CH40 (101), Reaching Coast City

I spent the rest of the weekend just relaxing with my parents. On a side note, they say that good luck and bad luck rarely came alone. Well, in our case it was good luck. After Star's evolution on Kyoday, I saw that Skye's potential had improved to light blue during her visit on Grouday.

What actually happened was that Skye came for one of her visits this Grouday and I did my routine status check and saw that she had somehow managed to increase her potential from deep green to light blue during her trip to her little territory in the outer area of Viridian Forest.

This was actually a long time coming in my opinion because it took more than two years for this to happen since her potential had not increased since the time I had seen her for the first time. Actually the same was true for many of my parent's Pokemon.

The fact that I was constantly helping to improve the potential of my Pokemon in one way or another meant that the crawling growth rate or even nearly static potential growth of other Pokemon seemed unbearable to me, even if THAT was actually the norm.

Skye informed us that she had felt herself being enhanced and my parents looked to me to see my reaction. I confirmed for my parents that the feeling Skye gave of had improved and now matched the one Agni and the others gave off. My father was understandably ecstatic by the news and we celebrated the news with some pizza.

Anyway, today I was heading out to begin the last part of my journey, but before that happened I made a stop in Cyan City. Since today was Arcday I was going to call Rose and Aaron. I found myself a phone booth and began to dial Rose's home phone number before I momentarily paused.

I remembered that Rose should be in school at the moment, which meant that I wouldn't be able to reach her right now. So, I reset the phone while deciding to call her after going back home. That was the next best opportunity since I had no plans to return to the city for lunch. No, today I was going to briefly eat something and keep going.

After resetting the phone, I started to dial Aaron's number instead. It did not take too long for him to pick up the phone. The summary of our talk was that he had nearly reached Pewter City, which was impressive since that meant that he had covered more than 900 km in 9 days on foot.

Aaron said he was going to rest a day or two in Pewter and then leave for his family.

I told him a bit about what I had been up to and I finally remembered to tell him about the Machop I had seen on Route 3. He thanked me for the info even if it was a bit late, but he also told me that the next Pokemon he captured would be the last he did for quite some time.

He explained that since he already had 8 Pokemon at the moment; the next would be his 9th and that he wanted to focus on training those up first before he caught some more. He didn't want to spread his focus too much and 9 was his limit for now. Once his Pokemon had reached a certain strength, he would think about adding more.

I knew where he was coming from. If I did not have the space I would have been unable to keep as many Pokemon as I currently was. Well, everyone has to do it his own way, and I can afford to train a higher number of Pokemon at once. Even if I am approaching my current limit as well.

I'll stop adding new members for a while once that becomes the case, or more like I'll catch them and let them just chill inside the space, or maybe I'll rotate them. I'm not sure, I'll leave that to the future me. Anyway, after we hung up I let out Nyx, Pidgey, and Xatu, who shot Pidgey a brief look when she decided to settle on my head before we left Cyan City towards Coast City.

There was no official Route on the way there, so the road counted as being in a wild area. This meant that besides the occasional sign, there were none of the comforts, like rest stops and benches, and no relative safety provided by the alliance as well. Sure, there was the official vehicle road that connected Cyan City and Coast City but compared to the giant space that Routes represent these roads were only 100 m in width and only meant for vehicles.

I mean I could walk beside the road, but it would be really loud and I wouldn't be able to do anything besides walking. I would be forbidden from doing anything that could affect the road, and the alliance tried to keep the immediate vicinity of the road clear as well. This meant if I wanted the trainer experience, I would have to find my way there by myself.

I just had to make sure I kept staying just an hour or two away from the road, which together with the compass I had would make sure I walked in the right direction. I knew Coast City was to the south, so all I had to do was walk southward and I would eventually reach my destination.

Since the road was to my east, the only way to walk off-target was to walk westwards, which the compass and the occasional sign, they put up near the road for trainers, should minimize. Once I was sure I was ready I set off.

During my walk, I noticed a few peculiarities. The farther I walked the more the demographic of the wild Pokemon was changing. The number of Pidgey was decreasing, while the number of Taillow and Wingull was increasing, especially the Wingull. The number of Spearow on the other hand stayed relatively constant.

Actually, that made sense, because Pidgey felt more comfortable in inland areas, while Spearow didn't care either way. Wingull preferred the coast, so the nearer I came to the coast the higher their number. The coast was as near to Hoenn as you can get mainland-wise, so some of them settling around that area over time, after Migrations or just territory changes, and preferring to stay near that area made some sense as well.

Other than those flying types, I also notice an increase in the number of water types as well. Psyduck, Poliwag, Marill, and Wooper were some of the Pokemon I started to see more often. I even saw my first wild Surskit on one of the ponds, which was pretty cool. Seeing them "skiing" on the water looked awesome.

Well, Lotad were still quite rare, while the rate of Rattata, Sentret, Zigzagoon stayed relatively the same and Magikarp were universal in any body of water. By the end of the day I estimated that I had covered about 50 km, but I was not sure.

Besides the wild Pokemon, I had seen less than 10 other trainers over the whole day and chatted with 4, since the others gave off a leave me alone vibe. Furthermore, while I did come across some interesting things, like the remains of some Pokemon, they were unfortunately not useful.

Once I was home I did not forget to call Rose to talk to her, since it became some kind of weekly ritual and I would not hear the end of it if I forgot/skipped doing it. We talked about this and that, she bragged a bit about her training and I told her about some of the Pokemon I saw. I also saw my mother smile and nod in my direction, while I was talking with Rose.

Some 20 minutes later I ended the call and started talking with my father, who had come home while I was on the phone. I had greeted him and he had waved me off telling me to keep talking to Rose with a light tone.

The next morning I decided to stop at Cyan City first because I wanted to visit the Normal Hall for Xatu's second Flash session. I had paid for it so I was going to use it. The coach had his Pokemon demonstrate some different uses for Flash, like a focused one instead of the omnidirectional one, and observed Xatu's Flash as well. He gave out tips that helped Xatu improve his execution of Flash and three hours later we left.

15 minutes in I saw a sign that showed 100 km to Coast City, which confirmed that I had covered about 50 km yesterday. Shaking my head at missing the sign by a few minutes the day before I went on my way.

During my walk, I noticed that the strength of the wild Pokemon was more arbitrary compared to the Routes. There the strength of the Pokemon increased the more you left the central area, which totally made sense since the alliance oversaw the place. Here that was not the case.

While I had not seen any silver stage Pokemon yet, most likely because we were too close to the vehicle road for their taste, I had encountered Pokemon ranging from stageless to the (high) bronze stage, while maintaining the same direction.

So, even if the number of (mid) and (high) bronze stage Pokemon was still small, I did not have to change my direction to find them, they came to me. Like that one (high) bronze-stage Fearow that led a small flock of 8 Spearow to steal our food during lunch.

I let Xatu deal with the leader, Mothra simply chose to ignore them and continued eating, knowing that we would handle it. Butterfree followed her lead and I let him. Seb and Gaia were not happy about the interruption and decided to show their displeasure by trashing the two strongest Spearow, at the (low) bronze stage, after they saw that Xatu was fighting the Fearow.

The 4 (high) iron-stage Spearow were entrusted to Nyx, Teddiursa, and Pidgey, while I allowed my Weedle to deal with the 2 (mid) iron-stage ones. All thrashings besides the main fight were over pretty quickly, even the fight of my Weedle's since their opponents decided to underestimate my bugs.

QueenBee seemed to take an exception to their mocking gazes, which ended with them being caught in a few Electrowebs before being peppered with Poison Stings. Anyway, seeing that everyone was done with their opponents Xatu teleported behind Fearow and used a Confuse Ray.

While Fearow was behaving like a drunk Xatu aimed two Air Slashes at its wings, which caused it to plummet downwards. Apparently, Xatu was not done yet, because he used his Psychic to accelerate Fearow's falling and the poor thing crashed into the ground with quite the bang. Pokemon being the tenacious beings they were I was pretty sure the Fearow would be alright somehow.

At least, that's what I thought before the dust raised by the crash settled. It turned out the Fearow had landed on its neck and the Psychic boosted crash broke it, which meant it died. I had prepared myself for something like this eventually happening, and I was only indirectly responsible since it was Xatu that did it, so even if it was a sapient being, which at its strength was likely, I felt pretty much okay.

I mean I was a bit sad that it died, but I didn't feel nauseous or anything. It was partly its own fault for attacking us and every wild Pokemon knew that all fights could result in their deaths. All the mental preparation I did since my arrival, like witnessing the life and death battles, killing the Magikarp, prepared me sufficiently for this.

I didn't know how I would react if I did the deed myself, but I was okay right now. After that moment of introspection, I looked towards Xatu to see how he was doing. It was his first kill after all. I saw him just standing beside the body of Fearow and went up to him.

I gave him a one-armed hug and asked. "How are feeling buddy?" While looking at him.

'Fine, really. It was going to happen sooner or later, and we have witnessed enough deaths to know that it is part of our lives.' He calmly answered my query through telepathy.

Most likely noticing my slight reaction at his calm response he continued. 'I knew this was going to happen and have accepted it. Moreover, I am not the only one that was prepared for something like this to happen. No, all of us knew it was happening sooner or later and every single one of us accepted that.'

If I had been surprised before, then I was dumbfounded right now. I mean I could somewhat accept Xatu's reaction since he was a Psychic-type and those tended to do the whole logical perspective thing but to think that my Pokemon were talking about life, death, and other serious topics among themselves. I was expecting some emotional conversation and not whatever just happened. Just wow, at least this saves me from some future headaches.

"That's good then buddy. Death is part of our lives and as you said Fearow and all other Pokemon know that each fight could be their last. Oh, wow, I thought I would have to console you, you know. So I'm a bit surprised" I told him in a slightly relieved tone while patting his back.

'Thank you for caring, but as you can see you didn't have to since I am fine,' I heard him say and I felt his calm through his telepathy, and now that I focused on it I felt it through my aura given emotion sense as well.

"Yeah, honestly, that's a relief, since I was not sure how to go about the whole thing. Anyway, let's finish eating and go on our way." I chose to close the subject and send him back to eat.

After Xatu went back to eating I stored the Fearow inside the house in my space and walked back to the others as well. Everyone chatted with each other while they ate and once everyone was done we left, leaving the knocked-out Spearow where they were.

By the end of the day I had covered about 30 km by my estimation, maybe a bit more, but that was alright with me. I did not mention our first kill to my parents, and the rest of the evening was spent relaxing.

On Giratiday the only difference to the day before was that I finally had to change the fire chips and rocks around the Growlithe egg and that we were not ambushed by a large group of Pokemon during lunch. We did a stop in Cyan City for our last Flash session and during the rest of the day just battled the occasional wild Pokemon.

Unfortunately, I did not see anyone with better potential than deep yellow and we did not find anything useful as well. By the end of the day, I was sure we had covered around as much distance as the day before, which meant we were only left with another 40 km until Coast City.

I slept a tiny bit earlier that evening since by the end of the next day we would reach our goal. Just as I had speculated the day before, just 2 hours before it was time for dinner we arrived at the periphery of Coast City.

Tomorrow was Dialday, which meant I could explore the city tomorrow as well instead of doing now. So there was no reason to rush it since I had a day before the weekend arrived and I had to stay home for two days. With that in mind, I chose to return home early instead of entering the city.

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