Day 19 of the journey to Kanto. Heavy rain.
Reiji had reached the eastern coast of the Kanto mainland, or at least that was the general direction. As for his exact location, he had no clue.
When he finally made it to the shoreline last night, it was still pouring. Right before he landed, a flash of lightning lit up the coast for an instant. What he saw was nothing but untouched forest. No buildings. No lights. Not even the faintest sign of people.
He landed on the beach first. Thankfully, the stab-proof suit he was wearing was waterproof, but that only helped for so long. Stay soaked long enough and the cold would still get to him. He released Poliwhirl and the others right away and sent them into the forest to look for somewhere dry enough to shelter.
The rain was already bad, and it looked like it was only going to get worse. There was no point trying to pitch a tent in weather like that. He needed a place to get out of the storm and regroup first.
It didn't take long for the Pokémon to find a cave. The entrance was wide, though the cave itself wasn't very deep. It was just barely enough for them to rest in. He also sent the Water-types out to gather firewood, though most of what they brought back was dead wood soaked through by the rain.
That wasn't a dealbreaker. Wet wood could still be dried out over a fire. The real problem was that he didn't have much dry tinder left in his pack, so they had no choice but to burn half-soaked branches from outside. The whole cave ended up filling with white smoke.
Once the fire was going, he stripped off his clothes and hung them over a wooden rack to dry. After that, he let the Pokémon out in batches so everyone could have dinner. Once they were done eating, they all went back into their Poké Balls.
There wasn't much room in the cave to begin with, so there was no point leaving everyone out to wander around. After dinner, he only kept Spinarak and Kingler outside to stand watch, then laid out his sleeping bag and went straight to sleep.
He'd already warned Spinarak what to do if the fire started dying. A little silk for kindling, a few more wet branches, keep the fire alive. And if the cave ran out of wood altogether, Kingler would go back into the forest for more.
Then he laid out a moisture pad on the ground, spread the sleeping bag over it, crawled inside, and passed out.
He had spent so long flying on Pelipper yesterday that by the time they found the cave, cleaned it up, and finished dinner, it was already seven or eight at night.
He'd been exhausted to begin with. Add a full day of rain on top of that, and once he'd warmed himself up, dried off, and gotten something hot into his stomach, all he wanted was sleep.
He'd gone to bed so early that he was awake again by six in the morning. But when he opened his eyes, the sky was still black and heavy, almost identical to the evening before. Rain was still hammering down outside, and the clouds overhead were so thick they had turned the whole morning dark.
In the end, he dragged himself up and boiled some water. At least something hot would help. At this rate, he was getting forced into wilderness survival mode again. Luckily, he still had about a week's worth of food in his pack, leftovers from the last few resupply stops.
He could only hope it would last until he found signs of civilization. Once he reached people, he could restock properly. This time he'd left the ship in a hurry and never got the chance to buy supplies first.
Still, that wasn't the real problem.
The letter was.
He had left it behind, but whether Blaine had found it yet, whether he had already wrapped everything up, and how exactly he had handled it—Reiji had no way of knowing. All he could do was hope Blaine had finished the job cleanly. If he hadn't, then Reiji was the one who'd be in trouble.
That said, he wasn't actually worried about whether Blaine would act. Not when Amber was involved. Blaine would take this seriously. That was exactly why Reiji had dared leave the letter behind in the first place. He trusted Blaine to do whatever was necessary for Amber's sake, and at the very least, to finish the cleanup properly.
There was no point asking about it now anyway, especially after he'd vanished without saying a word. Better to wait until later. He could always ask when they met again at the Indigo Plateau Conference.
As he sat there turning the last two days over in his head, the water in the pot finally began bubbling hard. He filled his metal cup and took a sip to warm himself up, then fed breakfast to Kingler and the others. Once that was done, he returned Kingler to its Poké Ball and sent out Poliwhirl instead.
Kingler had spent the whole night on watch. It was Poliwhirl's turn now.
The same went for Spinarak. After breakfast, the little guy dragged itself over to the cave wall and curled up to rest. Between looting bodies and standing watch, it had been worked half to death yesterday.
Reiji set the metal cup aside, lifted the pot off the fire, and started eating bread while digging through his pack for a Poké Ball.
Riolu's.
Only now did he finally have time to check its panel. He'd been too tired last night to do anything except collapse. In a way, this Riolu was the most valuable thing he'd gotten out of that whole dirty job.
[Riolu]
[Type: Fighting]
[Gender: Male]
[Potential: 41%]
[Level: 22.12%]
[Ability: Inner Focus / 33.18%]
Fighting-type [Moves: (Sky Uppercut / 10.11%)(Vacuum Wave / 11.12%)(Counter / 8.24%)(Rock Smash / 12.34%)(Force Palm / 16.25%)]
Normal-type [(Mind Reader / 20.48%)(Quick Attack / 4.44%)(Protect / 23.51%)(Endure / 26.15%)(Feint / 6.36%)(Foresight / 9.32%)(Screech / 14.27%)(Work Up / 25.77%)(Roar / 15.91%)]
Psychic-type [(Rest / 24.72%)(Calm Mind / 30.47%)(Zen Headbutt / 23.28%)]
Other [(Metal Claw / 21.17%)(Crunch / 21.75%)]
"Forty-one percent potential," he muttered. "That's lower than I expected."
He'd assumed the spoiled brat's Pokémon would all have excellent potential. Instead, this one was mediocre.
That probably meant they hadn't stolen any truly valuable Eggs—just ordinary ones laid by ordinary parents.
Even so, a Riolu Egg with unknown parentage still wouldn't come cheap. He wasn't sure it could still sell for over a hundred million, though. The whole aura craze had cooled off a lot.
For a while, Riolu prices in the black market had been driven sky-high by the hype around aura. But once that fever faded, people started realizing aura was just aura. Strip away the mystery and it wasn't all that different from psychic powers—just another unusual ability Pokémon could have.
Sure, aura was rarer, but not impossibly rare. If you went looking, you could still find other Pokémon with similar abilities. The only real difference was how strong those abilities were.
Then again, "everything has aura" was such a convenient explanation that it practically sounded like the anime writers had gotten lazy and stopped trying.
As the hype died down, people calmed down too. On top of that, stories kept spreading about how odd these Pokémon were by nature, and how hard they were to truly win over.
Even so, this Riolu was still priceless to him.
The potential was low, yes. And after everything it had gone through, getting it to accept a second Trainer would be difficult. Getting its approval at all would be even harder.
At his current level of wealth, buying a Riolu or a Ralts wouldn't actually be difficult anymore.
The reason he hadn't bothered was simple: Pokémon like those were hard to win over in the first place. For someone like him, with a mind as dirty as his, it would be even harder.
That was why he'd never wasted money on them before.
But this one was free.
A free Pokémon was still worth trying.
Even so, he wasn't expecting much. Riolu had the same kind of problem Farfetch'd had—a damaged Pokémon that hated humans.
Still, Riolu did have one thing going for it.
That stubborn refusal to bend.
That part reminded him a lot of Scyther, and he liked that.
But the problem remained the same. Whether he could truly catch Riolu or not depended on one thing: whether Riolu's twisted view of humans could be corrected. If it couldn't, then that was the end of it. They had no future together.
And Riolu could sense hearts.
So there was no need to pretend. He knew exactly how filthy his own was.
Better not to hope, and then he wouldn't have to be disappointed.
As an adult, he had stopped expecting much from things like this a long time ago.
If it worked out, great.
If not, then not.
That was the nice thing about being a washed-up bum who knew how to lie flat. He could take things as they came.
[End of chapter]
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