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Rattata Chapter 40: Meet the Fucktards
🕑 Added 2024-09-03 03:00:03 +0000 UTCIt was almost an hour and two Magkarp later that Joey started suspecting that this wasn't going to be as easy as he had been promised.
It was good then, that just past the suspicion started forming, his waning trust in Daisy's ability to hook things other than Magikarp was rewarded.
“I think I finally have something,” the girl said excitedly as she pulled at the fishing rod. It was bending much more than it had been previously for the other catches.
The youngster admired the girl as she pulled vigorously and reeled in what she’d caught. He could see that she had quite well-developed muscles on her arms and wondered if he could beat her in her arm wrestling contest.
He called his Pokemon to attention as whatever was caught on the line approached the shoreline and was glad for it when Daisy finally succeeded in pulling the top half of what she’d caught out of the water and onto the dirt of the beach.
It was a Goldeen. The white and orange fish that evolved into a Seaking later on. Daisy completed a complicated manoeuvre with her fishing rod to unhook the fish which promptly opened its mouth wide, probably to spray them with a Water Gun.
However, before even a droplet could escape its mouth, a perfectly sized ball of white String Shot shot out to lodge itself in between the teeth of the misfortune fish Pokemon. Then, a powerful Mud Slap followed, hitting it right in the face and sending it teetering ass over kettle onto its back. As a finishing touch, a flying Rattata crashed down onto it and smashed it into the dirt with a perfectly executed Rock Smash.
Joey's starter jumped back from where the Goldeen was now half submerged in the water on its back with dizzy eyes and preened, kissing the flexed bicep of the arm that he’d used to smash the poor water-type.
“That was brutal,” Daisy muttered.
Joey for his part shrugged and threw out one of the Pokeballs that he'd been given. The Goldeen dematerialized into red light, and the device shook on the floor a few times before settling down and activating the youngster’s internal reward systems with that perfect ping sound of a freshly caught Pokemon.
“If I wanted to catch it for my team I would have fought it one one-on-one to prove that I'm a good trainer. Relocation, however, doesn't require such niceties,” he said, perhaps harshly.
Daisy gave him a nervous sideways glance before nodding. The Krabby at her side clicked its pincers a few times and took a few steps away from Joey's team.
Rattata brought Joey the Pokeball and the boy clipped it to his belt.
He knew of course that the culture he had been born into put a lot of value on fair fights in which one could show one's mettle. It was so ingrained that minor misdemeanours such as dine dashing, were sometimes resolved with battling. However, having grown up in a more pragmatic space in his last life where the easiest and best way to win a fight was to simply gang up on someone, he knew that there were times to adhere to the cultural norms and times when one could disregard them. Today was not about respecting some sort of social standards, but about getting that badge so that he could catch Misdreavus.
Nevertheless, he did glance once over his shoulder to see if anyone had seen what he'd done. Thankfully there was only one man in a long trenchcoat taking a stroll a bit further away, who had been unlikely to truly see the details of what had occurred.
“Do you maybe want to try with the fishing rod?” Daisy asked. “I'm getting a bit tired,” she said, offering him the light alloy device, which seemed to be carbon fibre. Considering that they had been here for an hour and he'd already caught one of the requisite five Pokemon, Joey shrugged and took the fishing pole from the girl, sitting down on her place on the stump.
“Can you help me learn how to use it?” he asked, not at all ashamed to be asking for help from a child. He’d never fished before, and she seemed like an expert.
“Sure,” Daisy said, cheering up a bit from the surprise she had felt upon witnessing the brutal beat-down of the Goldeen. “It's not like the skill of the person holding the rod changes what you’re going to get, as long as you can keep still of course. This issue is matching the energy of the catch to bring it to land. I'll lead you through it when you get something,” she promised.
Joey nodded and together they put a new bait onto the barbed fishing hook. The Goldeen had apparently swallowed the previous one. The bait was a cute little cookie in the shape of a golden coin.
“What is it made of?” Joey asked curiously.
From his very limited exposure to fishing as he’d seen it on television, people generally used either worms or other smaller fish? He didn't really know.
Daisy perked up at the chance to explain something, her chest puffing out in pride. “Well, it's a very specific type of puffin that my family makes. It's essentially made out of berries with some flour and cornstarch. It's pressed in the form of a coin which we then dip into a water-resistant golden paint. Berries are a very rare treat for many water Pokemon because they can mostly only get them if there's a tree which loses fruit next to a body of water. The flavour undulating through the water attracts them quite well, and the shininess also helps.”
“Interesting." Joey threw the fishing rod over his shoulder aiming to cast the line.
It was of course at this point that Daisy tutted, shook her head and corrected his posture. The whole process took about five minutes, but afterwards, Joey was finally qualified to cast a line. He wondered how long it would take for him to become qualified to reel it in if this was already how it was starting.
Thankfully, they had time. It was only noon and they’d already caught one of the five Pokemon. If they continued at this rate of one per hour, they'd be done before dinner time.
Joey settled his ass into a comfortable position on the stump, glanced to the side to make sure his Pokemon were waiting at relatively decent levels of attention and nodded. Only Metapod was currently a bit distracted, creating her poison. He couldn’t fault her for it.
This was going to take a while, but at least he’d get a new skill out of it. He was always happy to learn.
-/-
“Did you hear that Bruno challenged Blaine for his spot in the Elite Four?” Daisy asked after some waiting.
Joey paused. He had heard in fact. It was quite old news actually. Daisy was probably just trying to make conversation. "Yeah, I'm looking forward to the battle."
“I heard it again on the news just this morning when I left the house. He made the challenge a while ago, but they still don't quite know how the odds are,” the girl explained.
“He's been training two Onix for this reason I think,” Joey replied. “I heard that if Bruno wins, Lance just goes straight to Agatha." Joey suddenly thought of Michelle, whom he knew had her Elite Four battle, a six-on-five, not a real take-over challenge, scheduled for the opening of this year's Indigo Conference. If Bruno beat Blaine. Wouldn’t that make Blaine the weakest Elite Four member? He discontinued the line of thought, not wanting to digress.
“Wouldn't that be unfair to Lance though? He's been preparing for Blaine. If the battle is then switched out for Agatha…” Joey trailed off.
“I mean, they'll just delay it anyway, like, if the opponent switches they won't go through with the previous scheduling, right?”
The youngster nodded thoughtfully. That made sense to him. If Lance’s battle switched from Blaine to Agatha, they couldn't really use the previous schedule that they had made for the boy; it would have just been straight-out unfair to deprive him of that preparation time.
Personally, Joey was willing to bet on Lance again if it was against Blaine. However, when the boy came up against Agatha, Joey believed a stall of progression would occur. Agatha was a monster, and Pryce’s ice-types would also make some trouble for a flying type specialist.
“Well, not like it matters,” Daisy eventually decided. “Lance will never beat Pryce anyway,” she decided with a nod.
Joey threw her a sideways glance. “Are you just saying that because Pryce, being an ice-type trainer, also has some water types on his team?”
The girl blushed before shaking her head. “Of course not,” she said in a very unconvincing manner. “It’s just because, well, ice counters dragons, so what's he supposed to do?”
Joey shrugged. “Pryce is getting old and unlike Agatha’s ghost types, his Pokemon don't necessarily benefit from that. Also, he hasn't had a real challenge in a very long time so I can't even imagine that he's not feeling some of the rust settling in. He's an old man, and I prefer betting on the future instead of the past. Maybe Lance won't beat him on the first try, but he's already secured himself a spot and the Elite Four which means that he can always challenge the whole thing again in the future even if he fails.”
Of course, what he didn't say was that it wasn't that many years off canon and if Lance didn't win now he would definitely have to win it all the second time or else the timeline just wouldn't make sense. Unless of course, if Joey was in an alternative universe, which he could never know.
Before he could fully develop that line of thought, he suddenly felt a twitch run up the fishing rod. Not knowing exactly what to do, the first thing he did was freeze up. “I have something,” he said with surprise in his voice.
Daisy looked at where the float was bobbing up and down. “Well, pull it in gently at first, just try to guide it,” she said.
But Joey in a mode of panic due to the unfamiliarity of the situation channeled whatever ghost-type energy he could into his muscles to strengthen them and pulled at the fishing rod like it was a pull-up bar. The rod bent, but held, thankfully, and a Magikarp came flying out of the water into the air, where it landed in a not-so-graceful arch 20 metres behind Joey, all in all, 25 metres from the shore.
After the initial surprise of flying for the first time, it started flopping around uselessly, hook still in its mouth.
“Magi, karpppp.”
Daisy for her part simply stared at the fish in surprise, before looking back to where he’d pulled it out of the water, before looking at Joey and tilting her head.
The youngster put up his arms. “I panicked, okay.”
-/-
It was after Joey restarted his tutelage that he started becoming more and more comfortable with the fishing rod and with reeling in the variety of Magikarp that decided to hang themselves onto the hook.
Eventually, he managed to pull out another Goldeen, which promptly suffered the same fate as its same species equivalent earlier.
Daisy winced at the efficiency of Joey’s tactics, but he couldn't do anything about the fact that she found his sense of logic intimidating.
The sun slowly made its way across the horizon, having reached its zenith already and now starting to dip downwards again.
Joey sat and learned how to fish, how to carry away Magikarp that were unwanted with enough friendliness that they didn’t evolve out of anger, and how to best pull in a big catch.
On the occasion that there was nothing to do but wait, he and Daisy chatted about a variety of topics such as who was most likely to win the Indigo Conference this year, how good Joey thought his chances of winning the youngster tournament were and even the dietary needs of a variety of water types.
Daisy turned out to be very knowledgeable actually, and Joey was glad that he'd met her. It had been a weird stroke of luck.
A conversation about star signs and how they influenced people's personalities that Joey was not per se, interested in, but which he degraded himself to the level of to pass the time, was interrupted by another catch on his bait.
This time it was a Poliwag who upon surfacing from the water and crying out its name cutely was very promptly reminded that there was no mercy on the streets and that while there was honour amongst thieves the only thing that a job objective would get from being caught was a quick beatdown.
Honestly, Joey justified it to himself with the fact that defeating a Pokemon quickly rather than dragging out their suffering was more merciful than pretending like they had a say in the matter. It wasn't like he would just let them go back into the territory he'd been tasked with emptying out if they won a 1 vs 1 fight. No, if a water Pokemon he hooked defeated one of his Pokemon, then Joey would just send out the next team member. The world was brutal like that, battle royale, yo.
Anthropologically he thought that the culture of the Pokemon world was incredibly convenient for people like him who were getting decently good at battling, After all, due to the fact that was at the core of most social interactions, one could get away with a lot of things.
What he didn't necessarily agree with was that while this position of what would have in his previous world been essentially animal abuse was made good by some honourable conduct rules and words.
At the end of the day, if you challenged someone to a fight and had your trusted companion get beaten up so badly that they started spitting blood, the only thing you were doing was participating in a very widespread cultural and magical dog fighting ring. Just because everyone did it didn’t mean it couldn’t be bad.
Of course, it could only exist in such a state with active consent from most Pokemon, who masochistically enjoyed such things. This world ran on some sort of magic that made beating each other up a rewarding and fun activity for the whole family… Considering that Pokemon were stronger than humans anyway if they didn’t want to participate in something like this, they didn’t have to. If Joey tried to get elected on the platform of ending systemic battling, then people and their Pokemon would vote him into office just so that his lynching would send a bigger political message.
“I'm getting a bit tired,,” Joey muttered after some more ruminations on the meaning of violence and the values of friendship. “Wanna switch again?” he asked, turning towards Daisy who was eating a sandwich that she’d brought with her.
Joey had some of his own food in his backpack, along with some stuff for his team, so switching would be a good opportunity to feed them and himself. It was slowly approaching 3pm, and while their pace of catching the requisite Pokemon was quite decent, he didn't really think they would be done any sooner than 6pm.
“Sure,” Daisy said after she finished chewing the last bite of the triangle sandwich.
However, just as she was about to stand up to take over; at which Joey could have said that iconic line of, 'And now his watch has ended,' he suddenly felt a powerful tug on the fishing line. It was several times stronger than anything that he’d felt before.
On an instinctual basis rather than any active thought, he channelled as much of his ghost-type energy as he could into his body to make himself stronger in entirety. One couldn't just strengthen one part, one needed to strengthen everything else to at least 50% along with if one didn't want to sustain injuries from one's efforts.
He pulled vigorously against the force that had almost torn the fishing pole straight out of his hands and into the water. The pole strained, but held, proving that the material that it had been composed of was sufficiently strong.
“I have something,” he shouted as if it wasn't obvious to Daisy that he had hooked a Pokemon much stronger than what they had contented with previously.
Daisy for her part, who had at some point recalled her Krabby put a hand on the Pokebelt hanging above her skirt and narrowed her eyes.
Joey pulled and pulled, but couldn't quite manage to force whatever he had to surface, which was the point at which Daisy sprang in.
“Sometimes whatever you hook is too strong and you have to send your Pokemon into the water to get it out,” she said as she threw out a Pokeball which released in a flash of bright red light a decently sized Starmie instead of the Krabby that she'd had earlier.
Without any preamble, showcasing that she could be brutal herself, Daisy gave a command that made Joey wince. “Starmie, Thunderbolt the water!” she shouted, making Joey wonder if he should drop the rod so the electricity wouldn't conduct up towards him. But, Daisy would have thought of that, right? He didn't remember pissing her off enough at any given point that she would want to electrocute him.
Regardless, before these thoughts had even formed fully in his mind the attack was already being executed, the purple star Pokemon having lit up an electric yellow before flashing one and sending a spear of lightning into the water at the speed of, well, lightning.
The water lit up, but rather than knocking out whatever had been underneath, it simply forced it to come out.
It was as the head of the Pokemon surfaced, that Joey noticed the similarities to a Wartortle. However, rather unfortunately, what surfaced wasn’t exactly that Pokemon in particular, but rather a larger, more heavy-set version of it with two canons built into its large brown shell. They were pointing directly at Joey, causing him to wince.
“Blastoise,” the final evolution of the Squirtle line muttered darkly as the water finished dripping down its humongous form to showcase it in all its might.
Joey sweat dropped, knowing perfectly well that he wasn't really in any position to fight such a Pokemon. “Daisy, that deal of me helping you catch it. Does it still stand?” he asked, turning to the girl.
Only to see that Daisy was already turning around in a running pose and dipping faster than an escaped convict when they heard a police siren. “Run, Joey, run!” she shouted at him.
The youngster for his part sequentially and quickly clicked the buttons of the Pokeballs attached to his belt recalling his startled team before also turning around and taking his legs into his hands.
Just in time as well, because a powerful jet of water shot through the air through the space where one second ago his head had been. The fishing rod, still in his hand, something that he had forgotten in his panic, unreeled itself as he ran, until he pulled off the wheel it was attached to at the base. Shit was expensive, and nobody had the money to replace that crap. He ran with the rod in his hands.
While running Joey glanced back for a moment to check if the Pokemon was following them, only to see it stand there on the shore on all of its fours with its cannons pointed still at them.
“Duck!” he shouted at Daisy who was running in front of him before throwing himself to the ground.
One second later, what must have been a Hydro Pump ripped through the air. It absolutely disintegrated the fence locking in the property of the hotel conglomerate before continuing over the heads of the now downed Joey and Daisy and eventually smashing into a construction site which had been at this point of the day abandoned because people had gone home.
The unlucky recipient of the water pressure was a large cement mixer standing in between some heavy-duty vehicles which, upon impact, was simply perforated and lifted off its feet to crashland a few dozen metres back.
From his position on the ground, Joey turned to his head to see what the Blastoise would do next, already prepping his ghost-type energy to potentially sneak away or distract it with an attack if necessary.
Fortunately, after that particularly violent attack the Blastoise righted itself to its feet, looked in their direction and snorted loudly enough for them to hear it before shaking its head. It turned around and started walking back into the water, its heavy steps easily discernible in the air for it eventually submerged itself and disappeared under the bated breaths of the two young trainers.
“Well, that was something,” Joey said absent-mindedly once the danger had passed. This had been his first time meeting a third-stage evolution in the wild. It wasn't an experience he was looking to repeat anytime soon if this was any indicator of how those encounters were likely to go.
“It's gone?” Daisy shouted from her position on the dirt road a few metres down from Joey. Her face was facing downwards, pushed into the gravel so she obviously hadn't seen the Blastoise leave.
“Seems like it,” Joey replied, pushing himself first to his knees and then to his feet before using his hands to dust himself off.
“Are you alright?” he asked the girl as he came up to her prostrated form and helped her up.
Her blonde hair which had previously been well groomed was now dishevelled and her clothes were dirty.
Her eyes, however, in contrast to the rest of her appearance, were shining.
“Wasn't that incredible?” she asked. “The elegance and the power of that Hydro Pump at the end there. Truly the beauty of water types astonishes me every time.”
Elegant? Those weren't really the words that Joey would have used to describe the situation. He tilted his head to look at the girl with a concerned expression, wondering what exactly was wrong with her brain.
It was this gesture that allowed him to see the two men approaching them from down the road, one of them being the presumed team rocket grunt from the Nugget Bridge.
Joey grabbed Daisy by the hand and pulled her to his side to face the direction of the approaching duo.
The two men looked at each other upon seeing Joey’s wary look and shared an obnoxious laugh before swaggering up.
The youngster for his part wasn't an idiot, and his right hand immediately went to his belt to grasp Rattata’s Pokeball, while his left went to his Pokenav to press the distress signal.
That was when he felt a slight brush of fur against his left hand, which came up empty.
A brown blur passed through the slight gap between Daisy and Joey and came to a stop in front of the two men revealing itself to be Raticate whose front paws were covered in dark-type energy and which were holding two separate Pokenavs.
“Sorry kids, but we can’t have your calling for help right now,” the grunt that Joey wasn't familiar with said standing behind the Raticate which came up to his hips. Unlike the man in the trench coat, he was dressed in a black suit with a red tie and had gelled-back light blue hair. He was younger than the other one, maybe in his early 20s or even late teens.
“I did tell you it was an offer you can't refuse,” the grunt in the trench coat said darkly as he clenched a Pokeball in his hand.
“It's not really about the boy,” the blue-haired of the duo said. “Let's not give a false impression.” His eyes turned from Joey to Daisy before he smiled, an odd grimace that didn't reach his eyes. “Daisy Waterflower, please come with us. If you do, we’ll leave your friend alone.” He tilted his head. “We're not asking, by the way.”
Joey took a second to glance at his companion, realising that he should have recognized the daughter of the gym leader sooner, and noted that the girl was shaking in fear.
“And hand over your Pokeballs while you're at it, kid, I saw you catching stuff,” the grunt in the trench coat said pointing the finger of his unoccupied hand at Joey.
That was when Daisy erupted, making Joey realise that she hadn't been shaking in fear but rather in anger.
“For that, you’ll have to beat us in a battle first! We’ll send you running with your pathetic tails between your legs before you even breathe on our Pokemon!” the girl shouted, clenching her fist and punching it out against the two with a Pokeball grasped firmly within it.
“Feisty,” the blue-haired Rocket member muttered. “I’ll leave that one to you. Beating up the blue-cap idiot will let me join you in a few seconds.”
It was here that Joey observed an interesting phenomenon that he only ever saw in the games. Almost instinctively he found his body following and mirroring the gestures of the Rocket as they stepped to the side to face each other away from where Daisy was confronting the other grunt.
It was almost as if some sort of supernatural force was pairing them up in two separate one-versus-one scenarios and having them commit to a very standardised battle. Joey didn’t know if this was some sort of heavenly decree, or if it was just the cultural Zeitgeist of the people present taking over their actions.
Regardless of anything else, in a situation like this where he couldn't call for help and he couldn't really abandon Daisy by shadow sneaking away, there was only one thing that Joey had to do.
He narrowed his eyes at the Rocket and the Raticate standing in front of him and called out Rattata, who came out with an angry chitter which turned very murderous once his starter beheld the situation.
There was only one thing to do.
Joey just needed to win.
Comments
IV08004
Lol flying type specialist
Bookworm bibliophile
If they get take pokenave couldn't have they kill them easily
bor902
Youngster Joey's casts punch
Green0Photon
> “It’s just because, well, ice counters dragons, so what's he supposed to do?” Little did Daisy know, Lance is actually a Flying type trainer. Not that that actually helps vs Ice... > It was almost as if some sort of supernatural force was pairing them up in two separate one-versus-one scenarios and having them commit to a very standardised battle. Arceus, is that you? I'm hoping to still see him have his Pokemon gang up on the Rocket grunts, despite this supernatural force. Considering his methodology earlier in the chapter. And because they yoinked his panic button. If they can play unfair, so can he. It would also be funny NGL if at the end if he loses or something, he just does a ghost punch or something. Or maybe he joins in in the first place. I'm so happy to finally get another chapter of this.
