PROLOGUE
The dock is even more crowded than he expected.
If it weren’t for the fact that Fall City was made for hauling large amounts of people to and fro and stuffing them onto ships like tins of Wishi-washi he would have been concerned it was going to break under the pressure.
He could count maybe twenty people? If he was even counting at all, it was more of an estimate since that was all he guess the tiniest dock could handle. There was no Pokemon in sight - unless you counted the Wingulls - a strange sight but not a surprising one given the circumstances.
Because of this people were more prone to interacting with each other than their partners, making the enclosed-yet-not-enclosed space louder than it had any right to be.
His own hand twitched to his belt even though he knew it was empty, all his Pokemon were at home probably gorging themselves on whatever food they could find and enjoying a nice early retirement from battling.
Meanwhile he was here, ready to embark on another possibly excruciating journey to get more badges, more Pokemon, and go through more challenges than any trainer should want to go through.
A large sigh escaped him as his fingers twitched for something to hold, and ended up digging into his pocket to pull out a flyer.
There was something exciting about it, if not absolutely terrifying. No one had heard about this league, let along this region until any trainer who had entered any league officially got mailed this little scrap of paper.
The whole thing was pretty straightforward, a regular flyer that encouraged tourism. “Come visit us at the Alcot Region!” it said, big block letters layered over a scenic picture. He had to admit the photo was pretty, and could easily attract even just normal travelers without the mind-blowing news on the pack.
He flipped the flyer over, the simple sentence replaced with a full list of why people should visit. A newly built league that promised a challenge to all trainers, old and new. He’d always considered himself a skeptical person, but the opportunity to become a champion (a new champion at that) was too tempting to just through the flyer away.
Of course, what also came with the innate need to compete, was confusion.
After a running list of everything Alcot had to offer, there was an 800 number, something the little piece of paper said that you needed to do before even considering going.
He called of course, and after about an hour of boring wait times (he definitely wasn’t the only person to get this flyer, he assumed) there was a hoarse voice asking for his name and information. He gave it freely, all leagues needed a name to put winnings under just in case you lost your badges, and there was a growing movement to remove badge checkpoints anyways, who had time to manually check for everyone’s badges when you could just swipe a card and have it spit out the information anyway?
As she did this, going through his past experiences, she started listing what he considered to be the terms and conditions for traveling to Alcot and participating in the (new! Exciting! Challenging!) league.
Old standings didn’t matter: meaning if you had participated in an old league or even won one, you would not get any special treatment. Everyone started from square one regardless of previous accomplishments.
Which brought the lady to her next point, outside Pokemon would not be allowed to be brought in to the region.
He supposed it wasn’t terribly shocking, new league and all. But no other region had made that a specific requirement before, rather more of an unspoken rule that you probably shouldn’t use the same team for every league you enter.
So to have it laid out so plainly though was definitely a little jarring to hear.
They really took “fresh start” seriously, he supposed.
The other conditions for joining weren’t as exciting. Service Pokemon were allowed on the strict condition they not participate in any battling having to do with the league (recreational was fine, it’s not like they could monitor everything). You had to have your vaccinations up to date to enter the region, along with having a valid ID that stated you were at least a certain age, and there was no sympathy for those who participated in crime, any trainers that broke Alcot laws were to be expelled from the league immediately.
Which honestly, was fair. A world that had a widely accepted culture of people who talked to everyone and everyone talked back was lovely, but even he had to admit there were trainers who pushed boundaries just because they thought they could.
Finally after what seemed like an hour of rule reciting he got the information on how to actually get to the region.
The Alcot Adventurer’s Foundation (the company that apparently sent out and sponsored all those flyers) were going to send him a plane ticket to go to Fall City in the Fiore region. From there, he had to use the other ticket that they would give him and take a boat that was supposedly specifically chosen by the foundation to take them to Alcot.
The lady on the phone said all this hassle was to be able to keep track of all the trainers coming in, and have them come in through the correct channels in general.
In essence, it was all because of some bureaucratic bullshit.
He shoved the flyer back in his pocket before checking his watch. The boat was supposed to come in around ten minutes and everyone was to board in twenty. There was only one licensed boat that was to take trainers in group to Alcot directly.
He managed to get onto one of the earlier boats, thank god. He doesn’t know if he could manage waiting any longer to start challenging gyms again.
“You look like you’re about to vibrate off this plane of existence.”
He doesn’t startle, he barely flinches.
The girl that just spoke (out of
nowhere by the way) looks like she’s two seconds from bursting into laughter anyway.
“Impatient about how long the boats taking?” she moves so she’s standing in front of him now, grinning like she knows something he doesn’t.
Regardless of how out of nowhere this came from, he can’t help but voice his agreement.
“Yeah, me too,” she stretches her arms over her head, “I feel like I’ve been standing on this dumb dock for hours. The Wingull are probably mocking all of us by now.”
He hums, and she just sighs and holds her hand out.
“Not much of a talker? That’s fine, more room for me. My name’s Daisy.”
She’s definitely friendly, if not a little pushy, but he doesn’t have his Pokemon with him and honestly, making friends when you’re going to fun-but-strange new regions is half the fun.
Most of the fun comes from that battles though.
He shakes her hand and introduces himself too, watching her grin somehow grow even larger. She says his name is cool (weird) and that she’s excited about going to this weird region that really never had any reasons to travel to (same).
They both start talking about their experience in getting accepted to travel there, and she goes on about how boring it was to do a phone call of all things to get accepted before their here someone in the crowd shout before the entire dock is cheering. He can’t see it through the throngs of people but he assumes the boat is here.
Thank god for that.
“Took it long enough.”
At least Daisy agrees with him, and she grabs his arm so she doesn’t lose him in the crowd as everyone starts pushing at each other to form some sort of line as the boat (which he can now see) approaches the dock.
The SS Richard is about as unremarkable as it’s name, but the sight of it still makes his heart race. Daisy teases him about the smile working his way onto his face but even though he barely knows her, he can’t seem to be annoyed, this is it after all.
The line moves fairly slowly and it would be even more excruciating than it already is if he didn’t have Daisy yammering his poor ear off the whole time as a distraction.
In the span of the ten minutes in which the boat docks, anchors, and gets ready to take in passenger he learns just about everything there is to know about the girl behind him.
Daisy’s never done a league before, but she has Pokemon and she cried when she left them behind (he couldn’t judge, he teared up when he said goodbye too, even if he knew they were going to get pampered). She likes the color orange, something he could have guessed from her dress (it had flames on it). Also, she almost lost her boat ticket twice on the plane because she kept looking at it.
Three things constitutes for know everything about somebody right?
It’s been a while since he’s had to make new friends.
He pulls his own ticket out of his pocket when they both get closer to the front of the line and comes face to face with the tallest man he’s ever seen.
In his mind he knows that’s wrong, everyone knows Lance from Johto is impossibly tall, but since he’s never really stood next to him, this guy (the captain he guesses) takes absolutely all the awards.
“Ticket, please.”
The man’s voice is gentle, and he has no qualms in feeling like he can trust him immediately as he hands over his ticket to be looked over. He can feel Daisy bouncing on her heels behind him in excitement as the sailor hands his ticket back after ripping off the stub.
“Passengers go on the deck.”
He looks behind him to tell Daisy he’ll wait for her there and scurries up the plank, because despite being an adult (nineteen is adult enough) he’s excited damnit, he’s been waiting for this for days, and starts looking around.
Despite being fairly plain the boat is
nice, and in between the people milling round he can see the whole thing is pretty spotless, his own reflection looking back at him on the wooden deck.
He can see himself grinning, and for once he doesn’t feel too embarrassed about it.
Daisy almost wrecks his hearing when she comes up behind him and squeals, mouth going a mile a minute as she talks about how cool the captain guy is. Of course the reason she took longer than him was because she asked him a ton of questions. The guy really is the captain, and his name is Teach. She managed to worm out of him the fact that he’s been sailing for “a very very long time” (she tries to mimic his deep voice too, even if she sounds like a fool doing it) and this is his ship.
“He told me he had to get to the rest of the passengers so I couldn’t get anything else,” She tries to pout but she’s clearly just as excited as he is (though he knew that already), “Actually, he did say that the trip was going to be like three hours, so that’s cool.”
The arrival time was on their tickets, but he agreed it was nice to hear it from the guy who was actually going to get them in the first place.
“What do you wanna do while we wait?”
And that was the question wasn’t it. Waiting thirty minutes on the dock was bad enough, how were they supposed to entertain themselves for that much time on a contained boat? With no Pokemon to even have a friendly battle with?
He just sighs and looks around, captain Teach had apparently finished getting everyone on the boat and was pulling up the plank to get ready to set sail. Everyone else was either getting settled to look over the railing or sitting on the floor and chatting.
He turned to Daisy and she looked at him expectantly.
He wasn’t much for small talk or just milling around but he figured this was fine.
“We can play I Spy?”
---
The game of I Spy lasted the take off of the boat, and the next fifteen minutes after that before he and Daisy started both collectively losing their minds. Daisy was still trying though, probably for her own sake.
“Hmm… I Spy something-”
“It’s the ocean.”
He can’t help but think he saw this exact scenario of boredom induced I Spy on a TV show.
The two of them were leaning against the railing looking at said ocean and even though there was the occasional Wailmer sighting, or the much more common Wingull and Pelipper sighting, there was just a whole lot of blue and not much else.
They stood in relatively comfortable silence for a while before he had had enough. He was going to fly overboard if he spent the next two and a half hours dissociating from life and looking at Wingull. Daisy seemed to agree because she pulled out her Pokegear and started pressing buttons on it.
“You wanna play some Pokemon Pinball with me?”
---
Daisy was way too good at Pokemon Pinball.
---
Pokemon Pinball turned into Pokemon Shuffle which turned into Pokemon Quest (all of which Daisy was disgustingly good at, which made him scrunch up his nose despite them not even being versus games) and eventually they moved to the center of the deck to join the other soon-to-be-trainers in the practice of laying on the wooden floor and staring up at the sun.
He threw his arm up to both block the sun and check his watch. They had around forty-five minutes left, and he’d have to thank Daisy for supplying him with the time-passers that were Pokegear games.
“How hard d’you think the league is going to be?”
The ship at this point was filled with relative quiet, everyone either calming down or just melting onto the deck from the warm rays of the sun, so someone speaking loudly was enough to get him (Daisy was still playing Pokemon Quest) to tilt his head to the side toward the voice.
“It was advertised as way harder than the other regional leagues, though I don’t know how, really.”
“I’m sure it was just fluff words to get more people to come.”
It was a group of boys huddled together nearby, all of them wearing pensive looks on their faces. He turned back up to look at the sky (still really blue, he noted wryly) to try and pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping.
He heard a loud sigh, “It better not be, I have high hopes for this place.”
“They really did hype it up, huh.”
He heard one of them shuffle around and it was only his fear of being caught acting like a weirdo that made him keep his eyes glued to the sky.
“This thing says it’s an extensive league… Challenging…” There was some mumbling he couldn’t catch, “But it doesn’t really say what’s changed about it.”
Hums answered him.
“The person I spoke to on the phone said there was a different set of rules in this league and that is, quote, ‘will test both your talent as a trainer and your dedication to proceed.’”
“Sounds like more fluff.”
“I dunno, with the flyer it does sound like this isn’t gonna be anything like other gym battles.”
“Good. I’m getting bored of the same old same old.”
“Yeah… And the new trainers aren’t helping either.”
He couldn’t help but agree, his mind wandering from the trio’s conversation to trainers both new and old of any and each region that have been making to their own leagues making battles seem more like a showoff of breeding and pedigree rather than actual talent.
It came with the territory when the only updates from the league were more restrictions on Pokemon usage and rules that didn’t make much sense in the long run. Trainers started to breed better Pokemon individuals and leagues lost a little bit of their excitement. Not all of it of course, he still tuned in to the world tournament every year, and he got as hyped up as any trainer with a heart.
But when doing battles himself… The fun was a little lost.
He closed his eyes, hearing one thump against the wooden floor followed by two more (which he assumed were the trio of boys returning to their sunbathing) and took a deep breath.
A nap until he reached Alcot sounded nice.
---
He knew who was shaking him before he even opened his eyes, Daisy once again speaking as much as a Chatot while gripping his arm and trying to pull it from it’s socket.
“We’re here! I can see the city, come on!”
She let go of his arm before he even stood up, joining the rest of the trainers on the edge of the deck looking out to the sea. He stood up as
quickly as he could, risking dizziness so he could get a look as well.
If you asked him, he did not run.
If you asked anyone else, they would say he did.
Vivace City was absolutely massive. A monumental dome of glass surrounding an area that could rival Castelia, Lumiose, and Jubilife all at once in regards to how impressive it was. Even at this distance the city screamed “capitol.” He'd have to be blind not to be in awe.
The ship was heading straight towards one of the two protruding tunnels that lead into Vivace, and he could practically feel Daisy grinning a thousand watt smile as they got closer, the SS Richard blowing a horn to signal its arrival, and the trainers on deck calling back with elated cheers.
The Alcot Region was welcoming its new trainers, and despite the long journey, he couldn’t feel any amount of annoyance as he stared at the gate.
