Chapter 24 "5 Years Later"

I look around the room that I've spent the last five years of my life actually living out of. Everything is packed up now. I sent the pokebeds back to my parents, along with everything I wasn't actually going to need.

In my third year, Professor Oak had me become an Intern at the Oak Lab. I wrote my first paper on the growth of Psychic type pokemon to sapience. As I didn't have the time to actually catch a psychic type, Prof. Oak gave me an egg and told me that the only thing he knew about the egg was that it was a Psychic type.

Half a year later, I got to find out that Prof. Oak was right when Cleo hatched. Cleo is a Gothita, and can evolve into the impressive Gothitelle. Besides helping me with communicating through Telepathy, she became the main focus of my first research paper. She is also a very strong psychic type.

Prof. Oak also gave me my last pokemon as well. There was a situation in North Eastern Hoenn, and large numbers of Spheal were being kicked out of the Spheal line colonies in that area. To help alleviate this, trainers started catching as many of the weaker Spheal and taking them to the pokemon centers nearby. Once it was determined that there wasn't any disease to worry about, many of the Spheal were given over to the Pokemon League to give away as starter pokemon for new trainers.

However, Professor Oak managed to get one and give it to me as my third, with a recommendation on writing a paper about the Spheal line to help people understand what might have happened.

And find out I did. Took me almost all of my fifth year, in addition to gaining the trust of Njord so that he would help explain what was going on.

The Spheal line evolves into Sealeo and then Walrein. The Walrein are known inside of the colonies as the Beach Masters. Beach Masters don't like having to much competition around, and the colonies were getting to the point that there were just too many in that area. This is largely because the main predators of the Spheal line have been pushed away from the location, namely the Carvanha line.

With the reduction in natural predators, the Spheal population grew until the Beach Masters were needing to push the weakest out of their territory. If it had persisted for another couple of years, there would have been a Pokemon Tide in the area. Thankfully, I wasn't to late with turning my report in. Prof. Oak and his connections were able to get several projects up and running to allow predators of Spheal to move back into the area and reestablish the proper food chain.

Back to me, Danu evolved once she hit silver stage in my fourth year. She managed to get to mid silver stage, and the battle style we've been working on for her is even more impressive now. She's picked up Bulldoze and while we didn't focus on Vine Whip at all, she still managed to pick it, and Power Whip up for close range combat. But now as a Bayleef, she's much stronger, and as we focused on her getting larger, she's actually large enough for me to ride.

Gothita/ Cleo is at the High Iron stage and very close to advancing to Bronze, while Spheal/ Njord is still at the Middle Iron stage. Danu is still in the Low Silver stage, though she's very close to upgrading to Middle Silver. However, with all of that and us graduating the Oak Academy, I am now officially a Beginner Class trainer.

In the last couple of weeks, our plans have become more solid as well. John and Andrew are going to join me in leaving Kanto and Johto. We're going to hit up Hoenn first, then who knows. Gary is joining a larger group and they are gonna travel through Kanto. His plan is to get to Advanced Trainer as quickly as possible so he can travel on his own if he wants to.

Lily is going back to SInnoh and will be doing her journey with Cynthia and another girl. Jessica I think her name was. Cynthia is going to take on the gyms, Lily wants to participate in the contests. Honestly not sure what Jessica is there for, other than to finish filling out the group. League regulations say that trainers aren't allowed to travel alone until they're Intermediate trainers at the earliest.

But back to John, Andrew and I. Thanks to our good grades, and the research paper on Spheal habitat behaviour, Prof. Oak managed to get us three tickets for the S.S. Anne to head straight for Hoenn. We leave a couple days before my fifteenth birthday, and will arrive in Slateport City about a week after. Hoenn really isn't that close to Kanto and Johto, at least if your taking a ship. We'd have taken air or teleport except both of those are really expensive. More than a normal new group of trainers make in a year expensive.

Andrew filled out his initial team as well, though he's in the middle of a fight with his grandmother because of it. She got him a Ghastly for his second pokemon, and while he likes the little prankster, it wasn't exactly the route he was thinking. So in the last year, he caught himself a male Nidoran and the four of them have been working together to get stronger.

John on the other hand followed along right with his father's wishes. His second pokemon was a Poliwag, and he fully intends on allowing it to evolve into Poliwrath. And his third his father actually bought for him once he told him that he was going to participate in the Hoenn League first, a Swablu.

His dad actually gave all of us advice, or a warning depending on how you look at it. "There is still a lot of competition between the regions. It isn't a good idea to have a full team with no pokemon native to the region you're in. With you boys going to Hoenn first, you'll be okay as two of you have pokemon that a common in Hoenn now, but don't get complacent."

We've had some friendly battle in the past five years, though we've never gone all out. We're saving that for the League Conferences.

As I think about all of this, I hear a weird buzzing sound. Looking around, I don't see any Combee or Beedrill around, and the buzzing is getting louder. Then I feel the pain in my hand.

I don't remember much about what happened next, because between the pain and the buzzing, I passed out.