Rubbing my dry eyes from looking at the screen for too long, I decided to grab some grub since I'd been sitting in the library for over four hours now.
Stretching my back, I packed all my belongings back into my bag before heading out, but not before noting down a few books that caught my eye, like "Dummies Guide to Caring for Pokémon," "Professor Oak's Leading Research For Non-Researchers!," and "Connection Between Pokémon and Trainer."
I'll download them later to read on my phone; no point borrowing them since it would be a hassle to return them.
Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I walked out of the library and witnessed once more the coexistence between Pokémon and humans, feeling a little weirded out, and with good reason.
"I am so not used to this," I muttered under my breath.
As I walked down the street towards my usual coffee shop, I noticed a Hoothoot perched on a nearby lamppost, preening its feathers. A group of Lilipups scurried along the sidewalk, dodging the feet of busy pedestrians. A trainer walked past me with an Electrike trotting happily at his heels, its striped fur looking sleek and well-groomed.
The coffee shop that I usually go to was just around the corner of the street's community shopping center, where stores and stalls of all kinds were lined up in a straight line. The shop took up almost four individual shopping complexes, with tons of hawker stalls stationed around the premises—a very common sight in Malaysia.
Taking a seat at an empty spot with my bag on another chair next to me, I sighed as I looked around the coffee shop, thinking of what to eat for today's lunch.
"Hey! What can I get you?"
A familiar voice called out. I turned to look, just to stare at the Meowth who stood beside my friend, Ahmad, who worked as a waiter. I had known him ever since my family started coming here often back in the day.
"... Yeah, can I please get iced tea, Ahmad?"
"Sure! I'll be back soon. Come on, Meowth!"
"Rrowth! [ヾ(•ω•`)o]"
The Scratch Cat Pokémon gave me a familiar wave before tailing Ahmad to get more orders. The mascot of the shop was supposed to be a cat, so I guess it became a Meowth now that this world was coexisting with Pokémon.
So weird. But super cool.
Leaving my belongings on the table, I quickly went to order a bowl of Hokkien mee, only to pause as the notes in my wallet were different from the usual Malaysian Ringgit. Instead, in my wallet were notes with the face of a Pikachu instead of Malaysia's first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman's, face.
"Right, it's Pokédollars now."
Even the pricing for the food had changed. This was so dang disorientating. Paying for the noodles with five 1-note Pokédollars, I pointed at my table before walking back to my spot.
While waiting for my food and drink to arrive, I thought back to the things I'd found about this new universe.
First was the amount of peace between nations and countries. Before I died, I recalled that war in the Eastern Mediterranean was still raging on. Nowadays, the only recorded threats were mostly natural disasters like floods and earthquakes.
There were more things that I'd read upon, like the history of Pokémon and human civilization, the impact Pokémon had on this world to somehow unite all regions to adopt a single currency, changes in the geography and terms of the world compared to my old world, and so on.
The most important aspect that I found was that there were actual Pokémon Trainers in this world.
Thanking Ahmad for the drink and paying for it, I stirred my drink as I continued to delve into my thoughts.
Yup, Pokémon Trainer is a profession and career option for teenagers reaching the age of 15, something different compared to the normal 10 seen in the anime series and games.
I am currently just under five months before turning 15, so I was seriously considering becoming one. And hell, yeah, I wanted to be a trainer. Would you seriously not if given the chance?
Sure, it was dangerous. Hell, even Ash, the main protagonist of the series, bit the bullet at least a handful of times, but the point of Pokémon as a whole was the journey!
I wanted to explore this new world, to see the old and new, the similarities and differences between both worlds! I wanted to try out new things that aren't in my comfort zone, taste new food, and broaden my horizons, especially with new knowledge of Pokémon!
I mean, have you never really thought of being a Pokémon Trainer when you were a kid? Be the best that no one ever was? To catch new Pokémon and train them? Travel across the land and search far and wide to teach Pokémon the power that's inside?
Sorry, I went off-tangent with the Pokémon theme song. I really need to stop singing the Pokémon theme in my head, but you get the point. If you were in my shoes, you would definitely be like me and take the initiative to catch them all.
So, what is a Trainer anyway? Well, it's a broad term. Anyone with a Pokémon is essentially a Trainer, but the one that most people aspire to become is the type to travel the world and work their way to becoming a Pokémon Champion, the Combat Trainer profession.
They are basically the country's manpower, to say the least, acting as the world's first and last line of defense if a country is threatened or requires help from a threat.
But to become a Pokémon Trainer, there are some criteria that will need to be addressed first before being able to challenge the Pokémon League.
1. Applying for a Pokémon License: This is the license that all Pokémon owners have to adopt and own a Pokémon.
2. Actually owning a Pokémon. What kind of Trainer are you if you hadn't had experience with a Pokémon before? And you'll need a Pokémon for the next step, after all.
3. Going to Trainer School and completing your studies for three years for the diploma. During your time in Trainer School, you can apply for a few branches, such as becoming a Breeder, a Combat Trainer, a Coordinator, a Professor, and more.
After that, there are more steps if you'd want to challenge the League and whatnot, but those are the three main steps that you'd have to take, steps that I will have a major headache to try and solve.
... I won't lie to you, but my family is on the less-wealthy side of the spectrum. My father is working 7 days a week, 8 hours a day, for a take-home pay of just shy of RM4,000.
My mother is a stay-at-home mother who works as a babysitter for our neighbors, raking in about RM1,400 average, sometimes more with overnight stays.
A total of roughly RM5,400 back in my old world, which may be more or less the same in this universe, hopefully. We're not doing that well, especially when my sister is studying medicine.
Don't get me wrong, she's the smartest person I know. Hell, she scored a scholarship to waive her first year in college, meaning we didn't have to pay a single cent in year one, but she still had 4 more years of expenses.
And if we counted me as someone who's about to join college in a few years time, we're kind of bleeding dry, my father said a while back when we did a heart-to-heart, dad-and-son moment.
Being a Pokémon Combat Trainer is costly. And I mean, extremely costly.
The Pokémon Association, the governing body that handles legislation regarding the entirety of the Pokémon side of the world, requires you to fork up almost 5,000 Pokédollars to apply for a Pokémon License after doing well in their assessment tests.
After that, 500 Pokédollars a month. In turn, you get very good benefits such as free usage of Pokémon Centers, discounted services like trains and buses, a higher priority when applying for a loan from any bank as long as the reasoning is Pokémon-related, etc.
That's just the license. Now, we get to step 2, owning a Pokémon. This is where the majority of the headache stems from.
Pokémon are mostly sold to people; you aren't allowed to catch any Pokémon by yourself out in the wild unless you have a Trainer License, something you'll get once you start studying in a Trainer School.
I looked up how much an ordinary Pokémon costs, and I almost died from choking on my saliva earlier. A Pidgey is worth 1,000 Pokédollars . One thousand bucks for a bird that I can catch anywhere in the skies!
The Catching and Breeding scene is just that affordable, I guess. And I looked up the iconic Kanto starters, too. I won't tell you how much due to it being impossible for me, but the number of zeros would make a grown man cry in shame.
And don't get me started with going to a Trainer School. Sure, the official Pokémon Academy gave out a good amount of options for scholarships, as Professor Oak said! But you will still have to somehow come up with 10,000 Pokédollars upfront as a deposit before being eligible to apply for a scholarship for the year.
I sighed as I sunk in my seat, my palm on my face, as I didn't even register that my food even came until I sat upright to soothe my parched throat.
What to do, what to do? The chance to be a Pokémon Trainer is in my sights, but my reach is too short to even take it. Grabbing the chopsticks on the bowl, I started to eat my meal, deciding to put off the money thinking until later and just enjoy my food when I remembered something.
Digging into my bag, I fished out the weird new console that I packed and booted it up. I expected it to lag slightly, but it instantly came on as the screen displayed the classic Gengar versus Nidorino fight but in Pokémon Black and White graphics.
Weird, since this thing didn't have a cartridge slot, I thought it would present me with some sort of menu to choose my games...
Soon, the battle dims as the title screen presents itself with Arceus in the back of the title.
"Pokémon: GENERATIONS?"
It loaded up an unknown Pokémon game. Cool, but I'd like to enjoy my all-time favorite, Fire Red, at the moment. I tried pressing the buttons other than the ones that would start the game, hoping to try and access some kind of menu option to choose another game but it didn't work.
Eventually I gave up and pressed on the START button to start the game; the screen shifted as the whole library of Pokémon games was presented to me, making me stare at it confused.
"Oh... Generations, the title makes sense now."
Moving my fingers, I navigated through the generations of Pokémon and soon landed on Fire Red. Selecting it, I confirmed my choice when a prompt appeared asking me if I was sure of my decision, something I completely ignored.
In my defense, who even reads the policies and agreements?
Anyway, I breezed through the initial dialogue by Professor Oak, who surprisingly didn't ask about my avatar's gender and name and straightaway moved on to my rival's name.
Inputting Blue since it was my go-to name for Fire Red's rival, the game starts with a short cutscene of a revamped Pallet Town, showcasing the new buildings and NPCs in the town, something that I quite enjoyed with these graphics!
A moment later, the cutscene ends as my avatar wakes up from his bed...
Wait a second...
That's me! Whoa! Usually the sprite of Red has brown hair, but this avatar had black hair just like me! And the models of the overworld sprites were the full-art version when seen during battles, meaning I could see the model of my avatar very clearly.
That's so cool; the me in the game was wearing Red's outfit, but the red cap he was wearing showed more of his messy hair.
Just to make sure, I pressed on the START button to open up the menu, and there it was! My name, JOSEPH, was under the BAG option. Huh, there were many more additions to the menu, like an in-game clock at the top left of the screen that showed real-time, a HELP option, and an EXIT option.
Putting that aside for now, I did what every person did when loading a new playthrough, walking to the PC to grab my free Potion. Booting up the PC, I navigated through the options and grabbed my Potion before moving my avatar down the stairs out of the house.
Holy moly, this game looks so damn good. I quickly walked in the direction where Route 1 starts and was immediately stopped by Professor Oak, who soon guided me to his laboratory.
I skipped most of the dialogue since I was already familiar with the conversation and soon was able to choose my starter.
Testing something out, I saved the game before pressing START, SELECT, B, and A together at once to test if soft resetting would work.
And it did! Nice, I can start soft resetting for my starter's nature, a ritual at this point to get the best starter possible. Now what to choose, though... ?
My last run was on a Blastoise, and Venusaur was prior to Blastoise. So the choice lands on Charizard then. I cracked my fingers as I walked up to Charmander's Pokéball and saved for a shorter delay when resetting.
Time to get a good Charmander to start the game.
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Come support me on my Pa tre on where I post early chapters (sometimes) and new story ideas not on any websites yet.
There's currently extra chapters that I haven't posted, want to stockpile them beforehand, so if you want to read early come join!
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