Ranching is dangerous

"Say for example it had to run 4 fridges, 4 freezers, various lights and lamps, a mid sized hot water heater, split system air conditioner and a couple of TVs?"

I'm currently in a camping/electronics store which is closer to a warehouse in size in the northern part of Viridian speaking with a salesmen about electrical camping generators.

I spent another night of uneasy rest waiting for the morning before having Becky drive me into town in the very early hours of the morning to find a truck similar to the one I pinched awhile back to swap my stolen ones number plates for the ones on the clean truck.

It honestly only took half an hour to find one, luckily it was unlocked so we could pop the little front hood and damage the VIN plate near the engine to make it harder to identify it as not being the stolen truck…after a quick swap of the number plates which thankfully were the same colour…hopefully the guy or gal who owns the truck doesn't notice that it's a different number instantly and it covers us for a few hours…

But after that I had Becky drive us into the new industrial area after a little early breakfast at a small cafe and a little waiting for shops to open due to being so early to do a little more survival shopping and on the list was a generator…

"I mean….technically it can, but you would run your Pokémon ragged trying to keep up enough electricity to keep it fed, not to mention the stress you would put on the machine….I would suggest something bigger if you were looking to run all that…these are designed for trainers in the wild to power essentials and meant to run a week plus on a zap or two off a Pokémon, I'd say running all that you would have to recharge it twice, maybe 3 times a day…"

The model I was looking at was roughly the size of a child's lounge chair, which is basically the largest size you can fit into a silph co space bag, it might be a portable warehouse but it had size limits on what you could put into it…

"Well what if I spread all of that between 2 or maybe 3 of them?"

"That would work, but as you know these things aren't cheap kid, because 6 grand a piece is going to sting even for a mid level trainer…. I know you said your grandfather likes to be prepared, but this seems a little much…"

He started to hesitate a little talking to me, looking around a little, probably looking for his manager or something….god it sucks being 10 because no one takes you seriously..

"Listen buddy, my grandpa said and I quote 'if I'm going to let you to walk out into the wilderness filled with giant monsters at 16 fucking years old to try your hand at training the damned things with nothing but a untested and untrained beast you can sure as fuck go and buy what I told you to buy!!'…..I don't want to be here anymore than you want to be talking to a 10 year old fella, but he uses that excuse or something like it anytime I try and wiggle my way out of anything…so please, just sell me what I'm here to buy because if grandpa has to come down here both of us are fucked"

He seemed to lose a bit of hesitation and gives me an almost understanding look bordering on sympathy..

"Yeah….I had a tough grandpa too… but you gotta understand kid, I also always thought my grandpa was just speaking nonsense about Pokémon before I went on my own journey….it's not all the sunshine and rainbows that the league makes it sound, especially if you're used to the Pokémon temperaments in and around the city, they're a lot nastier out on the road….so make sure to take his advice to heart…."

Is he trying to give me advice to listen to my made up grandpas advice? I must be selling the whole hard grandpa thing pretty well then…

"Yeah I know, it's rough out there so he makes me do this stuff to help me prepare early…so….about those generators?"

"Ah right, so….yeah, you're probably going to want two maybe 3 generators for whatever it is you have set up considering you want it able to fit into a silph co bag…which is going to cost you a pretty penny which I really shouldn't be discouraging considering I'll get commission but yeah, with it spread out like that it should cover all of that and any extra you throw at it as long as your Pokémon juices it once every few days"

"Any way you could give me a discount on em?"

"Eh I suppose I could knock of a couple hundred bucks for ya, buying bulk and all that…"

"And I assume they come with warranty?"

"Yeah, a 6 year warranty with scheduled service with any authorised party licensed to work on machines like this, as long as you keep your receipts there shouldn't be any problem…"

"Cool beans….I'm also supposed to look for some other stuff you probably have in store if that's alright?"

"Yeah, not a problem what are we looking for?"

I pull out a notepad from my back pocket, flip through as I start listing off what I've wrote down

" a 45kg gas tank,filled…a 4 burner gas outdoor cooking stove, some outdoor cooking tongs… and uhhh do you happen to sell a swinging cow brush?"

" you mean the swinging tauros brush? Yeah we do…."

I did some part time work on a dairy farm when I was younger and I seen the cows absolutely loved their swinging cow brush or SCB as they called it, I'm getting it mostly for miltank and skiddo but I reckon most of my mons will love it.

Even if I'm buying most of this probably unneeded stuff out of a growing sense of paranoia that would probably fade in a week or two after my nerves calm down, it's still no excuse not to look after my crew and get em a treat…

"Cool, one of those as well….I need a couple first aid kits if you got em and….I'll need some electrical supplies to hook up most of this stuff…and uhhh….that's about it, it looks like"

"We got all that stuff in store kid so no worries there…it will just take a little to walk around and pull it all together, did you need me to do it for you? Given you're on crutches and all?"

The soreness is still there but almost gone after some more heal pulses but I'm using some pain killers Becky picked up for me to take the edge off, but I'm still using the crutch just incase..

" I'd prefer to grab em myself but I could use a guide around, maybe a big cart or something?"

"Not a problem kid I'll show ya around…."

A woman wearing the same black and yellow uniformed shirt was making her way past as the "guy", that's literally his name "guy" calls out

"Hey jen would you mind pulling up 3 SCG012 generators from the back warehouse up to the front registers for me? I gotta take this kid around to grab some other stuff"

"Sure thing guy, I'll grab it after I drop off this paperwork to the boss"

"Thanks Jen"

After that I followed him around the warehouse sized superstore picking up everything on my list, even some things that weren't like camping and survival guides for beginner trainers I didn't know existed.

"What's the deal with these books? I didn't know they were a thing? You'd think they would be more popular"

I said while flipping through a book that was showing different tracks of kantonian Pokémon and the best way to track them among other nifty little bits of information.

Guy does a quick and very subtle glance around like he's about to tell a racist joke in the political climate I lived in before I was "transmigrated"

" the official story is that the league likes to use is that knowledge like this could prompt underage people to seek out their own Pokémon illegally and possibly put themselves in danger…"

As I'm flipping through the pages still I come to a page of what it looks like when someone who's been surrounded by a group of Mankey and some very gory details about what ones capable of if it gets it hands on you….

" you didn't hear at his from me but….I'm pretty sure things like these books aren't advertised are because they could potentially scare away new trainers from trying to sign up for their own journey….as I said before a journey isn't all sunshine and rainbows, they need young ignorant trainers to throw into the meat grinder so to speak…"

I look up at him confused

"wouldnt it just be easier for them to control media and write less….graphic details?"

"Oh there are books with a lighter tone given to school children and the like, but publishing purposefully wrong information would work against them in the long run, history has shown that lying to your trainers has never turned out well…that's why these books exist but aren't publicly advertised, like they made the information available but it's not their fault if you never read it sort of thing…as great as the league is…they can be assholes when it suites them…"

"Should you be telling me all this? Seems like a quick way to get into trouble bad mouthing the league like that"

"Eh, with the way you describe your grandpa it sounds as he had a similar experience with his journey as me so I'm sure you were half aware of this stuff already, and if not you probably would be soon….you seem oddly mature for a kid"

"Fair enough I suppose….I'll take one of each of all these books…would make good reading material"

The stuff we were grabbing was getting out of hand so we grabbed a big shopping cart and continued around picking up various items as guy went on to tell me about how he quit his journey after losing half his team to a rather nasty Ursaring that attacked him in the middle of the night while camping and subsequently how he took up a job on a tauros ranch…

And turns out tauros ranching is a dangerous as fuck job because tauros ranches are glorified death farms and not in the way that you'd think..

it's one of the most dangerous jobs available, pokemon are smart…like really smart, and tauros are no exception. They know exactly why they are on those farms and they're completely fine with it as well.

Wild Pokémon know death is part of life and living on those farms meant their eventual death but they have a system worked out with how you actually have to battle it to the death to takes it corpse away for food…and they see no issue with it, they get a great life with easy food, water and treatment but will have to battle for their life every now and then…they win? Cool they live longer and get stronger, they lose? Well they would be dead in the wilds as well so it all works out the same with a better life in the middle.

The dangerous part is the tauros play for keeps as well, if they win they would usually kill the persons Pokémon who was challenging them and sometimes even the person themselves, so as I said tauros ranching is a dangerous job…

We eventually make it out after I've picked everything up on my list plus a few extras…this trip has burned a pretty big hole in my pocket….but I'll just have to make do, guy was a little concerned with a kid carrying around over 25 grand cash but he eventually got over it when I dropped him a tip of a few hundred…which was more than I actually saved on the discounts but whatever..he earned it

I was in the warehouse for a good hour and a half and had Becky waiting outside with meowth keeping an eye on her and the truck..

I left miltank, skiddo and Ferroseed home to defend the fort while we were away.

I had Slowpoke and machop out with me, which guy didn't even question given how there's an active gang war in the city and all that…I gave him the same excuse of they were grandpas and they were here for my protection yada yada…

It took a good 20 minutes with the help of guy to get everything loaded and strapped down, the truck was stuffed to the gills and overflowing almost, we were especially careful strapping down the gas tank…

After everything was all said and done we waved goodbye as we told him we were waiting for our "big brother" to come back and drive us home only to instantly have becky hop in after he was out of site and make out get away…

We made it home over and hour later and moved everything upstairs….well I say we but Becky carried the small stuff upstairs while Slowpoke teleported machop and the heavy stuff upstairs and set it aside ready for me to mess around with it once I'm back in action fully….

We were finished by mid afternoon and were ready to settle down for the day when I noticed something off…

"Is anyone else freezing cold?"