9 Unnamed

The first thing Carl did the next day after a late start was to go to the local Poke co. branch. When Carl checked in with the manager, John, he found it both weird and at the same time perfectly natural that the manager fawned over him so much.

On the one hand, he still had the idea from his previous life that an adult fawning over a 12 year old was creepy. On the other hand, he had memories of growing up as the heir to the company and the manager's future boss.

Carl realized that the manager was worried that if Carl was unhappy with his performance, he could get his dad to fire him. So it made sense John would do his best to make Carl happy.

As Carl thought about it more, he had many memories of people treating him like that all through growing up, so it felt somewhat normal for Carl now. The only thing was that now that Carl had his old life's memories, he realized that all those people that tried so hard to make him happy wasn't because respect for him, a kid with no accomlishments. It wasn't anything he did that was deserving of that kind of behavior from people.

Those people were just afraid to upset him on the chance that he would complain to his backing, his parents, and that would result in their benefits of a good job being taken away from them. They would then lose their financial stability. And then they wouldn't be able to support their families.

And this realization didn't give Carl a feeling of power over people. It didn't make him feel like he was superior. Instead it impressed on Carl the importance of understanding what motivates people. It imprinted the responsibility inherent in a high position on Carl.

These were his people. Or his father's people, so it amounted to the same thing. They depended on his family to survive. And his family couldn't accomplish what they had with their company without their employees willing help.

With this clarity of thought, almost an epiphany, Carl realized that for the most part, people will give him a certain amount of respect and loyalty as long as they had a decent relationship of give and take. They give him labor, loyalty, and respect, and in return he gives them money, job security, and respect back.

For most people, no matter how much the money offered, if there was no respect they would have a cutoff point. A point at which they say "I've had all I can stand, and I can't stand no more." At that point, it doesn't matter how much money or job security they were offered. It wasn't worth putting up with the shit their employers dump on them.

So faced with the overeager manager John, and the fresh realization that respect must go both up and down the chain of command in order to instill loyalty, Carl treated the manager nicely, and actually chit chatted with him about his city and what his job entailed. Carl could tell the man was touched by Carl's apparent concern.

After a good talk, which Carl learned many ins and outs of Santalune City, Carl finally got to the point of why he had arrived at the branch that morning.

Carl first had John give him access to the company's computer, and uploaded his information to his father's files for him to access.

He then asked John about his supplies from the market that should have been delivered. After being assured his supplies were sitting in a secure room, John also informed Carl that Clark had shipped a new machine to their branch when he heard Carl was in the area.

John didn't know what the large package was, but it had been put in the same locked room as his food supplies.

They soon arrived at the storage room. After a polite request, John left Carl alone in the storage room for a few moments, long enough for Carl to open his warehouse and telekinetically shift the goods and package from Clark inside. Once that was done, Carl simply thanked John for his time and help, and left.

Carl didn't worry too much about John wondering about how he took the goods out. In a society with spatial manipulation and pocket dimension tech, little questions like that were not a big deal. At most John would assume he had some high tech storage item from his parents. They were rich, after all. Who knows what toys the rich had?

It wasn't until Carl returned to the hotel that he got a chance to slip back into his warehouse to check on his goods. He first organized and refilled his pocket dimension poke feeders. They were such wonderful devices that made food dispensing easy so feeding a dozen pokemon at a time wasn't difficult.

He then looked at the vending machine sized package that his father had sent him. After opening the box, he saw that it was an actual vending machine. After reading the documentation, Carl soon learned that it was a deluxe pokeball organizer/scanner/record keeping device. Carl simply needed to make sure it received a charge every few weeks when he returned to town to keep it running.

Another great feature it had was similar to how pokeballs could store pokemon, the Poke Organizer also had a small briefcase sized storage unit for ease of transport in the field.

It had plenty of space to store hundreds of pokeballs. As each one was placed in the Poke Organizer, it was scanned. The pokemon species, their power level, their abilities, health, and all other relevant information would be logged, stored, and synced with Carl's laptop and Pokedex for ease of information retrieval.

It would also make it easier to keep track of and retrieve the pokemon he wanted, rather than having tens or hundreds of pokeballs just sitting in a pile in his backpack.

Carl was very enthused for the new toy! He had over fifteen pokemon, and it was already getting to be a pain to keep the pokeballs in a decent order. This device would only help him. And the best thing was Carl could simply plug the device into the power grid in his warehouse and didn't need to worry about remembering to charge it.

Carl immediately installed the software on his laptop, loaded his pokeballs into it, and synced his data across the board. As Carl looked through the program and data provided, he smiled in satisfaction. He would have to thank his father for this gift. This would save him a lot of time by having the data automatically entered, instead of having to do it by hand every day. More time for training and other things.

Carl decided to spend one more day in the city. He took Fiona and Rhona to some of the local sights, parks, and a movie theatre. So far, despite being a "queen" Rhona hadn't experienced much of the posh life. Most of the time was spent traveling and training with Carl. So this new experience really made her day, and Fiona enjoyed talking about all the things she'd experienced in her life by Carl's side.

It made for a relaxing day.

The next day Carl, Fiona, and Rhona checked out of the hotel, and made their way out of the city, heading south. It took nearly a day of traveling to make it to Aquacorde Town. Since it was already evening, Carl checked into a motel and spent the night there, eating out at a restaurant instead of preparing his own food.

The next day, Carl made his way out of the town, and started exploring the wilds as he resumed his training schedule.

With the extra time available in the evenings now that Carl didn't have to manually enter his training logs, he spent a bit more time training his magic. He was able to really exercise his body all day as he hiked around and trained with his pokemon, so he really felt he needed some extra practice with his magic to get it back up to where it used to be, even if that would take a few years.

After a week and a half of following his training regimen, Carl finally, fully. admitted to himself something he had been suspecting for some time. Ever since he'd first used his magic attack against the attack power training stone the first time, he suspected it, but only with months of training and searching his suddenly improved memory had he solidified his suspicions.

Now that he had the Savant perk, he never forgot anything. He had been going over his memories from ten years ago, from when he first started training up his magic. His memories from before he'd gotten the perk were a lot duller and more difficult to remember, but once he dredged a memory up, he didn't forget it again.

And he'd finally concluded that it wasn't his imagination, his magic really was noticeably weaker in this world at the same stage than it had been when he was in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer world.

After some thought Carl decided that the reason why is that this world's laws made it so that pokemon and their abilities were the strongest thing around. The only way for humans to have access to that power was to convince pokemon to fight for them. Or with them.

Even the perks available before entering this world were all geared towards making humans better trainers. Even the psychic abilities available was relegated to a simple tool to communicate with pokemon.

For whatever reason the natural laws were like that, Carl just had to suck it up and realize that by using the same amount of energy as a pokemon, his magic would be at least half as effective as a pokemon's abilities. Maybe in different worlds his magic would once more be just as powerful and effective, but in this one, he would have to work twice as much for half the effect.

Which to Carl just meant he had to put in at least as much effort into his training, if not more, than his pokemon did. Who knows when a little extra punch, no matter how light, would tip the scales in his team's favor? So he couldn't slack any. It would also set a good example for his pokemon to see him train just as hard as them.

Carl was very happy he had purchased the medunit. He had already determined that the medunit sped up the body's natural healing, while keeping the patient alive so the healing could take effect. This meant that when he or his pokemon trained hard, all those microtears in their muscles that cause soreness and weakness after a workout, could be healed with a quick use of the medunit, thus increasing their strength, speed, and endurance from the workout in record time.

It made their exercise sessions three or four times more effective, at least.

It also allowed them to train as hard as they could one day, get healed, then go hunting the next without worrying about being too weak to defend themselves.

After training and hunting for a few weeks in the area around Aquacorde Town, Carl moved south again to the area around Vaniville Town. The town itself was very small, and didn't have anything that interested Carl, aside from refilling their food supplies.

After trekking around the wilds for a few days, Carl ran across a small Turtwig being harassed by a flock of Pidgeys. The little turtle with a sapling on his back was actually acting like he barely noticed the birds, which was impressive since a Grass type pokemon like him was usually very vulnerable to flying pokemon.

But the sturdy little guy just kept plodding along, eating the grass in front of him while the bird pokemon uselessly attacked his shell. The few times they attacked his head, he retracted his head lightning quick into his shell, until they gave up and looked for a different target.

Carl extended his magic senses out to the little guy, and sensed that he had large growth potential, similar to Fiona and Rhona.

"Rhona, can you drive off those birds? I'm interested in adding that Turtwig to our team."

Nodding earnestly, Rhona stepped up and started sending psybeams to drive off the birds.

Not to be outdone, Fiona jumped in and sent some fireballs off as well, singing more than a few birds.

"Thanks, good work you two." Carl praised. It was always important to make sure your pokemon knew how much their contributions to the team meant to you.

Carl cautiously approached the wandering Turtwig. He pulled out of his backpack various snack foods since he had sensed the turtle's hunger eating at him. Carl didn't think the grass was his normal food, but it seems that's all he had available to him at the moment.

Carl noticed the little guy's immediate interest when he smelled the food Carl pulled out.

"Hey, would you like to join us? You'll get lots of food, and friends to hang out with if you do." Carl tempted the turtle pokemon.

The Turtwig seemed to be considering Carl's question for a long moment, but finally nodded his head firmly. When Carl saw he had agreed, he set the different foods out for the turtle. The little guy immediately started chomping on the jerky first. Looks like grass was as far from his preferred food as was possible. The more food he ate, the more energetic he seemed to be getting.

Carl reached out psychically to him. Recently, due to his hard work, Carl had improved his magic enough for another psychic link to be established, but Carl had decided to wait until he found a teammate that had potential similar to Fiona and Rhona before establishing it.

[Hey buddy. My name is Carl. The Fennekin to my right is Fiona, and the Ralts to my left is Rhona. Welcome to the team.]

[Hey there, slowpoke! Welcome to the team.] Fiona chimed in.

[Welcome to the team.] Rhona added.

[I'm not a slowpoke, I'm a Turtwig.] Came the response from the turtle as he glared at Fiona.

[Whatever, compared to me, the Queen of Speed and Fire, you're slow.] Fiona arrogantly proclaimed with her nose in the air.

Which was a mistake, because it meant she didn't notice the vine from the Turtwig's sapling snap forward and bop Fiona on snout. It did no damage to Fiona, only startling her.

[I may not be able to move fast, but I can attack fast!] The Turtwig proudly proclaimed.

[Ha! We'll just see about that!] Fiona proclaimed, suddenly taking the contest seriously, she started sprinting around the Turtwig, attempting to get close without getting tagged by the Turtwig's vines.

Carl just smiled as they mock fought. He didn't sense any intent to hurt each other in the exchange, just to test each other's abilities. Carl watched, amazed, as Fiona upped her speed beyond what he thought she was able to. 'Apparently she'd been sandbagging her training, content with her speed as it was. This contest is probably good for her, it seems to have gotten her fired up.' Carl started thinking of ways to increase Fiona's speed training.

Occasionally Fiona would get tagged with the vine, and occasionally she would get inside and tag the Turtwig. Finally, after several minutes of running around, Fiona stopped running outside of the Turtwig's reach.

[Hah! I won, 7 to 4, I tagged you more!] Fiona bragged.

[Yup, you're faster than anyone else I've met.] Turtwig readily admitted.

[You're not so bad yourself. No one else can keep up with me.] Fiona complimented him back after being praised.

"You two are really good. Okay, first things first, let's get you assigned to a pokeball so if you're ever injured we can keep you stable until I can get you to a medical unit." Carl said, dropping a pokeball next to the Turtwig. "Don't resist the pokeball."

And the Turtwig was sucked into his own pokeball. Carl opened up his warehouse and added him to the Poke-Organizer. Once the data was recorded, Carl once more let the Turtwig out, and set out some more food for him.

"Do you have a name already?" Carl asked once the Turtwig had finished eating. After he answered in the negative, Carl asked. "How does the name Talbot sound to you?"

[I like it!] Fiona immediately said.

[It sounds like a strong name.] Rhona added.

[Okay. I'll be Talbot from now on.] Talbot agreed easily.

Carl had the sense that Talbot would be pretty laid back for the most part, but as evidenced by his contest with Fiona was more than willing to step up when he needed to.

Carl then started going over everything Talbot would need to know about their team, with added comments from Fiona and Rhona.

After everything was settled, they soon returned to their campsite to continue their training schedule. Carl was feeling pretty good about his group. He vaguely felt like he was assembling a party group from an MMO. Talbot would be the tank, as evidenced by his toughness in vending off those Pidgeys and being able to keep Fiona engaged, Fiona was DPS with her melee, fire, and psychic attacks, and Rhona was a DPS/support/healer.

With the large potential talents that Carl sensed in these three, he knew they would be his first string team. They would eventually grow into massively powerful pokemon. He was excited to see that day.

After a couple of weeks searching the area and finding no more new pokemon, Carl packed up his camp and started the trip back to Lumiose City. The basket on his bike now held Rhona and Talbot, while Fiona perched on his backpack and his shoulders for the travel back.

They spent another evening in the hotel at Santalune City. Talbot was just as amazed as Rhona had been, the first time they saw human buildings, goods, and services. Fiona, as the one of the three who had spent the most time among humans, acted as the tour guide with great pride.

Carl simply did what he usually did. Sit back with a smile and enjoy their interactions. It was a strange position he held. He was their good friend, but at the same time he wasn't a pokemon like them, which for some unknown reason made it so he wasn't just one of the crew. He was the leader and trainer, which seemed to put him a bit above them in a way.

Carl had had time to become accustomed to the curious hierarchy their group had, and he had long determined that he would simply enjoy the group for what they were. Trying to purposefully shape their attitudes and behaviors would just destroy what they had, so Carl was determined to just let the group dynamics grow as they would.

The next day in the evening Carl finally peddled into Lumiose City. He arrived home late, but still found his parents waiting up for him. This kind of care and love was hard to find, and Carl was determined to enjoy it as long as he could.

After a late dinner with his parents, Carl soon retired to his room, and slept until late the next morning. Arriving at the table, Carl was surprised to find his parents still home.

"Dad, mom, why are you still here?" Carl asked in surprise.

"What? You can't wait to get rid of your poor parents?" Claire teasingly asked. "Do you maybe have some girl coming to visit that you don't want your parents to embarrass you in front of?"

"Come on mom, you know I don't!" Carl exclaimed, while blushing.

'Damn you hormones and my 12 year old body! I've got at least four girlfriends waiting for me in the last world. I've been an adult for many years! I've even had orgies! But the moment I'm back in a young body, I can't help but be embarrassed by my mom! How ridiculous is that!' Carl couldn't help but complain in his mind.

After his parents had their laugh, they settled down to talking about plans. This time around, Carl planned to stay home for at least a month while he went over his data and plans with Clark at the company. He was hoping that by working with him as he scanned the pokemon and adjusted the equipment, Carl would be able to help him develop more advanced equipment.

Also, his Gyarados had gotten up to 40% of his maximum potential. Carl was really interested to see just how much he could grow, because he could still feel that only half of his potential was available, but only by reaching that point could he be sure if he was right.

Meanwhile, Claire informed him what social events were happening and that she expected him to attend over the next month. Carl agreed to attend the events to help his mother with her socializing.

From his memories Carl remembered being bored at those events, but now with a new, adult perspective, Carl was interested to see what he would think of the socializing parties.

With the late breakfast over, Carl joined Clark at the company and started using the company's pokemon gym to train his pokemon and getting more data, while at the same time helping Clark adjust the equipment in the proper directions to get better scans.

While on the weekends, Carl would join both Claire and Clark at social engagements.

Carl met, or rather, reacquainted himself with the local businessmen, politicians, and other professionals. He also met their young sons and daughters, and tried to be friendly.

However, Carl wasn't able to make any decent friends. The young men either cared nothing about pokemon, which was a huge part of Carl's life at the moment, or they felt they had to be douchebag rivals, since they, for some reason, felt they were superior to Carl and wanted to prove it.

Carl didn't feel any need to fight those kinds of people. Proving he was better than them in pissing contests that would waste his training time had no appeal to him. They would just keep coming after him over and over if he won, annoying the hell out of him, or they would treat him with a supercilious attitude, pissing him off. He would pass.

The young women of those social circles, on the other hand, all seemed to be in training to become trophy wives. In other words, they were what the parents of Cordelia and Harmony tried to force their daughters to be in the last world.

Backbiting, scrabbling for popularity and social credit. Any method of coming out on top was deemed to be appropriate. Which meant they tried to tear each other down more than they tried to build each other up.

Carl just couldn't enjoy that kind of attitude or environment. He had spent so much time in the previous world making sure Cordelia and Harmony didn't have to be like that. But in this life, he had no real connection to any of those young women, and he had no idea of knowing which ones might be worth something.

So instead of engaging in such an exhausting effort as social reform, Carl spent most of his time mingling with the adults and conversing about their company, or district, or whatever was interesting, as opposed to dealing with the crazy young kids.

After a month and a half, the Gyarados had finally gotten up to 50% of what Carl felt his full potential was, and simply stopped growing anymore after that. No matter what training or supplements they tried, nothing could move him past that block.

Once Carl saw those results, he was relieved he hadn't let any of his pokemon evolve when they first felt they could.

From what Carl could gather, if a pokemon in their first form didn't fully grow into their potential before they evolved, they would damage their foundation and it would be nigh impossible to grow to what their maximum potential was.

Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot especially had all gotten to the point where they could have evolved when they were at 33% of their maximum potential. It would be a tragedy if they couldn't fulfill their potential because they sought out short term gains of evolving into a more powerful form. At this point they were up to about 75% of their maximum potential in their first form. So another month or so should see them up to 100%.

The data about training and supplements they had been taking had allowed Carl and Clark to tailor individual training regimens that had really improved the speed of their growth. After talking to the Gyarados about whether he wanted to stay with Clark and try to find a way to improve past his block, or be let go back into the wild, the Gyarados decided he'd rather go wander the waters of the world. So Clark had some employees drive him in the company vehicles to some nearby rivers to see where he would like to go free. Carl hoped the Gyarados enjoyed himself.

Carl and Clark then made plans to build some water training facilities so Carl could bring some water based pokemon back sometime to train with and get data from. Carl planned to spend some time looking for a Magikarp with decent potential. He wanted to see what happened when he trained it up to 100% of its potential before he let it evolve to a Gyarados.

It was common knowledge that Gyarados didn't have a higher form, unless you could get your hands on a mega ring. The mega ring would enable a trainer to cause their pokemon to have a Mega Evolution. But Carl was hoping that the common knowledge was wrong so he could see what form the Gyarados would turn into after being properly trained to reach its full potential. And if they didn't have another form, at least he could see a Gyarados at full power.

After another two weeks the department that Clark had assigned to designing a computer interface for communications had come back with their first results. Since there were so many different types of pokemon, they had to design three different interfaces.

The first was for small sized pokemon who didn't have hands. The keyboard was designed so that pokemon with paws or beaks could type. It would be very slow typing, via the hunt and peck method, but there was nothing for it. Maybe after they could effectively communicate with the pokemon, they could work on building a database of the vocal utterances of the pokemon to work on translating between pokemon and English.

The next was a laptop for humanoid pokemon. Generally speaking, the humanoid pokemon were smaller than humans, and they didn't have five fingers per hand. So the keyboards were designed slightly differently to accommodate them.

The third design was for the large to very large pokemon that had no hands. The researchers decided they would have to have a stylus the pokemon could use, maybe in their mouths, to use the hunt and peck method.

Carl wasn't particularly happy with the methods they came up with for the pokemon without hands to type. Many pokemon don't have tons of patience, so the slow communication methods would drive them crazy.

Vaguely remembering some systems set up for handicapped people in his original world, Carl interrupted the presentation.

"Have you thought about setting up a system where we have cameras on the pokemon's face while they look at a screen, and software tracks their eyes. When they pause on letters or even some words set up on the screen, it will use that to type for them. It will be quicker than typing using the hunt and peck method for them." Carl could see from the group's eyes that they hadn't thought even considered the idea, but that they were warming up to the idea.

"Another consideration you should be thinking about while developing that idea, is that there are lots of water based pokemon. I don't exactly have any ideas about how to include them in this project. And we don't exactly have to rush it, but keep it in mind in case if you have any good ideas for that part of the project." Carl finished.

Carl could tell from Clark's expression that he was proud of the contribution his son had to the project. Which gave Carl warm fuzzy feelings.

'There are some good things to being 12 again, after all. I haven't felt this good for having someone's approval for years.' Carl thought in amusement. 'No wonder they say that positive reinforcement is necessary for a child's development.'

After a few more details about how to proceed with the research were discussed, the meeting broke apart.

As Carl and Clark were driving home, Clark brought up an interesting topic.

"Carl, the Lysandre Labs based here in the city has a product that they put out in the past month called the Holo Caster. It is truly an amazing invention. It makes use of holograms, so that you can use it to communicate with others, view news bulletins, news reports, and many other things."

"Wow, that's amazing technology!" Carl exclaimed, thinking of all the scifi he had consumed in his original world.

"Yes, but I wanted to warn you about it. Lysandre Labs came out of nowhere with this technology. There's a lot that hasn't been tested about it. So be careful not to send any important documents or messages through their system. I'm concerned that they could use the system they set up for industrial espionage. So be sure to stick to the safe methods we've already established. And if you do use their devices, keep them away from any sensitive material. I haven't been able to have our people go through its code to make sure they can't spy on us with it."

"Gotcha. It's not like not having holograms on the Pokegear for calls makes it difficult to use. I'll stick to the safe methods until we know for sure it is secure." Carl promised.

Like he'd thought before, people are people everywhere. Even if the universe is more inclined towards friends and adventures in the Pokemon universe, there are always bad eggs. He vaguely remembered there was a Team Rocket in the Pokemon series that was always trying to steal people's goods and pokemon.

Just because they came across as really goofy didn't mean they weren't trying to be criminals. Kidnapping and enslaving pokemon, theft, and probably some violence or attempted murder here or there. It's not all happy times in any world.

Time seemed to pass by quickly for Carl as he trained his team of pokemon. His main three, Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot seemed to take a lot more time to get to 100% of their potential, while all the rest of his pokemon had long since fulfilled their potential and evolved in the labs under all kinds of scanners.

Carl was happy that all of his pokemon that got to 100% of their potential returned magic scans of having no obstacle to their growth.

Finally, in the week before Carl was going to turn 13, Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot were ready to evolve.

Fiona evolved into a Braixen. She turned from a fox, into a humanoid like fox girl that stood on two feet. Compared to a normal Braixen, she stood a foot taller now at 4 feet, and she had three tails instead of only one. She was also insanely fast and hit like a truck. Much more powerful compared to a normal Braixen.

Rhona evolved into a Kirlia. She remained a humanoid form. Similar to Fiona, Rhona was about a foot taller than a normal Kirlia, at three feet. She also had a golden tint to her skin where most Kirlia were white. Her green coloring was also a deeper shade. Now that her dress like covering wasn't getting tangled up in her legs, she almost seemed to dance around the battlefield, easily avoiding many of the attacks other pokemon sent her way. Her healing and psychic abilities were more than a few tiers stronger than a normal Kirlia.

Talbot evolved into a Grotle. A normal Grotle had two bushes on their backs, and their backs were covered by their shell from their head to their tail. Talbot on the other hand now had two small trees on his back. His height was also a foot taller, at 4 feet. The deep green and gold coloring that Talbot had was unusual for a Grotle, and he was even more like an immovable object when he chose. He could easily stomp one foot onto the ground and cause the ground around him to shake, making it unstable for enemies to stand.

Carl was proud of just how strong each of his pokemon were. Their hard work over the last year had really paid off.

A few days later, Carl and his parents had a small, family only, birthday party. Clark and Claire gave him a motocycle with a sidecar. They knew he planned on leaving on another training trip, and he liked to have his three main pokemon out with him always. With the motorcycle he could get around quicker, and more importantly he could return quicker too.

Carl was very happy with the gift. It showed how much his parents cared about his desire to go on a pokemon journey, that they would give him the means to make it that much easier for him to accomplish it.

A couple weeks after his birthday, Carl decided it was time to head out on his journey. He had everything he needed packed up. Over the past two weeks he had been surreptitiously adding storage units to his Warehouse, so he had several dozen pocket dimension storage units stored on his shelving and around the area. He had updated his training facilities in his Warehouse.

He had also put in a weight lifting gym and treadmill for his own exercise. He was determined that he would stay fit. There was more than a time or two in the last world when a vampire jumped him from behind that being fit and able to hip toss the leach had saved his neck. Despite their great strength, they were still only human in size and weight, thus he could get the needed seconds to pull out a stake or fireball them.

Now that everything was ready, he, Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot mounted the motorcycle and left Lumiose City, headed west toward Camphrier town.

In the wilds between Carl once more set up his camp, and started hunting pokemon. He was starting to gather so many pokemon, that he had to adjust the training schedule. He recruited Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot as his Lieutenants to each take a group and train them. They would rotate through the different groups, making sure that everyone was familiar with everyone else in his growing army.

Carl wasn't sure if he'd be able to keep all the pokemon he trained after he left this world. But on the off chance that he could, he was going to build himself a little organized pokemon army. He was of course the head, the general. So far his Lieutenants were his three main pokemon. They each had platoons, and they chose their own Sergeants as second in commands.

After a month of training and catching a decent example of every pokemon in the area, Carl packed up and moved on to Camphrier Town.

Carl had just arrived in front of the Market, where he planned to refill their food supplies, when he heard a loud cry behind him.

"It's you, you jerk!"

Since Carl didn't recognize the voice or think it was talking to him, he ignored it and continued to move on. He had things to do, and didn't feel like watching some drama happen in public right now.

Suddenly, he felt a hand land on his shoulder.

"Don't you ignore me! You'll pay for mocking me!"

Carl sighed. He turned around. It was the young teenager in jeans, a blue jacket, and red cap that picked a fight with that blonde girl back in Santalune City.

"I think you've got the wrong guy. I don't even know you." Carl evenly stated while thinking at Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot to stand down and not cream the guy for his rudeness.

"No! I've got the right guy, you laughed at me back at Santalune City."

[This guy does have something wrong with his brain.] Was the general consensus among his pokemon.

"And now I'm going to get my revenge on you. I challenge you to a pokemon duel. I'm going to be the one laughing in the end!" And then he dramatically pointed at Carl.

"So, you want to duel me? Sure we can't just agree to part ways and leave each other be?"

"No! My honor demands satisfaction! Let's go, right here, right now!" The dude yelled again. Dramatic much?

"No." Carl calmly stated, and turned around to leave.

"What do you mean no? You can't turn down a duel if you're a trainer!"

"Actually, while we're sitting here in a public space, yeah I can. If you want to duel me, go to the Pokemon Center in town, book an arena, pony up the cash for a prize money, and then send me a message about the time, place, and prize money. I'll see you when you have all that set up. Later."

The whole culture behind the pokemon battling craze had its own rules and traditions. Traditionally, Pokemon Trainers couldn't refuse a duel. Something something honor and traditions. But legally and rules wise, they couldn't duel in a public space without a permit. So Carl was totally in the right to demand the guy act that way.

"But…I don't really have that much money to reserve an arena." The dude said.

Carl snorted. "Not my problem. I don't know you, or have any reason to care about you. You're the one who decided they have a bone to pick with me. Either pony up, or shut up. Either way, I've got things to do and pokemon to feed. Later."

And Carl left. He hoped the dude forgot to-

"What's your name?! How do I contact you?"

Dammit. Carl was hoping the guy would be off balance enough to forget he didn't know him.

"Carl, badge ##-###-##. The Pokemon Center will be able to contact me. No offense, but you're weird, and I don't really want to give you my pokegear number. The less we interact or know each other, the happier I'll be."

Carl left then. He wasn't sticking around the brain drain any longer than he needed to.

A few minutes later, Carl was in the market, purchasing the needed food to be delivered to the local Poke co. branch when he heard light footsteps coming close to him. Earlier he hadn't been paying attention to his surroundings as much, and there was a crowd, which allowed the dumbass to sneak up on him. But after that incident, Carl was much more on guard.

So when he turned around to see who was approaching him, he almost face palmed to see the blond haired girl that had that fight with the dumbass back in Santalune City. It looks like, despite his wishes, he was going to be entangled with this pair for the foreseeable future.

The blonde just smiled happily at Carl. "I hear I'm not the only victim of Calem the creep."

"Oh, is that his name?" Carl idly asked her.

"Oh, yeah. Calem is really annoying. He never let's any slight go, and he'll go out of his way to track you down and try to 'revenge' himself anyone and everyone." The cute blonde cheerily proclaimed. "I'm Serena. What's your name?"

"Carl. So, what can I do for you, Serena?"

"Nothing much. I was just going to pick up some supplies myself, so it's a coincidence we met like this. Although, I'd love to hear about it if there was a duel between you two so I can watch Calem make a fool of himself." She paused to look over at Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot. "I've got a feeling he won't be able to handle your pokemon. They sure are something." She wistfully trailed off.

"Yeah, they're amazing. Let me introduce you. This is Fiona, Rhona, and Talbot. Guys, this is Serena." After talking with her for a short time, she seemed like a nice girl, and she seemed to really appreciate pokemon. So he didn't mind interacting with her.

After a few minutes of chatting, and once the shopkeeper had finished putting in his order, Carl exchanged numbers with Serena with the promise that he would call her if dumbass ever got a duel set up.

Carl then took off to find a hotel room for the night. He would pickup his order in the morning and leave the town then, unless the duel went through.

The next day after retrieving his goods, Carl still hadn't gotten a notice of a duel being set up, so he left. No sense wasting time on something that he didn't care if it happened or not.

Carl made his way on the road to the Northwest, to the Parfum Palace. The place was the palace of the old King of Kalos. The king had built it 300 years ago, after some war with some of the other regions. It was now a museum, and had a lot of tributes to the generals and pokemon that fought in that war.

When Carl arrived in front of the gates, he saw a man standing near the entrance, just sneering at the place. He cut a striking figure in his black suit with red trim and a white fur collar. He had a head full of wild mane-like red hair and a chin beard with no mustache.

Carl had no idea what problem he had with the museum, and Carl didn't want to know either. He just walked past the man, paid his 1,000 pokedollar entrance fee, and went in.

He and his three Lieutenants spent some time enjoying the scenery, paintings, and statues. Eventually they arrived at the rear of the estate, where there was a lake full of water type pokemon.

Looking around, Carl noticed that there was a stand set up to sell fishing equipment that was designed to reel in some pokemon for those interested. Carl also saw the no swimming signs. 'Well, there goes the idea to make use of my rebreather.' Carl sighed.

He lined up at the fishing shack and bought himself a rod and bait. Soon enough he was on the banks of the lake and trying his luck.