant to ask why it works,” I said. I tapped my own backpack. “I mean, hammerspace bags exist, so why didn’t they just hire a few people to go up and down the mountain on a flying type?”
“Your bag still has a weight limit.”
“I know, about two hundred pounds.” The beauty of these bags was that they always weighed the same. Two hundred pounds was more than enough for a trainer to trek a route while feeding their team with nutrient-dense meals. “There’s gotta be storage units with bigger capacities, right?”
He wiggled his hand back and forth in a so-so gesture. “Eh, kinda? I ain’t no scientist, but there’s a limit to how much space can be folded. Or maybe doing it gets so energy-intensive that it’s not efficient after a certain point.”
“Huh. I guess you’re right. I never thought about what it actually took to make one of these bags.”
“I’m mostly talking out of my ass,” George grunted. “Could be because some bigwigs decided that infinite storage would ruin our shipping economy and blue collar folks like me still need a way to put food on the table.”
We made more small talk as we followed the caravan. According to George, it took about two days to get supplies up Mount Chimney like this. Back in Lavaridge, I wondered how the hell that could be. Not three hours into the trip, I had my answer.
It wasn’t just that the roads were bumpy; they were practically unmaintained. A broken tree lay in our way, its trunk almost as wide as I was tall. Old mountain meant old growths and this one must have fallen, maybe when a random graveler decided to tumble down a slightly different route.
Eight tons of hardwood had to be chopped up and moved aside piecemeal. And given we were four trucks in a line, we couldn’t exactly back up. Well, we could, but using the pokemon for a bit of hard labor was actually faster than clearing enough space and unloading one of the trucks of cargo to drag the tree aside.
This was probably the real reason we had four trainers. We weren’t just security; we were manual labor.
On the plus side, I got to meet the other three trainers. I already knew their names, Taiyou, Koichi, and Eunice, but this turned out to be a decent way of learning more about them. I was the youngest, but we were all pretty young. Only Eunice was in her mid-twenties.
Taiyou was the most stereotypical fire type specialist. He had a slugma, torkoal, and charmeleon, his ace. The former two weren’t particularly useful, but that charmeleon packed a fair bit of muscle. It did a decent job of dicing smaller chunks of wood using Metal Claw and was almost as strong as Durvasa.
Then there was Koichi, a man who defied every stereotype expected of a dark type specialist. He had a houndour and murkrow who kept watch while his nuzleaf helped dice up the old oak. He dressed in bright colors, loved to crack jokes, and had a seemingly unending supply of lollipops. Maybe he felt the need to buck the edgelord cliche with something sweet.
The eldest of us four was Eunice, a stern-faced, business-minded grass type specialist. Like Koichi, she too had a nuzleaf. Whereas his preferred Night Slash, hers leaned towards Leaf Blade to do the same sort of work. Seeing them work together to break down the hardwood made me wonder how else they differed. She also had a breloom and weepinbell.
Having Artoria join the “cutting team” with her fancy new spoon raised more than a few eyebrows. I’d never get bored of it, that bewildered silence that followed the giggling. With Durvasa and Magellan helping clear out the cut wood, we finished ahead of schedule.
Then, when we were two-thirds of the way up and getting ready to set up camp, we were accosted by a machoke. It, he, was a burly fellow, as tall as a grown man and wider than most doors. The contours of his bulging muscles caught the setting sun as he flexed in front of the convoy.
“Uh, what’s going on up front?” George spoke into a walkie-talkie.
“The machoke wants to fight us for food. I… I think we’re being robbed?” Sanae, the driver of the first truck, reported back.
“Ma! Machoke-ma!” the pokemon shouted at the top of his lungs. He slammed his fists into his chest and spread his arms wide in the universal body language for “Come at me, bro.”
I sighed. This was happening. Pokemon weren’t usually stupid. Sure, they ate each other and we ate them, but that was nature. Biological necessities aside, even “wild” pokemon had their own personalities and deeper motivations beyond survival, especially the humanoid ones.
Taking the speaker from George, I translated. “Hey, this is Aaron in the fourth car. The machoke says he’s not robbing us. He’s challenging us.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“The distinction is important to a martial artist.”
“Really. And how’d you figure that?”
“I have a kirlia. She’s a telepath. She can just tell me what he’s saying.”
“How convenient. So he wants to battle?”
“Yup. He battles one of our pokemon. If he wins, he gets to pick out what he likes from the supplies. If he loses, he steps aside.”
“That’s called robbery,” she said wryly.
“Technically, it’s a challenge. It matters to him.”
“Hell yeah, dibs!” Taiyou cut in. “Bet me and charmeleon can give him a good fight.”
“Hold on. Shouldn’t the battle go to the kirlia? She’s got a big advantage, right?” Sanae chimed in.
“No, that’s fine. I respect the sacred ‘dibs,’” I said magnanimously.
And so, we made camp by the side of the road. Not that there was much to set up; most of us didn't even bother with tents and just laid out sleeping bags atop foam mats. Once we were done, we grabbed a cold dinner of prepackaged food and gathered around to watch.
Taiyou's charmeleon handled himself well. He wasn't quite as strong as the machoke, but the not-dragon was by far more fierce. He dashed in as soon as the battle began, a set of Metal Claws extending his reach.
“That doesn't seem wise,” Eunice said as she took a seat next to me. In her hand was a cold wrap of some sort. “His charmeleon isn't going to out-muscle a machoke.”
And, to be fair, he didn’t even try. The charmeleon took a punch on his metallic claw and a sound like a ringing gong filled the air. Before the sound even faded, the lizard was on the machoke, clawing and biting like something straight out of Jurassic Park.
The battle promptly devolved into a slugfest. His charmeleon turned out to be a classic bruiser, the kind that was happy to take hits so long as he got to hit ‘em back. It hadn't even been a minute and the two were a mess of bruises, burns, and lacerations.
Taiyou gave no orders, only the odd encouragement here and there. He seemed more concerned with hyping up his pokemon than giving tactical advice.
“Eh, Taiyou probably should have started out by harassing the machoke from afar,” I agreed, “but it's not as if charmeleon are bad at close combat.”
“That's true. I guess the claws and fire makes up for being less physically powerful.”
“So? Ask. I know you want to.”
“Heh. Am I that obvious?”
“Kinda. You're a grass specialist. There isn't too much someone like you would want from me.”
“True, true. Chikorita. Alpha?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Luck. I found him in Petalburg Forest.”
“That's insane. I didn't even know there was a herd there.”
“Small one.”
“Damn, I'm going to have to check it out.”
“Don’t bother. There was an incident; the rangers got involved. They probably relocated the herd by now.”
“Aw, pity. Probably not worth it, then. Any chance you'd be willing to trade?” She asked.
“Only if Magellan asks himself,” I said with a slight scowl. Such requests were only to be expected. “You'd have to convince him that not only are you a better trainer worth following, but that you can make his dreams come true better than I can.”
She turned to Magellan, only to flinch as a Bullet Seed whistled past her ear. “Okay, geez, very loyal.”
“They all are,” I said with a satisfied smirk. Perks of being willing to get my own hands dirty. “So, what's your deal?”
“Hmm?”
“Usually, jobs like these are taken by rookie trainers. You seem a bit old for this, no offense.”
“Some taken. I started late. I mean, I tried college, didn't like it, then decided to go on my journey.”
“And you picked grass types? How'd that happen?”
“Mom's friend had a breloom, who gave me a shroomish. That, and I heard grass specialists can make good money. Grass types are pretty much always in demand, you know,” she said with an unashamed smile.
I nodded. I could respect the hustle. Not everyone had silly or impossible dreams they were willing to chase. “And how's it working out for you?”
“Haven't seen the lucrative job offers yet, but I do save a ton on supplies. Photosynthesis is so convenient. And they're incredible at finding me plants I can eat in the wild.”
Taiyou won. His charmeleon took a hell of a beating, but managed to pull through with grit and fighting spirit. Eventually, the burns and bleeding wounds overcame the machoke. It felt a little like watching a shonen anime, with a dragon-themed protagonist overcoming a powerful foe.
We ended up treating the machoke to potions and food anyway. It was just part of the culture; wild pokemon or not, defeated foe or not, there was a general consensus that the machoke deserved treatment. Plus, it was a good chance for Artoria and Magellan to practice. It took a workshop and a cert to volunteer at a pokemon center, but no one checked for that in the wild.
Well, I said “practice,” but there wasn’t too much they could do. We got permission from the machoke to use Stim Shot and Life Dew, then fed him a potion to make up for our shortcomings. For example, we couldn’t do much about the burnt tissue.
“Hey, Taiyou, do you mind if we look at your charmeleon, too?” I asked the older boy.
He looked at me, then the wok-fried larvesta next to my sleeping bag. “Ah… Sure, dude, but… what the hell is that?”
“She’s a larvesta named Larvesta, at least until she decides on a dream worth chasing.”
“No, I know what a larvesta is. I mean, why is she in a wok?”
“It’s her bed. There’s warm charcoal on the bottom and a layer of my flaffy’s wool on top. Comfy, warm, and keeps its heat all night. Neat, right?”
“I guess, but you know they have beds for smaller fire types, right?”
“They’re crazy expensive, though.”
“Huh… You know, I thought you were loaded.”
“Me? Loaded?” I blinked in confusion. I stared down at my clothes. After trekking through a third of Hoenn, they’d definitely seen better days. “I dress like a bum.”
“Yeah, but you have a kirlia, an alpha chikorita, and a larvesta. I mean, can you blame me?”
“I kinda thought the same thing as well,” Koichi chimed in with an easygoing smile.
Next to him, Eunice nodded in agreement. “Yup. It can’t be easy feeding an alpha pokemon, even if he’s a grass type. Sunshine only gets you so far.”
“See? I’m not crazy. Usually, generalists tend to be pretty well-off,” Taiyou added. “Like, you can afford to get multiple food types, TMs, and stuff. It’s not a hard rule or anything, but throw in the rare pokemon and…”
I nodded. Strictly speaking, I supposed I was pretty loaded. “I can see that. I mean, I do have a sponsor, but I can’t be completely free with money.”
We got to talking a bit more as the night wore on. They learned that Mossdeep Gym was my sponsor and was mostly weirded out that I wasn’t a psychic specialist.
Taiyou turned out to be an interesting fellow. Apparently, he was a Lavaridge native who got a handful of badges and returned. Like me, he didn’t have any real interest in Ever Grande. Instead, he earned himself just enough badges to join the local ranger outpost as an intern of sorts because he wanted to be like his dad.
That, and he made funny faces when Flannery’s name came up. When Koichi suggested joining the Lavaridge Gym for experience, he seemed to consider it, at least until I mentioned that Flannery was taking on more gym leader duties. Then, he seemed weirdly uncomfortable with the idea, maybe because she was two years younger than him and he didn’t like the thought of being the gym trainer for someone who was probably his childhood friend.
X
We made it to the expedition camp the next evening. It was a series of six bungalows made from pre-fab plastic, hastily raised to form living quarters, a lab, mess hall, and the like. They had a bunch of high-tech equipment lying around, most I didn’t immediately recognize, alongside a heavy, cylindrical drill and some kind of scanner. They were mostly what the fuel and replacement parts were for.
There, we were relieved by Ranger Stephen, a stern-faced man, who had us unload the trucks into a temporary warehouse. Once we were done, we were greeted by a woman in her mid-twenties dressed in flannel and wide-brimmed hat to keep out the sun tidy her hair.
She showed us where we could rest for the night before heading back tomorrow morning. While we waited for dinner to be ready at the mess hall, she also gave us a tour of the facilities.
“That’s why we’ve had some trouble advertising ourselves to the press,” she was telling Koichi. “Our primary mission is to conduct a geological survey of Mount Chimney, but we have several ecological consultants on hand, like Stephen. Truthfully, it’s a little hard to describe everything we’re trying to do in a neatly packaged soundbite for the press.”
“So, since we’re not here with the press, what’s the long answer?”
“We have two primary goals. Dr. Kagari, the head of this expedition, specializes in unique energy radiations emitted by certain geological formations.”
“So she studies evolution stones?” Taiyou, our resident fire type specialist, asked. “We’ve got some fire stones in the area but why all the hubbub? They’re not that valuable.”
“Right, that’s the interesting part. While we wouldn’t turn down evolution stones and are mapping the underground cave system around Mount Chimney for future mining prospects, that’s only the secondary goal. You know, the boring stuff we told our sponsors.
“Really, Dr. Kagari proposed this survey because she noticed a unique energy signature atop Mount Chimney. So our primary goal is to identify, quantify, and sample that energy before we draw any further conclusions.”
That sounded about right. In canon, Team Magma or Aqua stole the meteorite discovered by Professor Cozmo. They brought it here, where they tried to use the volcano’s power to awaken Groudon or Kyogre or something. After that, they ran off to Mount Pyre for the Orbs.
Of course, that didn’t work, but the fact that they tried in the first place implied some kind of connection between this volcano and the meteorite. Given that the meteorite ended up being Rayquaza-kibble, there was some truth to that. Wrong world-ending calamity, but the idea was solid.
The more I heard from Margaret, the more assured I became of my need to be here. I didn’t want to leave tomorrow so I looked for a reason to remain. When Margaret told us about some trouble they’d been having with cave-dwelling pokemon who didn’t like the noise, I saw my chance.
“So you’re saying you could use more trainers on-site?” I asked her.
“I mean, I suppose so? How many badges do you have?” She saw the Heat Badge and nodded. “Four, and from Lavaridge, so I guess you know how to deal with the local pokemon around here.”
“I’m confident in my team. Strictly speaking, I finished the delivery so I wouldn’t mind staying.”
“That sounds nice, but I’m not sure we even have the budget for another trainer. Research expeditions like this aren’t exactly drowning in cash.”
“Honestly? I’m interested in how this kind of research camp operates. I applied for a job at this site back when you were recruiting and got turned down because I didn’t have enough badges at the time.”
“So you’re a recent four badge trainer?”
“Right, so I’d be willing to negotiate. It’s the experience that interests me more than the money. Besides, I think my Larvesta likes it up here,” I said, tickling the oversized moth larvae sitting on my head.
“Hmm… Alright, I’m willing to ask, but I’m not the person who calls the shots on things like this. You’ll have to speak to Henry; he’s the site manager.”
“Thanks, can you point the way?”
That was that. I had an interview. Henry the site manager was a portly mountaineer who would have been a dead ringer for the in-game sprite had it not been for his fiery, red beard. It was voluminous enough to hide a snack or two.
He didn’t just take the research assistant’s word for it, of course. We settled on a price, a little over half of what I would have been paid had I joined at the start. Then, he asked me to prove my chops in the time-honored way all trainers solved grievances.
“Come on, linoone,” he called. “Alright, Aaron. Beat my partner here and you’re in.”
“Heh, funny sort of job interview we’re having,” I chuckled. Magellan took the field.
“Bah, this ain’t exactly a suit ‘n’ tie kinda place, kid.”
“Fair enough. Let’s get started.”
“Linoone, kick us off with Quick Attack!”
“Poison Powder.”
The linoone became a striped blur as it crashed head-first into Magellan. Though it stood low to the ground, its massive tail made it weigh pretty much the same as my chikorita.
The blow knocked Magellan back several steps but he caught himself. A violet cloud exploded from my little dinosaur. He reminded me of a colorful pinata, with purple glitter that could have a man vomiting his entrails for a week.
“Back, linoone,” Henry called, but it was too late. As agile as the ferret was, it’d committed to the attack and couldn’t leave quickly enough.
“Pin it.”
Magellan cried out and rose onto his hind legs. Vine Whips lashed out to pen his opponent even as he stomped down with his bulk. Hacking and coughing, the linoone couldn’t evade the multi-pronged attack.
Once he had his opponent grappled, that was that. It wasn’t that the linoone was physically weaker than my chikorita. If anything, it was a bit stronger. However, because Magellan had his bulk and vines, he could hold his opponent with multiple points of leverage.
It also helped that the linoone was poisoned already. After that came the Leech Seed it had no way of dodging from this position. It wasn’t pretty, but the battle ended when Henry returned his pokemon with a rueful smile.
I was in.
Author’s Note
Not much to say. I decided that Courtney should be the science-y type. Shelly can be something else, I guess. Everyone likes saucy pirate wenches, right? Right.
In ORAS, no Rayquaza can mega evolve until you feed the transformed meteorite to the in-story Rayquaza during the Delta Episode. The meteorite transforms several times throughout the story until it looks like a lumpy mega stone. The in-lore reason is that Rayquaza gained the ability to mega evolve with or without a trainer by eating meteorites like this one, completely separate from Kalos.
Animal Fact: There are bears in the Gobi Desert. They are called Gobi bears and there are only about thirty-one members of the species. "Gobi" in Mongolian means "waterless place" and these bears are used to walking a hundred miles just for water.
Because they live in such an inhospitable place, only about eight percent of their diet is made up of animal protein. They mainly eat roots, berries, and other plant matter, with the occasional rodents and the like. There is zero evidence to suggest they prey on larger animals, probably because they aren’t exactly common in the Gobi and even if they found one, chasing it down would be far more energy-intensive than advisable.
Their size reflects this. Males weigh at most about three hundred pounds. Females weigh roughly half that, at ~one-seventy. They are solitary except when rearing cubs.