CH26 (87), Viridian City (1)

Fresh on Arcday I had Xatu Teleport me to the periphery of Viridian City. During the weekend my father and I relaxed, while my mother spurred on by my father's success focused more on the training of her two newcomers. She still spent time with us, she just prolonged her training time by quite a bit.

I was a bit worried that she may overwork them, but I saw that she made sure not to overdo it. My father also said that she knew not to force them to train more than they can endure. Ponyta and Sneasel were quite enthusiastic since they disliked being mother's weakest Pokemon.

What can I say except for, as expected of a species, that agrees to servitude after a loss in exchange for food and the chance to get stronger? Well, that was still the better alternative to being eaten or simply killed, but those were the rules of nature, so adaptation it is.

Anyway, I made my way into the city after storing Xatu and once I had covered more than half of the outer area I called out Nyx to accompany me. While walking through the city I made sure to observe the people walking around, and the Pokemon that accompanied them.

I noted that the partner Pokemon of the people divulges something about the type focus inside the city. At least it had been like that until now, but the current impression I am getting paints another picture. There is no majority of one particular type as far as I have seen.

After 30 minutes of simply walking around and observing my surroundings, I start my investigation, into the general information on Viridian City. Talking with pedestrians, as long as they are willing to talk to you, is generally the easiest way to gather information on the place you are.

You could use the Internet, but then you would only learn the most obvious stuff, and it would miss a personal note. Besides, sometimes you need to know about something if you want to find out more about it on the internet. People on the other hand tended to slip in other facts along with the stuff you asked about.

Was it always useful? No, but sometimes you learned some interesting stuff. Anyway, I just kept walking around exploring the city for a few hours, while occasionally approaching some pedestrians to talk with them about interesting things about Viridian.

While strolling I found a few interesting places, and through the conversations, I learned some more information on interesting places and facts. First of all the Major Gym, was not one specializing in ground types, and the Gym Leader was also not Giovanni.

The Viridian Gym actually did not specialize in any type at all. The Gym Leader was a generalist, the only one among the current 12 Major Gym Leaders. At first, I thought 'it can't be, don't tell me Blue is the Gym Leader', but it turns out he wasn't. Actually, when I mentioned Blue one or two times no one reacted, so either he doesn't exist (yet), or he is not well known (yet). Maybe he has another name, but I will have to find out some other time.

Anyway, the Gym Leader's name is Colby Ventura, and I learned that his Ace is a Rhydon. Besides that, I also heard he has a Pidgeot, Electrode, and Kingler. I am sure he has more than that, but those were the ones I heard about.

Besides the Gym, Viridian City also has 3 Halls, a ground-type Hall, a flying-type Hall, and an electric-type Hall. Yes, I checked if the leader of the ground Hall was Giovanni, but he wasn't. For now, it seems Viridian is Rocket-free, but I am still not disavowing the possibility of them hiding themselves. Quite successfully at that, if that is the case.

After all, that roaming around it was nearly time for lunch, and before I went to one of the restaurants that were recommended to me, I decided to call Aaron to ask him how things went on his end. It has been 5 days since we met, and I am curious if he succeeded in finding his targets.

So, I walked towards one of the phone booths I saw while roaming around. Yes, they still have phone booths around here on Terra, and I am thankful for that. Otherwise, I would have no easy way to call him that couldn't be traced back to me.

Anyway, I took out the paper with Aaron's number from my bag of holding and dialed it. It rang three times before he answered the call. "Hello, Aaron. It's me Mikail." I said, and he greeted me back. "I just wanted to know how you're doing. Have you managed to find what you have been searching for?" I asked and he answered me.

"So, you're still camping around the outer part of Viridian Forest?" I wondered after hearing his answer. "What about the Pokemon did you find any at all?" I asked curiously. "So, you have seen a few Poliwag while replenishing your water, but none felt right?" I marveled, seems like the guy was really planning to catch only the ones he felt good about. Who knew how long it was going to take him to find one he was satisfied with?

"Well, that's too bad. How about Shroomish/Breloom and Heracross?" I inquired and listened to his reply. "Too bad that you found no Heracross at all, but they are supposed to be rare, especially in the outer part, so that was to be expected. To be honest I think you are going to have to search for quite some more time the way you are choosing your Pokemon." I began.

"I mean you may have not seen any Breloom, but you found a group of 3 Shroomish, right?" I asked, and he agreed. "Yet, you caught none of them, because they did not feel right. If you insist on that, then you will most likely have to go through a high number of candidates. I hope you have reserved quite a lot of time for this trip because you're going to need it." I told him and he laughed before he answered.

"Well, it's good that you expected that. As long as you know what you're doing, everything's alright." I told him before he started asking about me. "Me? Well, not much, to be honest." I began. "After we separated, I leisurely made my way to Viridian City, and I am currently exploring the place," I told him.

"No, I did not encounter any difficulties during the trip but thank you for asking. Unfortunately, I saw no fighting types as well." I answered his question. "Yes, no problem. I will tell you in case I see some fighting types during my trips." I replied to his request. "Yeah, you take care of yourself as well. Good day to you too, and good luck." I reciprocated his farewells and hung up.

Then I left the booth and walked towards another one, that was on the way to the restaurant I was planning to visit. A few minutes later, I entered the other phone booth and called Rose to ask her how she's doing. "Hi, aunt Lily, is Rose there?" I asked Rose's mother, who answered the phone.

"Yes, I am fine thank you for asking. How are you and uncle Thorn?" I talk to her for a bit. "That's great to hear. Is that Rose that I am hearing, could you please pass the phone to her? Thanks." I asked her, and she thankfully did.

It's not that I did not want to talk to her or something like that, but she always started to try to tease me, and partner me up with Rose. I mean we're 4 and 6 respectively, so please slow the hell down. Anyway, Rose and I talked for 15 minutes before I managed to hang up. Well, it was mostly her talking and me listening, with some occasional input from me.

Still, I currently had only this one friend, so I could listen to her talking for 15-20 minutes per day without complaining. As for Aaron, he might become one, but for now, Rose was the only one. Back to Rose, she told me everything was fine on her end. She talked a bit about her school life, and about her Vulpix, and Eevee.

That was also what I had expected because that came up every week during our talks. What I did not expect was her telling me, that she got another Pokemon. A Whismur, to be precise. She said it was a gift from her parents and the son of her father's Exploud. All I could do was congratulate her.

Still, she was only 6, so she had nearly 10 years until the start of her journey. Yet, she already had the beginnings of a solid team. Ninetales, An Eevolution, and Exploud were strong species. Nevertheless, it was better for me that way.

As I had previously said, it is better if my friends are strong and have high potential. That way they won't fall behind too much, and things won't get too awkward between us. Anyway, after ending the call, I walked towards the "Flying Choice", a restaurant that was recommended to me multiple times.

The name apparently contains two puns, as far as I heard. The first one was that if you repeated "Flying Choice" really fast, sometimes it turned into "frying choice", which was the main dish type. The second pun was that all food variants were from some kind of bird Pokemon, hence flying.

I ordered two portions of Pidgey Stripes as well as some Fries, and I have to say it tasted awesome. 10/10 would recommend. After eating my fill, I visited some of the stores I saw while strolling around, and in one of them, I bought something that would be useful for my Growlithe egg as well.

'Name: Fire Rock

Type: Fire

Class: F

Uses: It's a rock that forms around a Fire Stone. While it is not as precious or useful as a Fire Stone, it can absorb and store small amounts of fire energy from the environment.

Contains fire-type energy and can be used as a supplement to help fire-type Pokemon.'

According to the clerk, rocks like these could be found in mines, near the evolutionary stones. They were like the disappointing little brother that the Fire Stone grew up with, but for me, it was still useful. Especially after my space upgraded it. Together with the Fire Chip, I had one more option to surround my Growlithe egg with.

I could use them alternatively, which would help me, since I have a limited supply of them, and the production rate was not that fast for the D-class version I was planning to use. The rock was relatively cheap, I paid 500 Poke for it.

Besides buying the Fire Rock I also sold some of my berries, but only the standard ones, not the rare ones. I had way too many of the standard ones, so I sold around 300 of each. Since there were 9 types of berries, I sold a total of 2700 berries and got a total of 160.000 Poke for them.

Naturally, I sold them in across multiple stores, since I did not want anyone to get curious why I had so many berries. All that took a few hours, and by the end of my selling spree, there was only 2 hours left until dinner. I decided to use that time to check out the locations of the Gym, the 3 Halls, and the Battle Club, I had heard about so that I could check them out tomorrow since I did not have enough time to check them all out today. This way I could decide in which order to visit them, to avoid walking in circles. It took some time to find them all, and after mentally noting down their locations, I returned home.

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