2 Chapter 2: Rattata vs. caterpie, the epic show-down, must see, inhuman reactions, not click-bait

Joey woke up happy, fresh, thriving. While he did miss a lot of things about his old body, nothing quite beat being young again. He jumped out of his bed, put a towel around himself and walked over to the communal bathroom, where he had a nice and long undisturbed shower. It was only six in the morning and no one else was quite up yet. He did have to admit, after he'd dried off and went back to his room, that if there was one thing to enjoy about being a child and thus being incapable of scoring hot chicks; it was that there was no idiot trying to convince him that midnight was an acceptable time to go to sleep, and that waking up at 9 in the morning, when half the productive day was already over, was anything but cringe.

"Rattata," his pokemon mumbled sleepily as it tumbled out from behind its nest behind his desk.

"Come up, up you get, you lazy scallywag," Joey said animatedly as he put on his usual shorts, t-shirt and cap. Pulling a bag of poke-feed from the top shelf of the wardrobe he gave his boy some breakfast and went to refill the water. By the time he was thus packed for the day ahead, Rattata had eaten and was ready to rumble.

"Today we're going outside the city for a bit, to find a good training spot, then we're going to work ourselves to the ground until lunch-time. We'll come back then and then work on type energy somewhere in the city. Evening is free and we relax, mandatory, I'm afraid. You can think on what you want to do for that, but I'll want some alone time to read," Joey said as they walked through the corridors of the orphanage, snores coming from some of the rooms.

They were left undisturbed until they came to the main-entrance of the big yellow building, where they were greeted by Theresa brushing the steps outside. A constant war against the leaves that fell there every night from the oak trees framing the orphanage.

"Got your pokemon with you, I see," the red-haired woman mused, putting a hand on her hip as she looked down at her charge.

Theresa was a forty something woman who looked 10 years younger than she was, as was the case for most women in the pokemon world. She also had a heart of gold. After being abandoned by her husband, so that the man could pursue a pokemon journey, she'd decide to start working at an orphanage for those children misfortunate enough to have two parents who'd suddenly gotten a bad case of wander-lust, or death, and had no further relatives.

"Rattata!" Joey starter exclaimed, needing no introduction, as he walked up to the woman to get a pat on the head.

"Where's bell?" Joey asked, looking around to see if he could stop the way-ward vine-pokemon. Theresa rolled her eyes and pointed to the pile of leaves she'd collected. Some of them were wiggling, he noticed. A bellsprout emerged from the pile and placidly waved at him, smiling with its weird bell-shaped yellow mouth.

"Stop disturbing the piles!" Theresa scolded the pokemon, who simply rubbed the back of its head awkwardly with one of its vines and ran off into the building.

"He never changes," Theresa said with a sigh, causing him to laugh.

"Well, he might if he evolves," he suggested, but the woman just waved him off.

"Eh, his poison-typing means that no youngster can take him and his lackadaisical attitude means no serious trainer wants him. I think he's happy where he is, helping out in the kitchen now and again and playing with the younger children." She looked him up and down, "You're going out?"

Joey lifted the backpack he was wearing by pushing it up with his thumb and nodded. "Training session," he explained.

"Well, it's about time you stop haunting the library, now that you have this little cutie," Theresa said and patted Rattata again.

"Don't spoil him," Joey huffed, receiving a roll of the eyes.

"Well, be safe and don't wander off too far from the gates. Go to the south one, there's been a gang of ekans terrorising trainers going through the north recently. Kong still hasn't cleared them out and nobody seems to be accepting the job from where it's hung at the poke-centre," Theresa warned. Rattata's tail stiffened at the mention of ekans, he was a rat after all. He looked at Joey fearfully.

"We'll avoid the north then, just need a small clearing to train in, shouldn't be too far off," he said, before turning to his starter, "you'll protect me, right?" he asked and received an enthusiastic nod.

They set off with one final good-bye to Theresa and started making their way south-west, the orphanage was on the north-east part of Saffron, which meant that it would have been easier to go to the north or the east gate, but safety was always preferred over convenience. Especially when dealing with ekans. While most pokemon were friendly and didn't want to harm humans;why would they after all? Ekans, in line with their snake-based design, were a bit more psychotic than average. Or one could say, less empathic. Hard to train and bond with, they were mostly used by criminals that needed a pokemon they could train to be unscrupulous, or poison type-specialists that needed to round out their team with something physically powerful. Arbok, after all, were some of the strongest poison types available. The strongest, if you considered only Kanto pokemon. Which, for the most part, people did, considering that other regions were still garbed in mystery and hard to access for the average trainer.

Joey glanced at Rattata, who was once again looking around the streets they were traversing with wide eyes. They passed the fighting gym, which already had a small line of young trainers waiting in front of it. Shouts of exertion and brick-breaking were coming from the inside. While Rattata looked interested, Joey could only scoff when he saw Michael amongst the crowd.

"There are eight gyms worthy of the name in Kanto. The fighting one is currently one of them, but not for long if you consider their stuck up attitude and their pathetic battling performance when compared to the other gyms," Joey said. "However, the gym leader is still a very experienced trainer, whom someone with no badges, like us, has no chance of beating without some serious preparation. He usually sends out a machop, but if you're unlucky you might also end up facing a mankey. All those idiots waiting there don't stand a chance, they'll waste their first few days of their career with their starters in the poke-centre," he said dismissively.

Rather than scaring Rattata, the possibility of broken bones just seemed to make him more excited, and Joey was almost forced to recall the little bugger so he didn't run off into the gym.

"You're wrong," a voice suddenly said from behind Joey. It seemed directed at him, so he stopped in his stride and turned around to look at who'd addressed him.

A young girl, with long straight dark green hair that reached her waist and a purple dress. She held an abra in her arms and was looking at Joey with an absent gaze.

He recognized her of course, he'd even heard her name yesterday. The only person who'd scored higher than him in the youngster licensing exam.

"Yeah," he said nonchalantly and turned to his Rattata. "Out of all the youngsters and trainers waiting to get their ass beaten; this girl is probably the only one who has an actual chance in winning," he said, causing his Rattata to start sizing up the sleepy abra with an analytical gaze of an idiot about to bite off more than they could chew.

Sabrina seemed surprised with Joey simply admitting that he'd been wrong, and that she could beat the gym-leader. For all intents and purposes it seemed like she'd spoken to him because she'd overheard his words and had gotten her pride hurt. Him complimenting her, rather than sticking to his guns wasn't something she seemed to have predicted. And like any good psychic, the moment she encountered something she didn't understand, she activated her powers, signified by the blue flame suddenly overlapping her eyes as she stared at Joey.

She recoiled, almost tripping backwards on the cobbled streets and looked at him in horror, clutching the abra so strongly the little pokemon's slit eyes actually opened from the strength of her squeeze.

"What are you?" she hissed, as she looked at him warily, and in a way, fearfully.

Joey frowned. "Just an orphan without the family structure that would have allowed him to have started training a pokemon before even getting his licence, like you obviously did with your abra. The bond you two already share is sickening. How long has it been? three, two years?" he asked, jealously looking at the abra. If it had been a recent acquisition it would have already teleported away from the uncomfortable situation. It was too large and its coat too shiny to be anything but close to evolving, the event likely only being prevented by the ever-stone collar around its neck. Abra's were the most desired 0-tier pokemon in Kanto, easily beating out the pidgey line in the strength of their final evolution and their versatility. Unfortunately, they were also some of the most difficult pokemon to capture, usually teleporting away before a trainer even got a glimpse of them.

"I don't care about your dead parents," Sabrina hissed, "why are you dead?" she asked.

Joey rolled his eyes, sighing as his secret got out so easily, without any narrative tension or built up. "I'm not dead," he corrected. "I'm distorted. You think psychics were the only people born with a predisposition towards a specific type-energy and the ability to train its usage? They're just the most common."

"I don't like you," Sabrina said with a frown at his explanation, before rushing off like the twelve-year old girl that she was.

Turning to Rattata, who seemed to be imagining some sort of battle scenario in his head, and who'd seemingly missed the entirety of the exposition that had just taken place, Joey could only sigh. "Come on, let's get training. I'm sure we'll battle that abra in the future, at the conference most likely, but maybe earlier," he said, and continued on his way to the south gate. He wanted to get a good training spot early, and for all that it had been cool to be delayed because he'd meet a mini-version of a future gym-leader, he didn't enjoy being called out like that.

Like most people didn't enjoy it, probably?

The pair of them quickly reached the south-gate facing towards Vermillion after that, and Joey first had to pump himself up as he stood before the simple block structure behind which lay a wilderness full of wild beasts and angry dragons. Or something. He'd obviously never left Saffron on his own before, so this was his first time. But he did know that the routes going to and from cities, especially big one's like Saffron tended to be fairly safe. Trainers kept walking through, catching any overly aggressive pokemon that wandered onto the road for their teams, and if a problem was big enough the rangers would keep it under control. The ekans to the north of the city likely wouldn't last long now that the circuit had started and trainers would start venturing out of Saffron and towards it to earn the requisite badges for the conference. In a way it was a beautiful ecosystem, based around the league circuit, and not any sort of season.

Having calmed himself down a bit with the inner monologue, he approached the building which he'd only ever done with a class or with the orphanage when they took one of their yearly trips. Entering he quickly walked over to the guard sitting sleepily behind his desk, a growlithe napping at his feet.

"Licence?" the man asked with a yawn, and quickly checked over Joey's ID once the boy had handed it over.

"There's not going to be anyone to challenge you to a battle yet, you know," the man informed Joey, who simply shrugged. "Alright then, just don't wander off too far. Remember that you need to stay within a certain radius of the station. Me and Growlithe can reach you in a minute if you send the distress signal from within a kilometre."

And that was that. Without any further ado Joey and Rattata exited the guard station with its shabby plastic chairs, and exited onto route. It was obviously less climactic than it was made out to be in all of the trainer classes that Joey had had to sit through, but there was still something about standing on top of the hill and looking down a wide span of road and forest which lead to Vermillion.

"Come on," he said to his starter as he immediately turned right and walked off the yellowish brown road. "There's a small clearing right there if I remember correctly. Basically next to the guard station, but behind enough trees so that no one can see us."

They walked into the forest a bit stiltedly, unsure of what exactly they might meet. As they went Joey bent down to pick up a stick or a rock every now and again, depositing them into his backpack. At some point he even gripped the end of a caterpie's tail, which looked like a yellow stick if you didn't see the rest of the body.

"Caterpiiiii!" The bug screamed angrily and blasted the boy in the face with a string shot before worming off to do whatever caterpies did in their free-time. Rattata chittered at his misfortune, although Joey didn't know if his starter was laughing at him, or offering to defend his honour by beating the caterpie into unconsciousness. Joey assumed the latter to spare his own ego and the two of them soon entered a small forest clearing which was mostly empty, if you ignored a few curious looking oddish which clumped together to look like just another bush.

Joey finished removing and spitting out the string shot that had gotten into his mouth, before throwing his arms wide to encompass the clearing and the very small stream running through the farthest end of it. "Ready for some training?" he asked, and received a series of excited jumps as a response.

"Alright, glad to see you're excited. First I'd like to tell you about the different things that we're going to focus on and in what order," Joey began, at which Rattata sat on his behind and looked up at him with curious eyes. "There are three aspects to battling that you need to master to even be able to call yourself a contender for any sort of title. These aspects are divided into your mastery of your physical body, your mastery of type-energy and your battling skill. Now as you probably understand, your body has certain limits that it's unlikely to be able to surpass with just training. These limits are likely much higher than you think, but they exist. What doesn't have a real limit is the mastery you can exert over type energy, which is the fuel for pokemon moves, but also, a little less known fact, can be used to strengthen our bodies," Joey walked over to a tree, away from the oddish still watching curiously, and slammed his fist against it. The tree barely moved and the only thing he got out of the endeavour was a scrape. Then, he channelled ghost energy into his hand and did the same thing again. The energy burst at impact with the tree, and he removed his hand to reveal that he'd scarred the bark. Some leaves fell down from the canopy.

"Now," Joey began again, while Rattata looked at him with stars in his eyes, "your physical body and your type-energy work in synergy with each other. You're always using the latter to strengthen the former. An extreme increase in physical ability can be brought on by a short time by certain moves, like agility, or bulk up, but there is always a passive increase irregardless of you using any techniques. This passive increase depends on the limits of your body and your control over your type-energy. Being fast enough to dodge attacks and strong enough to harm your opponent when you attack them is the basic foundation of all battles, so this is what we will be focusing on. We'll be training your body. The stronger it gets on its own, the more you can strengthen it with your type energy, in your case, normal type energy. Inversely, the better you become at channelling your energy throughout your body, the stronger it will grow due to the constant pressure being exerted on it."

Rattata nodded its head, putting up a fist to its chin during the explanation, but when Joey finished, it raised a paw and extended two claws at him.

"You want to know about the third aspect as well?" Joey asked and received a nod.

"Well, it's a bit complicated, but I would divide battle skill into another three aspects. Experience, which we will gain by battling other trainers, after we finish some preliminary training together. Then comes synergy with me, the one who's supposed to lead you in battle. I can see things you can't, know things you don't have to, but to bring this out we need to learn how to work together. Then the last part is skill, these are moves and techniques. Moves require type-energy, while techniques are strategies. We'll be training both, since moves in particular train both your body and energy mastery," Joey explained.

He rummaged through his backpack and held up a hand full of sticks. "Now, in the battles we will be having against other youngsters and beginning trainers there is a very basic combo that we need to master. But if we do, we can probably easily win most battles. It's called dodging, and counter-attacking. The reason we lost against that pidgey yesterday was because I didn't know if you could dodge the incoming attack, and then attack right back while the bird was still grounded. It caused me to decide on gambling on the direct confrontation. A gamble we lost. I think it was the right decision, but I'm sorry I didn't trust you more," Joey apologised.

Rattata waved him off, eyes focused on the sticks.

"The drill we're going to do now is very simple, but we'll do it long enough for you to become exhausted. I'll throw an object at you, imagine it's an enemy pokemon. Your job is to dodge, but dodge in a very specific manner, so that you can immediately attack from your new position," Joey explained. "It should look something like this."

Feeling a bit dumb the boy went down on all fours and looked at rattata making sure he had its attention. Then he hopped to the side on all fours, before digging his feet and hands into the ground, and springing forward for a head-butt against an imaginary enemy. He stood up and dusted off his hands. "The most important part is that you have enough purchase in the ground after your dodge that you can propel yourself forwards for a counter-attack. Why don't you show me a dodge and a quick attack. Imagine another Rattata is attacking you," Joey prompted.

Rattata nodded seriously, got on all fours, and started chattering away while looking into the distance, imagining an imaginary opponent. It took Joey a minute to understand that his starter would rather talk to someone of his own species than attack them, and that he was witnessing an example of rattata diplomacy.

"Ratta, tatata, Rattata!" his starter said very convincingly, while Joey planted his face in his hands.

"Okay, imagine you're being attacked by a pidgey," he said, at which the little prankster finally got serious. He did a small hop to the side, dodging an imaginary attack, before halting in his position as white energy built up around him. After a second or two it jumped forward in a quick attack, flying for a few metres, a white trail behind him.

Joey scratched his chin and realised that his starter simply didn't have the move mastery necessary to counter-attack with that move.

"Do it with a tackle."

This time the transition period between dodging and attacking was much shorter. Still not short enough, however, to have hit that pidgey yesterday. It would have simply swerved up after missing and would have flown up to try again.

But that's what they were here for.

To train.

"Alright, I'll start throwing objects now. Dodge them however much you feel like, and then tackle," Joey said, excited to finally start the drill after and threw a stick at Rattata. This apparently surprised his starter as the projectile hit him right in the fore-head, causing him to flinch.

They looked at each other awkwardly, before Joey threw another stick, which Rattata dodged, but positioned himself in a way that he was unable to attack it.

Joey realised that he had his work cut out for him. But considering that just the break he'd taken to think that thought had lasted long enough for his starter to angrily demand that he continue throwing objects, he thought he was going to be just fine.

-/-

The basic drill continued for much longer than a basic drill was usually meant to. However, considering that Joey wasn't an accountant who trained martial arts in the evening, spending four hours on just getting the dodging right was a fine amount of time.

Being a trainer wasn't just a fun thing one did in-between other hobbies, it was a serious commitment in which only the best succeeded. Joey had been building up his knowledge base, training himself, and developing training methods for a variety of pokemon he thought he might catch, for twelve years, ever since he'd been reborn.

He wasn't about to let a bit of hard-work get in between him and success. Thankfully Rattata shared that sentiment, and seemed an unending fountain of motivation. At the second hour mark when Joey had gotten bored of running after the sticks and stones he was throwing, he'd simply started attacking his starter himself. Telling the rat to consider him to be a particularly weak machop.

A sparring partner, essentially.

Considering they didn't have a second teammate yet, it really was up to Joey to provide the service, which was good, because this year was probably going to be the only year of his career in which he would be able to survive the attacks of his pokemon.

Of course just because he didn't die, didn't mean that he came out unscathed. Rolling up his t-shirt after they'd stopped for lunch revealed a blue and bruised torso. Although, to be fair, Rattata wasn't looking any better, covered in bruises and scrapes as he was. Sometimes he had failed to dodge a stone, and sometimes he'd failed to dodge Joey's kick or punch.

From the outside perhaps the training looked like abuse, from both sides, from the inside however, Joey felt closer to Rattata than ever. It was hard not respecting a rodent that could take a human haymaker to the face, stand up, and ask for more.

Inversely it was probably hard to not respect a human not afraid of getting a quick attack or two in the gut.

Joey prepared a quick lunch for the two of them while Rattata lay on his back, huffing and puffing, but smiling as he did so. For Rattata he mixed together some pellets, along with some crushed egg-shells that he'd taken from the orphanage kitchen. He wanted to start adding berries at some point, but before that he would need to do a tasting to check which one's Rattata even preferred. For himself he had an apple, two hard-boiled eggs, a slice of bread and a few nuts.

Putting down his starters bowl he began eating unceremoniously, before pulling out an empty note-book and starting to scribble. He wanted to remember what training he'd done on what day, and what result it had had, so he could have a clearer idea what battling capacity progression he should expect and push for from each of his pokemon. Even after the four-hour drill they'd just completed the booklet was conspicuously empty in comparison to all the other ones which he had at home, and which were filled by all the collected knowledge on training, pokemon types, moves and energies he'd been able to gather since waking up in this world.

"Rattata," his starter complained as it ate its meal, having come over after its short rest. He could hear the egg-shells being ground down between the rodent's powerful teeth.

"It's egg-shells, your species needs a lot of calcium to develop stronger front-teeth. Hyper fang, a move you'll learn later is the most powerful move you can learn naturally, I think. Need to start working on the foundation of that early, which mean's egg-shells," Joey said.

Rattata excitedly waved its tail at the mention of hyper fang, before running over to a tree and starting to gnaw on it ferociously. There was obviously no type energy involved in the attack, and the only thing Rattata managed to accomplish was to swallow a bit of tree-bark, which the rodent hacked onto the grass with violent coughs.

"Come on, we first have to work on tackling, hyper fang will come with time," Joey, at which Rattata showed him its quick attack.

"Everything builds up into each other, start low so you can go higher. You promised you'd listen to me," Joey said sternly, at which the Rattata relented and stopped gathering visible white energy.

"The only difference between tackle and quick attack is that the latter is the same as the former plus some speed. To add a maximum amount of speed however, you have to master the internal strengthening of tackle, so you have more mental focus to put into being quick," Joey lectured, "also, we'll be learning some manoeuvres. You need to get the movement for that down first before you can start accelerating," he said, at which Rattata tilted his head curiously.

"Alright, you see that tree?" Joey asked and pointed to the sturdiest looking oak tree present in their little clearing. Rattata nodded. "I want you to be able to run at it, jump on it, and then from your position on the trunk, tackle me. A lot of the battles we will be involved in will have different terrain, you need to start getting used to using it to your advantage," Joey said, but Rattata was already running. The pokemon jumped onto the tree and held itself there with its claws, before failing to rebound with a tackle, and landed right on its face on his descent.

Joey went over and kneeled next to the fallen warrior. "We need to train to tackle first. You need to be able to initiate it in less than a second, because that's how much time you have to rebound off the tree," he explained, at which he received a shaky thumbs up from his still face-down starter.

"I'd suggest you start tackling the tree," Joey suggested. "Maybe if you do well enough I won't train your dodging at the same time by throwing stones at you." He put up a hand to his chin, "actually, I'm going to do that anyway!"

"Tata," his starter complained, but got up immediately and with some reservation at first, tackled the tree head-on. Before he could step back from the attempt however, likely with an aching head, a caterpie fell from the upper branches of the tree and landed messily on the floor, rolling to a stop at Joey's feet.

The boy barely had time to look down at the unfortunate bug, just enough to see the developing tick-mark on its yellow brow, before he was once again covered with string-shot. Right in the face.

"Caterpie!" the bug pokemon screamed shrilly after it had covered him in its sticky goo.

Joey heard his starter chittering away at the bug, the latter answering similarly in an increasing volume. By the time that Joey had finished laboriously removing the white sticky thread from his nose, mouth and eyes, rattata and caterpie were facing off in an impromptu battle, standing opposite of each other and likely insulting each other's families.

They seemed to be waiting, however, for him to join. While Joey would have liked to remove the rest of the string shot from his head, especially his hair, he didn't feel like the diplomacy occurring between the two least desirable pokemon in Kanto was going to last long enough for him to actually get clean.

Heaving a sigh at the inevitability of the conflict he thus directed his words at rattata. "Alright, we seem to have entered a battle, which is good training on its own, so we don't mind. The caterpie looks to be bigger than average, so it's probably quite close to evolving. The plan of the battle is to dodge its string-shots while going towards it, tackle it, and then dodge and tackle again for every retaliation," he explained.

Taking a glance at the slightly larger than average caterpie which still had a tick-mark on its head, he shouted his first order of the battle. "Alright rattata, run at it, but don't commit to a move yet!" he shouted, and winced when he noticed his mistake. His order had been too long, so while he'd been shouting it rattata was already frantically dodging string-shots, which were quickly turning the ground around it into one big white sticky mess.

"Get out of the white field. Run at it!" Joey shouted as he saw his starter getting encircled. Thankfully he hadn't acted too late and the rat was able to hop out of the white zone and start running at the caterpie. Whenever the bug shot off a string shot the rat was able to side-step it in a diagonal zig zag which slowly but surely made sure that the two opponents were getting closer to each other. "Continue like that!" Joey encouraged, "just don't jump, you can't dodge in mid-air."

Rattata continued approaching steadily, surprisingly without incident and without disobeying. It was rather the caterpie that changed its strategy. Mirroring Joey's decision making process from yesterday it decided to tackle forwards rather than wait to be hit, and thus when rattata was close, but not enough to have started attacking yet, caterpie met him head on.

However, while the caterpie had apparently been present in the tree, it apparently hadn't been paying attention to what Joey and rattata had been training, because this situation was exactly what they'd prepared.

"Dodge and tackle," Joey ordered as caterpie rushed forward as quickly as its caterpillar-like body was capable of going. Which wasn't very fast. It was a trivial matter for rattata to side-step the tackle, dig its feet into the ground, and shoot forward with its own tackle. A meaty thunk resounded through the clearing as the two bodies met.

Rattata bent caterpie in half with its head and surged his neck-muscles to fling the bug away from him, but caterpie surprised both pokemon and trainer when it used its momentary proximity to use a move that Joey didn't expect it to know. Bug bite. Caterpie bit down on rattata's flank, refusing to be thrown off and refusing to be let go. The two pokemon lost all their momentum through their joining. If rattata knew hyper fang he could win this confrontation by biting right back, however, he didn't.

"Rattata build up a powerful quick attack into the tree," Joey ordered urgently, clenching his fists as he watched rattata laboriously gathering up white energy. It did so slowly through clenched eyes and teeth as the caterpie continued savaging its flank. However, this viciousness was what ended up winning them the battle, because the bug didn't notice its predicament before rattata sprung forward powerfully at half his usual speed and slammed caterpie into a tree, causing it to release its bite. Rattata stumbled back and Joey almost ordered it to prepare a second quick attack to slam his opponent while they were down… But, the caterpie lay there, knocked out.

Joey's mind blanked out for a second, and as much as he considered him a rational human being who'd known he was eventually going to win a battle. An inevitability really, the energy conferred to him by his victory caused him to surge forward and scoop up rattata, holding him up as he spun around the clearing.

"We won, we won!" he shouted, giddy with joy, his starter mirroring his enthusiasm, by vigorously squirming in his hands and chittering loudly. However, the rattata soon grew pale in the face. That's when Joey noticed that his starter was bleeding from his side. Quickly rushing the pokemon to where he'd put his backpack he applied some potion to the honestly quite hideous bite wound oozing a small amount of blood.

Deciding to be generous he also went over to the knocked out caterpie and applied a few spritzes of the potion to the bruised parts of its body. Not feeling too generous however, he then simply left the pokemon there, leaving it to its own devices. A caterpie already knowing bug bite was quite a good indicator of its potential, but it wasn't like he had a spot free on his team of one right now and while perhaps a butterfree eventually would be more useful than a raticate, Joey was a loyal person at heart.

Going back to his starter, who was now gingerly walking around, he started packing his back. For once not fighting the decision, rattata leaned on Joey's leg, clearly exhausted.

"Maybe our training was cut short today, but I think winning a battle is also quite nice, no?" Joey quipped, at which rattata tiredly nodded.

"First of many, alright. Today a caterpie, in two years the conference. My training, your willpower. They won't stand a chance," Joey muttered as he picked up his starter and began making his way back to the city. Looking down at the rat in his arms at the lack of response he saw that the rattata had fallen asleep. He hurried up his legs so as to get out of the forest faster. Mind already gone far in the future, facing champions and legendaries