6 Act I: Chapter 6

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"Fuck."

The words slipped out as I took a deep breath and released a sigh. "I'm suing someone." I announced.

"You'd lose." My father said. He didn't react to my use of bad language, nor did he go straight into lecture mode about me leaving without warning. "There is a little work around that most trainers don't know about."

"Let me guess, Gym Leaders are automatically privy to the medical records of young trainers?" I asked, throwing out my best guest.

"No, but parents are alerted when their children die."

That made my heart sink, while also confusing me for a second. 'Die?'

Apparently, my face showed my confusion. My dad held up two fingers before clearing the air. "Twice, on the table." His eyes hardened then, unhappy with the memory.

My mind immediately went to my mother. "Does mom know?"

The door behind my father, that led to the pokemon center, opened and I heard the voice I had really dreaded hearing. "Who do you think answered the phone?" My mother said as she stepped around the form of my father.

Her lower lip was quivering, and she rushed forward to envelope me in a hug. My wounds flared up when we made contact, but I didn't show any discomfort. Instead I hugged her back. I have been taller than her for a while now, so her face dug itself into my shoulder.

'I guess I deserve the pain.' I concluded as my shoulder became damp.

I may have been giving her attention, but it was my father who held my gaze. He was obviously worried, but now that everyone knew I was ok, he was fucking pissed. Like more pissed than I had ever seen. I didn't say anything, just letting my mother get it all out in my shoulder and weathering his glare.

"I guess it wouldn't do any good to tell you that I regretted leaving without saying goodbye as soon as I stepped out of the house, would it?" I asked them as her sobs settled down.

"No." My father answered for the both of them. My mother couldn't get any words out.

I nodded in acceptance then. "Well just know that I'm sorry I wasn't man enough to face you two then." I told them anyway.

"Enough of that." My mother said as she let go of me, and stepped back. She looked between my father and I. "We can talk about it once you get done healing at home."

'There it is.' I thought to myself. 'They think I'll go home now.'

She still had one of my hands in her own when she turned around to walk back to the pokemon center. When I didn't move, even when she pulled on my arm, she figured out that I wasn't giving up on my journey.

My father's eyes didn't show any signs of surprise. 'He knew I wouldn't give up.' I thought at his face. 'Well it's his own fault. He taught me how to be this stubborn.'

"I'm not going home, mom." I said to make it clear.

She turned back around and faced me with puffy red eyes. With that small sentence,her eyes blinked and threatened to spill tears again. It broke my heart to see her that way, but I hardened it.

'Mothers will always use their tears as a sword and shield.' I thought a little unfairly. She just wanted her baby boy back home and safe, nobody could blame her.

"Don't be ridiculous, Brawly!" She managed to get out without choking up or stuttering. "You were almost ki… killed!"

That, of course, started the water works again. It made me feel two feet tall. I hated being the reason for her tears.

"I'm going to continue my journey." I retorted, ignoring her comment.

I could have told them that it wouldn't happen again, but it would be a lie. Accidents and incidents like mine happened all the time around this world. It was obvious to me now, that while we had tamed a small portion of this world, it was still full of monsters. Unforgiving, uncaring, monsters hunting for their next meal.

'I'll conquer those monsters too.' I thought.

"No you're not." Brody said, confident. I went to retort, but he didn't let me before he spoke again.

"Your accounts are frozen."

That shocked me for a moment, as I processed his words. Then, my anger sparked as the information hit me and we met eyes. He wasn't lying, my father rarely lied.

I heard a shuffling to my side, and looked down to see Hashi stepping beside me. My pokemon had obviously picked up on my anger, as it bled over our empathic link.

"That is a perk of being a Gym Leader." Brody said unforgiving. "And it takes a while for your status as an adult to reach the banks. You can fight it, but it'll take a while."

'And it'll halt my journey because I'll be forced to go back home.' I deduced.

"Smart plan." I complimented him with a smile as I made my decision. "But I don't care about money."

We both understood that I really just told him 'I have enough cash because of the battles I have won.' I did a little mental dance as I noticed my father's smug look turn to shock, aggravation, and then livid again.

It was true too, I still had around two thousand dollars in my bag cash from the meager amount I withdrew before leaving and the battles from Bond Bridge. If he was smart, he would have searched my backpack, and taken that money too.

'He must have assumed I wouldn't battle so early.' I thought to myself.

"Brawly, please." My mother said, interrupting our little standoff.

That's when I realized that this was not how I wanted this meeting to happen. Ideally, I would have shown back up at Dewford Town, with three badges signifying my competence in my chosen career. Then I would have apologized profusely and done what they asked for the next few weeks, mending the relationship I had broken before heading back off on my journey with both sides happy. Now it was going even worse than I could have thought.

"I don't want to fight with you two, but I've made my decision." I reiterated to my mother before turning to my father. "This is exactly why I didn't say goodbye. I knew you would try to force me to stay."

"Damn it, boy!" My father raged. "What are you trying to prove?!"

I just stared at him as he raged, but I didn't answer him. I tried to keep myself calm, so that I wouldn't burn the bridge completely. When I didn't answer, he continued.

"Let me tell you what you've proven. That you aren't fucking ready for the real world!"

"Brody!" My mother protested.

A quick glance from my father shut her up pretty quick. The meek housewife showed its head when he did that, interrupting her normal confident demeanor. That made me want to beat him into unconsciousness but I didn't want to interfere in their marriage. I was already making it strain because of my actions.

"Is that what you were trying to prove?"

"I have nothing to prove." I lied. The words sounded weak, even as I tried to put my chest into the sentence. "To anyone but myself." I corrected.

There was a reason I had left home so early. I did want to prove to everyone that I was ready, and didn't need special treatment from my father. But that was a shallow reason, I really just wanted to prove it to myself that I had it in me to pursue my dreams. So yes, I wanted to show everyone I could do it, but that was just secondary to trying to prove it to myself. My father had hit the nail on the head with his words. A fire lit inside me that made me want to prove it even more.

"Thank you for both coming to see me. I love you both, and wish you would support me with this decision, but I will continue without your approval." I said. With that I turned back to my pokemon and buried the emotions that threatened to spill.

"You stubborn little shit!" My father raged and for a moment I thought he would attack me.

"I love you too, sweetie." My mother said. "Junior, I want to go home."

'It's because he loves you, that he acts this way.' Junior said in my mind just before he grabbed both of my parents.

"Oh no, he's no.."

I turned around to see that Junior had teleported both of my parents away, presumably back to our house in Dewford Town. I knew that Junior would catch shit from my father for doing it, but it was the best outcome from the situation. They would make up and dad would admit to his starter that he was right, and his anger had gotten out of control.

Minato stared at the spot where Junior had stood. I had noticed him staring at the powerful psychic pokemon the whole time during the engagement with my parents.

"Well that didn't go how we wanted it to."

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"Brawly?"

I looked up from my pokegear to see a red haired man dressed in an ace trainer uniform standing in the doorway. The ace gear was a midnight blue jacket and on his shoulder sat the ace trainer patch. A quick glance showed eight pokeballs that sat on his waist, and I knew they would all be at least six badge level pokemon.

"Yes, sir." I confirmed with a nod.

"My name is Troy, and I'm the ace trainer assigned to the investigation of the events the other night. The nurse told me you were healed up enough for some questions." Troy asked from the doorway. "Is it alright if I come in?" His eyes locked on to the forms of my pokemon, sitting in the seats of the room. Minato and Hashi were both asleep.

"Absolutely. I was kind of hoping you would clear some things up for me too." I admitted. I still hadn't been told what happened after passing out on the bridge. What happened to the skarmory? Did the security guard die?

"Well, this is more of a formality than anything to be honest. There were countless witnesses on Bond Bridge, so we have everything except your story." Troy said as he leaned against the wall. He pulled out a notepad to jot down my story.

"Ok, there isn't much to it. I arrived in town, off of a ferry from Dewford Town pretty early in the day. We were supposed to leave the next morning, so I went straight to Bond Bridge to get some experience battling with my starter. After winning most of the bouts, we wound up on the other side of the bridge mid-afternoon sometime. When I got there, I read all of the signs and walked through the gate to Berry Forest.."

"And the security guard didn't stop you, and warn you about the forest?" Troy interrupted me for a moment.

"No sir, I saw the security office, but it didn't look like anyone was there." I answered him honestly.

Troy frowned for a moment. "Yes, that's what some of the other trainers that visited the forest said also. Continue."

"Right, so I entered with my starter and went to the end of the dirt path. I thought it odd that I hadn't seen anyone, or any other pokemon worth mentioning during the walk. I ignored it, thinking that the forest is pretty isolated and it seemed possible that trainers may have reduced the local population over the years." I told him before taking a breath and gathering my thoughts.

"We decided to trek deeper. When I continued to find close to no pokemon in the area, I became suspicious. Then finally I decided to listen to my gut and turn around. It was just my luck that I heard the screeching of a skarmory and the sounds of fighting pretty quick. Then we…" I said and gestured to my now awake starter pokemon. "...stumbled on this little guy."

I pointed at my other pokemon, the sleeping drowzee in a chair then. "He was hiding behind a tree, the same as us. Then the skarmory shot down from the treetops heading straight towards him. I thought it would kill the little guy, but then a full grown hypno teleported between them and blasted it with a psybeam."

Troy stopped taking notes then and looked up at me with a frown, before noting something down again. I continued without asking him about it.

"Then the Hypno's eyes locked on to where I was hiding. I thought I was dead…" I told him. "...but the Skarmory attacked again, and stabbed the Hypno fatally." Troy put his notepad down, and was just staring at me as I recounted the story to him.

"Then it told me to take Minato, it's child, before teleporting the skarmory away. It teleported with a wing through it's lung…" Just saying it out loud made me incredulous as to how focused it had to be to pull it off.

Troy's face was in his hands, and he was smiling as his head shook. "Incredible…" Troy said. "And then?"

"Then I ran back to the bridge. The skarmory caught up as I reached the security office. You know the story after that." I trailed off a bit at the end. The picture of the impaled security guard flashed through my mind.

"Sorry you had to go through that kid." Troy said, noticing my hesitation to continue the story. "You're lucky that there was a cumbusken so close."

That reminded me about a question I had been meaning to ask. "Who was it that saved me? What happened after I blacked out?"

"Your savior didn't give his name, and was gone by the time you were teleported to the hospital." Troy said.

Hope at finding and thanking my savior was thrown out the window for a moment before Troy spoke up again.

"But I did some digging. There aren't too many people with a combusken around." Troy said, as if I should have realized that fact.

I frowned. "What do you mean? Isn't it one of the starters of Hoenn?" I asked him.

'It should be fairly popular right?' I wondered.

"You don't know?" Troy asked, almost just as confused as I was. "You have to qualify to be able to choose between the three 'starters' of any region. Perfect score across the board, for a test that is designed to discourage kids from going out in the big bad world."

If it was possible, my frown deepened even further. "And how often does someone get a perfect score?" I asked.

"Less than two a year, across all the regions." Troy answered quickly. His hand dropped to fiddle with one of his pokeballs nostalgically.

"How does everyone get their pokemon?" The first thing that came to mind, I spit out at him.

"How did you get yours, kid?" Troy asked, and the affectionate use of 'kid' started to wear off.

"I went into granite cave, and got luckier than anyone can ever expect." I answered him.

Troy shot me a strange look then, and I realized he must have been familiar with the dangerous cave of Hoenn. It was actually really well known around the world, mainly for the rare stones that seemed to never end in the cave.

"Well, pidgey is the most common pokemon above the sea. They grow and evolve into strong flying types, and provide fast travel pretty much anywhere you want to go. They're also cheap as hell for parents to get for their kids." Troy explained. "Pidgeot is the most common fully evolved pokemon in the world, unless you count bug types, which I don't."

"So kids get whatever pokemon their parents can afford them?" I summed up.

"Yep." Troy said. "The rarer the breed, the more it costs obviously."

I got quiet after he said that. Mainly I was lost in my own thoughts about the world that I was inhabiting. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that starters were that rare. Was it because of actual rarity in the wild?

'No, because there is a whole valley dedicated to a charizard. And then there were a lot of squirtles and bulbasaur in the anime. What about the other regions?' I thought to myself.

"Anyway, it didn't take me very long to figure out who saved you." Troy said, breaking me out of my thoughts.

"Brendan." I said out loud, having already deduced that it was the game's protagonist who saved me.

It made sense. As we progress through the game, it becomes obvious that we are more talented than the average trainer and rise to defeat the champion. That and the fact that during our first battle, Brendan struggled on choosing a weak enough pokemon to go up against Hashirama, further reinforcing the fact that he is an exceptional trainer. It was kind of obvious that he was the one to rescue me.

"You know him?" Troy asked, curious.

"Yea, he was my first battle as a trainer." I confirmed to the Ace Trainer.

Troy made a hissing noise before responding. "Tough luck. Saw his gym battles, and he's leagues ahead of where he is supposed to be."

It got awkward after that, because I didn't know how to respond. I decided to let the silence win.

"Well, that's all I needed from you. Nurse say when you can get out of this place?" Troy asked after a while of the silence.

That reminded me why I was still stuck in the hospital. It had been a couple of hours since the argument with my parents, after that, the nurse found me. She was absolutely livid that I was out of bed and roaming around.

"She said it'd be a week." I groaned as I told him. Troy let out a bark of a laugh as he moved to open the door and go do whatever it was that Ace Trainers do.

"If you need me, give me a call."

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I palmed the only pokeball on my hip and released the pokemon inside of it. Tsunade dove into the pool beneath her immediately.

Hashi and Minato both looked up to me curiously, waiting for me to tell them what to do. Instead of barking out orders, I pulled out my pokegear and went to the notes section. On it, was a list of all of my pokemon's moves, and training exercises for them to focus on during our week long stay at the pokecenter.

'Tsunade

Shows signs of an early water gun, train it to perfection. Will be a long ranged attack, and pretty much the only thing it's capable of offense wise.

Needs to develop physical resistance, and also build mass. Note: Magikarp evolves strictly from physical things like swimming up a strong current. Incorporate weight training to mimic nature and see if it will affect the Feebas line also.'

'Minato

Has already shown signs of utilizing it's psychic energies. Train up into Confusion? Will be long ranged attack.

Needs a lot of sleep throughout the day, is this a product of its weak physiology because of its increased mental prowess? Try training up the body, and showing it how to fight similar to Hashi. No one will expect a drowzee to do anything but launch confusions at the enemy. Teach it how to throw a proper punch, along with the psychic abilities and then wreck kids. Note: CAN NOT train on the same regimen as Hashi, tone it down severely to account for it's already weak body. Point is to gain the upperhand, not to make it into a physical beast. Just set the stage for the elemental punches, which Hypno can learn.

FIND A WAY TO TEACH TELEPORT, IF NOT. BUY AT EARLIEST CONVENIENCE.'

'Hashi

Train Sand Attack up, needs to cover a wider area of effect. Train sprinting speed, he already has endurance in spades because of his biology. This should cover gap closing for the weaker gyms, think of other ways for the higher gyms.

Incorporate weight training! His technique for fighting moves is already there, as is his use of focus energy (Past few battles have shown that it might be turning into pure fighting energy. Find a way to test theory, somehow.)

It actually seems as if he may evolve soon, put him against the harder battles, introduce a controlled amount of stress to expedite the process. DO NOT PUT HIM IN DANGER, EMPHASIS ON CONTROLLED.'

"Alright guys, we're going to take advantage of the time we have here to train up." I said as I took the backpack off and set it on the ground.

I opened it up to take out my latest purchase. I pulled on the straps and revealed it to my pokemon.

A black harness, made to fit most humanoid pokemon, sat in my hands. There was a black block, with several knobs on it attached to the harness and it looked like it would slip on to the back of whatever pokemon was wearing it. It was almost weightless in my hands, but a turn of one of the knobs on the back would change that.

I had gone into the pokemon center, looking for some way to do some serious weight training for my pokemon. Turns out that I was not the first person to think about it. In fact, it was such a staple in the training society that Silph Company had decided to invest in it. They had incorporated the technology they so coveted and applied it to industry.

It was amazing.

Somehow, someway, they had isolated the mass reduction qualities of pokeballs and the backpacks and applied it to the black block on the back of the harness. Only it worked in reverse. It increased weight, with only the turn of a knob, how broken is that?!

It was so over my head, technology wise, but I assumed it affected the mass of the object directly. Of course, I had no idea as to whether or not that's true because if it was then couldn't they, theoretically, create a black hole?

'I gotta stop thinking about the hows and whys, I'll never be able to deduce the workings of this world's technology with my previous life's meager science knowledge.' I told myself.

I did know that it required a lot of energy to obtain the effects you wanted, but the pokemon center provided that stuff for free considering ...you know, this world literally has species of pokemon that can generate electricity at will. So a few hours at the charging station at the pokemon center, and I was good to go.

'This world is so broken.' I thought to myself.

I flipped the harness over and looked at the knobs. I groaned when I realized it was on the metric system and cursed my last life in America.

'I'll have to learn the metric system it seems.' I thought to myself. 'I wonder if any of the other regions use imperial?'

The knob had ten different settings for 10kg all the way to 100kg. Along with a bar to the left for the charge left in the harness. I turned the knob to 10kg, and almost dropped the harness as the weight changed. It wasn't a lot of weight, it was just unexpected. If I had to guess, I would have said that it weighed around 15-20 pounds, although I had no way of converting the kg to pounds.

Either way, it would work for what I wanted it to do. I looked up to see that Hashi was looking over my shoulder, watching me. Minato was sleeping, of course. And Tsunade was swimming around the pool excitedly.

I smiled as I held their new torture device, and Hashi got excited through our empathic link also.

"Alright, let's get to work."

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A/N: Boom!

Brawly and Brody had a bit of a fight didn't they! Can you blame his parents for being worried and wanting him to come home after such an occurrence? What is it with me and writing kids who disagree with their parents?

Got some closure on the incident also! Only one of y'all realized who actually saved him! Brendan, the game's protagonist, came to the rescue, by way of chance.

Troy also revealed a lot of information about starters and the quality of the average trainer didn't he?

Tell me what y'all think in the reviews!