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Chapter 11

"Okay, let's go," Allen states while putting on the bag and then leading them out of the building.

I make sure to stay far enough away from Allen as he's walking past me to stay out of his striking range in case he decides for some reason to swipe at me. Caleb hops onto my back as we walk out of the front door and into the daylight. Once we are all outside Allen immediately starts walking along the path towards some destination, Sanaline following alongside me silently. That she's quiet isn't what's so curious to me but that she's walking so close to me. Yesterday she kept her distance but stayed with the group. It isn't until I notice her head moving to the side that I figure it out. Since we had arrived at the town late last night this is probably the first time she's seen the interior of this place when it's lit up well to actually see anything.

"Where are we going?" I ask, half expecting him to take a swipe at me for disturbing the silence.

"Since we have been given our Trainer's license we are expected to at least make it to get one badge. If we got the license and quit there the Professor would probably get annoyed at us and then get us declared as rogues who stole his ring. So we need to go to a gym and get that gym's badge. After that, well... We'll figure that out when we get there."

"So we're going to the spot on those tablet things point to in this place?"

"What?" Allen asks while turning back and giving me a strange look before he figures out what I'm talking about. "No, the Gym in this town is not for us."

"Well why not? You said we needed to go to one, right?"

"Because this Gym doesn't have pokemon of a low enough level to handle those without at least five badges already."

"I don't understand," I cock my head to one side as he turns around and begin walking again.

"There is a general expectation that one becomes stronger from going from one place to another. Which means that depending on where you started some gyms you will be a lot stronger when facing the leader than someone who started closer to that gym. It is because of this that most gyms will have sets based on how many badges you already have. There are eight badges to be had in this land so each gym should theoretically have eight different sets of pokemon, each of different strengths in order to match the circumstance. Most gyms don't have all sets, though, simply because of having to train so many pokemon to all of the levels they'd need them to get to."

"So that means that we're not going to the one in here?"

"Of course, idiot. Didn't you just hear what he said," Sanaline snaps at me as the conversation seems to have drawn her attention away from the roads.

"Then where are we going?"

"Well let's see. We can't go south since that's the way we came. There is no way to the east that we can use and we can't go west," Allen talks through after readjusting the bag.

"Why can't we go that way? That last one," I ask.

"It's simple really. To the west of this town is the Indigo Road which is where a big arena for all the best trainers battle against each other. The only people allowed to go down that road are spectators with a ticket to one of the arena's events or a trainer that has at least most of the badges. As we have neither, we can't go that way."

"So then which way do we go?" I ask, not really understanding what he meant by the directions. The only one of those four for places he was talking about earlier that I understand what he was talking about was that South place since I do remember which way we had come from.

"We're going north," Allen comments after half swinging at me. Thankfully I was far enough away that his swipe didn't have any chance of hitting me.

"The opposite direction from heading back to where you first met me," Caleb informs.

"But first we are going to the shop to pick up some supplies," Allen suddenly decides as we pass by a particular building.

As we reach the door of the building he enters it, leaving us to follow behind. I stare at the difference in this building, Sanaline moving somewhat closer to me though I don't pay any real attention to it. Instead my attention is with all of the information coming to my nose from the scents of all of the stuff in here. Allen puts the bag down and grabs the device before grabbing a little basket and putting the device into it. He moves along the isles and then grabs a few of the items and places them into the basket along with the device. While doing so I follow behind him while sniffing at all of the items in the store. Some of them have rather interesting smells to them. A few smell somewhat unsavory but some of the others smell somewhat sweet. Among them are a few more of those liquid containers as well as some more of the small balls. Once done he moves over to the table and stares at it a moment before putting it down.

"Okay, Sunshine, you're up," he states.

"What?" I ask.

He grunts and then marches over to me before grabbing at me. I manage to back away in time but his second lurch grabs one of my ears. The person at the table leans forwards to look at us as Allen drags me by one of my ears and I whine as I try and deal with the pain of having them handled in such a manner. He doesn't let go of my ear until we're both back the table.

"Now, you are going to hop up there right now or I will beat you until you do. Once up there I will hand you this basket and then you will pull out the dex and hand it to that clerk and then once he's scanned everything and given you a bag with it all you will hand them all back down to me and then we will leave and continue on our journey. Do you understand me?"

I nod quickly so as to keep him from attacking me again. I back up a few paces and then hop onto the table with little difficulty, half startling the human on the other side of it all. I look over and see Allen holding the basket above his head in such a way that I can grab the handle to it if I reached out for it. Bracing myself as best I can I stick my head out and reach for the handle on it with my mouth, half concerned that it's too far away and I'll fall forward and get beaten up for not doing it well enough. I manage to grab it without tipping over and then step back further onto the table as I move the basket to rest on the table as well. I lift myself up so that my forelegs are resting on the edge of the basket and then dip my head down and grab the little device and offer it to the human as Allen had instructed. The human, sort of dazed for a moment or two quickly gets a hold of himself and he takes the device from me and then starts taking stuff out of the basket and putting them through this beeping thing before putting them into a smaller bag. While he's doing this I lower my head to the ground and rub at my still sore ear with one of my paws, trying to massage the pain away at least a little bit.

Once he's done putting all of the items from the basket through the beeping thing and into the bag he puts the device into a sort of slot for it and it beeps again. He then takes the device out of the slot and puts it in the bag. However, instead of handing the bag back to me he leans over and as best he can lowers the bag down towards Allen, who takes it and lowers it on the ground. Having no more need to be up here I give a quick nod at the human and then hop off the table. Once down I make sure that I'm far enough away from Allen that he can't strike at me easily again, but he seems more interested in taking all of the items out of the bag the human gave us and putting them all into the bag he's been carrying around with us. Once done he takes the now empty bag and hands it to Caleb.

"Go fly this back up to the clerk. We don't need it anymore and I don't want to carry around something we can't use."

Caleb does so without question though the act of trying to fly up with something of that size looks awkward but he does get it back up to the table before putting it on the table and then flies back down as we all start to leave the building. I notice that during this entire time Sanaline hasn't really done much of anything beyond making sure to stay out of the way since we entered this building, which strikes me as odd but I choose not to comment. We all leave the building and Allen continues to lead us along our original path towards this north place, wherever it is. As we walk down the roads I notice that some of the humans from this town have started to leave whatever building they had spent the night as quite a few of them have begun walking through the streets, though to what destination I cannot even guess seeing as this is the first human establishment I've ever actually been in that I could actually observe the humans beyond if they see me or not. Though I definitely notice that every single one of them seem to stop and stare at the four of us walking down this hard path as soon as they see us.

"Why are the humans all staring at us?" I ask out loud.

"Don't worry about it," Sanaline responds. "They've all just probably been paralyzed from having witnessed such a retarded pokemon like yourself."

Allen looks over at the humans but doesn't make any sort of response before looking forward again, seemingly focusing on only where we are going and nothing else. Caleb ruffles his feathers a bit before hopping off my back and then taking off.

"I'm going to stretch my wings out for a while until we reach the edge of the town. Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on you so I won't lose where you go. I just don't see any reason to be still here when I could get some exercise for at least a little while longer. Would do me a lot of good to stretch out a bit, too," Caleb comments quickly before taking off and flying up higher and away from us.

Though I don't complain when Caleb flies off I am somewhat saddened that he did so. Both Allen and Sanaline don't really seem to like me all that much which meant that Caleb was the only one that I could have talked with and be mostly at ease with. With no one to talk with I take my time and just look around me, trying my best not to notice the people staring at us. The buildings are somewhat strange looking to me. Several of them are very almost intimidating looking, being almost completely gray or some other dull color. Most of them don't have many windows at all and those that do keep things very rigid, nothing like the much more friendly flourishes that place we slept in had or even the building we just left. Though I do notice off in the distance another such building that seems even more grandiose than the rest.

"What's that building?" I ask, nodding at the building.

"That would be the gym," Allen comments after looking over in the general direction of where I was pointing. "As I said earlier we aren't going that way. We're going further north of that and into the forest. Though speaking of which, since you were obviously not born down where I found you and likely didn't come from the west, didn't you come through the forest yourself once?"

"I suppose. I never really put much thought into the matter. I was mainly just wandering around all this time. I didn't really pay much attention to the area around me. I mainly just kept to myself. I made sure to keep away from humans the entire time or at least keep them from seeing me. And I generally tried to avoid pokemon at the same time. I'd never stay at one place for too long before going off and wandering again."

"If you say so," Sanaline retorts. "I remember going through and attempting to cross through a town once or twice. Never even got close to being able to being able to get anywhere into the town before at least a few humans saw me. I doubt you could have done much better than I with how much larger you are."

"Either way. It's not really important. We'll soon be at the checkpoint entering the forest and from there we'll play it by ear from then. Eventually we should be able to make it up to Pewter and get our first crack at a gym battle. Once we're done with that I don't really know. I suppose that we could always just come back here and live out the rest of our lives in peace."

I stare up at the clouds after his statement, keeping just enough mind on where I am to not potentially stumble into Sanaline and to be still following Allen. Staring at the clouds I'm half looking to see where Caleb is and half to dwell on Allen's statement. I'm not entirely sure whether or not I feel comfortable about just doing enough to have been considered a real trainer and then stopping for the rest of my life. As far as I can tell being a part of this group does have some advantages. Before when I had come through human settlements I would never have been allowed to walk into buildings and interact with the people there on some rudimentary level. In fact when I was by myself being seen by a human at all was a bad thing. Though from how the owner of that place with a lot of smells and the people in that resting structure I am still not considered even close to the status of another human in their eyes. But even still it seems that travelling with Allen and acting as a trainer is almost like a free pass to explore as much as possible. Strangely enough, it seems that being bound to a pokeball and having to obey whatever that device tells me to has provided me with more freedom than when I was not bound to anything. The thought makes me chuckle a little bit.

"What's so funny?" Allen asks.

"Nothing," I comment before trying to compose myself again.

"Who knows, maybe we'll have lucked out and now have to deal with a loopy pokemon for the entire time going through the forest," Sanaline snides.

I quickly notice that all of the buildings seem to stop at one point that we are fast approaching and that beyond that area there doesn't seem to be much of anything other than a long path extending into the beginning of what must be the forest in question. As we pass the last of the buildings I stop for a moment and turn around, taking one last look on this town. Though it is more than possible we may one day return to this place when we do so things will probably no longer be the same as they are now. I sigh and then turn back forwards before jogging a bit to catch up to Allen and Sanaline before they end up deciding to yell at me again.

We enter the path leading into the forest and for some reason I notice that there seems to be a sort of fence that has been erected along the forest border. When last I had come by that way I had noticed it as well but paid it little mind as it didn't really seem to do anything to try and stop anyone from passing through it. My head cocks to the side as I consider the whole point of such a thing given what little I know of humans but seem to come up blank on the matter. Finally I decide to give up and ask about it.

"Why is that thing there near the edge of the forest? It doesn't seem like it does anything."

"It does and it doesn't. It's more of a marker than anything. It likely smells of humans so that would at least make wild pokemon and animals hesitate slightly before wandering into the town. Beyond that it serves as an extra means to let trainers know where they are supposed to go. If I remember correctly there should be a building somewhere down this path. If someone went over the fence they'll probably end up missing the entrance to the building entirely and you need to have your device given a stamp as it were to be allowed past that point. If you don't travel to the checkpoints and get the stamps they'll often arrest you under suspicion of having tampered with your device or of doing underhanded dealings, whatever that may be."

"I see," I lie.

While walking down this path that was apparently set up just for groups such as us I notice that it soon starts no longer being completely paved but rather there seems to be a section that seems to have been intentionally let run wild that we have to go through. Not much longer after entering the taller grass I hear the sound alerting us that apparently we're going to be attacked again. Allen puts the bag down and gets the device before motioning for Sanaline to move forward. I look around briefly to see if Caleb is going to land but I can see him at all in the sky. Sanaline immediately charges forwards after whatever her opponent will be before it even shows itself. But just as it seems as if she were about to attack she seems to hesitate as if there is some force keeping her from attacking at this time.

Allen starts pushing the buttons on it and Sanaline finally charges in to attack what seems to be another Ratatta like herself. She seems to handle herself at least a little better than she had the previous day in this particular battle as she seems to find some openings that allow her to dodge her opponent. Still, it doesn't take all that long before her battle is over, with her as the clear victor. Yet even though there was never any real doubt she would win she didn't come out of that battle in the same condition that she entered it. Allen puts away the device and Sanaline walks triumphantly back to us as we leave the other Ratatta to whatever fate befalls those who lose against a pokemon and their trainer. I look over and half feel sorry for the thing and then consider the fact of just how lucky I must have been since I was good enough at not being caught that I never had the issue of having to find out for myself the difficulties involved in trying to survive with a beaten body, especially for one such as I who gets most of my food by hunting other living things.