Chapter 2

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

The next day

Jubilife had a bunch of Pokemon Centers and Marts. It was, after all, the biggest city in Sinnoh, home to millions of people. Where the city really shone, however, was the Pokemon Mall. It was a government-owned facility with stores as far as the eye could see. If you wanted anything related to Pokemon— potions, stones, TMs, grooming, trading— you’d find it in the mall. I, however, was only here for supplies. I had already wrangled my dad into giving me enough food to last the entire trip and then some, mostly in the form of granola bars. He had also bought me camping supplies, a lighter, a small axe and spade, and a book called ‘A trainer’s first guide’. So right now, I was only there for Togepi. She was in her Pokeball right now, since she wasn’t used to being next to so many people at the same time.

The mall was bustling right now with people and Pokemon, but it’d be packed to the brim in a few weeks when the Circuit would actually be about to start. I made my way through the facility with a specific store in mind: the general items store, where a trainer could find the most common, cheaper items. I wasn’t here for the best, I was here for what was necessary, so I wasn’t about to buy a bunch of hyper potions.

Although I wish I could have.

I stepped into the quiet store and inhaled loudly. I loved the smell— it was a particularly perfumy smell, probably what they used to clean the store during the night. I made my way to the potion aisle and grabbed five potions. 300 pokedollars each. Ouch. I bought a few antidotes too, because from what I had looked up, the routes I was going to go through had some bug types as well, although way fewer than Eterna Forest.

I slowly shuffled toward the queue when something caught my eye. The Pokeball aisle.

I wasn’t planning on catching anything.

But... what if, right?

I grabbed five Pokeballs and shoved them into my basket. You never know when you’re going to run into a legendary. It’d be real silly not to have any Pokeballs. I joked to myself.

The woman working at the checkout had dyed purple hair and looked really tired, with deep bags under her eyes. I quietly placed my items on the counter and let her scan them.

“That’ll be 2,800 Pokedollars, please,” She said.

Cursing at myself for not having gotten the money out beforehand, I fumbled through my bag and gave her the cash.

“Thank you for shopping at the Pokemon mall, have a—”

“Um, wait, sorry!” I said. The woman looked at me like I had just murdered her firstborn child. “I had a question regarding repels! I, uh, was wondering if they would work if I was traveling from here to Twinleaf?”

She gestured at the person next in line. “It depends. Most of the time, it’ll just annoy the wild Pokemon, but it won’t actually deter them from attacking you. Hell, sometimes it’ll even make them attack you. They’re mostly only useful if you already have a strong Pokemon at your side when traveling. Twice the deterrence.”

I bowed my head. “Thank you very much!”

“Thank you for shopping at the Pokemon mall, have a great rest of your day,” She said to someone who had just paid. She then turned to me and smiled. “Good luck out there, and good luck on the circuit. It was the best time of my life, although I only got to two gym badges.”

I’m not even signing up for the circuit, I thought, but I just decided to be polite and say thank you. Two gym badges was impressive, though. Every year, after every League Circuit, there’d be stats that came out about the percentage of trainers that got to what number of gym badges. Usually, half couldn’t even get past the first gym. There would be all these tips online about which gym battle was the easiest one to tackle first, and most people agreed on Oreburgh because of the many weaknesses of rock type Pokemon, but most of the time, people would try their hands at the gym the closest to them instead of traveling for weeks with no progress. Probably had something to do with the time pressure and all of that.

I quickly got back home and let Togepi out of her ball. She chirped, shook her entire body, and then smiled as she saw me. I leaned down and caressed her cute little cheeks.

“Hey, princess,” I said. “Got some bad news for you.”

She tilted her head in confusion. She was only a few months old and still had difficulties understanding everything I said.

“We’re going to go on an adventure, you and I. Well, I call it an adventure, but it’s gonna suck. We’ll be living in the wild for a week and a half and sleeping on the cold, hard, ground. Well, I’m exaggerating, dad’s going to bring a sleeping bag tonight, haha...”

“Toge! Togepi!” Togepi exclaimed.

“Are you telling me not to worry?” I guessed. There was no way to truly know what a Pokemon was saying, but a good trainer would usually be able to tell with tone and body language. Not that I was a good trainer, I had just spent the last few months of my life locked inside with this adorable little thing. “That’s sweet. But, uh, yeah, it’ll be dangerous. Not too dangerous, but traveling always has some degree of danger. So I want to make sure that we’re ready.”

“Prrrri?” She asked.

“So I want to try out some of your moves and stuff. You know, just to get you into shape. I need to make sure we’re on the same page with verbal commands and stuff like that, you feel me?”

The Pokemon nodded hesitantly.

Togepi, as usual, chirped as she ran toward my dad, oblivious to the dressing down that we were about to receive. Dad dropped his keys when he entered the kitchen. He had calmly asked me to go back to my room to wait for him to finish cleaning up. That was bad. Calm dad was really mad.

Twenty minutes later, give or take, dad entered my room and crossed his arms. He stood at the entrance, blocking the door.

“Grace—”

“I’m really sorry, dad! I just got carried away and, uh, I wanted to train Togepi for our journey. It turns out that it was really fun and I— I’m sorry,” I finished weakly.

“Grace, I’m not angry at you because you wanted to train. In fact, I’m proud of you for taking this seriously. I just don’t understand why you had to do it here. There are public arenas for this very purpose!” He said, finally raising his voice. “Pokemon gyms, new trainers looking to battle, everything! Now I have to deal with this and work,” He sighed.

“I’m sorry,” I just said. Togepi seemingly imitated me and gave a sad chirp.

“Look, you’re leaving tomorrow and I don’t want this argument to be on your mind when you’re out there, so I’ll just let it go. But promise me, when you come back and if you happen to want to train again, you’ll actually use the correct facilities.”

“I will, I was just scared... sorry.”

“Scared? What do you mean?”

“I was scared that I’d just make a fool of myself. You have all these trainers— really good trainers, even, training for the Circuit, and I’m just... there. I’m a really bad trainer with no experience and I have no idea what I’m doing,” I vented.

He took a deep breath and sat down next to me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder. Togepi jumped on my thighs.

“Grace, I thought you didn’t care about training or battling?” He asked softly.

“I mean, I don’t. Or I think I don’t. I still don’t want Togepi to get hurt, but training her today... it was fun. More fun than watching some shi— crappy tournament on T.V. or browsing the internet. I was actually doing the real thing. But I feel that if I actually took that final step— that step into the real world, then I’d realize how behind I am regarding everything Pokemon-related. It’d be like getting woken up with cold water. So if I stay home, I’m safe in my little bubble. I can act like I’m getting better and not just pretending.”

“Wow... that’s some heavy stuff, kid,” Dad sighed. I just nodded and hugged Togepi. “Listen, I won’t go into wanting to be a trainer, or signing up for the Circuit, or whatever. But, Grace, to be successful in life, you’ve got to be unafraid of failure.”

“What if the failure is really big?”

“Really big? Come on, losing your first battle is an event almost everyone goes through. Want to know how my first battle went?” Dad asked.

“Uhuh,” I simply said.

“I signed up for the Circuit as soon as I turned fifteen along with Herdier— well, he was a Lillipup back then. I set off toward Oreburgh on route 203, and I was challenged by some other kid way younger than me. He looked eight, or nine, so he wasn’t on the Circuit. I got cocky and underestimated him. His Budew just completely obliterated me. I couldn’t even get one hit in.”

“No way,” I said with a small gasp.

“I swear! He’d just keep his distance after setting up Leech Seed, and Lillipup was too panicked to do anything. He started rolling around the ground, trying to get the plants off of him while Budew kept attacking. It was... embarrassing, to say the least. But you know what I did after that?”

“You went on to win the Conference and then the League to beat the Champion?” I joked.

He chuckled. “Young me would have wanted that. But no, I went back to square one, and trained for a few weeks in Jubilife before setting off again. Of course, when I reached Oreburgh I got my ass kicked by the Gym Leader, so the story doesn’t really have a great ending,” Dad coughed and clapped his hands. “But it’s about your mindset, kid! You can’t be just doom and gloom all the time, right? Whenever you want to get good at something, you’re going to fail at some point no matter what— even the most gifted, talented people fail. Get it?”

“Yeah, I get it,” I nodded. “Thanks for the pep talk dad.”

“I’ll be rooting for you during your Circuit.” He grinned.

I pushed him off me playfully. “Shut up, I’m not signing up for it. As soon as I get back from Twinleaf, I’m never battling or training again.”

“We’ll see about that. You got the bug, it’s going to be impossible to get rid of now.”

“The bug?” I frowned.

“The training bug. It’ll grow and grow until you only want one thing,” Dad paused.

“To be Champion,” I finished, as something clicked in my mind, and dad’s smile grew into a wild, toothy grin.