Chapter Text
Going off on a journey with nothing but the clothes on your back and a Pokémon for company—it was a coming-of-age story common as mud. Older than bread. Not sliced bread, but like, the literal advent of baking ground wheat paste. It was just… what people did. Always has been.
At least, you know, if you were the kind of person lucky enough that your parents could afford Pokémon upkeep. And you lived in one of those nice regions where ten year olds could wander around in relative safety. Where everyone is raised with a deep sense of personal responsibility, and the burden of housing traveling trainers and healing their injured Pokémon is placed on tax-funded, state-owned Pokémon centers. Where travel between well-lit cities was made easy by following ranger-patrolled, numbered routes. Where the local criminal syndicates were so weak, that even if your ultra-powerful gym leaders and League members couldn’t protect you, a child armed with nothing but six Pokémon, a few week’s battle experience, and gumption, could.
Yeah, you still weren’t sure what to make of that one. Sounds fake, but you figure most anything can be accomplished with enough firepower, and over in Kanto they apparently just give away Charmander. To kids. For free.
Crazy world, right?
That’s not how it was in Orre. (The free Pokémon thing, you meant, not the being-crazy bit. Orre had crazy for breakfast, every day, big servings, second helpings.) No, there just weren’t wild Pokémon in Orre. Hadn’t been any for a long time now, since before they struck gold here in Pyrite, back when the town was still called Prosperity and the train was running.
No one really knew why the Pokémon left. ‘Experts’ hemmed and hawed about the harsh climate, blah blah pollution, blah blah ecosystem collapse, but it was all nonsense. If Pokémon out in Unova could live off the garbage of their cities, and there were breeds that had no trouble living in other deserts, or in the unforgiving tundras of the world, or the bottom of the sea, or flipping outer space, then Pokémon ought to have been able to live in Orre. But they’d all up and left, or died off.
What had your ancestors been thinking, setting up shop in a land so inhospitable even the Pokémon had cleared out? How do you ignore a warning sign like that?
For a while, it probably seemed like Prosperity could’ve become a great city, a real champion of industry. But there was only enough gold in the mountain to last a handful of years. Aside from a few desperate operations still scratching in the rock, the companies withdrew almost immediately. Accidents became commonplace—your gramps lost an arm when a shaft collapsed, right at the end, when they starting excavating with dynamite because they couldn’t afford to repair the machines as they broke down.
And then, when the mining operation had well and truly halted, the people were just… stranded, here.
These days, even the train tracks were gone—stripped off the dry, cracked earth and salvaged for scrap metal. The only people left now were people like you, the third and fourth generations of a long line of down-on-their-luck, dirt-poor losers. The people of Pyrite—squatters, drifters, thugs, unfortunates—were trapped in a shanty town thrown together from the rusty, hollowed-out husks of hundred-year-old mining equipment. Nestled in a forgotten canyon so totally removed from civilization that you couldn’t get there by road, in a land so barren even the Pokémon had gone.
So there’d been no adventure for you. No coming-of-age ritual. No Pokémon partner, no big life lessons, and no travel.
Instead, your dad had you working the counter at your little corner store since you were tall enough to see over the counter. Sure, that wasn’t technically legal. Even Orre had child labor laws. But if the local law enforcement ever cared, it wasn’t anything tax-free smokes and a hefty discount couldn’t fix.
It wasn’t such a bad childhood, really. Sounded worse that it was. You may have spent most of your time selling cheap drinks and questionable magazines to scary weirdos (at least when you weren’t at lessons over in the volunteer-run school next to the laundromat), but growing up in Pyrite made you business-savvy and street smart and tough as nails. That could get you places.
Namely, the heck out of Orre.
Now, Orre wasn’t all that bad if you could get out to Phenac or Agate. It was just that Phenac was a desert paradise so overflowing with money that they could afford to pump thousands of gallons of fresh reservoir water into fountains and canals, effectively wasting it, and Agate was, like, a retirement mecca. Even renting, you couldn’t dream of being able to afford that kind of real estate. And really, even if you could, how could you expect to make a living? Open up another corner store?
There was no future for you in Orre. You had plans, though. You just needed some starting-up cash to get you going.
Luckily, there was still money to be made, even in places like Pyrite, though most options were off the table. You could get a lot of dough running Pokémon up from Johto, or placing bets on one of a dozen Pokémon fighting rings. Transporting and selling the usual contraband, stuff you couldn’t grow in a climate like this. Theft, though it really wasn’t worth the risk—most people had nothing worth taking. And, uh, certain dirty jobs that’d make your dad pop you in the mouth if he knew you ever spared them a thought.
All the really bad capital “c” Crime happened in the Under, the unadvertised town-within-a-town that occupied the old caves and mine shafts below the canyon surface. You stayed away from that place if you could help it. With the facilities they had on display down there, it was obvious someone powerful was funneling money into it. Frankly, that sort was just too dangerous to get involved with. You kept up with a handful of contacts down there, though. You knew guys who knew guys. Important to keep an ear out in that scene, because at the end of the day it was because of people like them that there was any money in this town at all.
It was always a temptation to go get involved, but the Under just chewed people up, even worse than the town above did.
No, none of that glamourous, risky nonsense—you kept it simple. Made bootleg DVDs for resale. Scalped Colosseum tickets. Participated in one or another racket. A little fixed-wager betting. Picked the pockets of open-mouthed tourists, come to gawk at the roughnecks dumb enough to live in Pyrite.
And then, when dad passed on, and you had to sell the store to pay for his arrangements, there was still a little left over for your escape fund.
You’d been raised on grand tales of explorers, forging the severe desert lands, striking rich and making their fortunes. Stories of fierce trainers beating impossible odds. Myths of heroes standing side by side with creatures that could, without exaggeration, be called gods. Saturday morning cartoons, comic books, novels, legends—they were all in agreement.
Go off on a journey with nothing but the clothes on your back and a Pokémon for company, and adventure would find you.
You had wanted a Pokémon from the first moment you saw a distant cloud of Butterfree, blown off their normal migration by fierce winds. Dreamed of them when your father, seeing you enchanted by their flight, had painted delicate white wings on the ceiling above your bed as a surprise. And even when the dolls and picture books had come off the shelves of your bedroom, and you replaced your crayon-drawings with band posters, you slept every night that flock of acrylic Butterfree.
That ceiling, and the house, and the store underneath… your father. All gone, now.
The dream, though... that wasn’t dead until you were.
So here you stood, under a flickering fluorescent sign, in a cavern half a mile under the surface of the earth. You sniffed damply at the unpleasant air. It was too musty for words, and tinged with the scent of old oil. The low light and long shadows made the place seem at once empty and fit to burst. There was a pervading sense that you were being watched.
This was the last place you wanted to be. Hopefully, this visit would be your last, and not in an ominous way, or anything.
Your contact slid out from behind a building, the nervous manner in which he clutched his backpack at odds with his causal gait. A newbie, then, just your luck. He came to a sudden halt.
“Howdy,” your contact greets you, with a Johto drawl. He smiles at you with green teeth, his green eyes glinting through his greasy green hair. You squint.
Okay, actually, that was probably just the lighting.
“Mornin’.”
“Hope you got my money,” he says cagily, and it’s the same old song and dance. He wants to make sure he’ll be paid and you want to make sure he’s not swindling you, yeah yeah, you hate this part.
“Your pals vouched for me, you know I’m good for it, and I vetted you and you seem legit can we please just skip to the part where you hand me a Pokémon and I get to fulfil a childhood dream, please.”
He sighs.
“Pyrite towners, man.” The man sinks to a crouch and sets his backpack on the ground, unzipping the top and thumbing through the contents, which amounted to a heck of a lot of paperwork and one very intriguing orb.
“Here’s your trainer card. This here’s your passport. This piece of paper with the seal means you’re registered with the Johto PC storage system but you have to actually go down there and open an account before you can use it. Don’t come crying to me if you get busted for carrying more than six Pokémon. This is your ID number—”
“That’s the wrong egg,” you interrupt.
“That’s the… no, no it isn’t.”
“On the phone you said you’d bring a Caterpie egg.”
“Yes, and—”
“That’s a Weedle egg.”
“I… no, I was told—”
“Look here,” you say, grabbing the man’s hand, which had been twitching defensively towards the poké ball he kept threaded through a belt loop, “See these ridges? That’s from how the Beedrill store the eggs in a formation of eight, in a hexagonal wax shell.”
“Uh,” said the man. You brush his fingers against the shiny surface of the egg.
“You feel that? Ridges. Caterpie eggs don’t have ’em.”
“Um.”
“Also, Caterpie eggs are translucent. ’S pretty easy to tell them apart.”
The man’s face, already made pale and sickly by the green light, begins to bead with sweat. Your lip curls over your teeth as your eyes narrow. He thinks he can trick you? Like you’re some backwater know-nothing?
“You trying to scam me, you greasy lummox?”
His free hand shoots towards his poké ball and you snatch his wrist. He makes a noise like he stepped on a lego and twists a little in your grip, but he’s not very strong. It’s kind of pathetic, actually.
You clap his hands together. Once. Twice.
“Here’s how you’re gonna make this right, pal,” you say, using his arm to gesture, “I forget that you just tried to play Baby’s First Con, take this lot at half of our agreed price, and in return, I don’t spread the word around that you’re a filthy, untrustworthy liar.”
He snarls at you, wimpily. You keep hold of his wrists, slowly increasing the pressure of your grip.
“It’s either that or I let everyone know that you, a Pokémon egg smuggler, can’t tell the difference between Pokémon eggs. Which, uh, lemme say, that’s not real impressive. You’ve been in the business, what, a month or two? I’m sure you don’t got much yet in the way of a reputation to damage, but here’s the thing about small towns like this—everyone knows each other. I think my deal’s real reasonable.”
His fingers tremble, but you don’t let up. If he bruises, he bruises. His fault, anyway.
“Whadduya say?” you grin, your smile taking on a knife-like edge. “Shake on it?”
The next day, with all the money you saved, you got yourself a cheap cabin in the first passenger ship out of Gateon Port. It was a cramped little room that smelled kind of like vomit, but since your original plan called for stowing away… well, it was important to appreciate the small stuff in life.
Or maybe you were just giddy. First time on a boat and all. And you’d been drinking, just a little.
It wasn’t often you got to fulfil a lifelong desire.
Everything was just about perfect, puke smell notwithstanding, except the egg in your lap. It was a lovely thing, really. It just wasn’t what you’d wanted.
Butterfree, right? It was like… you know, the original inspiration for this whole thing. There was a kind of pleasant symbolism to it. You’d learned everything you could about Butterfree back in your nerd days (you liked to pretend you weren’t still a huge dork, but, well, certain impromptu science lectures like the one from the day before sort of outed you). Whenever you pictured yourself on a journey, Butterfree was a vital component.
You ran a hand over the ridged shell. It was just a little above room temperature.
Your first Pokémon…
Maybe… the exciting part wasn’t everything going to plan. Adventures were supposed to be about surprise, right? Probably not much point to it if it was all predictable. Yeah.
You leaned forward. Feeling profoundly foolish, you licked your lips and whispered.
“Hey there, little guy.”
The slightly warm and very inert egg didn’t answer, but you smiled.
“This is exciting, right?”
You felt boat jerk. The engines thrummed to life, and the deck below your feet vibrated.
“We’re gonna be so good, just you wait.”