CH79 (601), Rangers (1)

Arcday was the start of the 11th month of 2185 and it was also the first day of my 6 months with the Rangers. I left Utopia that morning after an early breakfast, and made my way to Rose City, more precisely the Ranger's HQ there since that was where I had been assigned to, at least for now.

I did not believe it was a coincidence, but just north of Rose City was the biggest stretch of "wild area" in Kanto that was boxed in by the Route System, at least without including the sea. I was not sure if I would be transferred to other locations during these 6 months, but even if that did not happen, I was pretty confident that anything the alliance had put on the bucket list for the Rangers could be dealt with within these ~780.000 km² of "wild" space.

Anyway, I made it to Rose City and headed straight toward the Ranger HQ. There, I reported my arrival at the reception, and less than a minute later I was led to a conference room where a few fellow "newbies"/aspiring trainers were already waiting. One of them quickly approached me and told me that they had been told that we had to wait until everyone had arrived before the meeting would begin.

Considering that the actual meeting time had been at 8:00 a.m., we would have to wait for another 40 minutes if the others did not arrive a bit early as well. Nonetheless, after the first one stepped up, the others also came up to us and "dragged" me into a conversation. In the process we exchanged names, and due to my relative fame, at least among my fellows, they recognized me once I told them my name.

I had expected that since I knew that the very weak "don't recognize me" field I passively kept up would become ineffective once they learned my name. At least it was good enough to keep people from recognizing me upon sight, which was its purpose in the first place. I had first come up with this after I got swarmed by reporters for the first time but started passively keeping it up a few months ago after being fed up with the attempts on my life. It did not stand up to scrutiny or really determined people, but it did a good job in its intended purpose.

Regardless, once they realized who I was, they began to enthusiastically bombard me with questions, which I answered to the best of my abilities as long as they were not intrusive or related to something I'd rather keep to myself. While we were talking more and more "youths" were led into the room and joined in on our conversation. Roughly 20 minutes before 8, a Ranger stepped into the room and declared that we could start early since the last trainer hopeful had arrived as well.

What followed was an hour-long explanation/run down of what our time with the Ranger Corp was going to be like, and it looked like the phase would mostly go the way I expected it to. All 80 of us, that was the number of rookies in the room, would be assigned to a Ranger and would be accompanying him or her while they did their job.

Naturally, the rangers were obligated to teach us some stuff mandated by the alliance, which would help us on our journey, more specifically during our times in the "wild" or even while we were traveling along the route system. In short, after everything we had learned so far during our practical year, the alliance wanted to tie up our "education" with the knowledge of how to behave while we were on the road.

Obviously, the rangers would not only be "teaching" us but also doing their regular assignments, which were patrolling the "wild" and observing/supervising the areas they were assigned to. Depending on the situation they would either keep observing, report back, and/or intervene if necessary. This meant that we, the aspiring trainers, would not only learn what we would need to look out for during our journey but also get to experience some of the work rangers did usually, which had everyone excited, and I could feel that they were all eager to start.

While I was interested in experiencing the work of a ranger as well, I was quite sure that I already knew the parts the alliance wanted us to learn. Hopefully, the ranger I got assigned to would be willing to skim past the parts I told him I already knew. We'd have to see if that worked, and I was really hoping it would.

Anyway, once the Lead Ranger was done with his explanation, ten "new" Rangers entered the room. Each one of them called out a name and ordered their charge to follow them before leaving the room. It was obvious that the rangers we had been assigned to were coming to pick us up, and after each batch left, a new one came in to replace the previous one. It took nearly 10 minutes, but my name got called up along with the others who belonged to the final batch.

I followed after the ranger who called out my name, and she introduced herself as Senior Ranger Elisabeth Rowland. She straight up told me that she knew who I was and that she could guess that I already knew most of the stuff the alliance wanted her to share with me, but she also frankly admitted that she had strict instructions to share them with me nonetheless, so she would do just that. This pretty much pre-empted my plan to ask her to skim stuff, and since she had strict orders I could not even blame her for following them.

Once we left the HQ, Elisabeth asked me if I had a tent along with other camping necessities with me. Apparently, we would be getting the full ranger experience, and since their patrol missions usually took multiple days, sometimes even weeks, camping out in the wild was a guaranteed thing. After I told her that I had everything, we left the city and headed into the "wild".

While we were getting farther away from the city and the route system, Elisabeth did not forget to start sharing some basic knowledge with me, such as always keeping a partner/Pokemon out while one was traveling outside the city and other pretty basic/obvious stuff. She also mentioned that our destination was three days away on foot at the pace we were going and that she would have usually flown or teleported there, but that we would use the three days to cover part of the bucket list.

By the end of the three days, I could freely say that Elisabeth shared nearly nothing I did not already know, the things I did find interesting were her interactions with the Pokemon we came across during our trip. She had an interesting way of avoiding conflict, which appeared to be her favorite stance during the last three days, though that did not mean that she was afraid of a confrontation since she did have to use intimidation/force once or twice when being nice did not work.

Once we made it to our goal, we proceeded to patrol the area and Elisabeth made sure to occasionally point out what she/we were looking for. We also paid a visit to a lot of the tribes, groups, families, and loners hanging out in the area Elisabeth was in charge of. The groups aside, some of the loners piqued my interest, more specifically the older ones.

According to Elisabeth some of the older loners were starting to truly feel their age and it was starting to affect their strength as well as health. I could feel her sadness as well as pity when she said that, and I got where she was coming from. In the wild, this kind of situation could lead to an early demise on their part due to others taking advantage of the situation.

I was naturally interested in offering these "oldies" the same deal I had given Raticate, but I decided to wait until they had gotten used to me more. I had more than enough time for that since Elisabeth told me that this stretch of the wild would be our patrol area for the next 3 months unless something urgent came up and that we would stay here for 3/4weeks out of each month.

We would go back to Rose City for one week each month to report our findings and to relax a bit since no matter how used one was to be in the wild, one would be unable to completely relax like one could in the city. Well, that did not apply to me since I could always enter Utopia, but I refrained from doing that while we were out in the wild since Elisabeth told me that I was required to be present at all times.

All this also meant I had no day off during these 3 weeks, and that I would have the whole week off since Elisabeth was the only one that had to be present during the report. The points above also meant that this week in the city was the first time in 3 weeks that I had the chance to enter Utopia. Heck, Horus/Xatu successfully advanced to the (high) dark gold stage on Palkiday last week, but I could not be "personally" present during the celebration.

Sure, I used an earth clone to take part and I even called him out to congratulate him in person, but not being able to "truly" take part in the celebration was a bit sad. Well, I did make sure to make up for the "missed" time by spending the whole week inside Utopia with my Pokemon. I used the whole 7 days to complete a grooming/massage session for all my Pokemon, and they made sure to express how much they enjoyed it.

On Arcday of week 5, we returned to our patrol area, and this time around we flew there on Elisabeth's Pidgeot. I could have asked Horus to teleport us there or even had Hera/Pidgeot fly us there since both would have been faster than Elisabeth's (mid) gold stage Pidgeot, but I decided against it since I did not want to hurt her self-esteem that way.

Mewday happened to be the final day of the month, and it also happened to be the day Medusa/Gyarados advanced to the (high) dark gold stage. I once more had the same problem with her that I had with Horus, but in her case, I had to first ask Elisabeth for permission before I could call/bring out Medusa since she, unlike Horus, was quite big, so it was possible that her appearance would cause a commotion among the "wild" residents.

This was the second celebration that I had to participate in using a clone, and unfortunately, it was not the last one during this trip. Giratiday started off the new/12th month, and on Arcday of week 2 Abyss/Gyarados followed Medusa's example and also advanced to the (high) dark gold stage. I was lucky that there was no third time, though it had been a somewhat close thing.

On Mewday of week 4, the week we had off, Paravti/Beedrill came to me and asked me to check her status sheet since she felt as if she was done with her limit-breaking phase. A quick check confirmed that she was right, and if that had happened just two days earlier, we would have had to postpone her breakthrough until I was able to enter Utopia. Thankfully, that did not happen, and as soon as we had the confirmation that she was ready, I announced her upcoming breakthrough over UtopiaFM.

Following that we made our way to Parvati as well as Prime/Beedrill's place, where we waited for all spectators to arrive. Aside from the usual curious Utopians, all Beedrill also gathered around us, but their arrival at our side was pretty swift since they were actually living in this area/habitat.

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I wish all of you Happy Holidays and to those that celebrate it a Merry Christmas. To those of you that don't, I wish a wonderful week 😊

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