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"What the actual fuck," Joey said as they disembarked on the Cinnabar harbour and beheld the absolute mouth-frothing chaos happening in the small town on the island.
"Five weeks for a match, are you kidding me?"
"Sleep on my couch for a month, only 100k Pokedollars!"
"Buy your original-made Blaine t-shirts, ever wanted an old man on your chest, now's your chance!"
There were people.
So many people.
No. Not people.
Kids.
If Pewter had been packed, then Cinnabar was so full it looked like it was going to explode.
There were more people on each one of the streets that Joey could see from the harbour than Pallet Town had a population.
"Been like this for a few days now." The old ferryman who'd set them over said while shaking his head at the chaos. He stroked his long salt-pepper beard. "Not every day you just get to battle a former member of the Elite Four, even if they're not using their real team. I'm also tempted to be honest, Seaking hasn't had a good exercise in a while haha! My colleagues doing the Fuschia route say they're completely swamped. The boats' almost capsizing level of travellers. Every young un' from Fuschia, Celadon, Saffron, Lavender and Cerulean rushed over here as fast as their feet could take them."
"No," Jessie whispered as she beheld the scene.
"Unfortunately, yes, it will probably take a while to get the battle," Joey said with a sigh.
"I don't care about your battle, you dolt!" the magenta-haired girl shouted at him with wide eyes. She pointed at a pot-bellied man leading away a young, rich-looking girl to one of the houses on the coast. "That girl just paid a ridiculous amount of money for a couch, that means the Pokecentre is full!"
Joey crossed his arms and nodded sagely. "That makes sense."
"It makes sense!" Jessie shouted in despair. "But it probably means I'll be sleeping in that stupid tent for another week, arrghhh!"
"Let's go to the gym first," the trainer said. "See how bad the situation really is."
"I need to go to the Pokecentre," Jessie huffed. "Happiny needs a check-up more regularly than your Pokémon."
"Meet you there when I'm done at the gym?" Joey asked.
Jessie nodded mutely, looked at the crowd, took a deep breath and dived in.
Joey understood her apprehension as he dove in himself, aiming for the large building closer to the volcano. The streets were so full he felt like a canned sardine. He had to channel some ghost-type energy to strengthen himself just to not get crushed by the mass of people jostling him from every direction.
Unfortunately, as he neared the gym, the situation just got worse. The crowd became denser.
Minutes passed.
Joey was seriously considering using Shadow Sneak to get ahead, but eventually managed to force himself to the entrance of the gym.
Sweat was streaming down his face. Despite the fact that it was March, the surroundings were unbearably hot. Kanto had maybe a few thousand trainers starting their journeys every year. 90% of those trainers seemed to be here, alongside a bunch of those who'd made it into a career and finally had the chance to fight an Elite Four member without first having to win a conference.
"Hey, buddy!" Someone suddenly shouted into Joey's ear while tapping him on the shoulder.
Joey turned to the right to see an annoyed older man talking down at him.
"Don't skip the line!" the man shouted and pointed his thumb backwards.
Joey turned his head and he realised that through all the chaos, there was a line leading from the gym's reception desk, through its permanently opened front door and out onto the street.
"That line," Joey said breathlessly with wide eyes. "That's going to take two hours," he realised.
"I've been here for three hours, buddy, and you ain't taking my place! Back you go!" the older man exclaimed. He looked like a hiker, sweaty and tired, dark bags of stress under his eyes.
Joey reluctantly stepped back and got into the back of the line, pulling out his Pokedex to browse the encyclopedia. If nothing else, he could read. Just lose himself in the screen.
Smartphones didn't quite exist yet, so there was no real content to lose himself in, but a digital library that weighed as much as an ice cream cone with one scoop would do.
As the hours passed, the heat from the surrounding people turned Joey into a sweaty mess. He'd inadvertently become a germaphobe through close contact with others.
By the time he finally reached the reception desk, he'd read the in-depth Pokedex entry for each one of Blaine's Pokemon three times. If he ever saw a text describing the territorial behaviour of Magmar ever again, he was going to deepthroat a shotgun.
The receptionist, an incredibly frazzled woman in her forties, looked like she'd deepthroat two, just to be extra sure.
"Name, ID, badge number, additional information?" She asked in the voice of a broken drone.
"Jonathan Joestar, challenging for the sixth badge, would like to battle in a month's earliest," Joey said while handing over his trainer ID.
The receptionist paused, shocked, before looking up at him with a traumatised look. "Sixth badge?" she asked.
Joey nodded.
Some moisture gathered in the woman's eyes. She wiped it away. "I've scheduled more first-badge challenges in the last week than I think have happened in the region in the last ten years. Thank you, thank you." She quickly input Joey's information into her computer terminal.
"The earliest slot I have is in exactly a month. Thirty days. Evening. Three on three."
"I'll take it," Joey said. He'd crushed Flint quite easily, which had made him more confident for Blaine. Diglett had a type advantage. Rattata knew Dig. Misdreavus was just straight up cheating with her Hypnosis and Dream Eater combo. Originally, he'd wanted to train at Cinnabar for two months, take his time, but now that he'd seen the place? The earlier he was gone, the better.
"Good," the receptionist nodded before giving him a deep look. "Try not to miss out, or you'll probably have to wait another month."
Joey grimaced. "I'll try not to," he said before turning around to leave and elbowing his way out of the large building.
A loud boo suddenly resounded from the door leading to the back of the gym, where a crowd seemed to be spectating a battle.
"And Pidgey goes down, sixth one today, how unexpected…" a commentator said in the most bored voice Joey had ever heard in his life. "Up next, we have… surprise, surprise, another one badge challenge. 70-year-old Tyrus from Lavender is here to give his Mareep a workout and fulfil his life-long dream of battling an Elite Four member…" The announcer then seemed to forget to release the button that transmitted his voice from the booth he was sitting in. "I swear if I didn't have a mortgage none of you would ever see me again…" he muttered, before realising that everyone had heard that one. "Oops… Please fire me…"
Joey shook his head and exited the building, ruthlessly utilising his elbows to make his way to the Pokecenter. He had no hopes of getting a room, but he needed to get Jessie so that they could go to the other half of the island and find a place to camp.
The journey felt like a workout, but once he finally got to the Pokecenter, he saw something that was even more sad than his experience waiting in line at the gym.
Jessie was in the Pokecenter.
But she wasn't waiting for him impatiently; rather, she was still in the queue of the Pokecenter. Sure, there were only ten people in front of her, but still.
Joey went to stand by her and shook his head. "This is not normal."
Jessie's face twitched; by the lack of Happiny, it was obvious that she'd chosen to capture the baby Pokemon and recall her rather than inflict the rather gruesome waiting time on a literal baby.
"Don't talk to me," the girl managed to force out through gritted teeth. "I'll just snap at you. Wait until we're somewhere else."
Joey gave his travelling companion a wary look before nodding and walking off. He looked around the white interior of the Pokecenter.
All the computer terminals were taken, which was unfortunate. He would have liked to check up on what people were saying on his thread. He liked doing that after each gym battle, just for fun. He shrugged and picked up a newspaper from one of the coffee tables and sat on the floor; all the seats were taken.
He was halfway through reading a story about some recent Team Rocket busts in Cerulean, King seemed to be doing his job, when a girl suddenly walked up to him so that he could see her over the newspaper and simply stared at his face.
"You can say hello, you know," Joey muttered as he put down the newspaper.
"Hello," Sabrina said once and continued staring.
"It's been a week since we said goodbye at the Poketech Institute. Faring well?" Joey asked.
Sabrina nodded with a blank face.
Joey stared at her. "Blink twice if you're currently being held hostage. Blink once if you got a lobotomy since I saw you last."
The psychic girl quickly blinked three times just to confuse him.
Joey tilted his head. "Three lobotomies?" he asked doubtfully.
"Too… many… people…" the girl managed to mutter out and shook her head.
"Did you get the badge at least?"
Sabrina slowly nodded and pulled out her badge case from her pocket, opening it to show the five badges inside. She preened.
"I see, I did Flint first, it seems we both have five," Joey remarked, at which point the girl deflated and pouted. "I'll have six in a month, battle in 30 days."
"Have… camp… north… volcano… staying… Cinnabar… to… train… you… can… join… me…" Sabrina managed to mutter out with a red face.
Joey fanned himself with his newspaper; it really was too hot in here.
"Finally done!" Jessie shouted loudly as she burst onto the scene and grabbed Joey's hand to drag him away. "Let's get out of here, one more second, and I'm going to start hurting people," she said before noticing that Joey was talking to someone.
The nurse turned to Sabrina, looked her up and down. They actually had somewhat similar hairstyles. Sabrina's hair was dark green, Jessie's was magenta.
"Are you copying me?" Jessie asked dubiously.
Joey stopped worrying about the heat.
The Pokecenter had suddenly gotten very, very cold.
Sabrina's eyes blazed with blue energy, fixated on the hand that was holding Joey's. She glared at it as if she wanted to incinerate the connection. Then she looked up, met Joey's eyes and with a purple flash, she was gone.
"You've got weird friends," Jessie commented before resuming dragging Joey out of the Pokecenter.
"You really shouldn't talk," the boy muttered as he let himself get pulled away.
"Bitch I'm fabulous."
-/-
After just four hours in the bustling port-town of Cinnabar, famous in the past as a seaside tourist destination, but now apparently as the battle mecca for people catching up on their childhood dreams, Joey hugged the earth after finally leaving the town behind.
Half of Cinnabar was civilised, half of it was left untamed by human hand. Namely, the part next to the volcano where a lot of strong fire Pokémon held territory.
"I can't believe I'm saying this," Jessie said as she went to sit down on a large brown rock sitting in the mostly barren clearing they'd found at the foot of the volcano. "But I'm happy to be back in nature." She shook her head. "That number of people… It's not normal…"
Joey looked around the clearing, identifying four different pine trees that were large enough to hide their tent under their shade. The air smelled like salt, and the pine trees reminded him of his vacations on the Adriatic Sea, even if it had been more than a decade now.
"It's weird we're the only ones camping," he said as he went to the biggest pine tree and knocked on the bark. No bug Pokemon jumped out of the branches to tell him off, so he shrugged and dumped his tent equipment on the ground, starting to build the structure. Faded deep ranger orange, it blended in quite well into the more sandy red rock landscape of the island.
"Mostly first-badgers and retirees," Jessie snorted as she opened Happiny's pokeball and scooped up the little pink Pokemon into her arms. "Half of them probably don't know how to set up a tent, while the other half would break their backs from sleeping on the ground."
Joey watched curiously as Happiny struggled free from Jessie's grip and forced the girl to lower her to the ground. Once there, she started walking around and picking up random stones while chanting her name.
"She's growing up fast," he commented, at which the registered nurse could only shrug.
"It's like this with Pokemon. She'll be ready to battle in a week if she wants to," the girl put a finger to her chin. "I heard there's a contest being held in Fuschia in three months. We should go check it out. Maybe Happiny will like it." She seemed hopeful. After all, it would be useless being a coordinator if you didn't have a Pokemon that wanted to do contests.
"You're her mommy," Joey said with a shrug. "I'm sure she'll like whatever you like."
"But the legislature," Jessie said with a sigh. "Contests are completely new. To capture more Pokemon, you still need badges."
Joey shrugged as he unfurled the tent and started inserting the metal rods in the corners. "You should learn regardless. It's a matter of self-protection. The world's not as safe as one would hope."
As if to iterate his point, a loud hiss suddenly reverberated from underneath the rock Jessie was sitting on, causing the pink-haired girl to jump up in fright and run towards Joey.
A bright purple Ekans suddenly undulated from where it had been hiding under the rock, and blinked blearily at the humans that had intruded onto its resting place.
"Well, that explains the lack of bug types," Joey said blasely.
"Ekan, Ekans," the snake Pokemon complained, continuing to taste the air.
Its eyes lit up when it saw, or rather, a tasty Happiny who was staring at the intruder with wide eyes full of wonder, seemingly not quite aware of the danger.
Jessie fumbled for the Pokeball at her belt, but it was already too late.
The Ekans lunged at the baby Pokemon.
Then suddenly, when it was mid-air, a small purple blur smashed into it, throwing it off course, before a Hyper Fang cleanly severed its spine.
"Ratta," Joey's starter said disdainfully as he shook the Ekans around like a rag doll. It would have looked comical, a Rattata shaking around a Pokemon several times its size, if the Pokemon hadn't been dead.
"What the hell," Jessie whispered, running to Happiny and picking her up as the baby started loudly wailing.
"Seems Rattata wants to protect the baby," Joey commented, nodding his acknowledgement to his starter.
"That was extreme, no?" Jessie asked.
"Bad experience with Ekans, or, well, Arbok, rather," Joey explained briefly as the corpse was brought to his feet and unceremoniously dumped there.
He got up from working on the tent and retrieved a few nails from his kit. "Still, this could be useful," he said as he picked up the corpse and walked to the second-largest pine tree. On his way there, he scooped up a sturdy-looking rock, before lining up the dead Ekans against the tree with its head up and nailing it in place.
"What the hell, Jojo?" Jessie asked, covering Happiny's eyes.
"Viridian forest is a well-known hazard, which means it receives a lot of attention from the rangers. Cinnabar is more dangerous, which isn't an issue since it's generally only visited by trainers with sixth badges. The Pokemon here are stronger, meaner and more territorial," Joey briefly explained. "This here was the territory of the Ekans; killing it means another Pokemon might want to claim the place. This will scare them off during our stay." He paused. "Regardless of anything, however, I will always have one of my team patrolling. I'd recommend you not stray far from them." He looked at the inactive volcano towering over them on the west side of the island. One of seven volcanoes that littered the small cinnabar archipelago. The only truly inactive one, which was why humans had settled there.
"The further up the volcano you go, the stronger the Pokemon," Joey explained. "In Cinnabar, fire types rule nature. That's why there are so few trees. They all got burned down." The volcano was completely barren. Just a lump of rock, really. "This area, before the volcano incline, is likely the last stop where you can meet a non-fire-type."
"We'll be staying here for a month?" Jessie asked with wide eyes.
"I'll be going up the volcano to fight some fire-types, always leaving behind one Pokemon to protect our campsite. Otherwise, I'll be training here. It's safe," Joey assured her.
He'd done his research, and they were still quite close to the town. This meant that for the moment, they didn't have to worry about anything too crazy. The forest and the plains around the volcano were just that. Forests and plains. Some Ekans, some bug-types, some Rattata, Meowth, etc. The moment you started scaling the volcano, however? Slugma, Charmander, Magmar. The higher up you went, the more evolved the Pokemon. Magcargo, Charmeleon, Rapidash. Rumours had it that there was a Magmortar living in the depths of the volcano, occasionally filling it with lava to bathe in there.
Joey wouldn't go verify those rumours. He'd only go up to the rim. He wouldn't descend.
He remembered that in the anime, Blaine held his gym badges inside the volcano, which was somehow active again.
He wondered if the man had somehow managed to restart the lava flow of the currently defunct structure just for the aesthetics.
Quite frankly, that did sound like something a gym leader would do in the Pokemon world.
Flint battled you inside a giant rock while King used a pool. Kong had a dojo, and the Celadon gym leader had a large tropical forest. Only Surge was relatively normal and used a dirt arena.
An active volcano was pretty on point.
Joey went back to fixing up the tent, calling out the rest of his team.
"I didn't expect travelling to be this scary," Jessie muttered.
"It is if you go off-road in the more dangerous areas of the region," Joey explained as he finished setting up the tent and turned around to tell Diglett to dig a firepit. And to collect a few stones to put in it. "This isn't one of them, however. The area around the volcano is considered a safe zone. The volcano itself is the issue, but thankfully, the Pokemon living on it don't come down at all from what I read on the ranger information map. Technically, you need three badges to stay in this forest, and five to scale the volcano. You're allowed as my plus one, but you shouldn't stray too far or join me for the latter.
"Maybe…" Jessie muttered. "Maybe it's time to start training Happiny. It's not like there's anything to do here during the next month, considering the town is unusable."
"She has gotten bigger," Joey said with a nod. "You should discuss it with her."
"Two weeks is about the time needed to grow up for Pokemon. It's really too fast," Jessie sighed and turned to the Pokemon in her arms, who had stopped crying and had been listening to their conversation.
Happiny didn't forget to throw a look of disdain at Joey during that, so she was probably alright.
Joey shrugged and turned to his team, who had all gathered in front of him, Diglett already done with creating the pits Joey had asked for.
"We're in Cinnabar," he informed the squad. "Gym battle is in 30 days. We're camping in the wilds outside. We'll be training in this clearing," he explained and circled the space they were in with his finger extended. "For practice against fire-types, we'll be scaling the volcano and battling. One of you will always stay behind to protect the campsite, Jessie and Happiny, in a rotation. That technically means that you'll get half a day off training every four days, although you'll have to stay alert. Any questions?"
His Pokemon shared looks, before shrugging.
Joey nodded, "Good. Anyway, for the gym, Diglett will take the front. Softening up the ground first will make it easier for Rattata to spam Dig after. Rattata will go second so the ground doesn't solidify again. Misdreavus will come in last to mop up." He turned to Metapod. "Metapod, I know you're itching for a battle, but Blaine will be really problematic. I'll throw you in if we need a stall, otherwise you'll be prepping mostly for Fuschia rather than Cinnabar."
His team shared looks and nodded resolutely; even Metapod seemed alright with going with the program. "Moves we need to work on. Diglett, everything ground type, we're digging our heels into this mono-typing and going all out. Rattata, let's eek out the last bit of Dig proficiency that we still can. Let's see if we can mix it with Detect. Until this point, you've only managed to combine Detect with fighting and normal-type moves, let's add ground to that list. Misdreavus, Hypnosis and Dream Eater. This will be our bread and butter until we retire, and there's no super-effective moves you can learn against fire-types. After Cinnabar, for Fuschia, we'll all be working on Taunt, but that's not what we're doing now." Joey turned to Metapod. "Metapod, let's start you on the Fuschia training. Poison yourself, help Misdreavus with Hypnosis. At the end of this, I want you to basically be immune to most status effects. I believe in you." He was about to continue when a ringing sound suddenly came from his pocket.
Joey froze and furrowed his brows.
He didn't get calls often.
He pulled out his Pokenav and looked at the number. Unknown. He was just about to press decline when he decided that it might be urgent. The concept of spam calls hadn't quite reached the Pokémon world yet, so he wasn't too worried about that.
"Jonathan Joestar?" he asked.
"This is Officer Jenny," a female voice said from the other end of the line. "I think we might have something to discuss."
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AN: Next arc of the story has started, the Joey goes to Jail arc I've been hinting at for a few chapters now. Count de MonteJoey. Read ahead on Patreon if you're impatient or want to support me!