8 Cold mornings

I slowly and blearily regain my consciousness to find myself surrounded by a dark enclosed space and I started to panic a little, but that panic only lasted a few seconds as I noticed when I was flailing my arms and legs they seemed to encounter soft obstacles on every side of me that made high pitched 'zzzt' 'zzzzt' that I found out was just my sleeping bag….

At some point I tucked my head inside and sealed it off while I was sleeping apparently, and it wasn't till a few seconds later that I popped my head out the top and instantly regretted it….

It seemed to be the crack of dawn going by the faint light shining in, but that wasn't the issue, the issue was....Cold...it was so cold...there was build up of frost everywhere and the fire seemed to have gone out at some point yesterday…

I can only assume I slept more than 24 hours because I felt more refreshed then I had since I arrived in this world, and by the time I got back here, started the fire and called it a day last night, there couldn't have been more than a few hours before dawn, and the fire would still be going if it was….

So I could only guess I slept that long.

But holy shit was it cold….there was no snow, but I'd been in warmer places that had snow before….good lord!….

But I was also starving….so I had to choose, cold or starving, which one did I prefer right now?

I notice my pile of random supplies stacked in the corner barely a dozen feet away, but it might as well have been on the moon with how reluctant I was to leave my sleeping bag…

But after a few minutes I worked up the courage to leave me fortress of warmth and goodness in a quick dash and regretted it almost immediately….as soon as the cold hit my body it felt like knives cutting through me…

But I soldiered on and moved quickly toward my supplies, but instead of grabbing any food, i grabbed some kindling and a small bottle of siphoned gas I had left, and with as much haste as my small and freezing body would slow got a fire going…

It only took a few minutes but it felt like eternity, but I knew I didn't have the luxury of small comforts for a little while yet, I was still in survival mode, so that meant early, painfully cold mornings for awhile…winter wouldn't break for another month and a bit..

But with the fire started and my boots back on i riffled through my stuff to pull out 2 cans of tinned spaghetti, for a quick breakfast before I started my day of scavenging and repair, while also keeping an eye out of a Pokémon I might be able to catch..

I'm not really picky when it comes to Pokémon at the moment, I would even catch a rattata if given the chance….but the problem is they always travel in packs and without a Pokémon of your own, it's hard to single them out before they screech for back up…

With how my luck has been since coming to this world, I'm convinced I'm not some miracle MC who's going to run into rare powerful Pokémon after ran powerful Pokémon that wants to join me because 'friendship'

No, from what I've learned from grizzled old drunken trainers from shady bars is that Pokémon join humans only if the see value in doing so…

Most Pokémon have an almost instinctual urge to get stronger, and humans can make them stronger which they normally prove by beating them with their Pokémon they already have…so getting a Pokémon without a Pokémon just isn't really done…

Most Pokémon are sentient beings, meaning they understand and feel emotion, not to mention human language somehow, so talking it out with a Pokémon might work, if it doesn't try and kill you first that is..

But Most Pokémon that live in and near cities are used to human presence so they rarely attack, and even if they do it's mostly just warning shots to make you leave because they understand that humans won't tolerate people killing Pokemon around their "nests", and that's kind of what I'm counting on to survive…i verified with multiple sources so I'm pretty sure it's accurate..

But with breakfast out of the way, the fire tended too so it won't need to be stocked for most of the day, and even if it putters out there will be plenty of coals by the time I return, I grab my trusty little wheel cart, load it with a couple tools such as a crow bar, shifter and other miscellaneous things i might need to pull something apart, grab a packet of beef jerky for lunch and attach my trusty new water bottle to my hip and I'm ready for the day!

Never would I have thought myself a person who attached a water bottle to my hip, they always just seemed so pretentious….but look at me now…

I'll never be leaving home without my pokeballs, so I have them shrunken down and tucked into an inner pocket in my new weatherproof jacket/hoodie..

I head downstairs as the sun is already just breaking out of dawn and starting it's own day of trying to chasing the cold away, me and my little pull cart are on the "road" looking around for stuff to improve my livening situation, and I thought I would start with an old semi collapsed industrial sized plumbing supply depot on the north end of the abandoned zone..

The main thing I'm really looking for today is a small to mid sized in tact hot water system I can hopefully jerry rig up into the bathroom along with some fittings and PVC or maybe even copper pipe to rig up a shower….

It takes a good hour and a half to get there after clearing through a path on the fractured streets, but I eventually made it to "Viridian plumbing plus", well that's what the broken sign said it was anyways..

It's a large shed like building that's half collapsed….and as I walk inside I grab a few rocks and load them into my cart just incase I need to either test rooms for Pokémon or possibly brain one if it gets a little too aggressive to give me a chance to run..

I wander through and find plenty of useful abandoned tools and eventually find a section where there's a few hot water systems just sitting on crates that look to be abandoned just sitting there….a little banged up, but in tact none the less…

When people moved from this place, they left a lot of stuff because people prefer new things compared to repairing old one, and i really don't blame em.

Pokémon really just make everything way more convenient compared to my old world, so it's actually more expensive to fix something compared to buying it new for most cases, in big city's they have a throw away culture with basically no lasting environmental impact because pokemon just fix everything with Pokémon nonsense...hence a section of slightly dinged up hot water systems waiting for me to take.

I have VERY basic knowledge of electronics like this and I was thankful it wasn't to much different to my old world even though this world has some crazy tech getting around…

I pulled open a few of the systems and they looked fine on the inside so I picked the least dinged up mid sized one that was roughly the same size as me, and with monumental effort and a good amount of swearing, I had it loaded and tied down on my trusty pull cart within 20 minutes ready to bring it home..

I was already dreading getting this thing up to the third floor back home…..I mean I would get it done, but it's going to be a whole thing….I'll have to get creative….

But with that loaded I decided to leave the pull cart there for the moment and wander around and thankfully spotted no wild Pokémon.

I did end up finding some useful tools, bathroom fittings and piping for a shower and a few heavy duty tarps I can use to "wall" off that shower I plan on building…hell, I even found a decent coffee table in the "break room" that looked almost new, so I balanced it on top of my over loaded pull cart and started to make my way home…

I really only had one thing on my mind as I was making my way home, and that was I wish I had bought gloves….my hands were kinda sore from lifting heavy things for hours at a time….and I can't buy any just yet…

I don't plan on showing myself in the city for a few weeks just incase someone somehow recognises me, I wanted to give it some time to cool down after the orphanage burned down..

But as I was cursing at my lack of foresight on my glove situation I suddenly heard a loud pained yowling

*REEEEOOOOOOWWWWWWRRRRRR*

If I had to guess it sounded like a cat of some sort, and it was close….maybe a block away?

I wanted to just bail and not push my luck by checking out whatever made that noise, but it could be an opportunity, so I chocked a few rocks under the wheel of my cart to stop it from rolling while I was gone, and took off with as much stealth as I could muster in the direction of the noise…