I put my pokemon in their balls and gathered my items on the bedside table before I walked to the door, leaving the room for the last time. I walked downstairs and headed to the counter. Noticing that the nurse was busy using one of the many healing machines, I called for her. She immediately looked up and began to speak after seeing the key I was holding.
“Just reach over and set it behind the counter.” She pointed to the area where she had set my I.D. when modifying it, so I did as she asked. I waited until I heard the clink of the keys landing before I gave her my thanks and walked out of the building.
As the doors closed behind me, I raised a hand to block the sun from my eyes. I used the other to reach down to my belt and press the button on Storm’s ball, releasing her. She playfully gave me a gentle headbutt in thanks before rising to hover above my head. I scratched her side as she rose and began to look around for a general goods store and a pokemart, wishing I had asked Mary or one of her helpers where I could find the shops.
The police station was the only notable building across the street, so I turned to look at the buildings around the pokecenter on my side of the road. As I put my back to the street, I noticed that the shops I wanted were flanking the pokecenter. The general goods store was on the pokecenter’s left, and the pokemart was on the right.
I entered the general goods store first, leaving Storm outside due to her size. How much I spent on a backpack and a set of camping supplies would determine my budget for everything else. Those kinds of mundane items couldn’t be found in a pokemart and needed a general store. The stat growth items and other pokemon-centric goods could be found in the pokemart.
Using a cart, I quickly grabbed a plain, sky-blue backpack before adding a boxed set of camping supplies and a pots and spices travel kit. Taking the cart to a cashier, I pay P$175 for a duffel bag, a sleeping bag, a portable stove and fuel, and a set of camping cookware. I packed the duffel bag mostly full with the supplies I had just bought and the items I carried from the pokecenter before slinging it over my shoulders like a backpack and walking out of the general store.
My next stop was the pokemart where Storm was relegated, once more, to a glorified door guard. I had P$325 to spend there since I already bought everything I would need. I walked through the sliding doors and grabbed a small basket before moving to browse the shelves. When I looked at the price for a level one HP Up, all I could do was grimace. P$7000 to increase the HP stat of a pokemon by one percent. I would need a way to make some money before I could start buying those.
In the end, I bought a normal potion for P$200 and left the store. I walked back to the pokecenter, figuring that they would be more likely to know where someone can find odd jobs to earn some money. This time the doors and building were big enough for Storm to join me inside, so I waited for her to enter before calling out to Mary.
“Nurse Joy.” Hearing that, she turned to look at me expectantly. “Where could I find one-off jobs for trainers? Things that involve dealing with other pokemon, whether trained or wild.” A gentle smile grew on her face as she responded.
“I figured you’d come back for that. There’s a board over there with all those jobs, separated by judged difficulty and labeled with suggested pokemon level.” She pointed to a bulletin board set up to my left. It was a square piece with sides about five feet (1.5 meters) long and was over half full of papers. I walked over to the board, labeled “Trainer Quests,” and checked for anything unique or interesting.
The most common requests I found on the board were parents requesting a day of sparring practice between any wandering trainer and their child. Those requests also required the trainer to give a few tips on how to beat the type and specialty of the pokemon used against the kid. The reward for each varied depending on how specific the contractor was with regard to the type and focus requested, but the average was around P$100 for a 30-minute lesson and battle combo.
The next most common quest available was the gathering quest. Those would have the trainer gather and deliver a certain amount of materials found a day or more away from the town, be it herbs or pokemon parts. The prices varied wildly based on the item and quantity being asked for.
The final type of requests on the board were variant quests. Those involved either delivering a variant pokemon for the contractor to own or displaying your own variant pokemon for the request maker to study.
I had no materials or pokemon I could deliver, so I skipped over all of the gathering and most of the variant quests. I knew my pokemon had no interest in being poked and prodded, so I moved to the training requests. Searching through those, I found one where the father wanted his son to face a new trainer who could beat him. The boy had gained the approval of a tauros and, thanks to its superior base stat total, had yet to lose a battle with his peers, who had all gotten ponyta and birds.
I grabbed that paper off the board and took it over to the counter, where I found the teenage girl, Anna, waiting for me. When she opened her mouth to speak, her voice was so soft and light that it seemed almost ethereal.
Question, would Storm eventually get the ability to transform into a human figure like what happens in one of the movies? I'm asking because even waiting like a glorified pet dog may end up being extremely frustrating for her.
There is potential for a human form to happen.
Either way, the majority of the time Ben will be leather outside or in areas designed with pokemon in mind. So it won't be a huge issue.